Central Europe Yearbook

Encounters with Native Americans in Early Colonial Georgia

The Salzburger Emigrants and Their Reports on Interactions with Indigenous Peoples

Fabia Weisser

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich

Keywords: Georgia, Native American, Salzburgers, Southeast, Colonial

Abstract

In the 1730s, a group of religiously persecuted Salzburgers found refuge in the newly established colony of Georgia. Two pastors, Johann Martin Boltzius and Israel Christian Gronau, accompanied the men, women, and children on their way to the New World. Between 1733 and 1760, the pastors composed letters and diary entries about the challenges in adapting to their new home, which they named Ebenezer. A significant portion of the descriptions of their new “Heimat” includes encounters with indigenous peoples. The Salzburgers and their Native American neighbors not only exchanged commodities and gifts but also interacted through acts of kindness and charity. The Austrian emigrants’ leader, Boltzius, also sought to teach indigenous peoples—whom he frequently portrayed as wild pagans yet intrinsically good people—about Christianity. The Salzburgers’ accounts of their encounters with Native Americans, described in a collection of diary entries and letters known as the Detailed Reports, reveal the many difficulties they faced in cross-cultural interactions, including language barriers and essential cultural and religious differences that elevated a sense of distrust and resentment between both groups. As the political circumstances in America’s Southeast changed, so did the descriptions of Native Americans by the pastors.