He Holds up the Heavens: Conrad Weiser

Interpreting and translating is difficult work, easy to get wrong.  Concepts and ideas, idioms and figures of speech often do not translate from one language to another.  Add to this the fact that Native cultural ideas about leadership and land ownership rights couldn't have been more different and the challenge becomes even harder.  With good reason, Native tribes trusted few White men as interpreters, well aware that most served the agenda of the White agencies and governments who hired them.  One man who did earn their trust was Conrad Weiser, 1696-1760, a German religious refugee from Pennsylvania who was a master at both interpreting and mediating between various Native tribes and Pennsylvania colonial authorities.

Conrad was born in Affstatt, in what is now Wurttemberg, Germany.  This area was part of Germany's Palatinate region, an area of principalities along the River Rhine, facing France.  It was a war-torn area, as the kingdoms of Germany were frequently at war with France over religion, succession and land rights.  The Weiser family were a deeply religious Protestant family, subject to persecution from French invaders and local governments in Germany.  The Palatinate region was ruled by the Catholic Wittelsbach family, who also ruled Bavaria.  Conrad's mother died when he was about twelve or thirteen and his father decided that the family should flee their homeland forever.  They first settled in England, where several thousand refugees from war and persecution in the Palatinate had gone.  There were so many of them that the English government had to set up refugee camps outside London.  With the help of friendly Mohawk leaders, Queen Anne's government arranged for these refugees to settle along the Mohawk River in New York.  However, each family had to pay for their passage as indentured servants, living in refugee camps until they could find land of their own.

In 1710, Conrad's family arrived in America.  His father knew that a refugee camp was no place to raise a young man.  The elder Weiser had made contact with Mohawk leaders near Schoharie, New York and arranged for his son to live among the Mohawk.  Thus, rather than being captured, Conrad's family placed him with the Natives, where he learned their language and culture and grew to respect it.  Conrad later returned to White society in 1713.  By 1720, he had married Anna Feck, and the two settled on a farm near what is now Reading, Pennsylvania.   In 1731, Weiser was out hunting and ran into Oneida chief Shkellamy.  Shkellamy had been sent by the Oneida as an emissary to other tribes and to the British.  Weiser and Shkellamy soon became friends and Weiser agreed to travel to Philadelphia to assist Shkellamy in presenting his people's needs to colonial authorities in Philadelphia.  As an adopted Mohawk, Weiser was respected by the Native people and soon grew to be trusted by White authorities, as well.  In 1736, Pennsylvania finalized a purchase from the Iroquois of land drained by the Delaware River around Blue Mountain.  By treating with the Iroquois, the Pennsylvanians angered and alienate the local Delaware/Lenape, who actually lived on and hunted this land.  Combined with the Walking Purchase and other treaties, the Delaware felt cheated by Pennsylvania and this led to tension between Whites and Delaware as well as the Iroquois and the Lenape/Delaware.

Weiser understood this and was used several times by both the Pennsylvania and Virginia governments in conducting councils with the Iroquois.  His ability to endure the hardships of frontier travel between the Iroquois capital of Onondaga, Philadelphia and Williamsburg earned him further esteem among the Natives.  His Mohawk name was Tarachiawagon, He Holds Up the Heavens.  Another trusted friend of Weiser's was Benjamin Franklin, who had also observed Native culture and respected their democratic methods of governing and solving problems.  Weiser would be the interpreter at the Treaty of Lancaster of 1744, of which Franklin was an observer.  In addition to councils with the Iroquois tribes, Weiser also worked with the Shawnee and Delaware, trying to alleviate the tensions between them and Pennsylvania.  In 1756, the Pennsylvania legislature appointed Weiser and Franklin to oversee construction of a series of forts in the backcountry to protect the colony in the even of a French attack.  Weiser also interpreted for the council that lead to the Treaty of Easton of 1758.  As a Protestant refugee who'd been given an opportunity in British-controlled America, Weiser was careful to persuade his Native contacts of the need to ally with Britain over France.

In addition to his service as an interpreter and running his own farm, Weiser became a convinced Seventh Day Baptist and spent several years at a commune run by a German preacher named Conrad Beissel.  He supplemented his income as a tanner and was the Chief Judge of Berks County from 1752-1760.  He also was a lay preacher and Sunday school teacher.  He died and was buried on his farm in 1760.  An Iroquois leader was said to have remarked that, "we are at a great loss and sit in darkness.  Since his death we cannot so well understand one another."  After Weiser's death, relations between Pennsylvania and the various tribes deteriorated rapidly into war.  The Conrad Weiser Homestead in Womelsdorf, Pennyslvania is run by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission as a museum and interpretive center.