Nachricht von Suriname und seinen Einwohnern

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Foreword by Drs. H.C. van Renselaar

A heroic episode in the history of the Moravian Brethren in Surinam and Berbice is constituted by the missionary work they did among the Indians about the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1740 it started with the foundation of the Pilgerhut settlement on the river Berbice. Soon a group of Arawaks settled here and applied themselves to agriculture under the direction of the Brethren. Great men like T.S. Schumann gave their energies to this work.

The mission to the Indians suffered countless setbacks. Not only was there opposition from the colonial government and the European planters; the greatest trouble was caused by the enmity between Bush Negroes and Indians, which is understandable enough when it is considered that Indians were often employed to pursue fugitive negro slaves.

In the seventeen-fifties other missionary stations, besides Pilgerhut, were established at Saron on the river Saramacca and at Ephraim and Hope on the Corentyn. Pilgerhut was devastated in the great slave rebellion of Berbice in 1763 and was then deserted. In 1761 Saron had been burnt down by the Bush Negroes. Although it rose to prosperity again, fresh difficulties, diseases and deaths eventually caused the missionary station to be discontinued in 1779. At Ephraim and Hope, too, the activities ceased early in the nineteenth century. This

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marked the end of a period of intensive missionary work among the Indians.

Side by side with their fervent zeal for the cause of their mission the Brethren evinced a vivid interest in the Indian language and culture. Of widest repute is the work of the gifted Schumann, who, besides translating parts of the Bible into the language of the Arawaks, composed an Arawakan grammar and dictionary. The same scientific interest in the life of the Indians underlies the book which C. Quandt wrote on his twelve years' residence in Surinam. Christlieb Quandt was born in 1740 at Urbs in Latvia as the son of a Lutheran minister who had already joined the Moravian Brethren before. Orphaned at an early age, Quandt was educated in Germany, after which he became a teacher at a boarding-school for boys at Neudietendorf. In 1768 he was ordered by the Directors of the Unity at Zeist to sail to Surinam, where he was to work as a missionary among the Arawaks at Saron. Not many months after his arrival Quandt had already mastered the Arawakan tongue and was acquitting himself of his task with great ability. From 1774 till 1780 he directed the work of the mission at Hope on the Corentyn. In the latter year he was forced by his wife's persistent illness to set out on the voyage back to Europe. From his diary and notes Quandt compiled a book on his life in Surinam, to which he gave the form of a packet of twenty-two letters. The first ten of these give a chronological account of Quandt's work among the Indians; the other twelve consist of treatises on the vegetable and animal world of Surinam, as well as ethnographical

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and philological notes on the Indians. Quandt was a sober-minded and keen observer, of a markedly practical disposition, as is evidenced by his unvarnished and reliable report on the colonial society of his day and the role which the Brethren played in it. In this he also shows himself to be a typical child of his age in that he does not denounce the institution of slavery - he bought slaves himself - but condemns the ill treatment which slaves suffered at the hands of the planters. Of particu-and Bush Negroes and those of the latter with the negro slaves. His remarks on the life of the Indians, lastly, make it lar interest are Quandt's notes on the relations between Indians clear to us that it underwent comparatively little change ever since those days until the era which may be said to have begun after the second world war. This proves how stable these Indian communities have remained in spite of their contacts with the Protestants and Catholic missions and the government.