After the Pennsylvania sectarians came into the Shenandoah Valley, they quickly established contact with the Shawnee and with the Africans who had begun to settle there, fulfilling their chosen mission of justice. The Governor of Virginia, facing strong opposition from other Governors, and uncertain of his best course of action, delayed his invasion of the Shenandoah Valley.

During the first spring, in the Christian year 1746, the discussions were ceremonial. Leaders praised each other in long meetings; the few followers that came eyed each other, mostly unable to speak to their counterparts, and waited for the events to be over.

In May, the Pennsylvanians were informed that they were facing massive fines for their crime of sedition against the Crown -- as much as four pounds per family. They were also informed that, in lieu of payment, the Royal Governor of Pennsylvania would begin expropriating the farmlands they had left behind in July.

Of the Five Thousand, perhaps a dozen families submitted to this blackmail, returning to pay the fine and regain their land before July. For example, Hans Esser took his young wife and baby back to their farm near Lancaster -- a farm that his father in-law had provided them. His wife had married him in the style of the Mennonites, and promised to practice his religion; but, she was heard to say, she had never promised to do so in the wilds of Virginia, hundreds of miles from her Lutheran kinfolk and their settled Pennsylvania farms.

But most of the Five Thousand were not so attached to their old homes. The elders of the German sectarians, in particular, had spent their lives in exile, moving from one nation to another in Europe before crossing the Atlantic to Pennsylvania. They had found some tolerance in the colony that Quaker William Penn had founded, but "the English" were growing in numbers there, and they found them an annoying, worldly and contentious people.

Perhaps more important to these devout peasants, though, was the fact that they found themselves in even better farmland than they had left. Of necessity, they had begun to plant a few crops and to graze their cattle as soon as they could -- and they found that they could do both a few days earlier in this warmer climate. They also found that the open land they had come to was mostly not claimed by anyone -- at least anyone they had to contend with. They knew that in theory it belonged to the Crown of Great Britain; but the authority of the Crown was nowhere to be seen on this side of Virginia's western mountains. As for native people, there were few here; the Shenandoah Valley seemed to be more of a hunting ground, or a neutral territory, as the Shawnee explained it to the newcomers.

The Governor of Pennsylvania had spurred their decision, but for most of them, staying in Virginia was not a bitter decision to make.

Shawnee people, and any of the tribes that considered themselves to be allies of the Shawnee, had also been coming to the Valley in greater and greater numbers, as the word spread throughout the British colonies and the frontier that the Valley was becoming a Shawnee stronghold. And Africans continued to follow the James River and the setting sun, finding their way one way or another to the neighborhood of the African Kingdom of Ségu.

The Africans who came to the Valley clustered close to the original village site where the Prince and his followers had settled. There was no doubt in their minds that their former British masters would pursue them, and they were determined to stand together and resist when that time came. In addition, many of them had taken their tools when they ran, as well as seed and other necessities, and by the time the Five Thousand came, the Africans had a town of their own, a place where you could find ironsmiths and carpenters, fletchers and seamstresses, and even a watchmaker. The Saturday market in Ségu Town, as the English speakers came to call it, was the market for the whole Valley area.

Of course, most of the Africans had to farm if they were to survive; so groups of them formed small intensely worked farms not far from the river where the Prince had settled.

The Shawnee established villages running to the east and the north, in hollows in the hills and mountains, every one with access to a creek or an all-season spring, but also to the forest. Corn and squash and beans were important to them, but so were the plants and animals of the forest.

This situation left the open valley land available for the Pennsylvanians when they came -- from their point of view, beautiful rolling land, mostly well watered and with visibility in every direction. Each one of their households could take on as much land as they believed they could take good care of, and still have a neighbor or three to gather with on the Sabbath for worship.

For some among the people beginning to gather in the Valley, just taking on the challenges of the seasons and of a new home was more then enough to handle. But the wiser heads knew that these new homes being formed were highly vulnerable. On June 11, 1746, representatives of the three peoples met for the first time in serious council.

None of these people were inclined to make flip decisions, and the talk still went on for many hours that day and on subsequent Thursdays. But on that first day, the Prince of Ségu made two critical statements. First, he welcomed his Christian brothers who had come in peace and in concern for justice to share the land.

None of his listeners thought for a moment that he could have done otherwise. The Pennsylvanians had nowhere to go now, and the Prince hardly had the resources to send them away even if he had wanted to. In addition, as he had told his closest advisor, Amin, the day before, the Pennsylvanians were, at this time, the best protection he had from the British troops, because, as all of them knew, the British Crown would not treat Christians in the same way they would treat Africans and Shawnee. Still, the Pennsylvanians were people not inclined to stay where they were not wanted, and there were probably lands to the west they could settle if they had to move on again.

As important as the fact of the Prince's welcome was the fact that it was he who gave it.   The Prince had been among the first Africans to see this place, and that had only happened eighteen years before. Shawnee people had never claimed this land as theirs, but they had certainly been living in it and near it and traveling through it for hundreds of years, if not thousands. The Prince was born across the ocean, not here in what was now his Kingdom. He was, however, the one man who had created and who sustained their new condition as a people outside the British realm and on the edge of new possibilities. This was not a position he intended to surrender. He believed that he was in that position as part of the Divine plan, and that he had an overwhelming responsibility to his fellow Muslims, his fellow Africans, to the Shawnee who stood by him, and now to these stern Christians who had joined them.

The second statement that he made was even simpler. He said "we must, every one of us, see ourselves as divinely appointed to defend, enrich, and make wise our God-given community."

It is often said that no-one who was there, and heard him say that, either in his own words or in translation, has ever forgotten that moment. It is also said that an inordinate number of those who best served the Cantons in the hard years that followed were there, under the blue sky, seated in the dust of the marketplace. It is said that to have been there when he made that simple statement was enough to ensure that one lived a life of selfless ingenuity and productivity. The undoubted fact that were some there who lived out their lives as drunkards and wastrels, or even died in brawls, is not seen as disproving this understanding. As the Christians say, some seed falls on barren ground, but it is still genuine and fruitful seed.