The Lenâpé and their Legends

Gros Ventre,

Sheyenne.

Granting, as we must, some common geographical centre for these many dialects, the question where this was located becomes an interesting one.

More than one attempt to answer it has been made. Mr. Lewis H. Morgan thought there was evidence to show that the valley of the Columbia river, Oregon, "was the initial point from which the Algonkin stock emigrated to the great lake region and thence to the Atlantic coast."[Footnote_1_1 - Lewis H. Morgan, Indian Migrations, in Beach's Indian Miscellany, p. 218.] This is in direct conflict with the evidence of language, as the Blackfoot or Satsika is the most corrupt and altered of the Algonkin dialects. Basing his argument on this evidence, Mr. Horatio Hale reaches a conclusion precisely the reverse of that of Morgan. "The course of migration of the Indian tribes," writes Mr. Hale, "has been from the Atlantic coast westward and southward. The traditions of the Algonkins seem to point to Hudson's Bay and the coast of Labrador."[Footnote_2_2 - H. Hale, Indian Migrations as Evidenced by Language, p. 24. (Chicago, 1883.)] This latter view is certainly that which accords best with the testimony of language and of history.

We know that both Chipeways and Crees have been steadily pressing westward since their country was first explored, driving before them the Blackfeet and Dakotas.[Footnote_3_3 - See the R. P. A. Lacombe Dictionnaire de la Langue des Cris. Introd., p. xi. (Montreal, 1874.)]

The Cree language is built up on a few simple, unchangeable radicals and elementary words, denoting being, relation, energy, etc.; it has extreme regularity of construction, a single negative, is almost wholly verbal and markedly incorporative, has its grammatical elements better defined than its neighbors, and a more consistent phonetic system.[Footnote_4_4 - See Joseph Howse, A grammar of the Cree Language, p. 13, et al. (London, 1842)] For these and similar reasons we are justified in considering it the nearest representative we possess of the pristine Algonkin tongue, and unless strong grounds to the contrary are advanced, it is proper to assume that the purest dialect is found nearest the primeval home of the stock.

§ 2. The Iroquois Stock

Surrounded on all sides by the Algonkins were the Iroquois, once called the Five or Six Nations. When first discovered they were on the St. Lawrence, near Montreal, and in the Lake Region of Central New York. Various other, tribes, not in their confederacy, and generally at war with them, spoke dialects of the same language. Such were the Hurons or Wyandots, between the Georgian Bay and Lake Erie, the Neutral Nation on the Niagara river, the Eries on the southern shore of the lake of that name, the Nottoways in Virginia, and the Tuscaroras in North Carolina. The Cherokees, found by the whites in East Tennessee, but whose national legend, carefully preserved for generations, located them originally on the head waters of the Ohio, were a remote offshoot of this same stem.

The Susquehannocks

The valley of the Susquehanna river was occupied by a tribe of Iroquois lineage and language, known as the Susquehannocks, Conestogas and Andastes. The last name is Iroquois, from andasta, a cabin pole. By some, "Susquehannock" has also been explained as an Iroquois word, but its form is certainly Algonkin. The terminal k is the place-sign, hanna denotes a flowing stream, while the adjectival prefix has been identified by Heckewelder with schachage, straight, from the direct course of the river near its mouth, and by Mr. Guss with woski, new, which, he thinks, referred to fresh or spring water.

Of these the former will appear the preferable, if we allow for the softening of the gutturals, which was a phonetic trait of the Unami dialect of the Lenape.

The Susquehannocks were always at deadly feud with the Iroquois, and between wars, the smallpox and the whites, they were finally exterminated. The particulars of their short and sad history have been presented with his characteristic thoroughness by Dr. John G. Shea,[Footnote_5_5 - In a note to Mr. Gowan's edition of George Alsop's Province of Maryland, pp. 117-121 (New York, 1869); also, in 1858, in an article "On the Identity of the Adastas, Minquas, Susquehannocks, and Conestogas," in the Amer. Hist. Mag., Vol. II, p. 294] and later by Prof. N. L. Guss.[Footnote_6_6 - Early Indian History on the Susquehanna, p. 31. (Harrisburg, 1883)] They were usually called by the Delawares Mengwe, which was the term they applied to all the Iroquois-speaking tribes.[Footnote_7_7 - Megnwe is the Onondaga yenkwe, males, or men, viri, and was borrowed from that dialect by the Delawares, as a general term. Bishop Ettwein states that the Iroquois called the Delawares, Mohegans, and all the New England Indians Agozhagduta.] The English corrupted it to Minqua and Mingo, and as the eastern trail of the Susquehannocks lay up the Conestoga Creek, and down the Christina, both those streams were called "Mingo Creek" by the early settlers.

It is important for the ethnology of Pennsylvania, to understand that at the time of the first settlement the whole of the Susquehanna Valley, from the Chesapeake to the New York lakes, was owned and controlled by Iroquois-speaking tribes. A different and erroneous opinion was expressed by Heckewelder, and has been generally received. He speaks of the Lenape Minsi as occupying the head waters of the Susquehanna. This was not so in the historic period.

The claims of the Susquehannocks extended down the Chesapeake Bay on the east shore, as far as the Choptank River, and on the west shore as far as the Patuxent. In 1654 they ceded to the government of Maryland their southern territory to these boundaries.[Footnote_8_8 - Bozman, History of Maryland, Vol. I, p. 167.] The first English explorers met them on the Potomac, about the Falls, and the Pascatoways were deserting their villages and fleeing before them, when, in 1634, Calvert founded his colony at St. Mary's.

Their subjection to the Five Nations took place about 1680, and it was through the rights obtained by this conquest that, at the treaty of Lancaster, 1744, Canassatego, the Onondaga speaker for the Nation, claimed pay from the government of Maryland for the lands on the Potomac, or, as that river was called in his tongue, the Cohongorontas.

The Hurons

The Hurons, Wyandots, or Wendats, were another Iroquois people, who seem, at some remote epoch, to have come into contact with the Lenape. The latter called them Delamattenos[Footnote_9_9 - Heckewelder, History of the Indian Nations, p. 80.] and claimed to have driven them out of a portion of their possessions. A Chipeway tradition also states that the Hurons were driven north from the lake shores by Algonkin tribes.[Footnote_10_10 - Peter Jones, History of the Ojibway Nation, p. 32.] We know, from the early accounts of the Jesuits, that there was commercial intercourse between them and the tribes south of the lakes, the materials of trade being principally fish and corn.[Footnote_11_11 - Relation da Jesuites, 1637, p. 154. The Hurons, at that time, are stated to have had reliable traditions running back more than two hundred years. Relation de 1639, p. 50.] The Jesuit Relations of 1648 contain quite a full account of a Huron convert who, in that year, visited the Lenape on the Delaware River, and had an interview with the Swedish Governor, whom he took to task for neglecting the morals of his men.

The Cherokees

The Cherokees were called by the Delawares Kittuwa (Kuttoowauw, in the spelling of the native Aupaumut). This word I suppose to be derived from the prefix, kit, great, and the root tawa (Cree, yette, tawa), to open, whence tawatawik, an open, i. e., uninhabited place, a wilderness (Zeisberger).

The designation is geographical. According to the tradition of the Cherokees, they once lived (probably about the fourteenth century) in the Ohio Valley, and claimed to have been the constructors of the Grave Creek and other earthworks there.[Footnote_12_12 - "The Cherokees had an oration, in which was contained the history of their migrations, which was lengthy." This tradition related "that they came from the upper part of the Ohio, where they erected the mounds on Grave Creek, and that they removed hither [to East Tennessee] from the country where Monticello is situated." This memory of their migrations was preserved and handed down by official orators, who repeated it annually, in public, at the national festival of the green corn dance. J. Haywood, Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, pp. 224-237. (Nashville, 1823.) Haywood adds: "It is now nearly forgotten." I have made vain attempts to recover some fragments of it from the present residents of the Cherokee Nation.] Some support is given to this claim by the recent linguistic investigations of Mr. Horatio Hale,[Footnote_13_13 - Indian Migrations as Evidenced by Language, p. 22.] and the archaeological researches of Prof. Cyrus Thomas.[Footnote_14_14 - Prof. Thomas has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the Cherokees were mound builders within the historic period.] They were driven southward by their warlike neighbors, locating their council fire first near Monticello, Va., and the main body reaching East Tennessee about the close of the fifteenth century. As late as 1730 some of them continued to live east of the Alleghanies, while, on the other hand, it is evident, from the proper names preserved by the chroniclers of De Soto's expedition (1542), that at that period others held the mountains of Northern Georgia. To the Delawares they remained kit-tawa-wi, inhabitants of the great wilderness of Southern Ohio and Kentucky.

Delaware traditions distinctly recalled the period when portions of the Cherokees were on the Ohio, and recounted long wars with them.[Footnote_15_15 - Loskiel, Geschichte der Mission, etc., p. 160; Heckewelder, History of the Indian Nations, p. 54. Bishop Ettwein states that the last Cherokees were driven from the upper Ohio river about 1700-10. His essay on the "Traditions and Languages of the Indian Nations," written for General Washington, in 1788, was first published in the Bulletin of the Pa. Hist. Soc., 1844.] When the Lenape assumed the office of peacemaker, this feud ceased, and was not renewed until the general turmoil of the French-Indian wars, 1750-60. After this closed, in 1768, the Cherokees sought and effected a renewal of their peaceful relations with the Delawares, and in 1779 they even sent a deputation of "condolence" to their "grandfather," the Lenape, on the death of the head chief, White Eyes.[Footnote_16_16 - Heckewelder, Indian Nations, pp. 88, 327. Mr. H. Hale, in The Iroquois Book of Rites, has fully explained the meaning and importance of the custom of "condolence." The Stockbridge Indian, Aupaumut, in his Journal, writes of the Delawares, that when they lose a relative, "according to ancient custom, long as they are not comforted, they are not to speak in public, and this ceremonie of comforting each other is highly esteemed among these nations." Narrative of Hendrick Aupaumut, in Mems. Hist. Soc. Pa., Vol. II, p. 99.]

CHAPTER II

The Wapanachki or Eastern Algonkin Confederacy

The Confederated Tribes – The Mohegans – The Nanticokes – The Conoys – The Shawnees – The Saponies – The Assiwikalees

The Confederated Tribes

All the Algonkin nations who dwelt north of the Potomac, on the east shore of Chesapeake Bay, and in the basins of the Delaware and Hudson rivers, claimed near kinship and an identical origin, and were at times united into a loose, defensive confederacy.

By the western and southern tribes they were collectively known as Wapanachkik– "those of the eastern region" – which in the form Abnaki is now confined to the remnant of a tribe in Maine. The Delawares in the far West retain traditionally the ancient confederate name, and still speak of themselves as "Eastlanders" —O-puh-narke. (Morgan.)

The members of the confederacy were the Mohegans (Mahicanni) of the Hudson, who occupied the valley of that river to the falls above the site of Albany, the various New Jersey tribes, the Delawares proper on the Delaware river and its branches, including the Minsi or Monseys, among the mountains, the Nanticokes, between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic, and the small tribe called Canai, Kanawhas or Ganawese, whose towns were on tributaries of the Potomac and Patuxent.

That all these were united in some sort of an alliance, with the Delawares at its head, is not only proved by the traditions of this tribe itself, but by the distinct assertion of the Mohegans and others, and by events within historical times, as the reunion of the Nanticokes, New Jersey and Eastern Indians with the Delawares as with the parent stem.[Footnote_17_17 - Heckewelder, History of the Indian Nations, p. 60, and Narrative of Hendrick Aupaumut, 1791, in Mems. Hist. Soc. Pa., Vol. II. The latter, himself a native Mohegan, repeatedly refers to "the ancient covenant of our ancestors," by which this confederacy was instituted, which included the "Wenaumeew (Unami), the Wemintheew (Minsi), the Wenuhtokowuk (Nanticokes) and Kuhnauwantheew (Kanawha)." From old Pennsylvania documents, Proud gives the members of the confederacy or league as "the Chiholacki or Delawares, the Wanami, the Munsi, the Mohicans and Wappingers." History of Penna., Vol. II, p. 297, note. Compare J. Long, Voyages and Travels, p. 10 (London, 1791), who gives the same list. Mr. Ruttenber writes: "In considering the political relations of the Lenapes, they should be considered as the most formidable of the Indian confederacies at the time of the discovery of America, and as having maintained for many years the position which subsequently fell to the Iroquois." —Indian Tribes on Hudson River, p. 64.]

The Mohegans

The Mohegans, Mo-hé-kun-ne-uk, dwelt on the tide-waters of the Hudson, and from this their name was derived. Dr. Trumbull, indeed, following Schoolcraft, thinks that they "took their tribal name from maingan, a wolf, and Moheganick = Chip. maniganikan, 'country of wolves.'"[Footnote_18_18 - Trumbull, Indian Names in Connecticut, p. 31. Schoolcraft had already given the same derivation in his History and Statistics of the Indian Tribes.] They, themselves, however, translate it, "seaside people," or more fully, "people of the great waters which are constantly ebbing or flowing."[Footnote_19_19 - Capt. Hendricks, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Colls., Vol. IX, p. 101.] The compound is machaak, great, hickan, tide ("ebbing tide," Zeis; "tide of flood," Campanius) and ik, animate plural termination.

The Mohegans on the Hudson are said to have been divided into three phratries, the Bear, the Wolf and the Turtle, of whom the Bear had the primacy.[Footnote_20_20 - Ruttenber, History of the Indian Tribes of Hudson's River, p. 50.] Mr. Morgan, however, who examined, in 1860, the representatives of the nation in Kansas,[Footnote_21_21 - Morgan, Ancient Society, pp. 173-4.] discovered that they had precisely the same phratries as the Delawares, that is the Wolf, the Turtle, and the Turkey, each subdivided into three or four gentes. He justly observes that this "proves their immediate connection with the Delawares and Munsees by descent," and thus renders their myths and traditions of the more import in the present study.

Linguistically, the Mohegans were more closely allied to the tribes of New England than to those of the Delaware Valley. Evidently, most of the tribes of Massachusetts and Connecticut were comparatively recent offshoots of the parent stem on the Hudson, supposing the course of migration had been eastward.

In some of his unpublished notes Mr. Heckewelder identifies the Wampanos, who lived in Connecticut, along the shore of Long Island Sound, and whose council fire was where New Haven now stands, as Mohegans, while the Wapings or Opings of the Northern Jersey shore were a mixed clan derived from intermarriages between Mohegans and Monseys.[Footnote_22_22 - These opinions are from a MS. in the library of the American Philosophical Society, in the handwriting of Mr. Heckewelder, entitled Notes, Amendments and Additions to Heckewelder's History of the Indians (8vo, pp. 38.) Unfortunately, this MS. was not placed in the hands of Mr. Reichel when he prepared the second edition of Heckewelder's work for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.An unpublished and hitherto unknown work on the Mohegan language is the Miscellanea Lingua Nationis Indica Mahikan dicta, curà scepta à Joh. Jac. Schmick, 2 vols., small 8vo.; MS. in the possession of the American Philosophical Society. Schmick was a Moravian missionary, born in 1714, died 1778. He acquired the Mohegan dialect among the converts at Gnadenhütten. His work is without date, but may be placed at about 1765. It is grammatical rather than lexicographical, and offers numerous verbal forms and familiar phrases.]

The Nanticokes

The Nanticokes occupied the territory between Chesapeake Bay and the ocean, except its southern extremity, which appears to have been under the control of the Powhatan tribe of Virginia.

The derivation of Nanticoke is from the Delaware Unéchtgo, "tide-water people," and is merely another form of Unalachtgo, the name of one of the Lenape sub-tribes. In both cases it is a mere geographical term, and not a national eponym.

In the records of the treaty at Fort Johnston, 1757, the Nanticokes are also named Tiawco. This is their Mohegan name, Otayãchgo, which means "bridge people," or bridge makers, the reference being to the skill with which the Nanticokes could fasten floating logs together to construct a bridge across a stream. In the Delaware dialect this was Tawachguáno, from taiachquoan, a bridge. The latter enables us to identify the Tockwhoghs, whom Captain John Smith met on the Chesapeake, in 1608, with the Nanticokes. The Kuscarawocks, whom he also visited, have been conclusively shown by Mr. Bozman[Footnote_23_23 - J. Bozman, History of Maryland, Vol. I, pp. 112, 114, 121, 177. This laborious writer still remains the best authority on the aboriginal inhabitants of Maryland.] to have been also Nanticokes.

By ancient traditions, they looked up to the Lenape as their "grandfather," and considered the Mohegans their "brethren."[Footnote_24_24 - "The We nuh tok o wuk are our brothers according to ancient agreement," Journal of Hendrick Aupaumut, Mems. Hist, Soc. Pa., Vol. II, P. 77.] That is, they were, as occasion required, attached to the same confederacy.

In manners and customs they differed little from their northern relatives. The only peculiarity in this respect which is noted of them was the extravagant consideration they bestowed on the bones of the dead. The corpse was buried for some months, then exhumed and the bones carefully cleaned and placed in an ossuary called man-to-kump (= manito, with the locative termination, place of the mystery or spirit).

When they removed from one place to another these bones were carried with them. Even those who migrated to northern Pennsylvania, about the middle of the last century, piously brought along these venerable relics, and finally interred them near the present site of Towanda, whence its name, Tawundeunk, "where we bury our dead."[Footnote_25_25 - Charles Beatty, Journal of a Journey, etc., p. 87. Heckewelder, Indian Nations, pp. 90, et seq. Ibid. Trans. Am. Phil. Soc., Vol. IV, p. 362.]

Their dialect varied considerably from the Delaware; of which it is clearly a deteriorated form. It is characterized by abbreviated words and strongly expirated accents, as tah! quah! quak! su, short; quah! nah! qut, long.

Our knowledge of it is limited to a few vocabularies. The earliest was taken down by Captain John Smith, during his exploration of the Chesapeake. The most valuable is one obtained by Mr. William Vans Murray, in 1792, from the remnant in Maryland. It is in the library of the American Philosophical Society, and has never been correctly or completely printed.

The Nanticokes broke up early. Between the steady encroachments of the whites and the attacks of the Iroquois they found themselves between the upper and the nether millstones.

According to their own statement to Governor Evans, at a conference in 1707, they had at that time been tributary to the latter for twenty-seven years, i. e., since 1680. Their last head chief, or "crowned king," Winicaco, died about 1720. A few years after this occurrence bands of them began to remove to Pennsylvania, and at the middle of the century were living at the mouth of the Juniata, under the immediate control of the Iroquois. Thence they removed to Wyoming, and in 1753, "in a fleet of twenty-five canoes," to the Iroquois lands in western New York. Others of their nation were brought there by the Iroquois in 1767; but by the close of the century only five families survived in that region.[Footnote_26_26 - The authorities for these facts are Bozman, History of Maryland, Vol. I, pp. 175-180; Heckewelder, Indian Nations, pp. 93, sqq.; E. de Schweinitz, Life of Zeisberger, pp. 208, 322, etc.; the Treaty Records, and MSS. in the library of the American Philosophical Society.That the Nanticokes came from the South into Maryland has been maintained, on the ground that as late as 1770 they claimed land in North Carolina. New York Colonial Documents, Vol. VIII, p. 243. But the term "Carolina" was, I think, used erroneously in the document referred to, instead of Maryland, where at that date there were still many of the tribe.]

A small band called the Wiwash remained on Goose creek, Dorchester county, Maryland, to the same date.

The Conoys

The fourth member of the Wapanachki was that nation variously called in the old records Conoys, Ganawese or Canaways, the proper form of which Mr. Heckewelder states to be Canai.[Footnote_27_27 - History of the Indian Nations, Introduction, p. xlii.]

Considerable obscurity has rested on the early location and affiliation of this people. Mr. Heckewelder vaguely places them "at a distance on the Potomac," and supposes them to have been the Kanawhas of West Virginia.[Footnote_28_28 - Ibid., pp. 90-122.] This is a loose guess. They were, in fact, none other than the Piscataways of Southern Maryland, who occupied the area between Chesapeake Bay and the lower Potomac, about St. Mary's, and along the Piscataway creek and Patuxent river.

Proof of this is furnished by the speech of their venerable head chief, "Old Sack," at a conference in Philadelphia in 1743.[Footnote_29_29 - Minutes of the Provincial Council of Penna., Vol. IV, p. 657. Further proof of this in a Treaty of Peace concluded in 1682 by the New York colonial government, between the Senecas and Maryland Indians. In this instrument we find this tribe referred to as "the Canowes alias Piscatowayes," and elsewhere as the "Piscatoway of Cachnawayes." New York Colonial Documents, Vol. III, pp. 322, 323.] His words were: "Our forefathers came from Piscatua to an island in Potowmeck; and from thence down to Philadelphia, in old Proprietor Penn's time, to show their friendship to the Proprietor. After their return they brought down all their brothers from Potowmeck to Conejoholo, on the east side Sasquehannah, and built a town there."