T The reader of the following pages, having already seen what has induced me to come forward with an historical account of the Indians, after so many have written on the same subject, will perhaps look for something more extraordinary in this than in other works of the kind which he has seen. Not wishing any one to raise his expectations too high, I shall briefly state that I have not written to excite astonishment, but for the information of those who are desirous of knowing the true history of those people, who, for centuries, have been in full possession of the country we now inhabit; but who have since emigrated to a great distance. I can only assure them, that I have not taken the information here communicated from the writings of others, but from the mouths of the very people I am going to speak of, and from my own observation of what I have witnessed while living among them. I have, however, occasionally quoted other authors, and in some instances copied short passages from their works, especially where I have thought it necessary to illustrate or corroborate my own statements of facts. In what I have written concerning the character, customs, manners, and usages of these people, I cannot have been deceived, since it is the result of personal knowledge, of what I myself have seen, heard, and witnessed, while residing among and near them, for more than thirty years. I have however to remark, that this history, like other histories of former times, will not in every respect comport with the character of the Indians at the present time, since all these nations and tribes, by It may be proper to mention in this place, that I have made use of the proper national name of the people whom we call Delawares, which is: “Lenni Lenape.” Yet, as they, in the common way of speaking, merely pronounce the word “Lenape,” I have, in most instances, when speaking of them, used this word singly. I have also made use of the word “Mengwe,” or Mingoes, the name by which the Lenape commonly designate the people known to us by the name of the Iroquois, and Five or Six Nations. I shall give at the end a general list of all the names I have made use of in this communication, to which I refer the reader for instruction. As the Indians, in all their public speeches and addresses, speak in the singular number, I have sometimes been led to follow their example, when reporting what they have said; I have also frequently, by attending particularly to the identical words spoken by them, copied their peculiar phrases, when I might have given their meaning in other words. On the origin of the Indians, I have been silent, leaving this speculation to abler historians than myself. To their history, and notions with regard to their creation, I have given a place; and have also briefly related the traditions of the Lenape on the As the relation of the Delawares and Mohicans, concerning the policy adopted and pursued by the Six Nations towards them, may perhaps appear strange to many, and it may excite some astonishment, that a matter of such importance was not earlier set forth in the same light, I shall here, by way of introduction, and for the better understanding of the account which they give of this matter, examine into some facts, partly known to us already, and partly now told us in their relation; so that we may see how far these agree together, and know what we may rely upon. It is conceded on all sides that the Lenape and Iroquois carried on long and bloody wars with each other; but while the one party assert, that they completely conquered the other, and reduced them by force to the condition of women, this assertion is as strongly and pointedly denied by the other side; I have therefore thought that the real truth of this fact was well deserving of investigation. The story told by the Mingoes to the white people, of their having conquered the Lenape and made women of them, was much too implicitly believed; for the whites always acted towards the Delawares under the impression that it was true, refused even to hear their own account of the matter, and “shut their ears” against them, when they attempted to inform them of the real fact. This denial of common justice, is one of the principal complaints of the Lenape against the English, and makes a part of the tradition or history which they preserve for posterity. This complaint indeed, bears hard upon us, and should, at least, operate as a solemn call to rectify the error, if such it is found to be; that we, in our history, may not record and transmit erroneous statements of those Aborigines, from whom we have received the country we now so happily inhabit. We are bound in honour to acquit ourselves of all charges of the kind which those people may have against us, who, in the beginning welcomed us to their shores, in hopes that “they and we would We know that all Indians have the custom of transmitting to posterity, by a regular chain of tradition, the remarkable events which have taken place with them at any time, even often events of a trivial nature, of which I could mention a number. Ought we then, when such a source of information is at hand, to believe the story told by the Six Nations, of their having conquered the Lenape, (a powerful nation with a very large train of connexions and allies) and forcibly made them women? Ought we not, before we believe this, to look for a tradition of the circumstances of so important an event; for some account, at least, of the time, place, or places, where those battles were fought, which decided the fate of the Lenape, the Mohicans, and of a number of tribes connected with them? Are we to be left altogether ignorant of the numbers that were slain at the time, and the country in which this memorable event took place; whether on the St. Lawrence, on the Lakes, in the country of the conquerors, or of the conquered? All these I am inclined to call first considerations, while a second would be: How does this story accord with the situation the first Europeans found these people in on their arrival in this country? Were not those who are said to be a conquered people, thickly settled on the whole length of the sea coast, and far inland, in and from Virginia to and beyond the Province of Maine, and had they not yet, at that very time, a great National Council Fire burning on the banks of the Delaware? Does not the joint tradition of the Delawares, Mohicans and Nanticokes, inform us, that their great National Council House3 then extended from the head of the tide on the (now) Hudson river, to the head of the tide on the Potomack? All this we shall find faithfully copied or written down from their verbal tradition, and that this Council House “was pulled down by the white people!”4 and of course was It is admitted, however, by the Lenape themselves, that they and their allies were made women by the Iroquois. But how did this happen? Not surely by conquest, or the fate of battle. Strange as it may appear, it was not produced by the effects of superior force, but by successful intrigue. Here, if my informants were correct, and I trust they were, rests the great mystery, for the particulars of which, I refer the reader to the history of the Lenape and Mohicans themselves, as related in part by Loskiel in his “History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the North American Indians,”5 and in this work. In the first, he will find three material points ascertained, viz. 1st, “that the Delawares were too strong for the Iroquois, and could not be conquered by them by force of arms, but were subdued by insidious means. 2d, that the making women of the Delawares The Rev. Mr. PyrlÆus,8 who had learned the Mohawk language This was then, according to the best accounts we have, the time when this pretended “conquest” took place; and the Delawares, (as the Six Nations have since said) were by them made women. It was, however, a conquest of a singular nature, effected through duplicity and intrigue, at a council fire, not in battle. “And, (say the Delawares and Mohicans, in their tradition,) Colden, in his “History of the Five Nations,”12 informs us, page 34, that this took place in the year 1664; and in page 36, gives us full proof of this alliance, by the following account—He says: “The Five Nations being now amply supplied by the English with fire-arms and ammunition, gave full swing to their warlike genius, and soon resolved to revenge the affronts they had at any time received from the Indian nations that lived at a greater distance from them. The nearest nations, as they were attacked, commonly fled to those that were further off, and the Five Nations pursued them. This, together with the desire they had of conquering, or ambition of making all the nations around them their tributaries, or to make them acknowledge the Five Nations to be so far their masters, as to be absolutely directed by them in all affairs of peace and war with their neighbours, made them overrun great part of North America. They carried their arms as far south as Carolina; to the northward of New England; and as far west as the river Mississippi; over a vast country, which extends twelve hundred miles in length, from north to south, and about six hundred miles in breadth; where they entirely destroyed many nations, of whom there are now no accounts remaining among the English,” &c. To what a number of important questions would not the above statement give rise? But I will confine myself to a few, and enquire first, for what purpose the Five Nations were armed, and so “amply supplied with ammunition?” and secondly, what use did they make of those arms? The Delawares If we were permitted to omit the words, “revenge the affronts they had received from other nations,” &c., we need not one moment be at a loss to know precisely what they went out for, as the historian himself tells us, that they, soon after receiving fire-arms and ammunition, “gave full swing to their warlike genius, and went off with a desire of conquering nations—of making all those around them their tributaries, and compelling them all to acknowledge the Five Nations to be their masters, and to be absolutely directed by them, in all affairs of peace and war.” We then know with certainty, what the object was for which they took the field. We are here also told, of the vast tract of country over which the Six Nations had carried their arms, subduing, and even “so destroying many nations, that no account of them was now remaining with the English!” In reply to this I might bring forward some sayings and assertions of the Delawares and Mohicans, which would not comport with the above story, nor apply to the great name the Six Nations have given themselves, which, as Colden tells us, is I might ask the simple question, whether the Dutch, and afterwards the English, have favoured their “brethren,” the Delawares, Mohicans, and other tribes connected with them, who lived between them and the Six Nations, and on the land which they wanted to have, in the same manner that they have favoured their enemies? Colden, in his Introduction to the History of the Five Nations, page 3, says: “I have been told by old men in New England, who remembered the time when the Mohawks made war on their Indians,” (meaning here the Mohicans, or River Indians, as they often were called,) “that as soon as a single Mohawk was discovered in the country, their Indians raised a cry, from hill to hill, a Mohawk! a Mohawk! upon which they all fled, like sheep before wolves, without attempting to make the least resistance, whatever odds were on their side,” and that, “the poor New England Indians immediately ran to the Christian houses, and the Mohawks often pursued them so closely, that they entered along with them, and knocked their brains out in the presence of the people of the house,” &c. This is indeed a lamentable story! It might be asked, How could the white people, whom those very Mohicans had hospitably welcomed, and permitted to live with them on their land, suffer an enemy to come into the country to destroy their benefactors, without making any opposition? Why did these Indians suffer this? Why did they not with spirit meet this enemy? The answer to this last question will be found in their traditional Thus, then, arms were put into the hands of the Six Nations, and with them the Dutch, and afterwards the English, sided; but the Delawares and Mohicans were compelled to remain unarmed, for fear of being cut up by the white people, who had taken part with their enemies. May we not conclude, that these poor New England Indians were placed between two fires? We do not, I believe, find that in the then middle colonies, the Mohawks, or any of the Five Nations, had ventured so far in their hostile conduct against the Delawares, as they had done to the Mohicans of New England, though the alliance between the Dutch and the Five Nations, and afterwards between the English and the latter, was much against both, and indeed more against the Delawares than the Mohicans: yet, by turning to treaties and councils, held with these nations between the years 1740 and 1760, in Pennsylvania,13 we find much insolent language, which the Iroquois were, I will say, permitted, but which, the people concerned say, they were “bid or hired to make against the Delawares, for the purpose of stopping their mouths, preventing them from stating their complaints and grievances, and asking redress from the colonial government.” The result of such high toned language, as that which was made use of to the Delawares, by the Six Nations, at a council held at the proprietors, in July, 1742, and at other times afterwards,14 might easily have been foretold. For although now, these defenceless people had to submit to such gross insults, instead of seeing their grievances redressed, yet they were not ignorant of the manner in which they one day might take A work, entitled: “An Enquiry into the Causes of the Alienation of the Delaware and Shawanese Indians from the British Interest,” written by Charles Thompson,15 Esq., and printed in London, in 1759, which some time since fell into my hands, well merits to be read with attention, on account of the correctness of the information that it contains. By this time, the Delawares were sensible of the imposition which had been practised upon them. They saw that a plan had been organised for their destruction, and that not only their independence, but their very existence, was at stake; they therefore took measures to defend themselves, by abandoning the system of neutrality into which they had been insidiously drawn. It was not without difficulty that I obtained from them these interesting details, for they felt ashamed of their own conduct; they were afraid of being charged with cowardice, or at least with want of forethought, in having acted as they did, and not having discovered their error until it was too late. And yet, in my opinion, those fears were entirely groundless, and there appears nothing in their whole conduct disparaging to the courage and high sense of honour of that brave nation. Let us for a moment place ourselves in the situation of the Delawares, Mohicans, and the other tribes connected with them, at the time when the Europeans first landed on New York Island. It was the Delawares who first received and welcomed these new guests on New York Island; the Mohicans who inhabited the whole of the North River above, on its eastern side, were sent for to participate in the joy which was felt on being honoured by such visitants. Their tradition of this event is clear and explicit. None of the enemy, say they, (meaning the Five Nations17) were present. It may possibly be asked, how the Dutch could favour the Five Nations so much, when none of them were present at the meetings which took place on their arrival in America? how they came to abandon their first friends, and take part against These are (as they say) the circumstances which led to the league which was afterwards established between the white people and the Five Nations, which was the cause of much dissatisfaction, injustice, and bloodshed, and which would not have taken place, if the rights and privileges of the different nations Having seen how the Five, afterwards Six Nations, rose to power, we have next to state by what means they lost the ascendancy which they had thus acquired. The withdrawing of the principal part of the Delawares, and the Shawanos, from the Atlantic coast, between the years 1740 and 1760, afforded them an opportunity of consulting with the western tribes, on the manner of taking revenge on the Iroquois for the many provocations, wrongs and insults they had received from them; when ten nations immediately entered into an alliance for that purpose, the French having promised to assist them.19 In the year 1756, they agreed to move on in detached bodies, as though they meant to attack the English, with whom they and the French were then at war, and then turn suddenly on the Six Nations and make a bold stroke. Though, for various reasons, their designs could not at that time be carried into effect, yet they did not lose sight of the object, waiting only for a proper opportunity. It would, however, have been next to impossible, under existing circumstances, and while the Six Nations were supported by such a powerful ally as the English, for the Delawares and their allies, to subdue, or even effectually to chastise them. These Nations, however, at the commencement of a war between the English nation and the Colonies, were become so far independent, that such of them as lived remote from the British stations or garrisons, or were not immediately under their eye, were at full liberty to side with whom they pleased; and though the Six Nations attempted to dictate to the Western Delawares, what side they should take, their spirited chief, Captain White Eyes, did not hesitate to reply, in the name of his nation: “that he should do as he pleased; that he wore no petticoats, as they falsely pretended; he was no woman, but a man, and they should find him to act as such.” That this brave chief was in earnest, was soon after verified, by a party of Delawares joining the American army. In 1781, when almost all the Indian nations were in the British The same message being next sent to the Wyandots, they likewise disobeyed their orders, and did not make the least attempt to murder those innocent people. The Iroquois, therefore, were completely at a loss how to think and act, seeing that their orders were every where disregarded. At the conclusion of the revolutionary war, they had the mortification to see, that the trade which they had hitherto carried on, and to them was so agreeable and profitable, that of selling to the English the land of other nations, to which they had no possible claim, was at once and forever put an end to by the liberal line of conduct which the American Government adopted with the Indian Nations, leaving each at liberty to sell its own lands, reserving, only to themselves the right of purchase, to the exclusion of foreigners of every description. In addition to this, the bond of connexion which subsisted between these Six Nations, if it was not entirely broken, yet was much obstructed, by a separation which took place at the close of that war, when a part, and the most active body of them, retired into Canada. No nation then any more regarded their commands, nor even their advice, when it did not accord with their will and inclination; all which became evident during At last, being sensible of their humbled situation, and probably dreading the consequence of their former insolent conduct to the other Indian Nations, and principally the Delawares, whom they had so long and so much insulted, were they not to make some amends for all this contumely? They came forward, at the critical moment, just previous to the Treaty concluded by General Wayne, and formally declared the Delaware nation to be no longer Women, but Men. I hope to be believed in the solemn assertion which I now make: That in all that I have written on the subject of the history and politics of the Indian Nations, I have neither been influenced by partiality for the one, or undue prejudice against the other, but having had the best opportunities of obtaining from authentic sources, such information in matters of fact, as has enabled me to make up my mind on the subject, I have taken the liberty of expressing my opinion as I have honestly formed it, leaving the reader, however, at liberty to judge and decide for himself as he may deem most proper. I wish once more to observe, that in this history it is principally meant to shew, rather what the Indians of this country were previous to the white people’s arrival, than what they now are; for now, the two great nations, the Iroquois and the Delawares, are no longer the same people that they formerly were. The former, who, as their rivals would assert, were more like beasts than human beings, and made intrigue their only study, have, by their intercourse with the whites, become an industrious and somewhat civilised people; at least many of them are so, which is probably owing to their having been permitted to live so long, (indeed, for more than a century) in the same district My long residence among those nations in the constant habit of unrestrained familiarity, has enabled me to know them well, and made me intimately acquainted with the manners, customs, character and disposition of those men of nature, when uncorrupted by European vices. Of these, I think I could draw a highly interesting picture, if I only possessed adequate powers of description: but the talent of writing is not to be acquired in the wilderness, among savages. I have felt it, however, to be a duty incumbent upon me to make the attempt, and I have done it in the following pages, with a rude but faithful pencil. I have spent a great part of my life among those people, and have been treated by them with uniform kindness and hospitality. I have witnessed their virtues and experienced their goodness. I owe them a debt of gratitude, which I cannot acquit better than by presenting to the world this plain unadorned picture, which I have drawn in the spirit of candour and truth. Alas! in a few years, perhaps, they will have entirely disappeared from the face of the earth, and all that will be remembered of them will be that they existed and were numbered among the barbarous tribes that once inhabited this vast continent. At least, let it not be said, that among the whole race of white Christian men, not one single individual could be found, who, rising above the cloud of prejudice with which the pride of civilisation has surrounded the original inhabitants of this land, would undertake the task of doing justice to their many excellent qualities, and raise a small frail monument to their memory. I shall conclude with a few necessary remarks for the information of the reader. Lenni Lenape being the national and proper name of the people we call “Delawares,” I have retained this name, or for These people (the Lenni Lenape) are known and called by all the western, northern, and some of the southern nations, by the name of Wapanachki, which the Europeans have corrupted into Apenaki, Openagi, Abenaquis,25 and Abenakis.26 All these names, however differently written, and improperly understood by authors, point to one and the same people, the Lenape, who are by this compound word, called “people at the rising of the Sun,” or as we would say, Eastlanders; and are acknowledged by near forty Indian tribes, whom we call nations, as being their grandfathers. All these nations, derived from the same stock, recognise each other as Wapanachki, which among them is a generic name. The name “Delawares,” which we give to these people, is unknown in their language, and I well remember the time when they thought the whites had given it to them in derision; but they were reconciled to it, on being told that it was the name of a great white chief, Lord de la War, which had been given to them and their river. As they are fond of being named after distinguished men, they were rather pleased, considering it as a compliment. The Mahicanni have been called by so many different names,27 that I was at a loss which to adopt, so that the reader might know what people were meant. Loskiel calls them “Mohicans,” which is nearest to their real name Mahicanni, which, of course, I have adopted. The name “Nanticokes” I have left as generally used, though The “Canai,” I call by their proper name. I allude here to those people we call Canais, Conois, Conoys, Canaways, Kanhawas, Canawese. With regard to the Five, or Six Nations, I have called them by different names, such as are most common, and well understood. The Lenape (Delawares) are never heard to say “Six Nations,” and it is a rare thing to hear these people named by them otherwise than Mengwe; the Mahicanni call them Maqua, and even most white people call them Mingoes. When therefore I have said the Five or Six Nations, I have only used our own mode of speaking, not that of the Indians, who never look upon them as having been so many nations; but divisions, and tribes, who, as united, have become a nation. Thus, when the Lenape (Delawares) happen to name them as one body, the word they make use of implies “the five divisions together, or united,” as will be seen in another place of this work. I call them also Iroquois, after the French and some English writers. The Wyandots, or Wyondots, are the same whom the French call Hurons, and sometimes Guyandots. Father Sagard, a French Missionary, who lived among them in the 17th century, and has written an account of his mission, and a kind of dictionary of their language, says their proper name is AhouandÂte, from whence it is evident that the English appellation Wyandots has been derived. There being so many words in the language of the Lenape and their kindred tribes, the sound of which cannot well be represented according to the English pronunciation, I have in general adopted for them the German mode of spelling. The ch, particularly before a consonant, is a strong guttural, and unless an Englishman has the use of the Greek ?, he will not be able to pronounce it, as in the words Chasquem (Indian corn), Cheltol (many), Ches (a skin), Chauchschisis (an old woman), and a great many more. Sometimes, indeed, in the middle of a word substitutes may be found which may do, as in the word Nimachtak (brethren), which might be written Nemaughtok, but this will seldom answer. This is probably the reason that most of the The Delawares have neither of the letters R, F, nor V, in their language, though they easily learn to pronounce them. They have a consonant peculiar to them and other Indians, which is a sibilant, and which we represent by W. It is produced by a soft whistling, and is not unpleasant to the ear, although it comes before a consonant. It is not much unlike the English sound wh in what, but not so round or full, and rather more whistled. W before a vowel is pronounced as in English. |