USA > Delaware > History of Delaware : 1609-1888 > Part 4
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1 By many this tradition of the emigration of the Lonni Lenapr IN Theved to have a solid foutolution in fart, and the Allezwi are regarded as being the Month- Bucklers, where set works are numerous along the Mississippi, the Ohio and their tributato
" The DELAWARE Revert was called by the Lens-Lona . Lampe. alt- fu. R. i. e. the river of the Longe In the language of the Mines below.es the bathe Was Kat-home, of frukt-house, signifying the water town in ds region of country. Other names for it in various Indian tongues Were Pentaxat, Chu kolekce, Mariskitten and Mokershksken. The Dutch who were the first white people who said I up the 1 ay and liver named the latter in contradiminution food the North of Hudson River Zaget ag santh River, and they also called it Sassate River and I'm a Hen- drobe wandt harles River. The Swedes referred to it as the swen-ka Havar, Ny Sveriges Elfor Dova Sweet Revier how Swedeny River of New Swedeland stream). The English gave at the present name m huber at Loud de la Watre who was said to have passed the capes in 1010. 1's bay has also been respectively called Seagut, Mays and Guddyn's Bay.
Myths as to their origin as members of the human family-their creation-existed among the Dela- wares in great variety, attesting the proneness of even this barbarian people, in common with all civilized races, to speculate upon the mystery of life and their longing to solve the unknowable. They claim that they emerged from a cave in the earth, like the woodehnek and ground squirrel ; to have sprung from a snail that was transformed into a human being and instructed in the mysteries of wooderaft and the hunt by a beneficent spirit, and that subsequently he was received into the lodge of the beaver and married his favorite daughter. According to another legend, a woman fallen or expelled from heaven is hovering in mid- air over a chaos of angry waters, there being no earth to afford her a resting-place. At this critical juneture in the career of the Lenape progenitors. a giant turtle rose from the vasty depths and placed his broad and dome like back at her service, and she descended upon it and made it her abode. The turtle slept upon the surface of the globe-covering sea, barnacles attached themselves to the margin of the shell, the seum of the waters gathered float- ing fragments of sea-weed, and all of the plotzum of the primal ocean accumulated until the dry land grew apace, and after ages had passed, all of that broad expanse which constitutes North America had emerged from the deluge. The woman, worn with watching and with the loneliness of her situ- ation, fell into a deep sleep of vast duration, broken only by a dream in which she was visited by a spirit from her last home above the skies, and of that dream the fruits were sons and daughters, from whom have sprung all the nation- of the earth. In another legend the Great Spirit is represented : as descending upon the face of the waters in the form of a colossal bird and brooding there until the earth arose, when, exercising it> creative power. the Spirit brought into life the plants, the animals and, la-tly, man, to whom was given an arrow im- bued with mystie potency-a blessing and a safe- gnard. But the man, by his carelessness, lost the arrow, and the Spirit, grieved and offended, soared away and was no longer seen, and man had there- after to follow the hunt by means of his own rude devices and combat nature to gain his living. Still another and very prevalent fiction of the Lenape aseribes to the demi-rod Manabozho the creation of all the tribes of red men from the carcases of various animals, reptiles and birds, as the bear, the beaver, the wolf, the serpent, the turtle, the crane, the eagle, etc. Manabozho (also called Messou. Michaboo and Nanabush ) was the central figure in the Indian mythology ; was the restorer of the world after the deluge, brought on by the wicked-
11
THIE ABORIGINES.
ness of the serpent Manitous or evil spirits ; was temples of Mexico and Peru bear to those of Egypt regarded as working all of the mysterious changes and India. But Egypt, India, China and Tartary have not been the only countries of the Eastern
in nature, and was supposed to be the king of the whole creation of beasts. He was the son of the Hemisphere to which students of American antiq- west wind and a descendant of the moon
He uities have ascribed the origin of the red men. sometimes appeared in the form of a wolf' or a bird, Wales, Ireland, Spain, Scandinavia, Phoenicia and and often in that of a man of majestie mien and stature, but his usual manifestation was in the shape of the Gigantie Ilare. He had power over the magi; was, in fact, a sorcerer, and united in himself the qualities belonging to Prospero, Ariel and Puck, being sometimes actuated by a spirit of beneficence towards man, and again as an impish elf displaying in ingenious ways insatiable malice and malevolence. other countries of the Eastern world have been pointed to in turn as the regions in which the mys- terious movement of population finally spreiding over North America had its origin. The most generally accepted theory is that the Indian race came originally from China. Humboldt thought that in time, " by greater diligence and persever- ance, many of the historical problems" concerning this theory might " be cleared up by the discovery of facts with which we have hitherto been entirely unacquainted; "1 but Prof. W. D. Whitney, one of the most advanced students of our time, is less sanguine. 1Ie says that it is " futile to attempt, by the evidence of language, the peopling of the continent from Asia or from any other portion of the world outside. . . If our studies shall at length put us in a position to deal with the question of their Asiatic origin, we shall rejoice at it. I do not myself expect that valuable light will ever be shed upon the subject by linguistic evidence; others may be more sanguine, but all must, at any rate, agree that as things are, the subject is in no position to be taken up and dis- cussed with profit." The author from whom we have quoted, notwithstanding his attitude upon this question of Indian origin, is a warm advocate of greater diligence in the study of American an- tiquities. "Our national duty and honor," he says, "are peculiarly concerned in this matter of the study of aboriginal American languages, as the most fertile and important branch of Ameri- can archeology. Europeans aceuse us, with too much reason, of indifference and inefficiency with regard to preserving memorials of the race whom we have dispossessed and are dispossessing, and to promoting a thorough comprehension of their history."
The matter of the derivation of the Indian race has been as variously, if not as wildly and fancifully, speculated upon by scholars as by the red men themselves. William Penn gravely, and with com- placent assurance, put forward the hypothesis that the so-called aborigines of America were descend- ants of the ten lost tribes of Israel, and men of much more pretension of study, and usually con- fining themselves to the few hard facts that are known concerning this people, have permitted them- selves pleasing, if profitless, dalliance with various unsupported theories of their origin. Baneroft argues that a Calmnek or Mongolian immigration was not impossible and, indeed, not improbable, and this hypothesis has found many advocates. Spanish legends have been adduced to confirm this view. M. de Guignes, in a memoir read before the French Academy of Inscriptions, argued with con- siderable plausibility that the Chinese penetrated America in A.D. 458, and used the description and chart of Fou Fang in proof, and Charles G. Le- land, of Philadelphia, eminent as an ethnologist and explorer of the hidden byways of history, has been fascinated by the same half-myth and lent it the approval of his partial eredence in his re- publication of the story of the so-called island of Fou Sang and its inhabitants. De Guignes asserted that the Chinese were familiar with the Straits of Magellan and that the Coreans had a settlement on Terra del Fuego. Another Chinese immigration is assigned to A.D. 1270, the time of the Tartar in- vasion of the " Central Flowery Kingdom." China, Tartary, Siberia and Kamtschatka, with the Alen- tian archipelago, formed a natural route for immi- gration, though none of the students and speculators who have given it consideration have succeeded in explaining how the hordes of savages were able to make their way through the frozen wastes of Alaska and British North America. Some students, as Williamson, think the Indians of Cingalese or Hindoo origin, and that the Occidental world was peopled from the Oriental world in pre-historie time- is very generally admitted upon the strong ground of the close resemblance which the ancient
Reverting from what may seem a digression, to the matters of more immediate interest to the reader-to the Lenape or Delawares as the white man found them on the shores of the bay and river bearing their name-we find cause for regret that the first comers to these shores were not better observers and more accurate chroniclers. Hud-on, Captain Cornelis Hendrickson, Captain Jacobson Mey, De Vries, Campanius, Acrelius, William Penn, Gabriel Thomas, Thomas Budd, George Alsop (of Maryland), and others among the carly Datch, Swedish and English adven- turers and writers saw the Indians before they had undergone any material change from association
1 Cosmos, Vol. II., p &lo (note).
"" Language and the Study of Languages," by Prof. W. D. Whitney.
12
HISTORY OF DELAWARE.
with the civilized people, and before they had the Minquas, of the lower part of the Delaware- drunk in with Holland schnapps and English Maryland-Virgin'a peninsula, appear to have been spirits very much of that knowledge which bred at war with the Lenape, who were then chiefly confined to the eastern er New Jersey side of the Delaware Bay and River, and to the region along that part of the west shore now in Northern Dela- ware and Southwestern Pennsylvania. In 1638 the Brede cace to the Delaware (as will be more tilly set forth in the next chapter), and founding the first permanent settlement within the region which w our especial province at Christiana ( Wil- mington ). and subsequently establishing themselves at other points began an active and extensive trade with the Lenape, Miaquas and Nanticoke -. for furs. They bought the land which they oceu- pied, and appear to have lived with the Indians on very friendly terms. They were supplied with professional interpreters, and systematically sought The good-will of the Indians for the purpose of carrying on an advantageous trade with them. The Swedish governors seem to have understood how best to conciliate the Indians and retain their confidenee, and they soon supplanted the Dutch in the esteem of the savages. They even exercised a protecting power over the Delawares and the Minquas, and when the Iroquois came down to wage war against the latter, in 1662, they were battled by a regular fort, constructed by Swedish engineers, with bastions and mounted cannon. suspicion in the savage breast. Had the-e pioneers of the Delaware region been trained observers and investigators, able to divest themselves of preju- dices and to have told what they learned intel- ligibly, they could have preserved many tarts concerning the Indians which now are lost forever. Nearly all of these early writers give speculations. and dreams, and opinions, often exceedingly ex- travagant and ridiculous, instead of fact .. They paid more attention to the Indian's astrology, and fable, and tradition, than to the Indian's mai.ner of living, his social system and hi- language -- the most necessary factor in ethnological study. Some of them mingled most outrageously false state- ments, made evidently in the utmost seriousness, with the few truths they chronicled. Of this class, the baldest falsifier was Thomas Carepanius, of Stockholm, albeit a most interesting raconteur. and the preserver of some valuable facts as well as of many more or less interesting statemems, exhibiting high inventive genius, as, for instance, Campanius' stories of the rattlesnake which could bite a man's leg off, and of the "sea spiders" (crabs) which had tails like edged swords, with which they could saw down trees. The way in which Campanius allows his imagination to en- large upon and add to the marvels of the New World makes him worthy of the title Scandina- vian Munchausen of the Delaware.
From the time of Hudson's voyage to the close of the seventeenth century there is frequent co- temporary mention of the Delawares and their kinsmen, the Nanticokes (of whom we shall presently treat), and their neighbors the Mengwes, Minquas or Mingoes, known in Maryland as the Susquehannas, and later in Pennsylvania as the Conestogas. Captain Cornelis Hendrickson who explored part of the Delaware, in 1615-16,1 met and traded with the Minquas probably at the mouth of or upon the Christiana ), and redeemed from them three Dutch prisoners. His intercourse with them was the beginning of the Delaware fur trade. In 1623 Captain Cornelis Jacobson Mey met them at the site of Gloucester, N. J., just below the place where Penn's great city was to be founded, and where he built Fort Nassan.
The first whites who formed a settlement in the lone, but lovely wilderness region now included in the bounds of Delaware --- a little colony planted by David Pietersen De Vries, on the floornekill, near Lewes, in the year 1631- soon afterwards fell victims to the savages, though they wrought their own doom by initiatory acts of violence.'
When De Vries founded his colony, and at the time of his expedition in 1633 up the Delaware,
With the Swedish Governor Printz, there came to the Delaware, in 1643, John Campanius" (to whom allusion has heretofore been made), rendered prominent from being the first to translate Luther's catechism into the Indian language, from the faet that he was for six years a pastor of the Swedes. and last, but not least, because of his keeping a journal from which his grandson, Thomas Cam- panius, wrote his famous " Description of the New Province of New Sweden,"' illustrated with euts and maps made by the swedish engineer Lind- strom, several of which are reproduced in this work. From Campanius we glean some interest- ing information concerning the Indians taking eare to exclude much that is clearly erroneou -. He states that the Swedes in his time had no intercourse except with "the black and white Mengwes " -- an expression it is difficult to under- stand. The Minquas, or Susquehannas, had their chief population upon the river bearing their name, and in the region now Ceeil County, Mary- land (where they were regularly visited by the Swedish traders , but they are known also to have been quite numerous at times upon the Christiana and Brandywine, and thus in the immediate
" This name is sometimes printed John Campamins Holm, the Last name being added to signify stockholm, of which city he was a natry .. Where it so occurs it is equivalent to Jolin Campanius, of Holm or Stockholm.
3 A copy of the original Swedish edition of this work, published at Stockholm in - ", is in the library of the Delaware Historical Society.
Isce next chapter.
13
THE ABORIGINES.
neighborhood of Fort Christina. What i- meant by " black and white Min- quas," however, is not even a matter for intelligent conjecture-though this is not surprising-in the writings of the Swedish chaplain. Nothwithstanding the fact that he disclaims intercourse except with the Minquas, he cahnly enters upon a description of the life. manners and customs of the Lenaje, whom he accuses of being cannibals, as, in truth, were nearly all tribes of American Indians, but only upon rare occasions.
The attitude of the Indians of the Delaware towards the early Swedish settlers is shown in an account of a council which they held while Printz was Governor, probably about 1645, given in Campanius' work and undoubt- edly authentie in its essential statements. The council was called by the Sachen Matta Horn, who owned the ground on which Wilmington stands, and sohl that upon which Fort Christina was built. At the time of the council most of the inhabitants along the Delaware were Swedes, but there were a few Ilol- landers in the country. Matta Horn is represented as ealling first his son, Agga Horn, and afterwards upon other chiefs and warriors, to ascertain the opinion of his people as to the advisability of allowing the white men to dwell peacefully in the country, or fall upon and disperse them. The dialogue which ensues is thus represented by Campanius :
Father Matta Horn .- Where are the Swedes and the Dutch ?
Som Agga Horn .- Some of them are at Fort Christina, and some at Nrw Gottenberg.
Further,-What do the swedes and the Dutch say now ?
Sou .- They say, why are the Indians so angry with us? Why do they say they will kill all of us Swedes, and root us ont of the conutry ? The Swedes are very good. They come in largo fast sailing ships, with all sorts of time things from swede's country. or old Sweden.
F .- Go runnd to the other cluets and to the common men, and he ir what they bay.
$ -They say, you Indians and we (swedes, and Dutch, and English) are in friendship with each other. We are good men. Come to ns. We have a great deal of cloth, kettles, gunpowder, guns and all that you may want to buy.
F .- I understand. What do you say about this, Agga Horn, my son ? S .- I say that I think it best not to fall upon them, because the Swwles nre skillful warriors.
F .- My son, you must go about here and there, to our good friends. the chiefs and common men, and engage them to come immediately here to me, that we may consult together as to what we shall do.
S .- It as well, I will go.
F .- De that, but don't be long away.
The son comes again and sulutes his father.
Ş .- Father Matta Horn, I have done what you ordered me.
F -Well, my son, what answered the officers.
S .- They answered that they would come here to us, the day after
F -Yon, my son, Agga Horn, may go with the men to shoot some deer in the woods. Perhaps the goud gentlemen (sle) may be hungry when they come.
5 .- I understand that well, I will g> immediately ont hunting. After being hunting, he returns with venison.
F .- fave yon been hunting .
DELAWARE INDIAN FAMILY. (From Campanius' " New Sweden.")
S .- Yes, I have.
F .- What have you done?
> -We have killed two elks, and as many deer as will be wanted.
F .- [ave you shot no turkeys ?
S-I shall have also, twelve turkeys.
F -Enough, enongh.
The people are now assembleil in Council.
Sachen .- Are you here, good friends?
Warriors .- Yes, we are,
Suchem .- That is well, you are welcome. Sit down and rest. Warriors,-With pleasure, for we are much tired.
Suchem .- Are you also hungry '
Warriors .- Yes, may be we are hungry.
Sachem .- I know you have gour a great way, so you must be very hungry. We shall have meat presently.
Warriors .- That will do for 113.
Schem, -Here, you have to eat. Eat all, ye good friends.
Warriors -Yes, we will do our best Give us meat.
Machem .- Do you also want drink "
Warriors -Yes, give us drink. This is awiet and good water. We are now well satisfied. Thanks, thanks.
Sachem's Speech to the Warranx-My good friends, all of you don't take it amiss that my son h's called you to this place. The swertes dwe'l here upon our land, and they have many fortresses and houses for their habitation. But they have no goods to self to 19. We can find nothing in their shares that we want, and we cannot trade with them. The question is, whether we shall go out and kill all the swedes, and destroy theri altogether, or whether we shall sudler them to remain ? Therefore, I am glad that you came here, that we may consult together on this subject. You chiefs and warriors, what advice do you give? What shall we do with the Swedes? They have no cloth, red, blue, or brown. They have no kettles, no bra-s, no lead, no guns, no powder. They have nothing to sell us; but the English and Dutch have got all sorts of merchandise.
Some of the thief nummer .- We are for the Swedes, we have nothing against theni.
the ther Chef answers .- It would be well to kill all the suely ; for they have nothing in their stores, for which we can trade with them.
A commune warring says: Wherefore, should we kill all the swelles, and root them out of the country. They are in friendship with us. We have no complaint to make A them. Presently they will bring here a large chip full of all sorts of good things
14
HISTORY OF DELAWARE.
Others ansirer .- Yon talk well, we common warriors agree with you. Then we shall not kill all the Swedes, and root thein out of the country. Others reply .- No, by no means. For the Swedes are good enough, and they will shortly have here a large ship full of all sorts of , pods.
The King's dersom .- Right so. We. native Indiane, will have the Swedes, and the Swandes shall be our good friends. We, and the Sweles, and the Dutch, shall always trade with each other. We shall tet make war upon them and destroy them. This is hxed and certain. Tike care to observe it. 1
A sachem ruled over each tribe, the office being hereditary upon the mother's side. " When a king or sachem died it was not," says Can:parius," has children who succeeded him, but his brothers by the same mother, or his sisters or their daughters' male children, for no female could succeed to the government." It was customary, when any act of importance was to be entered upon, as the sale of land or making of war or peace, for the sachem to summon a couneil consisting of the wise men and also of the common people. In making a treaty of peace or friendship, they were accustomed to give to those with whom they were making it a pipe to smoke, which act being performed, the treaty was regarded as concluded and sarredly sealed. Their punishments usually consisted of fines. "A murderer," says Campanius, "may be forgiven on giving a feast or something else of the same kind ; but if a woman be killed, the penalty is doubled, because a woman can bring forth chil- dren and a man cannot." Nearly all authorities seem to agree with the Swedish chronicler that murder was very uncommon among the Indians until "the white man came, when, under the influ- ence of intoxication from the liquor they soll them, several were committed by the Indians. When they committed murder under those circumstances they exensed themselves by saying it was the liquor that did it."
Another writer 2 gives some interesting facts concerning the relation of drunkenness and crime among the Indians, prefacing his local facts with the remark that intoxication was to them (the Indians) a new sensation ; they did not come to it by slow and imperceptible degrees .. . . . but plunged at once into the vortex and madness was the consequence." In the year 1668 some Indians in a state of intoxication attacked and murdered the servants of one of the settlers near where Burl- ington, N. J., now stands on the Delaware. "The Indians when sober appear to have been ever anx- ions to live on terms of friendship with the whites. Accordingly, we find that in this instance, as they had previously done in many others, they deter- mined to bring the offenders to justice. Having as- certained who the murderers were, they arrested the chief of them, a man by the name of Tashiowycan, shot and brought his body to Wieacoa, ' from whence it was taken to New Castle and there hung in
chains." It is a notable fact that after this event the Indians themselves requested that an absolute prohibition of the sale of liquor to the Indians should be ordered along the entire length of the Delaware. Governor Lovelace in 1671 actually probibited, upon pain of death, the selling of spirits anal powder and lead to the Indians, but the law was inoperative, for we find that these very articles were the principal considerations in land purchases from the Indians almost immediately after the proclaisation, and continued to be for a century.
Romnung our extracts from Campanius' work, though this time it is the engineer and map-maker Lindstrom who is quoted by the former, we find a description of one of the Indians' great hunts .-
"As soon as the winter is over they commence their hunting oxpe- ditions, v hoch they lo in the most ingenmoms manner. They choose the tane when the grave is high, anddry as hay. The Sichem collecte the people together, and places them in a circumference of one or two miles, according to their uutuber -; they then rout ont all the grass around the' arcunferetice, to the breath of ahont four yards, so that the tro cannot run back upon them ; when that is done, they set the gra Bon fire, which of course extends all round, until it reaches the centre of the circumference. Fary then set up great outeries, and the . Annaais fy toward the centre, and when they are collected within a small circle, the Laudians shoot at them with guns and bows, and kill as many as they please, by which means they got plenty of venison. When the grass hay ceased to grow, they go out into the woodsand shoot the ammaly wluch they find there, in which they have not much tion- Me, for their sense of smelling is so aente that they can smell them like Trvands Their achem causes a turkey to be hung up in the air, of which the bowels being taken out and the belly filled with money, he who shoots the bird down gets the money that is within it. 14
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