History of Delaware : 1609-1888, Part 5

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : L. J. Richards
Number of Pages: 776

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The weapons of the Indians were stone hatchets, the how and arrow and the war-club, and these prinitive articles served them in the chase and in their battles with each other until they obtained guns and powder and lead, knives and iron tom- ahawks, the Delawares, Susquehannas, Nanticokes and some other tribes from the Dutch and Swedes and English, and the Iro- quois of New York from the French. Their bows were made usually of the limbs of trees about six feet in length, and then strings were made of the sinews and skins and in- HORNBLENDE AXE. testines of animals Their arrows were reeds from a yard to a yard and a half long. They were winged with feathers, and in the end was fixed a hard piece of wood, in which was set a flint, a piece of bone or horn or sometimes the sharp tooth of an animal or large fish, which was securely fastened in with tough ligaments and fish glue. When they went to war each brave provided himself with a bow, a quiver full of arrows and a club, and they painted themselves and placed apon their heads red feathers as the insignia of blood. They fortitied

+ Canjunius' " New Sweden," p. 125.

1 Campanius, pp. 153-156.

2 Wilham Huffington's Pelawatr Register. Vol. I. p. 212.

3 Wicaco, the Swedish settlement on the site of l'inladelphia.

: :

THE ABORIGINES.

some of their houses or groups of buts against the sudden attacks of their enemies. Campanius stys the Minquas had "a fort on a high mountain about twelve miles from New Sweden" 1 ( Fort Christina, on the Christiana River, at the site of Wilmington),

GROOVED HAMMER, With castle.

POLISHED AXE.

possibly meaning at Iron or Chestnut Hills, near Newark. He says " they surrounded their houses with round or square palisades made of logs or planks, which they fasten in the ground." Parkman'

FLINT KNIFE, 34 by 3 inches.

FLINT KNIFE, 8 by 314 inches.

more fully describes the mode of erecting these defenses. First, a ditch was dug around the vil- lage, the earth being thrown up on the inside. The trees of which the posts of the palisades were

CEREMONIAL STONE OF GREEN.

made were burned down and the trunks and larger branches partly cut through by fire, the work being finished by hacking them with such rude tools as the Indians possessed The logs were then placed upright in the embankment, in one or several con- centrie rows, those of each row, if the latter plan

was pursued, being bent towards each other until they intersected. Where the palisades crossed, a gallery of timber was thrown up for the defenders to stand upon. In some cases the palisades were placed perpendicularly in rude post-holes, and the earth from the ditch thrown up against them, None of these forts were regularly built or gave the appearance of any considerable strength, except where the Indians had the assistance of European soldiers.

Their lodges, according to Campanius, they con- structed in this way: "They fix a pole in the ground and spread their mats around it, which are made of the leaves of the Indian corn matted together ; then they cover it above with a kind of roof made of bark, leaving a hole at the top for

DELAWARE INDIAN FORT. (From Campanius' " New Sweden.")

smoke to pass through; they fix hooks in the pole on which they hang their kettles; underneath they put a large stone to gnard themselves from the fire, and around it they spread their mats and skins on which they sleep. For beds, tables and chairs they use nothing else ; the earth serves them for all these purposes. They have several doors to their houses, generally one on the north and one on the south side. When it blows hard, they stop up one of them with bark, and hang a mat or skin before the other." The Delawares, intimates our - swedish observer, had few towns or fixed places ,of habitation (though, as a matter of fact, they did have some permanent abiding-places ), and he continues: "They mostly wander about from one place to another, and generally go to those places where they think they are most likely to find the means of support. . . . When they travel they earry their meats with them wherever they go and fix them on poles, under which they dwell. When they want fire, they strike it out of a piece of dry wood, of which they find plenty ; and in that man- ner they are never at a loss for fire to warm them- selves or to cook their meat."

The huts of the Lquape and other Indians of the rezien which we are considering could not have been very comfortable in winter. The smoke from

1 Campanius, p. 127.

" Francis Parkman, in Introduction to " The Jesuits in Amerika "

HISTORY OF DELAWARE.

their fires had no outlet save irregularly through a of stone, sharpened to an edge by rubbing, and hole in the roof, and the interiors were stained and fastened to a wooden handle Their arrows were pointed with flint or bones. What clothing they wore was of the skins of animals taken in hunting, and their ornaments were principally of feathers." dingy, and the half-stifling air so filled with pun- gent and acrid odors as to cause much inflamma- tion of the eves and blindness in old age. The fleas and other vermin were numerous and pestifer- ous, and noise and confusion reigned supreme in the closely-huddled family circle. Parkman draws a vivid picture of a lodge on a winter night, alter- nately in glow and gloom from the thekering flame of resinous woods that sem fittul flashes through the dingy canopy of smoke, a bronzed group en- cireling the fire, cooking, eating, gambling, quarrel- ing or amusing themselves with idle chaff; grizzly old warriors, scarred with the marks of repeated battles; shriveled squaws, hideous with toil and hardship endured for half a century ; young war- riors with a record to make, vain, boastful, ob- streperous ; giddy girls, gay with paint, ochre wampum and braid ; " restless children pell-mell with restless dogs."

Of foods the Indians had, besides their game and fish, fresh and dried, melons, squashes and pumpkins, beans, peas and berries, of which they dried many for winter use, and several roots and plants of which they ate largely, and they all raised corn, the Indians along the Lower Dela- ware, and in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Vir- ginia especially, paying considerable attention to its cultivation. They ground it in the hollow plares of rocks either naturally or artificially formed. mixed the coarse eracked kernels with flour, and baked the paste in cakes upon the ashes. While engaged in the cha-e or traveling along distances they carried pouches full of parched corn for their sustenance. They had, too, the tuckahoe (the petuk- gunnug of the Delawares and the taugonuk of the Minquas), called by the whites the " Indian loaf," a curious root supposed by some to be a sort of truffle. It was of the form of a flattened sphere, and varied in size from an acorn to the bigness of a man's head. It was roasted in the ashes, as was also the Indian turnip, which, thus deprived of its pungeney, made a wholesome food

The Indians of Campanius' time had well-nigh given up the manufacture of pottery, for the cook- ing utensils they seeured from the Europeans served their purpose better. They were perfect strangers to the use of iron, and their own tools were rude and poor, strictly speaking, being those of the stone age. Charles Thompson, who had ab inti- mate knowledge of the Indians, but who, unfor- tunately, wrote but little about them, says in an essay: 1 " They were perfect strangers to the use of iron. The instruments with which they dug up the ground were of wood, or a stone fastened to a handle of wood. Their hatchets for cutting were

HAND-MADE AND FINGER-MARKED VESSEL OF POTTERY.

Their skill in some kinds of domestic industry is attested by Campanius, who says:

"They can tan and prepare the skins of animals, which they paint afterwards in their own way. They make much use of painted feathers, with which they adorn their skins and bed-covers, binding them with a kind of net-work, which is very handsome and fasteris the feathers well. With these they make light and warm covering and clothing for themselves; with the leaves of luchin corn and reeds they make purses mats and bisk-t .. . . . They make very hands die ail strong, mats of fine roots, which they punt with all kinds of heures; they hang their walls with these mats and make excellent bed clothes it them. The women spin thread and yarn ont of wattles, hemp and some plants unknown to us. Governor Printz had a complete sunt of clothes, with cont, breeches and belt, made by thesp barbarians with their watn. pum, which was curiously wrought with figures of all kinds of animals. . . . They make tobacco pipes out of reeds, abont a man's length ; the bowl is made of horn, and to contain a great quantity of tobacco. They generally present those pipes to their good friends to smoke. . . . They make them otherwise of red, yellow and blue chy, of which there is a great quantity in the country : also of white, gray, green, brown, black and blue stones, which are so soft that they can la rut with a knife. ... Their boats are made of the Mark of calar and burch trees, bound to- gether and lashed very strongly. They carry them along wherever they gu, and when they come to some creek that they want to get over they Lunch thein atel go whither they please. They also used to make boat- out of cedar trees, which they burnt insule and scraped off the coals with sharp stones, bones, or muscle shells."

ORNAMENTAL POTTERY.

The dress and adorument of the Indian, accord- ing to the always trustworthy Thompson, exhibited many peculiarities :

" They all painte Ior danbed their face with red. The men suffered only a tuft of hair to grow on the crown of their head ; the rest, whether

1 ". Essay upon Indian Affairs " (a fragment), published in Transactions of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

THE ABORIGINES.

in their heads or faces, they prevented from growing by constantly the king it out by the roots, so that they always appeared as if they were ball and beardless. Many were in the practice of marking to 1! wow, arms and breast by tricking the skin with theins and ruleang the part- with a bur powder nie of coal (charcoah, which, peintrating the join tures, left an indebble ston or mark, which remanand as lung .. they lived. The poite tures were made in nantes according to the ir .veral fancies The only part of the body which they covered wa from i . a ust half-way down the thighs, and then feet they guarded with a band of show made of hodes of buttales or dres-kin, based tight over the Istep and up to the ankle- with thongs Ir was and still confiou ~ to im a common pass the among the men to she thetreats, putting sathe- thing into the hole to prevent its rheing, and then by hanging weights to the lower part to stretch it out, so that it hangs down the check like a lunga ring."

Wampum and war and peace belts are described by the same writer :

FLESHER WITH HANDLE.

POLISHED FLESHER.

" Instead of money they mard a kind of brads made of conch shell manufactured in a curams manner Three leads were made, some of the white, some of the black or colored parts of the shell. They were formed into cylinders about one-quarter of an inch long and a quarter of an trich in diameter. They were round and lighty polished am per- forated lengthwise with a small hole, by which they strate them to- grtber and wove them into belts, some of which, by a proper artangement of the beads of different colors, were figured hhe carpeting with different figures, according to the various Hors for which they were de- dighed. These were made use of in their treaties and intercourse with each other, and served to assist their memory and queserve the remein- brance of transactions. When different tribes of nations made peace of alliance with each other they exchanged belts if one ant ; when they excited each other to wm they Had another sont. Hetice they were distinguished by the name of peace belts of war belts. Every messige wat from one tribe to another was accompanied with a string of these heads or a belt, and the string or belt was smaller or greater according to the weight and importance of the subject. These beads were their riches. They were worn as bracelets on the mms and like chains runbad the neck by way of ornaments."

William Penn's observations and opinions of the Indians are interesting and well worth reproduc- tion in these pages, for he not only first'saw the natives of the New World on the shores of the Delaware (at New Castle), but those whom he afterwards had opportunity of minutely studying at Philadelphia were of the same people, aud doubt- less, in me ay cases, the same individuals who lived in the region which now constitutes the northern part of this State. In a letter to Henry Sewell, dated Philadelphia, 30th of Fifth Month, 1683, he thus chronieles his impressions :

"The natives ate proper and shapely, very swift, their language lofty. They speak little, but fervently and with elegancy. I have never seen more naturall sagacity, ontistdering them without ye help-I was going toway youpayle-et tradition. The west is that they are y wap forse " lirestrany who have propagated their views and yieldled them traction for je wars & not for yo better things, they believe a Diety and Inmar- Listy with at ye help of metaphysiks & some of them sulaurally soler, though se Datch & Sweed and English have by Bramly and Rum almost ILusht go all, and when Drunk ye most wretched of specta les, often turning A sometimes murdering one another, at which times ye chris-

Liens ange See without danger as well as for This for gun they will run the hazard tools of ye and yo law, they make their worship to waitlist at two parts, Kiertowa wh they .. der of their first fruits with moarte font4 fervery and laws of hely sweating as i am a Bath, the other is their Canta www. as they call them web is performed by some bundes, some

and direct ve ct. "as ; this they performe with cqnal berveney but great appearances of joy. Han dong Undsage them, notas shall want with. other has, peti they have prque ty (property but freely commonwealde, they want or care a little, so that Exiline nor Balls of Letting. " s " haurery suits no: bene quer fort. ha ... they to perplex themselves huntide und fishing. "1

A much fuller description of the red men of the Delaware was given by Penn in a letter to the Free Society of Tradeis, written in Angust, 1683. The Datives, he says, are generally tall and straight,

" well built, and ot sim mar profe ction fi. . , of symmetry ] : they ttrad strong and clever, ani nunily walk with a lotty chin. of con k vion black, lost by design, is the appears in England. They steve them- seives with bears for vitrified, and using no de leite against wall and weaday, their skips post nords he swarthy. Their eye is hvid and Lack, not andke a straight-looked Jew. The thick hips and that Ise. so frequent with the Best Indi ans and blacks, are not commun to them . for I have seen as connely Europourlike fares among them, of both pey- es, De on your side the way and truly an Italian comple von hath not more of the white ; and the noses of several of them have as much of the Roman. Then late, nage is lofts, yet barros , but, like the Helgen, 12 signification full. Like shout-hand in writing, one word serveth in the pour of three, and the rest atu supdie' by the understanding of the hearer : imperfect in their trusts, wanting in their moods, partu iples, alverbs, conjunctions and interjections I have made it my business to understand it, that I might not want an interpeter ou any occasion . and I matist ray that I know not a language spoken in Europe that hath works of more sweetness or greatnes, in at ent and emphasis, than their ; for instance, Uoter kekon, Hancocas, Orieton, Shak, Mattan, Po- quesian, all which ate names of places, and have grandem in them, Ot word- of sweetness, come is mother ; asmus, a bother ; netrap, friend. noprovet, very good : june, bread , meist, eat ; mutfa, tas , hatta, to have ; page, to come ; Sepassent, l'assijou, the names of places . Tamanie, Se ane, Menance. Seratawirus, the the names of persons. .

.Of their customs and manners there is much to be sent. I will be- gin with children. So soon as they are born they wash them in water, and while very vonne and in cold weather to cloune, they plunge them in the rivers to harden and embolden them. Having wrapt them in a clout, they lay them on a strait thin board a little more than the length and breath of the chill, and aw while it fast ujem the lasttd to make it straight ; wherefore all Indians have that heads ; and thus they carry them at their barks. The children will go [walkj very young, at nine monthe commonly. They wear only a small clout around their waist til they are big. It boys, they go a-fishing till ripe for the words, which is aboat fifteen. There they hunt ; and having giseu sonte prout- of their manhood by a good return of skins, they muurry ; else it is a shame to think of a wife. The girls -tay with their mother-, and help to have the grown 1, plant corn and carry hunthens ; and they do well to use them to that, while young, which they must do when they are old : tor the wives are the true servants of the husbands ; otherwise the men are very affer the nate to them. When the young women are fit for marriage they wear something upon their heads for an advertisement, but so as their faces are hardly to be seen Init when they please. The age they marry at, if women, is about thnteen and fourteen ; if men, seventern and rightren. They are rarely older. Their houses are maty or banks of trees, art on poles in the fashion of an English burn, but ont of the power of the winds, for they are hardly higher than n man. They le va reels or grass. In travel they lodge in the woods about a great hre, with the mantle of duthis they wear by day wrapt about them and a few bomnghe stnek round them. Their diet is maize or Inhan corn chivers ways prepared, sometimes porusted in the ashes, sometimes beraten and boiled with water, which they call homine. They also make cakes not nupleasant to eat. They have likewise several sorts of beans and peas that are good banishment, and the woods and rivers ne their larter If an European comes to see them, or calls for lodging at then house or wigwam, they give him the best place and first out. It they copre to visit us they salute us with an Rah! which is as much as to say, 'Good be to you ! ' and set them down, which is mostly on the goonrail, close to their heels, their lege apright ; it may to they speak not a word, but ol- serve all passages (all that pases! If you give them anything to eat or drink, well, for they will not ask ; and, be it little or much, if it be with kindness, they are will pleased ; else they go away sullen, but say nothing. They are great romdealers of their own resentments, brought to it, I believe, by the revenge that lith been practiced anding them. In either of these they are not exceeded In the Italians. ... Some of the young women are said to take nimue bbetty before marriage for a portion ; but when muriel, chuste. ...

1 Pennsylvania Archives, Vol. I pp. Gx, 69.

HISTORY OF DELAWARE.

" But in hherality they excel ; nothing is too good for their friend ; give them a fine gun, coat, or other thing, if may pass through twenty hands before it ste ks, light of heart, strong af . this, but sien spent. The most merry creatures that live. frast ail dane- perpetually , they never have much, nor want mich , wealth cienlateth like the blood ; all poets partake ; and though hour shall want whit another hath, yet exact observers of property. Some kings have sold, others presented me with several par els of land , the pay of presents I made them were not hoarded by the particular owners ; but the bet_hluging kings and their cluus being pre-ent when the good- were brought out, the parties thirdly concerned consulted what and to whom they should give them. Tu every king them, by the hands of a person for that work appointed, is a proportion wat, wo suited and fobjed, and with that gravity that is ad- nucable. Then that king sulwhvyleth it in h & manner among his de- pendants. . They care for little, because they want but little ; and the reason is, a little contents them. In this they are sufficiently je. venged on us: if they are ignorant of our pleasures, they are also frue from our pains . . . Sime the Europeans came into their just- they are grown great lovers of strong ligded-, rum especially, and for it they ex- change the richest of their -kins and Inrs. It they are beateil with liquors they are pratirss till they have . nonch to sleep .- that is their cry,-Some more and I will go to sleep; but when drunk one of the uust wretched spectacles in the world !

GROOVED HAMMER.

PIERCED RECORD TABLET.

"In sickness, impatient to be fired ; and for it give anything. espe- cially for their children, to whom they are extremely natural. They drink at these times a town, or decection of some route in spring-water ; and if they eat any flesh it must be of the female of any creature. If they die they bury them with their apparel, be they nrit or wunmin, and the nearest of kin fling in something precious with them as a token of their love. Their mourning is blacking of their faces, which they con- tinte for a year. They are choice of the graves of their dead, for, lest they should be lost by time and fall to common use, they pick off the grass that grows upon them, and henp up the fallen earth with great care and exactness. These poor people are umler a dark night in things re- lating to religion ; to be sure the tradition of it ; yet they believe a God and immortality without the help of metaphysics, for they say, ' There is a Great King that made them, who dwells in a glorious country to the southwand of them, and that the souls of the goud shall go thither where they shall live again.' Their worship consists of two parts, acritice and cantico. Their sacrifice is their best fruits: the first and fattest buck they kill gueth to the fire, where he is all burnt, with a mournful ditty of him that performeth the ceremony, Uint with such marvellous fer vency and labor of body that he will even sweat to a form. The other part is their cantico, performed by round dances, sometimes words, some- times songs, then shunts, two being in the middle that begin, and by singing and drumming on a board ihreet the chorus. Their postures in the dance are very antu h and differing. but all keep measure. This is done with equal earnestness and Jubor, but great appearance of joy It the fall, when the corn cometh in, they begin to feast une another There have been two great festivals already, to which all come that will. I was at one myself : their entertainment was a great seat by a spring u. der some shady trees, and twenty bucks, with hot cakes of new corn, both wheat and beats, which they make up in a square form in the leaves of the stem and bake them in the ashes, and after that they fell to dance. But they that go minst carry a small present in their money ; it may be sixpence, which is tudde of the bone of a fish ; the black is with them as gold, the white silver : they call it all wampum.

"Their government is by hing, which they call Sachama, and these by surcesion, but always on the mother's sale. ... Every King hath his Couteil, and that runsists of all the obl and wie men of bts nation which, perhaps, is two hundred people. Nothing of moment in wieler. taken, be it war, 'peace, selling of land, or trathick, without advising with them, and, which is more, with the young meu too. It is adnur- able to consider how powerful the Kingware, and yet how they nowve by the breath of their proj ir. 1 have had occasion to be in conned with them upon treaties of land, and to adjust the terms of trade. Their or- der is thus : The king sits in the middle of an half moon, and hath bid council, the old and wise, on each hand ; behind them, or at a little dis- tance, sit the younger Iry in the same figure, Having consulted and

resolved their lowiness, the King ordered one of them to speak to n- he stood up, came to me and, in the name of his King salute na then took me by the hand and told me. . He was med. red by his Kie to speak to me, and that now it was not be, but the King that -job .. . i. cause what he should sis was the King's mind ' ile thet prayed met PA 'use them, that they had hắt candied with the the list tinh he br ites there might to some fault in the Interpreter, being neither lachen non English ; lesiles, it was the Delin custom the de hie rate and take it tak hi time to connect lot de they readse, and that it the young people and owners of the hand led them as reais as his. I had let thet with - much delay." Having those mitrolneed this matter, he fell to the Bounty ! of the land they had agreed to thepage of and the price, which then i- little all dear, that which wont have bunight twenty miles not luisitoz Dow two During the time that this man spoke not a man of them R ... observed to whisper of smule, the uil gute, the young reverent in their department. They speak little lust fervently, and with dogmar. I have never been more natural saggity, codering them without the helped was going to say the soul of tradition, and he will deserve the name of wier that ontwifs them in any treaty about a thing they ntojet- stated When the purchase was affeed great promo- passo of between 12, *ot kindness and good neighborhood, and that the It has att Fiz- lish must live in love as long as the sitt gave light,' what h done. anoth- er made a speech to the linhans in the name of all the Pachetulels of Kings, first to tell them what was done, next to change and common ! them "to love the Christians, and particularly live in peace with me at 1 the people under my government ; that many governors have been in the river, but that to troyetnot had rothe human It to live and stay here in fore, and having now such an one, that had treated them well. they should never do hun or his any winny," at every sentence of which they shouted and said Amen in then wav

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History of Delaware : 1609-1888, Part 5

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Philadelphia : L. J. Richards Number of Pages: 776

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : L. J. Richards
Number of Pages: 776