History of Delaware : 1609-1888, Part 6

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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"We have agreed that in all ditt -rehers between us six of each side eball end the matter. Do not abuse them, but let them have justu ". and you win them. The west is that they are the worse for the thin- tians, who have propagated their vores and yielded their traditions for il and not for good things But as how an elib as these people are at, and as inglorious as their own condition looks, the Christians have not ont- lived their sight, with all then pretenistons to an higher manifestation. What good, then, night not a good people gratt where there is so di -- . tinct a knowledge left between good and evil . I berech God to i due the hearts of all that rome into these parts, to outhive the kuowhat_ret the natives, by a fixed whole the to their greater knowledge of the v! of God, for it were miserable indeed for us to fall under the just ceusti; of the poor Indians' conscience, while we make profession of things far transcending.

" For their original, I am ready to believe them of the Jewish race . I mean, of the stock of the ten triles, and that for the following rea-ons First, they were to go to a " land tot planted not known ; which, to t- sure, Asia and Africa were, If not Europe, and He that intended that es- traordinary judgment upon them might make the passage not theasy to them, as it is not impossibile in it- it, from the easterntest parts of Aett to the westernmust of Anieina. ..

Gabriel Thomas discoursed of the Indians in a manner similar to Penn, but adds an interesting fact or two: "The English and the Indians," he says, " live together very peaceably, by reason that the English satisfies them for their Land. . . .. The Dutch and Sweads inform me that they are greatly decreased in number to what they were when they came first into this country, and the Indians themselves say that two of them die to every one Christian that comes in here." 1

There is not much more that it is worth while to deduce from the cotemporary writers upon the Delaware, though we shall hereafter quote from George Alrop concerning the Minquas, Mingoes of Susquehannas. What we have extracted from the writings of Campanius, Penn and others, endeavor- ing to omit matters of minor importance and thu-t which are clearly erroneous, atlords quite a compre- hensive view of the manners, customs, character and appearance of the supplanted race, in regard to whom there must be a constantly increasing inter- est as the years roll by.

1 " Historical Description of the Province nud County of West New Jersey in Ametdet, " London, INis.

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THE ABORIGINES.

The language of the Lenni Lenape .- " the pure Castilian of the New World,"-in the opinion of several competent judges, is the most perfect of all the Indian tongues, although all of these belonged to what philologists regard as one of the lowest orders of speech-the incorporative or polysyn- thetie type. It is distinguished by beauty, strength

BIRD AND TOR- TOISE PIPE.

DICK'S HEAD PIPE.

FLINTSKIN SCRAPER.

and flexibility. It has the power of compressing a whole sentence into a single word. This is done by taking the most important syllable of each word, and sometimes simply a single letter, con- bining them in slightly varying forms or with different terminations, the laws of euphony being observed, and thus forming a new word, express- ing a variety of ideas Nearly all of the fudian names, particularly those of the Lenape, are rich in rythmical euphony, and some which are exceptions have doubtless received their harshness through imperfect rendering into English (or, in many cases, Dutch and Swedish).

The earliest Indian deed transferring lands in Delaware which is on record is dated May 4, 1679, and is preserved in the archives of the recorder's office in New Castle County. It is a deed for the island upon the Delaware, in Duck Creek Hun- dred, Kent County, known as Bombay Hook Island, of which Mechacksit, a sachem, was the grantor and Peter Bayard' the grantee. In the

BLACK FLINT KNIFE. FLINT PERFORATOR.

following, which is the full text of the deed, here reprinted as of antiquarian interest, the "an- cher" of liquor mentioned as one of the items in the consideration was a Dutch measure, equivalent to about thirty-two gallons :---

" Be it known unto all men by these presents, that 1. Mechaecksitt, Chiefr Schema of Cubonauk, & side Indian aw ner and Proprietor of all that Traet of Land commonly called by the Christian. Bompiey Hook, and by the Indians Navsink, for & in roterterition of one unun, fower handfulls of Powder, three Mat-coats, one Antunes of lu or & one Kittie. before the Ensigning and Delivery here of to me in hand parl, and De- livered by Poter Bayard, of New Yorke, wherewith I acknowledge and confice my -elte to bee fully satsetved, contented and pari, therefore doe hereby Acout. Exoperate and fully Discharge the sud Peter Bayard, for the same Have Given, Hanted, Bargated, sold, assigned, Trang- ported att Madr over, and ony these presents doe fully, Clearly and ab-

unto him, the sud Peter Bay,ad, Ins heirs and Assigns, all that part of Land Called Thampire hook, afad lying and being on the west side of Deleware River and at the mouth thereof, Beginning at a fireat loud,

1 Bayard, so far as European law was concerned, was the owner of the tract five years before the making of this deed, Governor Audros bav- ing derded it to him December 15, 1675.

and a little Cherke issuing out of the said Pond being the uppermost Bonne of the ed Land's & stret long desde along the ad laver to Dai ko Greek, anelu leg ged Comprehenling mit the land, words, underw. nie, Marchew, Creeks & Waters between the said uppermost Pool and Sterke & Dicke freck afreeand. To have & to hold the sand tract of land. Mar-bes & Promises, : Sh ui and Singular the appartenances, as nie all the Right, Title and interest of Jim, the ed Me backatt, this here and Assigns theTem nuto tryand Peter Bava, his hair and assigns mito the state and Proper es & babeuf . ut kim, the wild Peter Bayard, his hele and Assigna fureur ..

" In wittese " hereof, her the oxid Was har hatt, bath horeunter sett his Hand & Seulo at New Castle, in Delaware, the 4th of May, 1079.

" Was subscribed The sigatt. or mark of

"MECH .CE-IT (18)

This Is the Math of HOBSSAPTENACHIN, 4/2 the sun of MEHOCKSIF.

" Sigmoi, sealed & Delivered in the presence of us " J. DEHAES as Interpreter. "JOHN ADAMS. "A. WELLEUNIS NARINGH, " EPH HERMAN, cer. "This above is a true copy of the original Deed lecorded and Ex- anted

"EPH HERMAN."

Another deed similiar to the one here given was made November 1, 1680. by the same sachem, Mechacksit, transferring to Ephraim Herman, " for two half ancers of drink, one blanequet, one mats- erate, two axes, two knives, two double handsfull of powder, two barrs of lead, and one kittle," a tract of land in Appoquininmink Hundred, in the lower part of New Castle County." In conveying lands the Indian sachems usually signed their marks to the deeds of conveyance for the various tracts. The autographs of the most prominent Indian chief's from 1682 to 1692 are shown below :

1 This latter deed is published in Huffington's Delaware Register, Vol. II. p. 150, and is sindlar to the one here produced.

---

HISTORY OF DELAWARE.

Something of the tribal division and later history at war, but after the advent of the French in of the vanished Lenape nation remains to be told. Canada, the Iroquois, finding that they could It is not probable that at any time after they be- came known to the whites the Delaware- had in their whole region more than twenty-five to thirty thousand people or from five to seven thousand warriors. In 1759, but little more than a century from the time that the first knowledge of them was obtained, they had but six hundred fighting men between the Delaware and the Ohio. It is probable that their numbers had been greatly redured, deci- mated time and time again by the Iroquois prior to the coming of the Dutch and Swedes and English among them. The Delaware, were di- vided into tribes of which the most notable were the branches of the Turtle or Unamis, the Turkey or Unalachtgo, and the Wolf or Minsi (corrupted into Monsey). While the domain of the Lenape extend- ed from the sea-coast between the Chesapeake and Long Island Sound baek beyond the Susquehanna to the Alleghenies and northward to the hunting- grounds of the Iroquois, it seems not to have been regarded as the common country of the tribes, but to have been set apart tor them in more or less dis- tinctly-defined districts. The Unamis and Unal- achtgo nations, subdivided into the tribes of Assun- pinks, Matas, Chichequaas, Shackamaxons, Tute- loes, Nanticokes and many others, occupied the lower country toward the coast, upon the Delaware and its affluents. The Unamis were the greatest and most intelligent of the Lenape. They were a fishing people and to a larger extent planters than the other tribes, and equally skilled in the hnut. They had numerous small villages under minor not withstand an enemy upon each side of them, shrewdly sought to placate the Lenape tribes, and. by the use of much skillful diplomacy, induced them to abandon arms and act as mediators be- tween all the nations, to take up the peaceful pur- suit of agriculture, and, by avoiding war, promote their own growth as a people, and at the same time exercise an influence towards the preservation of the entire Indian race. Into this trap, devised by the cunning Iroquois, they fell, and for a long period occupied, as they themselves expressed it, the position of women instead of men. The Five Nations, when opportunity presented itself, re- warded with treachery the confidence that the Lenape had reposed in them, and the latter, then resolving to unite their forces and by one great effort destroy their perfidious northern neighbors, again became men. This was before the era of the English in America had really begun, and the Lenape were diverted from their purpose by new and strange occurrences. The English came in great numbers to their coast. They received the new-comers kindly, as they had the Dutch, but in time the English, even the followers of Penn, turned from them and made friends with their enemy, the Iroquois, as the Dutch had done. They never ceased to revere the founder of Pennsylva- nia, Miquon, as they called him, but laid all of the subsequent wrong to mischievous people who got into power after their good brother had gone away, and who, not content with the land they had given them, contrived, they alleged, by every chiefs, who were subordinate to the great couneil of fraudulent means in their power, to rob them of the nation. They were less nomadic and more peaceable than the other tribes of Delawares.

The more warlike tribe of the Minsi or Wolf, as Heckewelder informs us, " had chosen to live back of the other tribes, and formed a kind of a bulwark for their protection, watching the motions of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and being at hand to offer aid in case of a rupture with them. " The Minsi," continues the authority from whom we have quoted, "extended their settlements from the Minisink, a place (on the Delaware, in Monroe County, Penn- sylvania) named after them, where they had their conneil-seat and fire, quite up to the Hudson ou the east, and to the west and south far beyond the Susquehanna ; their northern boundaries were sup- posed originally to be the heads of the great rivers Susquehanna and Delaware, and their southern that ridge of hills known in New Jersey by the name of Muskanceum, and in Pennsylvania by those of of the white settlements into the wilds around the Lehigh, C'oghnewago." 1

The Lenape and the Iroquois confederacy, as has been before remarked, were almost constantly

all their possessions, and brought the hated Iro- quois to humiliate them. They always maintained that they were insulted and treated in a degrading manner at treaties to which the English were par- ties, and particularly at that which took place at Philadelphia, in July, 1742, and at Easton, in November, 17. 6, when the Six Nations were pub- liely called upon to compel the Lenape to give up the land taken from them by the famous and in- famous "Walking Purchase" of 1737. But for this and other outrages they declared they would not have taken up the tomahawk against the Eng- lish in the so-called " French and Indian War" of 1755-63. It is possible that they would have re- mained nentral, notwithstanding their grievances, had they not been invited to enmity by the Iro- quois. After the close of the war, in 1763, the Lenape withdrew altogether from the proximity upper waters of the Susquehanna, and to Wyalu- sing, a hundred miles from the pioneer settlers of Pennsylvania. They did not long remain there, however, for the Iroquois sold the whole country to the English. . Some of the Minsis or Munseys had

Heckewelder's " Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations."

THE ABORIGINES.

gone before this to the head-waters of the Allegheny, times been made in this chapter, were allies and and those of this tribe who were at Wyalusing joined them there. Subsequently the Lenape tribes were in Ohio, and a considerable number, chiefly of the Minsis, in Upper Canada, while others were upon the waters of the Wabash, in Indiana. Be- tween the years 1780 and 1790 they began to emigrate from those regions to the territory west of the Mississippi. The remnant of the race thus --- if their legend was true-retraced the steps of their ancestors, made centuries before.

It would be improper to conelude this sketch of the Lenni Lenape without a few words upon its greatest and noblest character, the most illustrious and revered chief in the whole history of the nation -Tamanend or Tammany, who onee lived some- where in the territory now constituting the State of Delaware. Comparatively little is known of him. He lives principally in tradition, and his name has been perpetuated by frequent application to civic societies among the people who supplanted his race. He was a seventeenth century Indian, and is supposed to have died about the time of its close. In 1683 he, with a lesser chief, atfixed their hieroglyphical signatures to a deed conveying to William Penn a traet of land in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. ' While his home was doubtless for many years upon the Lower Delaware, and, there is reason to believe, near the Christiana, he doubt- less moved northward as the English settlers en- croached upon his domain, and it is traditionally asserted that he lived far up towards the head- waters of the river of his people in the extreme northeastern part of Pennsylvania. ' Of the charac- ter of Tamanend, Heckewehler says: " He was in the highest degree endowed with wisdom, virtue, prudence, charity, affability, meekness, hospitality, -in short, with every good and noble qualification that a human being may possess," and Thatcher declares that the Indians "could only account for the perfections they aseribed to him by supposing him to be favored with the special communications of the Great Spirit."

The Nauticokes, to whom allusion has several

1 Pennsylvania Archives, Vol 1. p. 64

" It is believed that Tamamend lived for a consideralde period on the west bank of the Delaware, in what is now Damascus townlup, Wayne County. The Connecticut settlet-, who cathe there in 1.57, called the fertile bottom land " St Tammuany Flit, 'att in later years his name was applied in it- canetazed folla to a local helge of the Meunie fra- ternity. The traditional fame of Tituaneit's virtute, wisdom and great- urss became a widespread among the whites that he was established its st. Tammany, the Patron Sunt of America. His name was printed m Mottar old-time calendars and hi- festival celebrated on the 1st day id Mary every year, On that day conumerous wenty of luis votaries walked together in procession through the streets of Philadelphia with turcktail, adopting their hats, and proceeded to u " wigwam," ma rural katality where they smoked the entimet of peace and indulzod in festivity and mirth. The origund Tammany Society in the United States was a Phula. IrIplua organization of high refaite, which had no other fairfuer than pleasure and spannt but itwent diversion. The later societies, twintig devoted to partisan politics, hruse let the hatin which the wid society possessed. It is interesting to note, however, that one of the most silely known political aswe lations in the country bears the name of the great chief of the Lenni Lenaje.

kindred of the Delawares, whom they called " grandfathers," and occupied the lower part of this State and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and were distinctively a fishing and trapping people, rather than hunters and warriors. These taets were asserted by one of their chiefs, White, to Loskiel and ITeckewelder, the Moravian mis- sionaries and historians at Bethlehem, Pennsyl- vania. The Nanticokes moved northward be- fore the pressure of the slow, but inexorable advance of the white settlers, and after waging for a long period an intermittent war with the early colonists of Maryland they retreated to the head of the Chesapeake Bay, and thence, some of them, under the advice and protection of the Iro- quois, moved to the Wyoming Valley, and others went farther up the Susquehanna to Chemmenk or Zeningis (Shenango), to which region they all immigrated at the beginning of the French and In- dian War against the English. The tribe suffered even more from contact with the Europeans than did the Delawares and Susquehannas. " Nothing," said White, " had equaled the decline of his tribe since the white people had come into the country. They were destroyed in part by disorders which they brought with them, by the small-pox, the venereal disease, and by the free use of spirituous liquors, to which great numbers fell victims." 3 The tribe had so dwindled away that soon after the Revolution (in which they had joined the British standard > they did not number more than fifty men.

The last remnant of this people in Delaware took their departure about 1748,' from the neigh- borhood of Laurel, in Sussex County. In this locality-about a mile from Laurel, on the bank of a small stream-there was quite an extensive burying-ground, which was opened early in the present century by workmen engaged in digging earth for the purpose of repairing a mill-dam. They dug up several wagon-loads of bones and left a large quantity still remaining in the earth. The skeletons were in a fair degree of preserva- tion, lay side by side and each bone was in its proper place. Several of them were of such size as to denote that the men whose remains they were, possessed remarkably high stature and great strength, one of them in particular being seven feet in length. At the time the grave-yard was opened by the spades of the laborers there were living in the neighborhood several very old men who remembered " the last of the Nanticokes." and said that a short time before they left that

: Hechowelder.

+ A minder of Santicoches from Maryland passed by Shamokin in ten rattoes on their way tu Wyomung -Doug of Her. Chrastum P'grl . NR. May 21. ITIs Others, Mys Hoch welder, frequently passed by land through Bethlehem, atul thence through the Delaware Water Gap to Ne-coperk or su-quehanna

HISTORY OF DELAWARE

part of the country they all assembled at this spor. and bringing with them the bones of their dend who had been buried elsewhere in the region round about, interred them here with many peru- liar ceremonies prior to their mournful final depar- ture from the land of their fathers' Heckewelder remarks that " the Nanticokes had the singular custom of removing the bones of their deceased friends from the burial-place to a place of deposit in the country they dwell in,"-a statement which is qualified by the authentic account we

A SUSQUEHANNA INDIAN WARRIOR.

have made use of in reference to the discovery near Laurel. In this instance the Indians did indeed remove the bones of their friends to a cen- tral locality and common burial-place, but they did not take them to the locality to which they were ahont to emigrate. That in some instances they did remove the bones of the dead from their i'll home in Delaware and Maryland to Northern Inte-ylvania is incontestable, but in such cases the remains were doubtless those of sachems or

' Bettington's Delaware Register, Vol. 1., pp. 16, 17.

chiefs, distinguished men or very close kindred Heckewelder is authority for the statement this in the year- between 1750 and 1760 many of the- Indians went down to the Delaware Maryland Peninsutia to carry the bones of their dead up 14 Wyoming and Descoperk, and he says, " I will remember socing them loaded with such bone -. which, being fresh, caused a disagreeable stench a. they passed through the streets of Bethlehem."

The Susquehannas, who had their home upon the Potomgar and the Susquehanna, and perhaj - their greatest strength in what is now Ceeil County. extending their population even into the territory of Northern Delaware, were a powerful tribe with whom the carly adventurers, traders and settlers of the Delaware had much intercourse, and they have received frequent mention in this chapter. but their importance, historically, makes them worthy of a more specific consideration in these pages than ba- yet been accorded to them. They were-conclude Francis Parkman and other stu- cients who have given special and intelligent atten- tion to the subject-a branch or outlying colony of that quite wonderful savage confederacy, the Five (afterwards the Six) Nations, or the Iroquois, and they seem to have acted as a guard or check upon the Delawares of the lower river and other southern tribes, often waging war against them and also committing occasional depredations on the frontier sectlements of Maryland. They were the Min- quas or Minquosy of the Dutch, the Mengwes of Campanius and the Swedes generally (the English corrupting the name into Mingoes), the Susque- hannas or Susquehannoeks of the Marylanders, and were also called the Andaste> or Gandastoque- (corrupted in Pennsylvania into Conestogas). The Susquehannas or Mingoes were a stalwart race of warriors, and those who saw them in their prime attest their physical superiority over other tribes. Captain John Smith describes them as

: "such great and well-proportional mon as are seldom even, for they seemed like giants to the English, wa, and to the neighbors, yet evened of an honest and simple disposition, with much adoe restrained from aduring was finds. . . . for theu language it may well forsale. their proportions, vinding from them as a voyer ina vanlt. . . . . Frv. of their Fluef werewances came abord wand crossed the Bay in the Parge, The portare of the greatest ut thetn is stated in the Majg . [as companying smith's narrative], the calfe at whose leg was thier quarters of ayant about, and all the rest of his lind seraitwelche . that proportion that heseemed the goodbest man we ever beheld "

"They are regarded," says George Alsop, in a little work ' on Maryland, published in 1666:

"As the most Noble and Heron k Nation of Indicates that we! men the confines of Andries, als hare me allowed and broke upon by the test of the Inthatis, by a submission and tributary at kauwledement, bella people vast into the mon'd of a most lar ze atel wathke de portment, the meni being for the tet et patt seven foot high mn altitude and it might Onde and full -suitable toso light & fitch ; their votre har rand hollow as asending off'a date, then gate and behavior straight, steady, and may stick, trading on the Ninth with ao lanche propos, content and distan to so could a centre a- can be imagined from a creature de 115. from the sime mondd and karth."

2 Heckewelder's " Manners and Custo ms of the Indian Nations "

s " A Character of the Province of Maryland," by George Alsop; Lou- don, 166C.

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT BY THE DUTCH.

The Susquehannas were on good terms with the Dutch and Swedes, being notably assisted and championed by the latter, who, as heretofore stated, built for them a fort which, in 1662, saved them from defeat at the hands of their kindred, the Six Nations. The English settlers upon the Dent- ware were equally skilltul with the Swedes in gaining and securing the friendship of this tribe, and carried on a large trade with them. The maintenance of relations at once agreeable and advantageous constantly exercised the diplomacy of officials, and communications of an advisory nature were incessantly pa -- ing between the Gov- ernors at New York and the minor officers upon the Delaware during the early period of the Eng- lish regime, as they did later between Penn and his functionaries in Pennsylvania and the " three lower counties.' Governor Andros, writing to the court officials at New Castle, on November 23, 1676, says: " Iff the Susquehannas should apply to you for any thing, you are to use them kindly, still as transient friends, butt for more than that to Refer them to come hither to the Governor, where they may expect all further just favors wth dispatch in what they may desire"1-which affords a fair illustration of the prevailing disposition of the English towards the people they were destined to supplant.

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History of Delaware : 1609-1888, Part 6

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