History of Sussex and Warren counties, New Jersey, with Illustration and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men and Pioneers, Part 5

Author: Snell, James P; Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Philadelphia : Everts & Peck
Number of Pages: 1140

USA > New Jersey > Sussex County > History of Sussex and Warren counties, New Jersey, with Illustration and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men and Pioneers > Part 5
USA > New Jersey > Warren County > History of Sussex and Warren counties, New Jersey, with Illustration and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men and Pioneers > Part 5

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

VII .- CONQUEST OF THE LENNI LENAPE BY THE IROQUOIS.

Before the European explorers had penetrated to the territories of the Lenape the power and prowess of the Iroquois had reduced the former nation to the condition of vassals. The attitude of the Iroquois, however, was not wholly that of conquerors over the Delawares, for they mingled, to some extent, the character of protectors with that of masters. It has been said of them that "the humiliation of tributary nations was to them [the Iroquois] tempered with a paternal regard for their interests in all negotiations with the whites, and care was taken that no tres- passes should be committed on their rights, and that they should be justly dealt with." This means, simply, that the Mengwe would, so far as lay in their power, see that none others than themselves should be permitted to despoil the Lenapè. They exacted from them an annual tribute, an acknowledgment of their state of vassalage, and on this condition they were permitted to occupy their former hunting- grounds. Bands of the Five Nations, however, were interspersed among the Delawarest probably more as a sort of police, and for the purpose of keeping a watchful eye upon them, than for any other purpose.

The Delawares regarded their conquerors with feel- ings of inextinguishable hatred (though these were held in abeyance by fear), and they also pretended to a feeling of superiority on account of their more an- cient lineage and their further removal from original barbarism, which latter claim was perhaps well grounded. On the part of the Iroquois, they main- tained a feeling of haughty superiority towards their vassals, whom they spoke of as no longer men and warriors, but as women. There is no recorded instance in which unmeasured insult and stinging contempt were more wantonly and publicly heaped on a cowed

+ Gabriel Thomas' " Historical Description of the Province and Conn- try of West New Jersey in America."

# The same policy wne pursued by the Five Nations towards the Sha- wanese, who had been expelled from the fur Southwest by stronger tribes, and n portion of whom, traveling eastward as far as the country adjoining the Delawares, had been permitted to erect their lodges there, but were, like the Lenape, held in a state of subjection by the Iroquois.

* And they believed that sometimes the grandfather tortoise became weary and shook himself or changed his position, and that this was tho cause of earthquakes.

INDIAN OCCUPATION-THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE.

and humiliated people than on the occasion of a treaty held in Philadelphia in 1742, when Connossa- tego, an old Iroquois chief, having been requested by the Governor to attend (really for the purpose of forcing the Delawares to yield up the rich lands of the Minisink), arose in the council, where whites and Delawares and Iroquois were convened, and in the name of all the deputies of his confederacy said to the Governor that the Delawares had been an unruly people and were altogether in the wrong, and that they should be removed from their lands; and then, turning superciliously towards the abashed Delawares, said to them, "You deserve to be taken by the hair of your heads and shaken until you recover your senses and become sober. We have seen a deed, signed by nine of your chiefs over fifty years ago, for this very land. But how came you to take it upon yourselves to sell lands at all? We conquered you; we made women of you! You know you are women and can no more sell lands than women. Nor is it fit that you should have power to sell lands, since you would abuse it. You have had clothes, meat, and drink, by the goods paid you for it, and now you want it again, like children, as you are. What makes you sell lands in the dark ? Did you ever tell us you had sold this land? Did we ever receive any part, even to the value of a pipe-shank, from you for it ? This is acting in the dark,-very differently from the conduct which our Six Nations observe in the sales of land. But we find you are none of our blood ; you act a dishonest part in this as in other matters. Your ears are ever open to slanderous reports about your brethren. For all these reasons we charge you to remove instantly ! We do not give you liberty to think about it. You are women ! Take the advice of a wise man, and remove instantly ! You may return to the other side of the river, where you came from, but we do not know whether, considering how you have demeaned yourselves, you will be permitted to live there, or whether you have not already swallowed that land down your throats, as well as the land on this side. You may go either to Wyoming or Shamo- kin, and then we shall have you under our eye and can see how you behave. Don't deliberate, but go, and take this belt of wampum." Ile then forbade them ever again to interfere in any matters between white man and Indian, or ever, under any pretext, to pretend to sell lands ; and as they (the Iroquois), he said, had some business of importance to transact with the Englishmen, he commanded them to immediately leave the council, like children and women, as they werc.

Heckewelder, however, attempts to rescue the good name of the humbled Delawares by giving some of their explanations, intended to show that the epithet " women," as applied to them by the Iroquois, was originally a term of distinction rather than reproach, and "that the making women of the Delawares was not an act of compulsion, but the result of their own

free will und consent." He gives the story, as it was narrated by the Delawares, substantially in this way : The Delawares were always too powerful for the Iroquois, so that the latter were at length convinced that if wars between them should continue, their own extirpation would become inevitable. They accord- ingly sent a message to the Delawares, representing that if continual wars were to be carried on between the nations, this would eventually work the ruin of the whole Indian race; that in order to prevent this it was necessary that one nation should lay down their arms and be called the woman, or mediator, with power to command the peace between the other na- tions who might be disposed to persist in hostilities against each other, and finally recommending that the part of the woman should be assumed by the Delawares, as the most powerful of all the nations.

The Delawares, upon receiving this message, and not perceiving the treacherous intentions of the Iro- quois, consented to the proposition. The Iroquois then appointed a council and feast, and invited the Delawares to it, when, in pursuance of the authority given, they made a solemn speech, containing three capital points. The first was that the Delawares be (and they were) declared women, in the following words :

"We dress you in a woman's long habit, reaching down to your feet, and adorn you with car-rings," meaning that they should no more take up arms. The second point was thus expressed : "We hang a calabash filled with oil and medicine upon your arm. With the oil you shall cleanse the cars of other na- tions, that they may attend to good and not to bad words; and with the medicine you shall heal those who are walking in foolish ways, that they may return to their senses and incline their hearts to peace." The third point, by which the Delawares were exhorted to make agriculture their future employment and means of subsistence, was thus worded : "We deliver into your hands a plant of Indian corn and a hoe." Each of these points was confirmed by delivering a belt of wampum, and these belts were carefully laid away, and their meaning frequently repeated.

"The Iroquois, on the contrary, assert that they conquered the Delawares, and that the latter were forced to adopt the defenseless state and appellation of a woman to avoid total ruin. Whether these ditfer- ent accounts be true or false, certain it is that the Delaware nation has ever since been looked to for the preservation of peace and intrusted with the charge of the great belt of peace and chain of friendship, which they must take care to preserve inviolate. Ac- cording to the figurative explanation of the Indians, the middle of the chain of friendship is placed upon the shoulder of the Delawares, the rest of the Indian nations holling one end and the Europeans the other."*

* Notes on the Indians, by David Zelsberger.

SUSSEX AND WARREN COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

It is evident that the clumsy and transparent tale of the Delawares in reference to their investiture as women was implicitly believed by Heckewelder and other Indian missionaries, who apparently did not realize that which no reader can fail to perceive, -- that if their championship and explanation were to have any influence at all on the world's estimate of their Indian friends, it could hardly be a favorable one, for it would only tend to show that they had suf- fered themselves to be most ridiculously imposed upon by the Iroquois, and that they were willing to ac- knowledge themselves a nation of imbeciles rather than admit a defeat which in itself brought no dis- grace on them, and was no impeachment of their courage or warlike skill.

Gen. William Henry Harrison, afterwards Presi- dent of the United States, in his "Notes on the Aborigines," said, in reference to the old missionary's account of the Delawares' humiliation,-

" But even if Mr. Heckewelder had succeeded in making his readers believe that the Delawares, when they submitted to the degradation pro- posed to them by their enemies, were infinenced, not by fear, but by the benevolent desire to put a stop to the calamities of war, he has estab- lished for them the reputation of being the most egregious dupes and fools that the world has ever seen. This is not often the case with Indian sachems. They are rarely cowards, but still more rarely are they de- ficient in sagacity or discernment to detect any attempt to impose on them. I sincerely wish that I could nnite with the worthy German in re- moving the stigma upon the Delawares."

It was not a lack of bravery or military enterprise on the part of the Delawares which caused their over- throw; it was a mightier agent than courage or energy : it was the gunpowder and lead of the Iro- quois, which they had procured from the trading Dutch on the Hudson almost immediately after the discovery of that river, which had wrought the down- fall of the Lenape. For them the conflict was a hopeless one, waged against immeasurable odds,-re- sistance to the irresistible. Under a reversal of con- ditions the Delawares must have been the victors and the Iroquois the vanquished, and no loss of honor could attach to a defeat under such circumstances. It is a pity that the tribes of the Lenape should vainly have expended so much labor and ingenuity upon a tale which, for their own sake, had better never have been told, and in which even the sincere indorsement of Heckewelder and other missionaries has wholly failed to produce a general belief.

When the old Iroquois chief Connossatego, at the treaty council in Philadelphia, before referred to, commanded the Delawares instantly to leave the council-house, where their presence would no longer be tolerated, and to prepare to vacate their hunting- grounds on the Delaware and its tributaries, the out- raged and insulted red men were completely crest- fallen and crushed, but they had no alternative and must obey. They at once left the presence of the Iroquois, returned to the homes which were now to be their homes no longer, and soon afterwards mi-

grated to the country bordering the Susquehanna, and beyond that river. This forced exodus of the Delawares was chiefly from the Minisink, the section of country now embraced in Sussex and Warren Counties.

There were traditions among the descendants of the Minisink people that the tribe from which that place derives its name made frequent expeditions down the river and came back with white men's scalps hanging at their belts. They stole down on the Pennsylvania side, and crossed over to this State a little below the Hopewell hills; then, returning ou this side of the river, they would lie in ambush along the yet wild and rugged shores and pick off any unfortunate trav- eler who might be passing along the river-path. An old Indian sachem used to relate that the steep hills along the Delaware had been the scene of more than one ambush and murder.

It was only the Indians from the upper country, however, who committed these acts of violence and bloodshed. Those whose domain embraced what are now the counties of Hunterdon and Somerset were uniformly peaceable and friendly in their intercourse with the settlers, by whom they were treated with justice and consideration. Their numbers in this region steadily decreased as the years passed, but it was the natural decadence of their race, and not the steel of the white man, that swept them away. But a very small remnant of the tribe was left here at the opening of the Revolution, and of these a few served in the army under Washington. In a very few years after the close of the war they had entirely disap- peared.

VIII .- FINAL DISPOSAL OF THIE DELAWARES.

At the treaty of 1758 the entire remaining claim of the Delawares to lands in New Jersey was extin- guished, except that there was reservet to them the right to fish in all the rivers and bays south of the Raritan, and to hunt on all uninelosed lands. A tract of three thousand acres of land was also pur- chased at Edge Pillock, in Burlington County, and on this the few remaining Delawares of New Jersey (about sixty in number) were collected and settled. They remained there until the year 1802, when they removed to New Stockbridge, near Oneida Lake, in the State of New York, where they joined their " grandsons," the Stockbridge tribe. Several years afterwards they again removed, and settled on a large tract of land on Fox River, Wis., which tract had been purchased for their use from the Menominee Indians. There, in conjunction with the Stock- bridges, they engaged in agricultural pursuits, and formed a settlement which was named Statesburg. There, in the year 1832, there remained about forty of the Delawares, among whom was still kept alive the tradition that they were the owners of fishing and hunting privileges in New Jersey. They re- solved to lay their claims before the Legislature of

INDIAN OCCUPATION-THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE.

this State, and request that a moderate sum (two thousand dollars) might be paid them for its relin- quishment. The person selected to act for them in presenting the matter before the Legislature was one of their own nation, whom they called Shawus- kukhkung (meaning "wilted grass"), but who was known among the white people as Bartholomew S. Calvin. He was born in 1756. and was educated at Princeton College, at the expense of the Scotch mis- sionary society. At the breaking out of the Revolu- tion he left his studies to join the patriot army under Washington, and he served with credit during the Revolutionary struggle. At the time when his red countrymen placed this business in his hands he was seventy-six years of age, yet he proceeded in the matter with all the energy of youth, and laid before the Legislature a petition in his favor signed by a large number of respectable citizens of New Jersey, together with a memorial, written by his own hand, as follows :

" MY BRETHREN ; I am old and weak and poor, and therefore a fit representative of my people. You are young and strong and rich, and therefore fit representatives of your people. But let me beg you for a moment to lay nalde the recollections of your strength and of our weak- ness, thut your minds may be prepared to examine with candor the sub- ject of our cluins.

"Our tradition informs us-and I believe It corresponds with your recorda-that the right of fishing in all the rivers und bays south of the Buritun, and of hunting In oll uninclosed lands, was never relinquished, but, on the contrary, was expressly reserved in our lust treaty, held at Crosswicks in 1758. Having myself been one of the parties to the sale, -I believe, In 1801,-1 know that these rights were not sold or partod with.

" We now offer to sell these privileges to the State of New Jersey. They were once of great value to us, and wo apprehend that neither time nor distance nor the non-use of our rights has at all affected them, but that the courts here would consider our claims valid were we to exercise them ourselves or delegate them to others. It is not, however, our wish thus to excite litigation. Wo consider the State Legislature the proper purchaser, and throw ourselves upon its benevolence und magnanimity, trusting that feelings of justice atul liberality will iudner you to give us what you doem a compensation. And, as we have ever looked up to the lending charactersof the United States (und to the leading characters o] this State in particular) as our fathers, protectors, and friends, we now look up to yon as such, und humbly beg that you will look upon un with that eye of pity, us wo have reason to think our poor untutored fore- fathers looked upon yours when they first arrived upon our then exten- sive but micultivated dominions, and sold them their lands, in many ftistances lor trifles, in comparison, as 'light us air.'

" From your humble petitioner, " BARTHOLOMEW S. CALVIN, " In behalf of himself und his red brethren."

In the Legislature the subject was referred to a committee, which, after patient hearing, reported favorably ; whereupon the Legislature granted to the Delawares the sum of two thousand dollars,-the full amount asked for, in consideration of this relinquish- ment of their last rights and claims in the State of New Jersey. Upon this result Mr. Calvin addressed to the Legislature a letter of thanks, which was read before the two houses in joint session, and was received with repeated rounds of most enthusiastic applause.

IX .- LOCAL INDIAN NAMES.

We add to this chapter a few Delaware Indian names of localities in Sussex and Warren Counties,

with their explanations, which will be of assistance to the reader.

In the Indian deed made by Kowyockhickon and other chiefs to William Penn, dated July 15, 1682, the name given to the Delaware River was Mackeris- hickon. In another location and survey it was called Zunikoway. The Delaware Indians called it Lenape- whittuck,-i.e., " the river of the Lenape." It was also called Kit-hanne (in Minsi Delaware, Gicht- hanne), signifying "the main stream in its region of country." The Dutch, who were the first Europeans to sail up the Delaware, named it, in contradistinction from the North (now Hudson) River, Zuydt or South River, and later the Fishkill. In a single instance (affidavit of Johannes Decker, in 1785) the Indian name of the Delaware is given as Lamasepose, signi- fying "fishkill." The river takes its present name from Lord de la Ware, Governor of Virginia, who passed the Capes and sailed into Delaware Bay in 1610.

The Paulinskill was called, in the Indian language, Tockhockonetkong. Its present name is said to have been derived from Pauline, the daughter of a Hessian soldier who was taken prisoner by Washington at the battle of Trenton, and who, after the close of the Revolutionary war, continued to reside in the neigh- borhood of Stillwater. Several surveys were located on this stream as early as 1716, and in one of the an- cient returns an Indian town is spoken of called Tok- hok-nok, near the head of the stream. From the large quantities of beads, arrow-heads, flints, etc., found where the Newton brickyard now stands it is quite evident that an Indian village was once located there. It is also at the head of the West Branch of the Paulinskill. On Germany Flats, nearer to the East Branch, there still remain the traces of an In- dian burying-ground. It may be that the ancient village of Tok-hok-nok was located within the present limits of the town of Newton.

The Indian name of the Request was Pophannunk, afterwards corrupted to Poquassing, and still Inter to its present name. William Penn and Col. John Al- ford located two large surveys of twelve hundred and fifty acres each at the mouth of the Pophannunk River, and below the noted hill Penngauchung. These tracts comprised Belvidere and the surround- ing country, the surveys being made by John Reading, demmity surveyor, Oct. 8 and 9, 1716. William Penn's heirs, Richard, Thomas, and William, sold the land to Robert Patterson in 1759, and on the Pequest he built the saw-mill then called Patterson's Mills. Penungauchung is the Manunka Chunk of the pres- ent day. So anxious was the elder Martin Ryerson to preserve the correct orthography and pronuncia- tion of the word that he wrote it out and underscored it in one of his ancient returns to the surveyor-gen- eral's office as P'e- Nun-gan-chung.

"Musconctrong" is corrupted from the Indian name Maskhanneunk, which signifies "a rapid stream."

SUSSEX AND WARREN COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

According to an old survey, in 1716, there stood on the Musconeteong an Indian village called Woponi- onchosongong.

The name "Blue Mountain" first occurs in the land records in 1773. The original Indian name was Pa- haqnalong, from which Pahaquarry is a corruption. An Indian village and burying-ground located on the farm owned by the late Judge Andrew Ribble bore the original name. It has since been called the Kit- tatinny Mountain, Minisink Mountain, Blue Ridge, etc. In the report of the commissioners to divide Sussex County into precincts, dated April 17, 1754, it is called "Packoquarry Mountain," and in a couple of old documents written in 1755 it is called "The Great Mountain."

According to Heckewelder, who is good authority, "Walpack" is a corruption from Wahlpeek, which in the Indian language signified a turn-hole or whirlpool in the water. It is compounded of the two Indian words, woa-lac, "a hole," and tup-peek, "a pool." The name "turn-hole"-a provincialism now obso- lete-was used to designate a sudden bend of a stream by which the water when deep was turned upon itself into an eddy or whirlpool. The turn-hole in the Le- high, above Mauch Chunk, was many years ago an objeet of interest to travelers in that wild region. Howell's map of 1792 indicates the exact spot. There is a "turn-hole" in the bend of the Delaware at the mouth of the Flat Brook, from which Walpack doubt- less took its name. It is visible in low water, and during great floods it becomes a powerful whirlpool, sucking in large pieces of timber and carrying them out of sight.

Heckewelder also says that Wantage is a corrup- tion of the Indian word Wundachqui, signilying "that way."

Allamuchy is the site of an Indian village called Mamnchahokken. John Lawrence, who surveyed the East and West Jersey line in 1737, makes men- tion of this place in his field-notes.

Emhowlaek was the name of an Indian village on the Pequest, just below the new Pequest furnace.

CHAPTER IV.

FIRST SETTLEMENT IN SUSSEX AND WARREN.

.I .- PIONEERS FROM ULSTER COUNTY.

THE first settlement in Sussex County, including the present county of Warren, was made in the upper valley of the Delaware, and was part of a general movement westward from the Dutch settlements at Esopus, New Paltz, and Kingston, on the Hudson River. The settlers were of the same Huguenot and Holland stock,-the former born' in France, from which they had been driven by persecution but a few years before, while the latter, if not themselves natives

of Holland, were the immediate descendants of those born in that country, which then offered an asylum for the persecuted and oppressed of all nations, and whose struggles in behalf of civil and religious lib- erty were so memorable.

The first settlers came here directly from Ulster Co., N. Y., the tide of immigration setting up the Mama- kating valley and thence to the Delaware, down which it flowed until it was met by another current ascending from Philadelphia. The two currents of population which thus met and mingled in the ancient valley of the Minisink and spread along the borders of these counties from the Neversink to the Musco- netcong were of divers nationalities, yet all uniting in one common characteristic,-a native love of liberty and a desire to find freedom from the civil and eccle- siastical restraints which had hampered and burdened them in the Old World. Those coming in from the north, we have said, were Huguenots and Hollanders, -the most renowned Protestants and dissenters of con- tinental Europe; those reaching our territory from the sonth were Welsh, Quakers, Germans, and Scotch- Irish, with a considerable intermixture of the Puritans of New England, all noted for their struggles for civil and religious liberty in the several European countries whence they came. These formed the basis of the early population not merely of Sussex and Warren Counties, but of the upper Delaware valley generally, including the river settlements in the three States of New Jer- sey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of Sussex and Warren counties, New Jersey, with Illustration and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men and Pioneers, Part 5

Author: Snell, James P; Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford) Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Philadelphia : Everts & Peck Number of Pages: 1140

Author: Snell, James P; Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Philadelphia : Everts & Peck
Number of Pages: 1140