The history of Camden county, New Jersey, Part 2

Author: Prowell, George Reeser, 1849-1928
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : Richards
Number of Pages: 1220

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HISTORY OF CAMDEN COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

plants have also in this way been brought to our doors.

It is well known that during the War of the Rebellion many vessels were engaged in carrying supplies to ports on the South At- lantic seaboard and to the Gulf States. As no return cargo could be obtained, vast quan- tities of ballast were used. Much of this in time reached here also, and iu consequence a large number of strictly southern plants were introduced. Partial lists of these have from time to time appeared in the scientific periodicals of the country, and Mr. Martin- dale, we learn, is at present engaged in the preparation of a complete history of this de- partment of his favorite study.

Of the foreign plants thus introduced, numbering perhaps hundreds of species, many never appeared but once, others maintained a foothold for a few years and then disap- peared, whilst a large number of species have been found year after year, showing that while an unusual combination of circum- stances may have led to their introduction, they have nevertheless come to stay, often rooting out the native plants and absolutely taking possession of the soil, in fair illustra- tion of the old story of the survival of the fittest in. the race for existence. The intro- duced element being more vigorons, obtained the mastery, and the native was obliged to yield possession, an exact repetition of the history of the settlement of the country by the European nations, where the foreigners held possession and the native American In- dian, proving to be the weaker vessel, has been gradually pushed farther and farther inland.

The greater part of the soil of Camden County being easily cultivated, the trees have been largely removed ; hence the acreage of forest has become very small and little of especial character in this line now exists that requires mention at our hands. The original timber has all been cut off and now but few trees of large or unusual size remain. The

wooded sections of the most eastern town- ships have for years furnished very largely the supply of charcoal for the Philadelphia markets. Immense numbers of hoop-poles were also shipped to those engaged in the West India sugar and molasses trade. The white cedar swamps have also furnished thousands of cedar rails annually for ship- ment to other sections, but the great demand for these articles has nearly exhausted the supply and these branches of industry are almost destroyed.

CHAPTER II.

THE INDIANS.

EARLY historians, probably through lack of study of the literary remains of the pio- neers and settlers of the seventeenth century, have very much too liberally overestimated the number of Indians in New Jersey at the time when the first settlements by the whites were made here. In this error they but shared the once common belief that the abo- rigines of North America three hundred years ago were a powerful and numerous people. Recent investigations have proved the inaccuracy of this belief.

The historian Robert Pond estimated the number of fighting men of eighteen given tribes east of the Mississippi River at twenty- seven thousand nine hundred, and total num- ber of souls one hundred and thirty-nine thousand five hundred. An historical ac- count printed in Philadelphia of Colonel Bouquet's expedition in 1763 against the Ohio Indians, asserts that there were then fifty-six thousand five hundred and eighty fighting men of such tribes as the French were in connection with in Canada and the West. Assuming this number to be one- fifth of the population, they would have had at that date two hundred and eighty-two thousand nine hundred in the territory now

THE INDIANS.

embraced in the United States. According to the figures of the Indian Bureau of the government, there are now about two hundred and seventy-five thousand Indians in the United States, or within a few thousands of as inany as ever roamed over the area now embraced within the States and Territories. Statistics and careful investigation have thus shattered the romance of the extinguishment of the Indian race, upon which innumerable pathetic tales have been founded. The con- ditions of Indian life were in every way op- posed to the rapid increase of population.

All the collateral evidence goes to sustain the theory that if Hendrick Hudson could have made a censns of the Indians in Schey- ichbi (their name for the territory almost iden- tical with the present State of New Jersey), he would not have counted many more than two thousand when, in 1609, he and his com- panions in the "Half-Moon " skirted the coast of what is now New Jersey. Master Evelin, writing in 1690, used this language : " I doe account all the Indians to be eight hundred; " and Oldmixon, in 1708, computed that they had been reduced to one-fourth that number. Evelyn and Oldmixon were below the mark, but they were much nearer it than those writers who have spoken of the "teeming thousands" of red men. Such miscalculations are largely traceable to circumstances which, in their turn, are a revelation of the physical condition of Scheyichbi when the white man was moving to plant his dominant standards upon its soil. The State of New Jersey is so rich in Indian relics that hasty observers came to the conclusion that it must have supported a comparatively dense Indian pop- ulation. "So abundant were the Indian villages," says Charles C. Abbott, in his "Stone Age in New Jersey," "that almost every brook that harbors a fish has now lying among the pebbles on its bed or in the turf upon its banks flinty arrow-points or delicate fish-spears." When it is remem- bered that these remains are in a great pro-

portion those of tribes that came to New Jersey in the seasons for hunting and fishing, and had their permanent locations beyond its confines, we understand the great attractions of the region for a primitive people, and also the source of the errors that have been made in enumerating the Indians of New Jersey two centuries ago. To them and to the

strangers who foraged in it from the North and West it was a land of plenty and fatness. The streams were well supplied with fish, and the forests and the plains with game. The recession of the glaciers had left a soil that so easily absorbed rain that it made quick and prodigal return for the work of the red husbandman, who cultivated In-

HISTORY OF CAMDEN COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

dian corn, pumpkins and beans. The inlets of the bay and sea were opulent with oysters and clams, and when the Indians had eaten of these luscious bivalves their shells were useful for conversion into wampum.

They were of the great Lenni Lenape nation, which then occupied the central por- tion of what is now the United States, and were hemmed in by the Natches, south of the Potomac River, and the Iroquois, north of the southern border of New York. They had sacredly preserved that curions tradition of an origin in the far West, of a march to the eastward, a joint victory with the Iro- quois over the Allegivi (Alleghenies) in a terrible battle and the final establishment of a new home upon the shores of the ocean from which the sun rises. The myth has long ago been resolved into an incident of the sun or fire worship common to prehis- toric faiths.

INDIAN TRADITIONS .- A writer in the "History of Philadelphia," published in 1880, gives the following interesting, though fanci- ful, traditions relating to the origin of our Aborigines :

" As to their origin as members of the human family, they have divers legends. They claim to have come out of a cave in the earth, like the woodchuck and the chipmunk, to have sprung from a snail that was transformed into a human being and taught to hunt by a kind of Manitou, after which it was received into the lodge of the beaver and married the beaver's favorite daughter.

" In another myth a woman is discovered hover- ing in mid-air ahove the watery waste of chaos. She has fallen or has been expelled from heaven, and there is no earth to offer her a resting-place. The tortoise, however, rose from the depths and put his broad shield-like back at her service, and she de- scended upon it and made it her abode, for its dome- like oval resembled the first emergence of dry land from the waters of the deluge. The tortoise slept upon the deep, and round the margin of his shell barnacles gathered, the scum of the sea collected and the floating fragments of the shredded sea-weed accumulated until the dry land grew apace, and by and by there was all that broad expanse of land which now constitutes North America. The woman, weary of watching, worn out with sighs for

her lonesomeness, dropped off into a tranquil slumber, and in that sleep she dreamed of a spirit who came to her from her lost home above the skies, and of that dream the fruits were sons and daughters, from whom have descended the human race. Another legend personifies the Great Spirit under the form of a gigantic bird that descended upon the face of the waters and brooded there until the earth arose. Then the Great Spirit, exercising a creative power, made the plants and animals aud, lastly, man, who was formed out of the integu- ments of the dog, and endowed with a magic arrow that was to be preserved with great care, for it was at once a blessing and a safeguard. But the man carelessly lost the arrow, whereupon the Great Spirit soared away upon its bird-like wings and was no longer seen, and man had thenceforth to hunt and struggle for his livelihood.

" Manabohzo, relates the general Algonkin tra- dition, created the different tribes of red men out of the carcasses of different animals, the beaver, the eagle, the wolf, the serpent, the tortoise, etc. Manabohzo, Messon, Michaboo or Nanabush is a demi-god who works the metamorphoses of nature. He is the king of all the beasts ; his father was the west wind, his mother the moon's great-grand- father, and sometimes he appears in the form of a wolf or bird, but his usual shape is that of the gigantic hare. After Manabohzo masquerades in the figure of a man of great endowments and majestic stature, when he is a magician after the order of Prospero; but when he takes the form of some impish elf, then he is more tricky than Ariel and more full of hobgoblin devices than Puck.

"Manabohzo is the restorer of the world, sub- merged by a deluge which the serpent-Manitous have created. He climbs a tree, saves himself and sends a loon to dive for mud from which he can make a new world. The loon fails to reach the bottom ; the muskrat, which next attempts the feat, returns lifeless to the surface, but with a little sand from which the Great Hare is able to re- create the world.

"In other legends the otter and beaver dive in vain, but the muskrat succeeds, losing his life in the attempt."

Students of the Aryan legends regarding the creation of the world and the Eastern mythology concerning the birth of demi-gods by the union of a supernatural man with a female human being, will detect at once the kinship of the myths of the Occident with those of the Orient. How far they aid in

THE INDIANS.

determining the origin of the American In- dians on the Asiatic plateau is a question which ethnologists are still busily discussing.

THE LENNI LENAPE, OR DELAWARE IN- DIANS .- The name Lenni Lenape signifies " original people," and came to be applied to the river upon which they dwelt, until the English decided that the name of the river should be the Delaware. They translated the Indian generic title into Delaware also. With the Iro- quois the Delaware fornied the Algonquin division of the abo- rigines, and were at its head ; but not later than the middle of the seventeenth century they surrend- ered their primacy at the dictation of the Iroquois and accepted the humble place of a subordinate nation. In this condition they were bound to abstain from war and in return they were protected from invasion. The pacific relations which existed between them and the Europeans in New Jersey is partially explainable by their vir- tual abandonment of the belliger- ent attitude which had been their normal status.

Along the Delaware, from the mouth of the bay northward on the eastern side, were perhaps twenty sub-divisions of the Lenni Lenape people. The names which have been preserved are in some instances generic and in others merely indicate the localities. Isaac Mickle, in his " Reminiscences of Old Gloucester County," hands down those of the Sewapooses, Sicounesses and Naraticons upon Raccoon Creek, the Manteses or Mantas on Mantua Creek and the Armewamexes or Arwames on Timber Creek. These last- named must have extended their possessions over the present limits of Camden County. There are no reasons to suppose that they

differed in any way from their neighbors of the Lenape. According to Pastor Cam- panius, in his " History of New Sweden," 1 they constructed their lodges by placing a bark roof upon poles, and when they desired to fortify a village they made a palisade of logs and dug a ditch on the outside. They could fashion rude household utensils of pot-

DELAWARE INDIAN FAMILY. From Campanius' " New Sweden.11

tery and they made dishes of bark and cedar

1 " The Indians of this region had no towns or fixed places of habitation ; they mostly wander around 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 carry their mats 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."

HISTORY OF CAMDEN COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

wood and wove baskets of withes. They were utter strangers to the uses of metals until they learned of them from the Europe- ans, but of stones they made arrow-heads and spear-heads, a queer sort of a " gig " for

AN INDIAN FORT.

catching fish, war-elubs, hatchets, axes, dag- gers and pestles and mortars, with which they pounded corn into meal or clay into paint. The neolithie or new stone implements and weapons unearthed throughout this county belonged to the Lenape Indians, just as the paleolithic or older and ruder stone tools did to the unknown people who preceded them and perished without leaving any records.

THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEF AND OTHER CHARACTERISTICS,- The Indians worshipped a Great Spirit under various forms, but the dance was their sole religious ceremonial. The nature of their belief in a Supreme Being has never been more clearly illustrated than in the following letter written to a friend about 1746 by Conrad Weiser, well known in the early history of Pennsylvania as the great interpreter of the Indian language :

" If by religion people mean an assent to certain creeds or the observance of a set of religions du- ties, as appointed prayers, singing, preaching, baptism or even heathenish worship, then it may

be said the Five Nations (Iroquois Indians) and their neighbors have no religion. But if by relig- ion we mean an attraction of the soul to God, whence proceeds a confidence in and hunger after the knowledge of Him, then this people must be allowed to have some religion among them, not- withstanding their sometimes savage deportment. For we find among them some traits of a confi- dence in God alone, and sometimes, though but seldom, a vocal calling upon Him."

Weiser then eites the ease of an Indian who accompanied him upon one of his jour- neys, and who, on being rescued from a fall over a great precipice, exelaimed,-

"I thank the great Lord and Governor of this world in that He has had mercy upon me and has been willing that I should live longer."

A few days later, when Weiser himself" was in danger of death, the same Indian ad- dressed him thus,-

" Remember that evil days are better than good days, for when we suffer much we do not sin; sin will be driven out of us by suffering; but good

MORTAR AND PESTLE.

days will cause men to sin, and God cannot extend His mercy to them; but, contrariwise, when it goeth evil with us God hath compassion on us."

Again, when, in 1760, a number of Indians came from Wyalusing to Philadelphia to confer with Governor Hamilton on various subjects, Chief Papounan is recorded by

THE INDIANS.

Conrad Weiser to have said to the Gover- nor, --

"I think on God who made us. I want to be instructed in His worship and service; the great God observes all that passes in our hearts and hears all that we say to one another."

FLINT KNIFE. 814 by 3 inches.

FLINT KNIFE. 8 by 31/4 inches.

Of course all these Indians whom he quotes had derived some religious ideas from their communication with the whites : they

PARTLY DRILLED PIECE OF STEATITE.

had, in fact, superimposed these impressions upon the vague and misty idealism which formed the basis of their original devotions. 2

If the word had been invented in Weiser's day, he might have entitled themu Pantheists. It must be kept steadily in mind, however,

CEREMONIAL STONE OF GREEN.

that Indian sentimentalism concerning the supernatural was very apt to yield to entice- ments, to plunder, bloodshed and debauchery. Yet they became skilled theological contro- versialists, if we are to place reliance upon the alleged reply of an Indian chief to a Swedish missionary who preached upon original sin and the necessity for a mediator, at Cones- toga, Lancaster County, Pa., in 1710. The

HAND-MADE AND FINGER-MARKED VESSEL OF POTTERY.

story runs that the missionary was so puzzled by the Indian logic that he requested the University of Upsal to furnish him with a confutation of it. The Indian speech, trans- lated from the Latin in which the worthy cleric embalmed it, is in part as follows :

"Since the subject of his (the missionary's) er- rand is to persuade us to embrace a new doctrine, perhaps it may not be amiss, before we offer him the reasons why we cannot comply with his re-

HISTORY OF CAMDEN COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

quest, to acquaint him with the grounds and prin- ciples of that religion which he would have us abandon. Our forefathers were under a strong persuasion, as we are, that those who act well in

HOE OF GREY FLINT, 7} BY 5} INCHES.

this life shall be rewarded in the next, according to the degree of their virtue; and on the other hand, that those who behave wickedly here will undergo such punishments hereafter as are propor-

HORNBLENDE AXE.

POLISHED FLESHER.

tionate to the crimes they are guilty of. ... We think it evident that our notion concerning future rewards and punishments was either revealed im-

GROOVED HAMMER.

POLISHED AXE.

mediately from heaven to some of our forefathers and from them descended to us, or that it was im-

'planted in each of us at our creation by the Cre- ator of all things. . . . Does he believe that our forefathers, men eminent for their piety, constant and warm in the pursuit of virtue, hoping thereby

ORNAMENTAL POTTERY. GROOVED HAMMER.

to meet everlasting happiness, were all damned ? Does he think that we, who are their zealous im- itators in good works, earnestly endeavoring with the greatest circumspection to tread the paths of

FLESHER WITH HANDLE.

PIERCED RECORD TABLET.

integrity, are in a state of damnation ?. .. The Al- mighty, for anything we know, may have commu- nicated the knowledge of Himself to a different race of people in a different manner. Some say

BIRD AND TORTOISE PIPE. BLACK FLINT KNIFE.

they have the will of God in writing: be it so; their revelation has no advantage above ours since . both must be equally sufficient to save, otherwise the end of the revelation would be frustrated. . . . Then say that the Almighty has permitted us to

FLINT PER- FORATOR.

DUCKS' HEAD PIPE.

FLINT SKIN SCRAPER.

remain in fatal error through so many ages is to represent Him as a tyrant. How is it consistent

THE INDIANS.

with His justice to force life upon a race of mor- tals without their consent and then damn them eternally without opening the door to their salva- tion? . . . Are the Christians more virtuous, or rather, are they not more vicious than we? If so, how came it to pass that they are the objects of God's beneficence, while we are neglected ? In a word, we find the Christians much more depraved in their morals than ourselves, and we judge of their doctrines by their conduct."

Different styles of painting the body and face were adopted for feasting and for war, ·and tattooing with charcoal for permanent ornament and for inscribing the "totem," or representative aniuial or sign upon the indi- vidual. The totems also served to distin- guish the tribes : as, for instance, those which occupied New Jersey south of the Muscon- etcong Mountains were the Unamis, or tur- tle, and the Unalachtgo, or wolf, between whose territories there seems never to have been any definite delineations. The men were warriors, hunters and fishers, while the women tilled the soil and performed all the domestic and household work.

William Penn, in a letter to Henry Savell, dated Philadelphia, 30th of Fifth Month, 1683, affirms that " the natives are proper and shapely," and that he had " never found more naturall sagacity, considering them without ye help-I was almost going to say ye spoyle of tradition." But in comparing the testimony of all the pioneers who record- ed their impressions, the conclusion is evi- dent that the primitive Indian was charac- terized by the same vices that mark his descendants in our time.

The red inhabitants on the banks of the Delaware possessed a willingness to be at peace with the white man, if the white man would permit. In proof of their early pa- cific disposition, it is pertinent to introduce here the evidence of Thomas Budd, who was a party to the conference held at Burlington in 1668. The whites were fearing an attack by the Indians, because the latter were re- ported as being angered at the whites for

having sold them match-coats infected with small-pox. The chiefs were asked to a meet- ing with the settlers, and when it took place one of them spoke in behalf of all in the fol- lowing lofty strain, as reported by Budd, and believed not to have been corrupted by any modern improvements upon his text :

"Our young men may speak such words as we do not like nor approve of, and we cannot help that, and some of your young men may speak such words as you do not like, and you cannot . help that. We are your brothers, and intend to live like brothers with you; we have no mind to have war ; . . . we are minded to live in peace. If we intend at any time to make war, we will let you know of it and the reason why we make war with you ; and if you make us satisfaction for the inju- ry done us, for which the war was intended, then we will not make war on you ; and if you intend at any time to make war on us, we would have you let us know of it and the reason, and then if we do not make satisfaction for the injury done unto you, then you may make war on us, otherwise you ought not to do it; you are our brothers, and we are ivil- ling to live like brothers with you ; we are willing to have a broad path for you and us to walk in,' and if the Indian is asleep in this path, the Eng-, lishman shall pass by and do him no harm ; and if an Englishman is asleep in this path, the Indian shall pass him by and say, ' He is an Englishman, he is asleep; let him alone, he loves to sleep.'"

Budd was so moved by this eloquent and amicable demonstration that he added,-

" The Indians have been very serviceable to us by selling us venison, Indian corn, peas and beans, fish and fowl, buck-skins, beaver, otter and other skins and furs; the men hunt, fish and fowl, and the women plant the corn and carry burthens. There are many of them of a good understanding, considering their education, and in their publick meetings of business they have excellent order, one speaking after another, and while one is speak- ing all the rest keep silence, and do not so much' as whisper to one another. . The kings sat on a form and we on another over against them; they had prepared four belts of wampum (so their cur- rent money is called, being black and white beads made of a fish shell) to give us as seals of the cov- enant they made with us; one of the kings, by consent and appointment of the rest, stood up and spoke."

It is interesting to compare the above with

HISTORY OF CAMDEN COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

the instructions issued by the lords proprie- tors to Governor Philip Carteret, February 10, 1664,-

" And lastly, if our Governors and Councellors happen to find any Natives in our said Province and Tract of Land aforesaid, that then you treat them with all Humanity and Kindness and do not in anywise grieve or oppress them, but endeavour by a Christian carriage to manifest Piety, Justice and Charity, and in your conversation with them, the Manifestation whereof will prove Beneficial to the Planters and likewise Advantageons to the Propagation of the Gospel."

It is a matter of no little difficulty to sift the truth from the voluminous tales of the Swedish, Dutch and English chroniclers who were among the first voyagers and settlers.

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The history of Camden county, New Jersey, Part 2

Author: Prowell, George Reeser, 1849-1928 Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : Richards Number of Pages: 1220

Author: Prowell, George Reeser, 1849-1928
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : Richards
Number of Pages: 1220