History of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Part 12

Author: Bean, Theodore Weber, 1833-1891, [from old catalog] ed; Buck, William J. (William Joseph), 1825-1901
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Everts & Peck
Number of Pages: 1534

USA > Pennsylvania > Montgomery County > History of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania > Part 12

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).

territory granted to him by his royal benefactor ; his intercourse with them was studied to the extent of acquiring a knowledge of their language, hence his observations are of more than usual interest.

10000

DELAWARE INDIAN.

" The natives are proper and shapely, very swift, their language lofty. They speak little, but fervently and with elegancy. I have never seeu more naturall sagacity, considering them without ye help-I was going to say ye spoyle-of tradition. The worst is that they are ye wors for ye Christians who have propa- gated their views and yielded them tradition for ye wors & not for ye better things, they believe a Deity and Immortality without ye help of metaphysicks & some of them admirably sober, though ye Dutch & Sweed and English have by Brandy and Rum almost Debaucht y" all and when Drunk ye most wretched of spectacles, often burning & sometimes murdering one another, at which times ye Christians are not with- out danger as well as fear. Tho' for gain they will run the hazard both of yt and ye Law, they make their worshipp to consist of two parts, sacrifices wh they offer

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY.

of their first fruits with marvellous fervency and la- bour of holy sweating as if in a bath, the other is their Canticoes, as they call them, wch is performed by round Dances, sometimes words, then songs, then shouts, two being in ye midle yt begin and direct ye chorus ; this they performe with equal fervency but great appear- ances of joy. In this I admire them, nobody shall want wt another has, yett they have propriety (prop- erty) but freely communicable, they want or care for little, no Bills of Exchange nor Bills of Lading, no Chancery suits nor Exchequer Acct, have they to per- plex themselves with, they are soon satisfied, and their pleasure feeds them,-I mean hunting and fish- ing."

This letter is made much more full in the one to the Free Society of Traders, written in August of the same year. The natives, Penn says, are generally tall, straight in their person, " well built, and of sin- gular proportion [i.e., of symmetry ] ; they tread strong and clever, and mostly walk with a lofty chin.1 Of complexion black, but by design, as the gipsies in England. They grease themselves with bear's fat clarified, and using no defence against sun and weather, their skins must needs be swarthy. Their eye is livid and black, not unlike a straight-looked Jew. The thick lips and flat nose, so frequent with the East Indians and black, are not common to them; for I have seen as comely European-like faces among them, of both sexes, as on your side the sea ; and truly an Italian complexion hath not more of the white; and the noses of several of them have as much of the Roman. Their language is lofty, yet narrow ; but, like the Hebrew, in signification full. Like short- hand in writing, one word serveth in the place of three, and the rest are supplied by the understanding of the hearer; imperfect in their tenses, wanting in their moods, participles, adverbs, conjunctions, and interjections. I have made it my business to under- stand it, that I might not want an interpreter on any occasion ; and I must say that I know not a langnage spoken in Europe that hath words of more sweetness or greatness, in accent and emphasis, than theirs; for

1 Penn had noticed a singularity in the Indians' gait, yet did not detect what it was; yet it is so obvious that a few years back, in Kentucky, where the people still walk like the Indians, even a school-boy would recognize a person from the East by differences in his way of walking from the way of those to the manner born. The Indian steps with a perfectly straight foot and without turning his toes out, so that if the sun were upon his back the shadow of his shanks would entirely cover his feet. This tread is the antithesis of that of the sailor, who walks with his toes very much turned out, and the European and the Eastern man walks like him. In both cases convenience and propriety are suited : the sailor, by his miode of locomotion, is enabled to tread more firmly and safely upon an uncertain deck that is always uneasy ; the Indian, hy his mode, is able to walk more safely the narrow forest path, and to step also with greater stealth and softness in pursuit of his enemy and his game where leaves to rustlo and twigs to break are numerous. But the difference ia that the sailor "rolls" in his gait and his shoulders swing from side to side, while the Indian's walk makes him carry himself sin- gularly straight, his shoulders never diverging from a perpendicular. This little circumstance added materially to the outward appearance of gravity in the savage's general demeanor.

instance, Octockekon, Rancocas, Oricton, Shak, Mar- ian, Poquesian, all which are names of places, and have grandeur in them. Of words of sweetness, annu is mother; issimus, a brother; neteap, friend; us- queoret, very good; pune, bread ; metsa, eat; mattu, no; hatta, to have ; payo, to come ; Sepassen, Passijon, the names of places ; Tamane, Secane, Menanse, Seca- tarens are the names of persons. If one ask them for anything they have not, they will answer, matta ne hatta, which, to translate, is 'not I have,' instead of ' I have not.'

"Of their customs and manners there is much to be said. I will begin with children. So soon as they are born they wash them in water, and while very young and in cold weather to choose, 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 breadth of the child, and swaddle it fast upon the board to make it straight; wherefore all Indians have flat heads ; and thus they carry them at their backs. The children will go [walk] very young, at nine months commonly. They wear only a small clout around their waist till they are big. If boys, they go a-fishing till ripe for the woods, which is about fifteen. There they hunt; and having given some proofs of their manhood by a good return of skins, they marry ; else it is a shame to think of a wife. The girls stay with their mothers, and help to hoe the ground, plant corn, and carry burthens; and they do well to use them to that, while young, which they must do when they are old; for the wives are the true servants of the husbands ; otherwise the men are very affectionate to them. When the young women are fit for marriage they wear something upon their heads for an adver- tisement, but so as their faces are hardly to be seen but when they please. The age they marry at, if women, is about thirteen and fourteen ; if men, seven- teen and eighteen. They are rarely older. Their houses are mats or barks of trees, set on poles in the fashion of an English barn, but out of the power of the winds, for they are hardly higher than a man. They lie on reeds or grass. In travel they lodge in the woods about a great fire, with the mantle of duffils they wear by day wrapt about them and a few boughs stuck round them. Their diet is maize or Indian corn divers ways prepared, sometimes roasted in the ashes, sometimes beaten and boiled with water, which they call homine. They also make cakes not unpleasant to eat. They have likewise several sorts of beans and peas that are good nourishment, and the woods and rivers are their larder. If an European comes to see them, or calls for lodging at their house or wigwam, they give him the best place and first cut. If they come to visit us they salute ns with an Itah ! which is as much as to say, 'Good be to you!' and set them down, which is mostly on the ground, close to their heels, their legs upright; it may be they speak not a word, but observe all passages [all that passes]. If

THE ABORIGINES.

you give them anything to eat or drink, well, for they will not ask ; and, he it little or much, if it be with kindness, they are well pleased; else they go away sullen, but say nothing. They are great concealers of their own resentments, brought to it, I believe, by the revenge that hath been practiced among them. In either of these they are not exceeded by the Italians. A tragical instance fell out since I came into the country. A king's daughter, thinking her- self slighted by her husband in suffering another woman to lie down between them, rose up, went out, plucked a root out the ground, and ate it, upon which she immediately died; and for which, last week, he made an offering to her kindred for atonement and liberty of marriage, as two others did to the kindred of their wives, who died a natural death; for till widowers have done so they must not marry again. Some of the young women are said to take undue liberty before marriage for a portion ; but when mar- ried, chaste. When with child they know their husbands no more till delivered; and during their month they touch no meat, they eat hut with a stiek, lest they should defile it; nor do their husbands fre- quent them till that time be expired.

" But in liberality they excel; nothing is too good for their friend ; give them a fine gun, coat, or other thing, it may pass through twenty hands before it sticks; light of heart, strong affections, but soon spent. The most merry creatures that live, feast and dance perpetually ; they never have much, nor want much; wealth circulateth like the blood; all poets partake; and though none shall want what another hath, yet exact observers of property. Some kings have sold, others presented me with several parcels of land; the pay or presents I made them were not hoarded by the particular owners; but the neigli- boring kings and their elans being present when the goods were brought ont, the parties chiefly concerned consulted what and to whom they should give them. To every king then, by the hands of a person for that work appointed, is a proportion sent, so sorted and folded, and with that gravity that is admirable. Then that king subdivideth it in like manner among his lependants, they hardly leaving themselves an equal share with one of their subjects; and be it on such occasions as festivals, or at their common meals, the kings distribute, and to themselves last. They care for little, because they want but little ; and the reason is, a little contents them. In this they are sufficiently revenged on us ; if they are ignorant of our pleasures, they are also free from our pains. . . . Since the Europeans came into these parts they are grown great lovers of strong liquors, rum especially, and for it they exchange the richest of their skins and furs. If they are heated with liquors they are restless till they have enough to sleep,-that is their ery, Some more und I will go to sleep ; but when drunk one of the most wretched spectacles in the world !

" In sickness, impatient to be cured ; and for it give

anything, especially for their children, to whom they are extremely natural. They drink at these times a tisun, or decoction of some roots 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 ap- parel, be they man or woman, 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 continue 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 heap up the fallen earth with great care and exactness. These poor people are under a dark night in things relating to religion ; to be sure the tradition of it; yet they be- , lieve 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 southward of them, and that the souls of the good shall go thither where they shall live again.' Their worship consists of two parts, sacrifice and cantico. Their sacrifice is their first fruits ; the first and fattest huek they kill goeth to the fire, where he is all burnt, with a mournful ditty of him that performeth the ceremony, but with such marvellous fervency and labor of body that he will even sweat to a foam. The other part is their cantico, performed by round danees, sometimes words, sometimes songs, then shouts, two being in the middle that begin, and by singing and drumming on a board direet the chorus. Their postures in the dance are very antiek and dif- ering, but all keep measure. This is done with equal earnestness and labor, but great appearance of joy. In the fall, when the corn cometh in, they begin to feast one another. There have been two great fes- tivals already, to which all come that will. I was at one myself; their entertainment was a great seat by a spring under some shady trees, and twenty bueks, with hot cakes of new corn, both wheat and beans, which they make up in a square form in the leaves of the stem and bake them in the ashes, and after that they fall to dance. But they that go must carry a small present in their money ; it may be sixpence, which is made of the bone of a fish ; the black is with them as gold, the white silver ; they call it all wampum.

"Their government is Kings, which they call Sachama, and these by succession, but always on the mother's side.1 For instance, the children of

1 Notwithstanding this mode of succession of their kings, yet for ex- traordinary reasons it was sometimes altered, of which appears an in- stance in S. Smith's " History of New Jersey," in the case of the old king Ockanickon, who died at Burlington, in that province, about the year 1681. Before his death he altered the succession, and instead of Sheoppy and Swampis, who, in regular order, were to have succeeded him, he, for reasons in his speech there given, appointed his brother's son, Fahkurfoe, to succeed him, giving him somo excellent advice on the occasion. This king, as thero related, soon after this made a good and pious exit, and his remains were interred in the Quakers' burying- ground at that place, being attended to the grave with solemnity by the Indians, in their manner, and with great respect by many of the English settlers, to whom he had been a true friend.

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY.

him who is now king will not succeed, but his brother by the mother, or the children of his sister, whose sons (and after them the children of her daughters) will reign, for woman inherits. The reason they render for this way of descent is, that their issue may not be spurious. Every King hath his Council, and that consists of all the old and wise men of his nation, which, perhaps, is two hundred people. Nothing of moment is undertaken, be it war, peace, selling of land, or traffick, without ad- vising with them, and, which is more, with the young men too. It is admirable to consider how powerful the Kings are, and yet how they move by the breath of their people. I have had occasion to be in coun- cil with them upon treaties of land, and to adjust the terms of trade. Their order is thus : The king sits in the middle of an half moon, and hath his council, the old and wise, on each hand ; behind them, or at a lit- the distance, sit the younger fry in the same figure. Having consulted and resolved their business, the King ordered one of them to speak to me; he stood up, came to me, and, in the name of his King, saluted me; then took me by the hand and told me, 'He was ordered by his King to speak to me, and that now it was not he, but the King that spoke; because what he should say was the King's mind.' He first prayed me ' to excuse them, that they had not complied with me the last time, he feared there might be some fault in the Interpreter, being neither Indian nor English ; besides, it was the Indian custom to deliberate and take up much time in council before they resolve, and that if the young people and owners of the land had been as ready as he, I had not met with so much delay.' Having thus introduced his matter, he fell to the bounds of the land they had agreed to dispose of and the price, which now is little and dear, that which would have bought twenty miles not buy- ing now two. During the time that this man spoke not a man of them was observed to whisper or smile, the old grave, the young reverent in their deport- ment. They speak little but fervently, and with ele- gance. I have never seen more natural sagacity, con- sidering them without the help (I was going to say the spoil) of tradition, and he will deserve the name of wise that outwits them in any treaty about a thing they understand. When the purchase was agrecd great promises passed hetween us, 'of kindness and good neighborhood, and that the Indians and Eng- lish must live in love as long as the sun gave light,' which done, another made a speech to the Indians in the name of all the Sachemakers or Kings, first to tell what was done, next to charge and command them 'to love the Christians, and particularly live in peace with me and the people under my govern- ment; that many governors had been in the river, but that no Governor had come himself to live and stay here before, and having now such an one, that had treated them well, they should never do him or his any wrong,' at every sentence of which they

shouted and said Amen in their way. The justice they have is pecuniary. In case of any wrong or evil fact, be it murder itself, they atone by feasts and presents of their wampum, which is proportioned to the quality of the offence, or the person injured, or of the sex they are of. For in case they kill a woman they pay double, and the reason they render is, 'that she breedeth children, which men cannot do.' It is rare they fall out if sober, and if drunk they forgive it, saying, 'It was the drink, and not the man, that abused them.'

" We have agreed that in all differences between us six of each side shall end the matter. Do not abuse them, but let them have justice and you win them. The worst is that they are the worse for the Christians, who have propagated their vices and yielded their traditions for ill and not for good things. But as low an ebb as these people are at. and as inglorious as their own condition looks, the Christians have not outlived their sight, with all their pretensions to an higher manifestation. What good, then, might not a good people graft where there is so distinct a knowledge left between good aud evil? I beseech God to incline the hearts of all that come into these parts, to outlive the knowledge of the na- tives, by a fixed obedience to their greater knowledge of the will of God, for it were miserable indeed for us to fall under the just censure of the poor Indians' conscience, while we make profession of things so far transcending.

" For their original, I am ready to believe them of the Jewish race ; I mean, of the stock of the ten trihes, and that for the following reasons : First, they were to go to a 'land not planted nor known' ; which, to be sure, Asia and Africa were, if not Europe, and He that intended that extraordinary judgment upon them might make the passage not uneasy to them, as it is not impossible in itself, from the easternmost parts of Asia to the westernmost of America. In the next place, I find them of the like countenance, and their children of so lively resemblance that a man would think himself in Duke's Place, or Berry Street, in London, when he seeth them. But this is not all : they agree in rites ; they reckon by moons ; they offer their first fruits; they have a kind of feast of taber- nacles; they are said to lay their altar upon twelve stones; their mourning a year; customs of women, with many other things that do not now occur."

The researches of John Gilmary Shea, Francis Parkman, and others who have given a special and intelligent attention to the subject, have established the fact that the tribe called Minquas or Minquosy by the Dutch (in the Latin of De Laet, Machoeretini), Mengwes by the Swedes (the English corruption of which was Mingoes), Susquehannocks or Susquehan- noughs (Sasquesahannogh is the rendering by Capt. John Smith) by the Marylanders, and Andastés or Gandastogues (corrupted in Pennsylvania into Con- estogas) was a branch of the Iroquois nation, settled

THE ABORIGINES.

above tide on the Susquehanna and Potomac Rivers. This ambitious race of savages, inspired with a con- quering instinet which put them on a par with the ancient Romans, not only consolidated its strength at home by a political and military confederacy, but extended its power and influence abroad by the es- tablishment of military colonies, just as republican Rome was in the habit of doing. One of these colo- nies constituted the tribe of the Tuscaroras, ocenpy- ing part of North Carolina and Georgia, upon the flanks of the Cherokee nation. Another was the Nottaways, south of the James River, in Virginia. A third colony was the tribe of the Nanticokes, afterwards (in Pennsyl- vania) known as the Conoys, who held the Delaware and Eastern Shore of Maryland peninsula from the Brandywine southward. They were joined on the north by the Min- quas or Susquehannas, whose "fort" was on the Susquehanna River at or near the mouth of Conestoga Creek. The Huron Iroquois of Canada were of this same na- tion, which thus occupied a belt of terri- tory from north to south extending from Lake Simcoe to the southern limits of North Carolina, all in the country of the Algonkins, yet as distinctly separate from them by difference of language, character, and habit as a vein of trap rock in a body of gneiss or granite. The Andastés (to call them by their own tribal name, Andasta meaning a cabin-pole, and the tribe wish- ing to imply by it that they were house- builders rather than dwellers in lodges), like the Lenapes, claimed a Western origin, and they were the most warlike race npon the continent, prond and haughty as the Romans whom they so closely resembled, and, like them, enabled to conquer by their compact military and civil organization. Other tribes were split into small bands, between which there was only a feeble and defective concert and unity of action. The Iroquois, on the other hand, were a nation, and wherever we find them we discover that they lived and acted together in co-operative union. In Pennsylvania, for example, in all the land purchases made by Dutch, Swedes, and English, we find the Minquas acting as one tribe, dealing as one people and one name, whereas with the Lenapes each petty chief seemed to do what was best in his own sight. Tamine or Tamanend was probably the great chief of the Lenapes in the time of Penn, and his supreme authority was mauifest in the councils, but when it came to selling land he was no more than on a level with the twenty or thirty sachems who signed their marks to the deeds of conveyance for the various tracts.

Their industrial arts were of the most primitive

character. Their tools and implements were made of stone, many of which are models of proportion. design, and neatness of finish. Campanius says, ---

" They make their bows with the limb of a tree, of about a man's length, and their bow-strings out of the sinews of animals; they make their arrows out of a reed a yard and a half long, and at one end they fix in a piece of hard wood of about a quarter's length, at the end of which they make a hole to fix | in the head of the arrow, which is made of black flint- stone, or of hard bone or horn, or the teeth of large

الشاب للسـ

DELAWARE INDIAN FAMILY. [From Campanius' " New Sweden. "]

fishes or animals, which they fasten in with fish glue in such a manner that the water cannot penetrate; at the other end of the arrow they put feathers. They can also 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 network, which is very handsome, and fastens the feathers very well. With these they make light and warm clothing and covering for themselves; with the leaves of Indian corn and reeds they make purses, mats, and baskets, and everything else that they want. . . . They make very handsome and strong mats of fine roots, which they paint with all kinds of figures;

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY.

they hang their walls with these mats, and make ex- cellent bed-clothes out of them. The women spin thread and yarn out of nettles, hemp, and some plants unknown to us. Governor Printz had a complete set of clothes, with coat, breeches, and belt, made by these barbarians with their wampum, which was curiously wrought with figures of all kinds of ani- małs. ... They make tobacco-pipes out of reeds

Kowyorkhukox. July 15, 1682.

Malebone. 5th Mo. 14, 1683.

Allowham. July 15, 1682.

Secane. 5th Mo. 14, 1683.

Icquoquehan. 5th Mo. 14, 1683.

Tamanen. June 23, 1683.

Essepenaike. June 23, 1683.

Tamanen. June 23, 1683.

Okettarickon. June 23, 1683.

Tamanen ( Receipt for Money). June 23, 1683.

Keheloppan. June 23, 1683.

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History of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Part 12

Author: Bean, Theodore Weber, 1833-1891, [from old catalog] ed; Buck, William J. (William Joseph), 1825-1901 Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, Everts & Peck Number of Pages: 1534

Author: Bean, Theodore Weber, 1833-1891, [from old catalog] ed; Buck, William J. (William Joseph), 1825-1901
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Everts & Peck
Number of Pages: 1534