Post by blackcrowheart on Jan 22, 2006 18:24:44 GMT -5
A FEW NOTES ON THE LENNI LENAPE OR DELAWARE TRIBE OF INDIAN
By: Alfred F. Berlin
as presented in the
PROCEEDINGS OF THE LEHIGH COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Annual Publication (undated [1920-1930])
<><><><><><>
Provided through the Research of Sherri LaBar
<><><><>
Between the years 1500-1600 the Algonkin Stock, then at the
height of its prosperity, occupied the Atlantic Coast from the
Savannah River on the south to the Strait of Belle Isle on the
North. The whole of Newfoundland was in their possession and in
Labrador they were neighbors of the Eskimos. Some of the sub-tribes
of this great Indian nation wandered as far West as the Rocky
Mountains. The surrounded on all sides that crafty and diplomatic
people, the Iroquois, or Five Nations, augmented later on by the
linguistically related Tuscaroras from the South, when they
bombastically styled themselves the Six Nations. It is said that
they presented the finest type of North American Indian. In
statecraft and diplomacy the more peaceful Delawares, who will be the
subject of this paper, were to the Iroquois no equal and often did
they have to regret having listened to their blandishments. The name
Lenni Lenape, we are told by the Missionary Heckewelder, is the
national and proper one of this tribe and signifies "original
people," a race of human beings who are the same that they were in
the beginning.
The late eminent anthropological authority, Dr. D. G.
Brinton, combats this, and believes that the word means a "male of
our kind," or "one more." He came to this conclusion after a careful
examination in all its parts of the word.
Living in greatest numbers on the banks of the Delaware
River, they were thus called "Delawares" by the Europeans. Thinking
that this name was given to them in derision they objected to it
until told that it was one of compliment. Then they were satisfied
when made aware of the fact that it was the name of a great white
chief, Lord de la Ware, and that the river upon whose banks were
their homes was given the same name. After this explanation they wee
greatly pleased.
According to traditions handed down to them by their
forefathers, the Lenni Lenape people lived many hundreds of years ago
in a distant country in the western part of the American
continent. For some unaccountable reason they determined to migrate
eastward and in a body set out in that direction. After a very long
journey and many nights' encampments by the way, which means a halt
of one year at a place, they at length reached the Namaesi Sipu, or
now the Mississippi River. The Lenape spies were told that the
country toward which their people were emigrating was occupied by a
very powerful nation who had many large towns built on the great
river flowing in every direction through their lands.
When the Lenape reached the banks of the Mississippi River
they sent a message to the Alligewi, the people occupying the
country, asking permission to settle there. This request was
refused, but they were given permission to pass through the country
and seek a settlement farther on. The Alligewi seeing the great
numbers crossing the river made a furious attack on those who had
reached their side and threatened with destruction all, if the others
still remaining on the other side persisted in coming. The Lenape,
aided by the Iroquois, who were also at the same time going toward
the East, declared war against the Alligewi. After many hard fought
battles in which many warriors fell on both sides, the Alligewi,
finding their destruction inevitable if they persisted in their
obstinacy, abandoned the country to their conquerors and fled down
the Mississippi, from whence they never returned. The war lasted many
years and the brunt of it fell always upon the Lenape, the crafty
Iroquois hanging back in the rear, while the battles were
fought. Through intrigue and craft they, however, gained the land
they desired, which was that bordering on the Great Lakes and on
their tributary streams.. The Lenape took possession of the country
to the South, and at last reached the large river upon which they
lived, as before said, in greatest numbers.
They say that the whole of their nation did not reach this
country, but that part of it remained on the other side of the
Mississippi, on being informed of the reception met with those who had crossed.
The Lenapes were divided into these sub-tribes:
1. The Minsi, Monseys, Montheys, Munsees or Minisinks
2. The Unami or Womameyo.
3. The Unalachtigo.
Minsi means "people of the stony country," or, briefly,
"mountaineers."
Unami means "people down the river."
Unalachtigo means "people who live near the ocean," and
historically such were the positions of these sub-tribes when they
first came to the knowledge of the Europeans.
The Minsi lived in the mountainous region at the headwaters
of the Delaware, above the Forks, or junction of the Lehigh
River. One of their principal fires was on the Minisink plains,
above the Water Gap, and another on the East Branch of the Delaware,
which they called Namaeo Sipu, "Fish River."
The Unami's territory on the right bank of the Delaware
River extended from the Lehigh Valley southward. It was with them
that Penn dealt for the land ceded him in the Indian deed of 1682.
The Unalachtigo had their principal seat on the affluents of
the Delaware, near where Wilmington now stands.
Each of these sub-tribes had its totemic animal from which
it claimed a mystical descent. The Minis had the wolf, the Unami the
turtle and the Unalachtigo, the turkey. The Unami, the sub-tribe
which occupied the territory in which is embraced our Lehigh county,
claimed and were conceded the precedence of the others, because their
ancestor, the turtle, was not the common animal, so called, but the
great original tortoise which bears the world on its back. This
animal had a power and a nature to produce all things on the earth,
even the earth itself. But it was not the ultimate energy of the
universe. There was a greater cause and the tortoise only brought
forth that which this primeval divinity wished through it to
produce. Everywhere in Algonkin pictography is the turtle or the
tortoise, the symbol of the earth.
Each tribe of the Lenape recognized a chieftain, called
sachem, and by common and ancient consent, the chief selected from
the turtle totem was head chief of the whole Lenape nation. They
could, however, not go to war themselves, nor attempt anything
indicating that the tempest of strife was to be let loose.
War was declared by the people at the instigation of the
"war captains," valorous braves of any birth or family who had
distinguished themselves by personal courage, and especially by good
success in forays against the enemy.
The Lenape depended not alone on the chase for
subsistence. They were largely agricultural, and raised a variety of
fruits and edible plants. Indian corn or maize, was, as usual, the staple.
This very valuable cereal originated in all probability in a
circumscribed locality, above 4,500 feet elevation, north of the
Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico, and south of the twenty-second degree
of north latitude, near the ancient seat of the mysterious and
cultured Maya tribes of Indians. There is hardly a doubt but that
they first cultivated it and distributed it in every direction. It
is probable that maize reached the Rio Grande about 700 A.D., for
Humbold tells us that the Aztecs learned of this staple in 666
A.D. By the year 1000 A.D. it had reached the coast of Maine. So
extensively was it cultivated by the American aboriginal people that
during wars with them millions of bushels were destroyed. The
Puritans in King Philip's War, in 1675, took possession of 1,000
acres of corn, which was harvested by the English and disposed of
according to their directions. Everywhere the Puritans found
maize. Marquis de Nouville, in his celebrated expedition against the
Seneca Indians, a sub-tribe of the Iroquois, captured and destroyed,
1,200,000 bushels. It took Fontenac three days in 1696 to destroy
the corn of the Onondagas, another sub-tribe of the Six Nation.
De Soto often speaks of Indian villages surrounded by
extensive fields of maize, and in one instance he passed through
continuous fields of this cereal for six miles. Becoming short of
provisions they robbed the Indians of enough corn to last his army of
freebooters for five days.
In addition to this wonderful resource of corn they had
extensive fields of squashes, beans and sweet potatoes. They also
cultivated freely a hardy variety of tobacco. Of this plant more in
a future paper. They also consumed wild fruits and plants and
nutritious tubers. Of nuts they used acorns, walnuts, hickory nuts,
chestnuts. They had plenty of melons, persimmons, peaches, plums,
grapes and mulberries. Had these people been left to themselves, the
writer is certain, they would in course of time have reached a high
state of civilization. When once a people become stationary and
begin cultivating the ground, this state is assured. While they have
superstitious notions, and who has not, be he educated or (unversed?)
the supreme Mannitto, the creator and preserver of heavens and earth,
is the great object of their adoration. On him they rest their
hopes, to him they address their prayers, and make their solemn
sacrifices. Their Almighty Creator is always before their eyes on
all important occasions.
The first step in the education of their children is to
prepare them for future happiness, by impressing upon their tender
minds that they are indebted for their existence to a great and
benevolent Spirit., who not only has given them life, but has
ordained them for certain great purposes, and as they grow older more
serious matters pertaining to live and mode of living are taught
them. They are finally told that if they respect the aged and
infirm, and are kind and obliging to them, they will be treated in
the same manner when their turn comes to be old. What a blessing
would it be were many whites taught this same lesson.
In teaching to their young their form of precepts it is done
in the gentlest and most persuasive manner. The child's pride is the
feeling to which an appeal is made, which proves successful in almost
every instance. How well could the Indian father and mother say of a
good child, as they often did, "May the great Spirit, who looks upon
him, grant this good child a long life."
The Missionary Heckewelder, to whom I am indebted for much
of the information contained in this paper, says: "It may justly be a
subject of wonder, how a native without a written code of laws or
system of jurisprudence, without any form or constitution of
government and without even a single elective or hereditary
magistrate, can submit together in peace and harmony, and in the
exercise of the moral virtues; how a people can be well and
effectually governed without any external authority; by the mere
force of the ascendency which men of superior minds have over those
of a more ordinary stamp; by a tacit, yet universal submission to the
aristocracy of experience, talents and virtue! Such, nevertheless,
is the spectacle which an Indian nation exhibits to the eye of a
stranger. I have been a witness to it for a long series of years and
after much observation and reflection to discover the cause of this
phenomenon. I think I have reason to be satisfied that it is in a
great degree to be ascribed to the pains which the Indians take to
instill at an early age, honest and virtuous principles upon the
minds of their children, and to the method which they pursue in
educating them. This method I will not call a system; for systems
are unknown to the sons of Nature, who by following alone her simple
dictates, have at once discovered and followed without effort that
plain obvious path which the philosophers of Europe have been so long
in search of.
"It is a striking fact that in their uncivilized state they
behave towards each other as though they were a cultivated
people. Their general principle, that good and bad can not mingle or
dwell together in one heart, and therefore must not come in contact
seems to be their guide on all occasions. I do not believe that
there exists a people more attentive to paying common civilities to
each other than are the Indians. A person is never left standing
and a stranger, if a white person, is furnished with the best seat."
[Underlining is inserted by current typist]
Marriages with them were never contracted for life. One
could put away the other if not satisfied. The Indians took his wife
as if it were on trial, determined, however, in his own mind not to
forsake her if she behaved well, and particularly if there wee
children. The woman, sensible of this does on her part everything in
her power to please her husband, particularly if he is a good hunter
or trapper, capable of maintaining her by his skill and industry and
protecting her by his strength and courage. It is generally believed
that the Indian woman was treated as a slave. Compared with the
tasks imposed upon white women, their labors appeared hard and heavy,
but they were no more than their fair share, under every
consideration and due allowance of the hardships attendant on savage
life. They are both willing and able to do it and always perform it
with cheerfulness. Mothers taught their daughters those duties which
common sense would otherwise point out to them when grown up. An
Indian lives to see his wife well clothed, and the more he does for
her the more is he esteemed particularly by his female
neighbors. Whatever longing a wife or mother of his children has, if
possible will be procured.
In their observations upon the implements then used by the
whites and their shrewdness in making axes, guns, knives, hoes,
shovels, pots and kettles, blankets and other very convenient
articles to which they became accustomed they say: "Our forefathers
did without all these things, and we have never heard, nor has any
tradition informed us that they were at a loss for the want of them;
therefore, we must conclude that they were also ingenious; and,
indeed, we know that they were; for they made axes of stone to cut
with, and bows and arrows to kill the game; they made knives and
arrow points with sharp flint stones and bones; hoes and shovels from
the shoulder blade of the elk and buffalo; they made pots of clay,
garments of skins, and ornaments with the weather of the turkey,
goose and other birds. They were not in want of anything, the game
was plenty and tame, the dart shot from our arrows did not frighten
them as the report of the gun now does; we had, therefore, everything
that we could reasonably require; we lived happy!"
They knew not the use of spiritous liquors and their
attendant results until the advent of the Europeans. This vice
produced terrible results, and reflecting Indians remarked "that it
was strange that a people who professed themselves believers in a
religion revealed to them by the great Spirit himself, who say that
they have in their houses the Word of God, and his laws and
commandments textually written, could think of making a liquor
calculated to bewitch people and make them destroy one another."
Mr. Heckewelder once asked an Indian at Pittsburgh who was a
stranger to him, who he was. The red man answered in broken English:
"My name is Blackfish, when at home with my nation I am a clever
fellow, and when here a hog." Whiskey had sunk him when in this
settlement, down to the level of that beast. Indian traditions tells
us that the Dutch, under Henry Hudson, when anchored in September,
1609, in New York, were the first whites to give to the Indians, the
Mohicans, a subtribe of the Lenapes, this drink.
I shall here simply describe for the sake of brevity the
presentation of the liquor in the council meetings and the result of
its use during the reception given the whites. Meanwhile, a large
bottle is brought by one of the servants of the white officer, from
which an unknown substance is poured out into a small cup or glass
and handed to the white officer. He drinks - has the glass filled
again and hands it to the chief standing next to him. The chief
receives it, but only smells the contents and passes it on to the
next chief, who does the same. The glass or cup thus passes through
the circle without the liquor being tasted by anyone, and is upon the
point of being returned to the red clothed white officer, when one of
the Indians, a brave man and a great warrior, suddenly jumps up and
harangues the assembly on the impropriety of returning the cup with
its contents. It was handed to them, says he, by the white officer,
that they should drink out of it as he himself had done. To follow
his example would be pleasing to him, but to return what he had given
them might provoke his wrath and bring destruction on them. And
since the orator believed it for the good of the nation that the
contents offered them should be drunk, and as no one else would do
it, he would drink it himself let the consequence be what it might;
it was better for one man to die, than that the whole nation should
be destroyed. He then took the glass and bidding the assembly a
solemn farewell, at once drank up its whole contents. Every eye was
fixed on the resolute chief, to see what effect the unknown liquor
would produce. He soon began to stagger and at last fell prostrate
to the ground. His companions now bemoan his fate; he falls into a
sound sleep and they think he has expired. He wakes again, jumps up
and declares that he has enjoyed the most delicious sensations and
that he never before felt himself so happy as after he drunk the
cup. He asks for more, his wish is granted. The whole assembly
then imitate him, and all become intoxicated.
In the way of introducing the Christian religion to the
Lenapes little was done. The Rev. Thomas Campinius, of Stockholm, a
Lutheran clergyman, attached to the Swedish settlement from 1642 to
1649, made a creditable effort to acquire the native tongue and
preach Christianity to the savages around him. So very religious a
body as the early Friends did nothing. William Penn offered in 1699
to provide with interpreters the Friends' Meeting at Philadelphia to
convey religious instruction to them but without avail. For nearly
half a century nothing was done, and when young David Brainerd began
his mission in 1742 he distinctly states that there was not another
missionary in the province of New Jersey. The little society of
Christian Indians which he gathered in Burlington county, New Jersey,
was even reported as a congregation of rioters and enemies of the
State. Penn's province was inclined to no greater favors toward
Christianized natives. Brainerd, however, knew nothing of the needs
of a Christian harvest which the ardent Moravian leader, Count
Nicholas Lewis Zinzendorf, had in 1742 sown in the wilderness of
Pennsylvania. The pious Rauch had gathered a small but earnest
congregation of Mohegans at Shekomeko, who soon removed to the valley
of the Lehigh to Gnadenhutten, now Lehighton. Zeisberger had
registered himself an appointed missionary to the heathen in 1744,
but when in 1808, after sixty-two years of missionary labors, he
closed his eyes in death, the huts of barely a score of converted
Indians clustered in his little chapel.
After the murder of the Conestoga Indians the Delawares
first withdrew into the wilds of the Susquehanna and settled at
Wyalusing, about 100 miles from the frontier settlers beyond the Blue
Mountains. But after living here for about five years they moved off
in a body directly for the Muskingum River in Ohio. From there, part
of them moved to Upper Louisiana in 1789. Others went to Canada,
while a few who remained in Ohio, attempted to live a peaceful and
agricultural life. They live a few years in Indiana. From there
they removed to near the mouth of the Kansas River. In 1850 they
were reported as owning their 375,000 acres and numbering 1,500
souls. Four years later they "ceded" their lands and the majority
were moved to various reservations in the Indian Territory. In
Kansas there lived in 1885 about 60 of these unfortunate people and
in Ontario, Canada, 300
[Typist Note: From about 1850 on, we are finding members of the
"Umholtz" and allied families in this area. In Zimmerdale, Kansas,
we find the "Pennsylvania Cemetery" which as I understand was started
as a final resting place for individual who were coming out of
Pennsylvania in the migration west. Many of the "Umholtz" family are
interred there. I have no "hard evidence" that the Umholtz's were
"Lenape", but they were certainly aligned with them in their travels
west. - WT]
- E N D -
By: Alfred F. Berlin
as presented in the
PROCEEDINGS OF THE LEHIGH COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Annual Publication (undated [1920-1930])
<><><><><><>
Provided through the Research of Sherri LaBar
<><><><>
Between the years 1500-1600 the Algonkin Stock, then at the
height of its prosperity, occupied the Atlantic Coast from the
Savannah River on the south to the Strait of Belle Isle on the
North. The whole of Newfoundland was in their possession and in
Labrador they were neighbors of the Eskimos. Some of the sub-tribes
of this great Indian nation wandered as far West as the Rocky
Mountains. The surrounded on all sides that crafty and diplomatic
people, the Iroquois, or Five Nations, augmented later on by the
linguistically related Tuscaroras from the South, when they
bombastically styled themselves the Six Nations. It is said that
they presented the finest type of North American Indian. In
statecraft and diplomacy the more peaceful Delawares, who will be the
subject of this paper, were to the Iroquois no equal and often did
they have to regret having listened to their blandishments. The name
Lenni Lenape, we are told by the Missionary Heckewelder, is the
national and proper one of this tribe and signifies "original
people," a race of human beings who are the same that they were in
the beginning.
The late eminent anthropological authority, Dr. D. G.
Brinton, combats this, and believes that the word means a "male of
our kind," or "one more." He came to this conclusion after a careful
examination in all its parts of the word.
Living in greatest numbers on the banks of the Delaware
River, they were thus called "Delawares" by the Europeans. Thinking
that this name was given to them in derision they objected to it
until told that it was one of compliment. Then they were satisfied
when made aware of the fact that it was the name of a great white
chief, Lord de la Ware, and that the river upon whose banks were
their homes was given the same name. After this explanation they wee
greatly pleased.
According to traditions handed down to them by their
forefathers, the Lenni Lenape people lived many hundreds of years ago
in a distant country in the western part of the American
continent. For some unaccountable reason they determined to migrate
eastward and in a body set out in that direction. After a very long
journey and many nights' encampments by the way, which means a halt
of one year at a place, they at length reached the Namaesi Sipu, or
now the Mississippi River. The Lenape spies were told that the
country toward which their people were emigrating was occupied by a
very powerful nation who had many large towns built on the great
river flowing in every direction through their lands.
When the Lenape reached the banks of the Mississippi River
they sent a message to the Alligewi, the people occupying the
country, asking permission to settle there. This request was
refused, but they were given permission to pass through the country
and seek a settlement farther on. The Alligewi seeing the great
numbers crossing the river made a furious attack on those who had
reached their side and threatened with destruction all, if the others
still remaining on the other side persisted in coming. The Lenape,
aided by the Iroquois, who were also at the same time going toward
the East, declared war against the Alligewi. After many hard fought
battles in which many warriors fell on both sides, the Alligewi,
finding their destruction inevitable if they persisted in their
obstinacy, abandoned the country to their conquerors and fled down
the Mississippi, from whence they never returned. The war lasted many
years and the brunt of it fell always upon the Lenape, the crafty
Iroquois hanging back in the rear, while the battles were
fought. Through intrigue and craft they, however, gained the land
they desired, which was that bordering on the Great Lakes and on
their tributary streams.. The Lenape took possession of the country
to the South, and at last reached the large river upon which they
lived, as before said, in greatest numbers.
They say that the whole of their nation did not reach this
country, but that part of it remained on the other side of the
Mississippi, on being informed of the reception met with those who had crossed.
The Lenapes were divided into these sub-tribes:
1. The Minsi, Monseys, Montheys, Munsees or Minisinks
2. The Unami or Womameyo.
3. The Unalachtigo.
Minsi means "people of the stony country," or, briefly,
"mountaineers."
Unami means "people down the river."
Unalachtigo means "people who live near the ocean," and
historically such were the positions of these sub-tribes when they
first came to the knowledge of the Europeans.
The Minsi lived in the mountainous region at the headwaters
of the Delaware, above the Forks, or junction of the Lehigh
River. One of their principal fires was on the Minisink plains,
above the Water Gap, and another on the East Branch of the Delaware,
which they called Namaeo Sipu, "Fish River."
The Unami's territory on the right bank of the Delaware
River extended from the Lehigh Valley southward. It was with them
that Penn dealt for the land ceded him in the Indian deed of 1682.
The Unalachtigo had their principal seat on the affluents of
the Delaware, near where Wilmington now stands.
Each of these sub-tribes had its totemic animal from which
it claimed a mystical descent. The Minis had the wolf, the Unami the
turtle and the Unalachtigo, the turkey. The Unami, the sub-tribe
which occupied the territory in which is embraced our Lehigh county,
claimed and were conceded the precedence of the others, because their
ancestor, the turtle, was not the common animal, so called, but the
great original tortoise which bears the world on its back. This
animal had a power and a nature to produce all things on the earth,
even the earth itself. But it was not the ultimate energy of the
universe. There was a greater cause and the tortoise only brought
forth that which this primeval divinity wished through it to
produce. Everywhere in Algonkin pictography is the turtle or the
tortoise, the symbol of the earth.
Each tribe of the Lenape recognized a chieftain, called
sachem, and by common and ancient consent, the chief selected from
the turtle totem was head chief of the whole Lenape nation. They
could, however, not go to war themselves, nor attempt anything
indicating that the tempest of strife was to be let loose.
War was declared by the people at the instigation of the
"war captains," valorous braves of any birth or family who had
distinguished themselves by personal courage, and especially by good
success in forays against the enemy.
The Lenape depended not alone on the chase for
subsistence. They were largely agricultural, and raised a variety of
fruits and edible plants. Indian corn or maize, was, as usual, the staple.
This very valuable cereal originated in all probability in a
circumscribed locality, above 4,500 feet elevation, north of the
Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico, and south of the twenty-second degree
of north latitude, near the ancient seat of the mysterious and
cultured Maya tribes of Indians. There is hardly a doubt but that
they first cultivated it and distributed it in every direction. It
is probable that maize reached the Rio Grande about 700 A.D., for
Humbold tells us that the Aztecs learned of this staple in 666
A.D. By the year 1000 A.D. it had reached the coast of Maine. So
extensively was it cultivated by the American aboriginal people that
during wars with them millions of bushels were destroyed. The
Puritans in King Philip's War, in 1675, took possession of 1,000
acres of corn, which was harvested by the English and disposed of
according to their directions. Everywhere the Puritans found
maize. Marquis de Nouville, in his celebrated expedition against the
Seneca Indians, a sub-tribe of the Iroquois, captured and destroyed,
1,200,000 bushels. It took Fontenac three days in 1696 to destroy
the corn of the Onondagas, another sub-tribe of the Six Nation.
De Soto often speaks of Indian villages surrounded by
extensive fields of maize, and in one instance he passed through
continuous fields of this cereal for six miles. Becoming short of
provisions they robbed the Indians of enough corn to last his army of
freebooters for five days.
In addition to this wonderful resource of corn they had
extensive fields of squashes, beans and sweet potatoes. They also
cultivated freely a hardy variety of tobacco. Of this plant more in
a future paper. They also consumed wild fruits and plants and
nutritious tubers. Of nuts they used acorns, walnuts, hickory nuts,
chestnuts. They had plenty of melons, persimmons, peaches, plums,
grapes and mulberries. Had these people been left to themselves, the
writer is certain, they would in course of time have reached a high
state of civilization. When once a people become stationary and
begin cultivating the ground, this state is assured. While they have
superstitious notions, and who has not, be he educated or (unversed?)
the supreme Mannitto, the creator and preserver of heavens and earth,
is the great object of their adoration. On him they rest their
hopes, to him they address their prayers, and make their solemn
sacrifices. Their Almighty Creator is always before their eyes on
all important occasions.
The first step in the education of their children is to
prepare them for future happiness, by impressing upon their tender
minds that they are indebted for their existence to a great and
benevolent Spirit., who not only has given them life, but has
ordained them for certain great purposes, and as they grow older more
serious matters pertaining to live and mode of living are taught
them. They are finally told that if they respect the aged and
infirm, and are kind and obliging to them, they will be treated in
the same manner when their turn comes to be old. What a blessing
would it be were many whites taught this same lesson.
In teaching to their young their form of precepts it is done
in the gentlest and most persuasive manner. The child's pride is the
feeling to which an appeal is made, which proves successful in almost
every instance. How well could the Indian father and mother say of a
good child, as they often did, "May the great Spirit, who looks upon
him, grant this good child a long life."
The Missionary Heckewelder, to whom I am indebted for much
of the information contained in this paper, says: "It may justly be a
subject of wonder, how a native without a written code of laws or
system of jurisprudence, without any form or constitution of
government and without even a single elective or hereditary
magistrate, can submit together in peace and harmony, and in the
exercise of the moral virtues; how a people can be well and
effectually governed without any external authority; by the mere
force of the ascendency which men of superior minds have over those
of a more ordinary stamp; by a tacit, yet universal submission to the
aristocracy of experience, talents and virtue! Such, nevertheless,
is the spectacle which an Indian nation exhibits to the eye of a
stranger. I have been a witness to it for a long series of years and
after much observation and reflection to discover the cause of this
phenomenon. I think I have reason to be satisfied that it is in a
great degree to be ascribed to the pains which the Indians take to
instill at an early age, honest and virtuous principles upon the
minds of their children, and to the method which they pursue in
educating them. This method I will not call a system; for systems
are unknown to the sons of Nature, who by following alone her simple
dictates, have at once discovered and followed without effort that
plain obvious path which the philosophers of Europe have been so long
in search of.
"It is a striking fact that in their uncivilized state they
behave towards each other as though they were a cultivated
people. Their general principle, that good and bad can not mingle or
dwell together in one heart, and therefore must not come in contact
seems to be their guide on all occasions. I do not believe that
there exists a people more attentive to paying common civilities to
each other than are the Indians. A person is never left standing
and a stranger, if a white person, is furnished with the best seat."
[Underlining is inserted by current typist]
Marriages with them were never contracted for life. One
could put away the other if not satisfied. The Indians took his wife
as if it were on trial, determined, however, in his own mind not to
forsake her if she behaved well, and particularly if there wee
children. The woman, sensible of this does on her part everything in
her power to please her husband, particularly if he is a good hunter
or trapper, capable of maintaining her by his skill and industry and
protecting her by his strength and courage. It is generally believed
that the Indian woman was treated as a slave. Compared with the
tasks imposed upon white women, their labors appeared hard and heavy,
but they were no more than their fair share, under every
consideration and due allowance of the hardships attendant on savage
life. They are both willing and able to do it and always perform it
with cheerfulness. Mothers taught their daughters those duties which
common sense would otherwise point out to them when grown up. An
Indian lives to see his wife well clothed, and the more he does for
her the more is he esteemed particularly by his female
neighbors. Whatever longing a wife or mother of his children has, if
possible will be procured.
In their observations upon the implements then used by the
whites and their shrewdness in making axes, guns, knives, hoes,
shovels, pots and kettles, blankets and other very convenient
articles to which they became accustomed they say: "Our forefathers
did without all these things, and we have never heard, nor has any
tradition informed us that they were at a loss for the want of them;
therefore, we must conclude that they were also ingenious; and,
indeed, we know that they were; for they made axes of stone to cut
with, and bows and arrows to kill the game; they made knives and
arrow points with sharp flint stones and bones; hoes and shovels from
the shoulder blade of the elk and buffalo; they made pots of clay,
garments of skins, and ornaments with the weather of the turkey,
goose and other birds. They were not in want of anything, the game
was plenty and tame, the dart shot from our arrows did not frighten
them as the report of the gun now does; we had, therefore, everything
that we could reasonably require; we lived happy!"
They knew not the use of spiritous liquors and their
attendant results until the advent of the Europeans. This vice
produced terrible results, and reflecting Indians remarked "that it
was strange that a people who professed themselves believers in a
religion revealed to them by the great Spirit himself, who say that
they have in their houses the Word of God, and his laws and
commandments textually written, could think of making a liquor
calculated to bewitch people and make them destroy one another."
Mr. Heckewelder once asked an Indian at Pittsburgh who was a
stranger to him, who he was. The red man answered in broken English:
"My name is Blackfish, when at home with my nation I am a clever
fellow, and when here a hog." Whiskey had sunk him when in this
settlement, down to the level of that beast. Indian traditions tells
us that the Dutch, under Henry Hudson, when anchored in September,
1609, in New York, were the first whites to give to the Indians, the
Mohicans, a subtribe of the Lenapes, this drink.
I shall here simply describe for the sake of brevity the
presentation of the liquor in the council meetings and the result of
its use during the reception given the whites. Meanwhile, a large
bottle is brought by one of the servants of the white officer, from
which an unknown substance is poured out into a small cup or glass
and handed to the white officer. He drinks - has the glass filled
again and hands it to the chief standing next to him. The chief
receives it, but only smells the contents and passes it on to the
next chief, who does the same. The glass or cup thus passes through
the circle without the liquor being tasted by anyone, and is upon the
point of being returned to the red clothed white officer, when one of
the Indians, a brave man and a great warrior, suddenly jumps up and
harangues the assembly on the impropriety of returning the cup with
its contents. It was handed to them, says he, by the white officer,
that they should drink out of it as he himself had done. To follow
his example would be pleasing to him, but to return what he had given
them might provoke his wrath and bring destruction on them. And
since the orator believed it for the good of the nation that the
contents offered them should be drunk, and as no one else would do
it, he would drink it himself let the consequence be what it might;
it was better for one man to die, than that the whole nation should
be destroyed. He then took the glass and bidding the assembly a
solemn farewell, at once drank up its whole contents. Every eye was
fixed on the resolute chief, to see what effect the unknown liquor
would produce. He soon began to stagger and at last fell prostrate
to the ground. His companions now bemoan his fate; he falls into a
sound sleep and they think he has expired. He wakes again, jumps up
and declares that he has enjoyed the most delicious sensations and
that he never before felt himself so happy as after he drunk the
cup. He asks for more, his wish is granted. The whole assembly
then imitate him, and all become intoxicated.
In the way of introducing the Christian religion to the
Lenapes little was done. The Rev. Thomas Campinius, of Stockholm, a
Lutheran clergyman, attached to the Swedish settlement from 1642 to
1649, made a creditable effort to acquire the native tongue and
preach Christianity to the savages around him. So very religious a
body as the early Friends did nothing. William Penn offered in 1699
to provide with interpreters the Friends' Meeting at Philadelphia to
convey religious instruction to them but without avail. For nearly
half a century nothing was done, and when young David Brainerd began
his mission in 1742 he distinctly states that there was not another
missionary in the province of New Jersey. The little society of
Christian Indians which he gathered in Burlington county, New Jersey,
was even reported as a congregation of rioters and enemies of the
State. Penn's province was inclined to no greater favors toward
Christianized natives. Brainerd, however, knew nothing of the needs
of a Christian harvest which the ardent Moravian leader, Count
Nicholas Lewis Zinzendorf, had in 1742 sown in the wilderness of
Pennsylvania. The pious Rauch had gathered a small but earnest
congregation of Mohegans at Shekomeko, who soon removed to the valley
of the Lehigh to Gnadenhutten, now Lehighton. Zeisberger had
registered himself an appointed missionary to the heathen in 1744,
but when in 1808, after sixty-two years of missionary labors, he
closed his eyes in death, the huts of barely a score of converted
Indians clustered in his little chapel.
After the murder of the Conestoga Indians the Delawares
first withdrew into the wilds of the Susquehanna and settled at
Wyalusing, about 100 miles from the frontier settlers beyond the Blue
Mountains. But after living here for about five years they moved off
in a body directly for the Muskingum River in Ohio. From there, part
of them moved to Upper Louisiana in 1789. Others went to Canada,
while a few who remained in Ohio, attempted to live a peaceful and
agricultural life. They live a few years in Indiana. From there
they removed to near the mouth of the Kansas River. In 1850 they
were reported as owning their 375,000 acres and numbering 1,500
souls. Four years later they "ceded" their lands and the majority
were moved to various reservations in the Indian Territory. In
Kansas there lived in 1885 about 60 of these unfortunate people and
in Ontario, Canada, 300
[Typist Note: From about 1850 on, we are finding members of the
"Umholtz" and allied families in this area. In Zimmerdale, Kansas,
we find the "Pennsylvania Cemetery" which as I understand was started
as a final resting place for individual who were coming out of
Pennsylvania in the migration west. Many of the "Umholtz" family are
interred there. I have no "hard evidence" that the Umholtz's were
"Lenape", but they were certainly aligned with them in their travels
west. - WT]
- E N D -