LIBRARY
OF
ABORIGINAL AMERICAN
LITERATURE.
No. V.
EDITED BY
D. G. BRINTON, M.D.
PHILADELPHIA
1885
THE LENÂPÉ AND THEIR LEGENDS;
WITH THE COMPLETE TEXT AND SYMBOLS
OF THE WALAM OLUM,
A NEW TRANSLATION, AND AN INQUIRY INTO ITS AUTHENTICITY.
BY
DANIEL G. BRINTON, A.M., M.D.,
PROFESSOR OF ETHNOLOGY AND ARCHÆOLOGY AT THE
ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES, PHILADELPHIA.
President of the Numismatic and Antiquarian; Society of
Philadelphia; Member of the American Philosophical Society,
the American Antiquarian Society, the Pennsylvania Historical
Society, etc.; Membre de la Société Royale des Antiquaires
du Nord; Délégné Général de l'Institution Ethnographique;
Vice-President du Congrés International des Americanistes;
Corresponding Member of the Anthropological Society of
Washington, etc.
D. G. BRINTON.
PHILADELPHIA.
1885.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885, by
D. G. BRINTON,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress. All rights reserved.
Transcriber's Notes:
Words or phrases with an underscore(_) before and after are italicized.
Words or phrases with an equal sign(=) before and after are in bold.
Obvious spelling and punctuation mistakes have been corrected.
The use of the digit 8 to represent a 'whistled' letter w has been
retained as in the original.
PREFACE.
In the present volume I have grouped a series of ethnological studies
of the Indians of Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, around
what is asserted to be one of the most curious records of ancient
American history.
For a long time this record--the WALAM OLUM, or Red Score--was supposed
to have been lost. Having obtained the original text complete about
a year ago, I printed a few copies and sent them to several educated
native Delawares with a request for aid in its translation and opinions
on its authenticity. The results will be found in the following pages.
The interest in the subject thus excited prompted me to a general
review of our knowledge of the Lenape or Delawares, their history and
traditions, their language and customs. This disclosed the existence
of a number of MSS. not mentioned in bibliographies, some in the first
rank of importance, especially in the field of linguistics. Of these I
have made free use.
In the course of these studies I have received suggestions and
assistance from a number of obliging friends, among whom I would
mention the native Delawares, the Rev. Albert Anthony, and the Rev.
John Kilbuck; Mr. Horatio Hale and the Right Rev. E. de Schweinitz; Dr.
J. Hammond Trambull, Prof. A. M. Elliott and Gen. John Mason Brown.
Not without hesitation do I send forth this volume to the learned
world. Regarded as an authentic memorial, the original text of the
WALAM OLUM will require a more accurate rendering than I have been able
to give it; while the possibility that a more searching criticism will
demonstrate it to have been a fabrication may condemn as labor lost the
pains that I have bestowed upon it. Yet even in the latter case my work
will not have been in vain. There is, I trust, sufficient in the volume
to justify its appearance, apart from the Red Score; and the latter,
by means of this complete presentation, can now be assigned its true
position in American archaeology, whatever that may be.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.--§ 1. THE ALGONKIN STOCK 9
Scheme of its Dialects.--Probable Primitive Location.
§ 2. THE IROQUIS STOCK 13
The Susquehannocks--The Hurons--The Cherokees.
CHAPTER II.--THE WAPANACHKI OR EASTERN ALGONKIN CONFEDERACY 19
The Confederated Tribes--The Mohegans--The Nanticokes.--The
Conoys.--The Shawnees.--The Saponies.--The Assiwikalees.
CHAPTER III.--THE LENAPE OR DELAWARES 33
Derivation of the Name Lenape.--The Three Sub-Tribes:
the Minsi or Wolf, the Unami or Turtle, and the Unalachtgo
or Turkey Tribes.--Their Totems.--The New Jersey Tribes:
the Wapings, Sanhicans and Mantas.--Political Constitution
of the Lenape.--Vegetable Food Resources.--Domestic
Architecture.--Manufactures.--Paints and Dyes.--Dogs.--
Interments.--Computation of Time.--Picture Writing.--
Record Sticks.--Moral and Mental Character.--Religious
Belief.--Doctrine of the Soul.--The Native Priests.--
Religious Ceremonies.
CHAPTER IV.--THE LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE OF THE LENAPE 74
§ 1. Literature of the Lenape Tongue.--
Campanius; Penn; Thomas; Zeisberger; Heckewelder;
Roth; Ettwem; Grube; Dencke; Luckenbach; Henry;
Vocabularies; a Native Letter.
§ 2. General Remarks on the Lenape.
§ 3. Dialects of the Lenape.
§ 4. Special Structure of the Lenape.--The Root and the Theme;
Prefixes; Suffixes; Derivatives; Grammatical Notes.
CHAPTER V.--HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF THE LENAPE 109
§ 1. The Lenape as "Women."
§ 2. Recent Migrations of the Lenape.
§ 3. Missionary Efforts in the Provinces of Pennsylvania
and New Jersey.
CHAPTER VI.--MYTHS AND TRADITIONS OF THE LENAPE 130
Cosmogonical and Culture Myths.--The Culture-hero,
Michabo.--Myths from Lindstrom, Ettwein, Jasper
Donkers, Zeisberger.--Native Symbolism--The Saturnian
Age.--Mohegan Cosmogony and Migration Myth.
National Traditions.--Beatty's Account.--The Number Seven.--
Heckewelder's Account.--Prehistoric Migrations.--Shawnee
Legend.--Lenape Legend of the Naked Bear.
CHAPTER VII.--THE WALAM OLUM:
ITS ORIGIN, AUTHENTICITY AND CONTENTS 148
Biographical Sketch of Rafinesque.--Value of his Writings.--
His account of the WALUM OLUM.--Was it a Forgery?--
Rafinesque's Character.--The Text Pronounced Genuine
by Native Delawares.--Conclusion Reached.
Phonetic System of the WALUM OLUM.--Metrical Form.--
Pictographic System--Derivation and Precise Meaning
of WALUM OLUM.--The MS of the WALUM OLUM.--General
Synopsis of the WALUM OLUM--Synopsis of its Parts.
THE WALUM OLUM.--ORIGINAL TEXT AND TRANSLATION 169
NOTES 219
VOCABULARY 233
APPENDIX 255
INDEX 257
THE LENAPE AND THEIR LEGENDS.
CHAPTER I.
§ 1. THE ALGONKIN STOCK.
Scheme of its Dialects--Probable Primitive Location
§ 2. THE IROQUIS STOCK.
The Susquehannocks--The Hurons--The Cherokees
§ 1. _The Algonkin Stock_.
About the period 1500-1600, those related tribes whom we now know by
the name of Algonkins were at the height of their prosperity. They
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; in Labrador they were neighbors to the Eskimos; their
northernmost branch, the Crees, dwelt along the southern shores of
Hudson Bay, and followed the streams which flow into it from the west,
until they met the Chipeways, closely akin to themselves, who roamed
over the water shed of Lake Superior. The Blackfeet carried a remote
dialect of their tongue quite to the Rocky Mountains; while the fertile
prairies of Illinois and Indiana were the homes of the Miamis. The area
of Ohio and Kentucky was very thinly peopled by a few of their roving
bands; but east of the Alleghanies, in the valleys of the Delaware,
the Potomac and the Hudson, over the barren hills of New England and
Nova Scotia, and throughout the swamps and forests of Virginia and the
Carolinas, their osier cabins and palisadoed strongholds, their maize
fields and workshops of stone implements, were numerously located.
It is needless for my purpose to enumerate the many small tribes which
made up this great group. The more prominent were the Micmacs of Nova
Scotia, the Abnakis of Maine, the Pequots and Narragansets, in New
England, the Mohegans of the Hudson, the Lenape on the Delaware, the
Nanticokes around Chesapeake Bay, the Pascataway on the Potomac, and
the Powhatans and Shawnees further south; while between the Great Lakes
and the Ohio river were the Ottawas, the Illinois, the Pottawatomies,
the Kikapoos, Piankishaws, etc.
The dialects of all these were related, and evidently at some distant
day had been derived from the same primitive tongue. Which of them had
preserved the ancient forms most closely, it may be premature to decide
positively, but the tendency of modern studies has been to assign that
place to the Cree--the northernmost of all.
We cannot erect a genealogical tree of these dialects. It is not
probable that they branched off, one after another, from a common
stock. The ancient tribes each took their several ways from a common
centre, and formed nuclei for subsequent development. We may, however,
group them in such a manner as roughly to indicate their relationship.
This I do on the following page:--
Cree,
Old Algonkin,
Montagnais.
Chipeway,
Ottawa,
Pottawattomie,
Miami,
Peoria,
Pea,
Piankishaw,
Kaskaskia,
Menominee,
Sac,
Fox,
Kikapoo.
Sheshatapoosh,
Secoffee,
Micmac,
Melisceet,
Etchemin,
Abnaki.
Mohegan,
Massachusetts,
Shawnee,
Minsi, }
Unami, }
Unalachtigo,}
Nanticoke,
Powhatan,
Pampticoke.
Blackfoot,
Gros Ventre,
Sheyenne.
Granting, as we must, some common geographical centre for these many
dialects, the question where this was located becomes an interesting
one.
More than one attempt to answer it has been made. Mr. Lewis H. Morgan
thought there was evidence to show that the valley of the Columbia
river, Oregon, "was the initial point from which the Algonkin stock
emigrated to the great lake region and thence to the Atlantic
coast."[1] This is in direct conflict with the evidence of language,
as the Blackfoot or Satsika is the most corrupt and altered of the
Algonkin dialects. Basing his argument on this evidence, Mr. Horatio
Hale reaches a conclusion precisely the reverse of that of Morgan. "The
course of migration of the Indian tribes," writes Mr. Hale, "has been
from the Atlantic coast westward and southward. The traditions of the
Algonkins seem to point to Hudson's Bay and the coast of Labrador."[2]
This latter view is certainly that which accords best with the
testimony of language and of history.
We know that both Chipeways and Crees have been steadily pressing
westward since their country was first explored, driving before them
the Blackfeet and Dakotas.[3]
The Cree language is built up on a few simple, unchangeable radicals
and elementary words, denoting being, relation, energy, etc.; it
has extreme regularity of construction, a single negative, is
almost wholly verbal and markedly incorporative, has its grammatical
elements better defined than its neighbors, and a more consistent
phonetic system.[4] For these and similar reasons we are justified
in considering it the nearest representative we possess of the
pristine Algonkin tongue, and unless strong grounds to the contrary
are advanced, it is proper to assume that the purest dialect is found
nearest the primeval home of the stock.
§2. _The Iroquois Stock_.
Surrounded on all sides by the Algonkins were the _Iroquois_, once
called the Five or Six Nations. When first discovered they were on the
St. Lawrence, near Montreal, and in the Lake Region of Central New
York. Various other, tribes, not in their confederacy, and generally
at war with them, spoke dialects of the same language. Such were the
Hurons or Wyandots, between the Georgian Bay and Lake Erie, the Neutral
Nation on the Niagara river, the Eries on the southern shore of the
lake of that name, the Nottoways in Virginia, and the Tuscaroras in
North Carolina. The Cherokees, found by the whites in East Tennessee,
but whose national legend, carefully preserved for generations, located
them originally on the head waters of the Ohio, were a remote offshoot
of this same stem.
_The Susquehannocks_.
The valley of the Susquehanna river was occupied by a tribe of Iroquois
lineage and language, known as the _Susquehannocks, Conestogas_ and
_Andastes_. The last name is Iroquois, from _andasta_, a cabin pole.
By some, "Susquehannock" has also been explained as an Iroquois word,
but its form is certainly Algonkin. The terminal _k_ is the place-sign,
_hanna_ denotes a flowing stream, while the adjectival prefix has been
identified by Heckewelder with _schachage_, straight, from the direct
course of the river near its mouth, and by Mr. Guss with _woski_, new,
which, he thinks, referred to fresh or spring water.
Of these the former will appear the preferable, if we allow for the
softening of the gutturals, which was a phonetic trait of the Unami
dialect of the Lenape.
The Susquehannocks were always at deadly feud with the Iroquois,
and between wars, the smallpox and the whites, they were finally
exterminated. The particulars of their short and sad history have
been presented with his characteristic thoroughness by Dr. John G.
Shea,[5] and later by Prof. N. L. Guss.[6] They were usually called
by the Delawares _Mengwe_, which was the term they applied to all
the Iroquois-speaking tribes.[7] The English corrupted it to Minqua
and Mingo, and as the eastern trail of the Susquehannocks lay up the
Conestoga Creek, and down the Christina, both those streams were called
"Mingo Creek" by the early settlers.
It is important for the ethnology of Pennsylvania, to understand that
at the time of the first settlement the whole of the Susquehanna
Valley, from the Chesapeake to the New York lakes, was owned and
controlled by Iroquois-speaking tribes. A different and erroneous
opinion was expressed by Heckewelder, and has been generally received.
He speaks of the Lenape Minsi as occupying the head waters of the
Susquehanna. This was not so in the historic period.
The claims of the Susquehannocks extended down the Chesapeake Bay on
the east shore, as far as the Choptank River, and on the west shore as
far as the Patuxent. In 1654 they ceded to the government of Maryland
their southern territory to these boundaries.[8] The first English
explorers met them on the Potomac, about the Falls, and the Pascatoways
were deserting their villages and fleeing before them, when, in 1634,
Calvert founded his colony at St. Mary's.
Their subjection to the Five Nations took place about 1680, and
it was through the rights obtained by this conquest that, at the
treaty of Lancaster, 1744, Canassatego, the Onondaga speaker for the
Nation, claimed pay from the government of Maryland for the lands
on the Potomac, or, as that river was called in his tongue, the
_Cohongorontas_.
_The Hurons._
The Hurons, Wyandots, or Wendats, were another Iroquois people, who
seem, at some remote epoch, to have come into contact with the Lenape.
The latter called them _Delamattenos_[9] and claimed to have driven
them out of a portion of their possessions. A Chipeway tradition also
states that the Hurons were driven north from the lake shores by
Algonkin tribes.[10] We know, from the early accounts of the Jesuits,
that there was commercial intercourse between them and the tribes
south of the lakes, the materials of trade being principally fish and
corn.[11] The Jesuit _Relations_ of 1648 contain quite a full account
of a Huron convert who, in that year, visited the Lenape on the
Delaware River, and had an interview with the Swedish Governor, whom he
took to task for neglecting the morals of his men.
_The Cherokees._
The Cherokees were called by the Delawares _Kittuwa_ (_Kuttoowauw_, in
the spelling of the native Aupaumut). This word I suppose to be derived
from the prefix, _kit_, great, and the root _tawa_ (Cree, _yette_,
_tawa_), to open, whence tawatawik, an open, _i.e._, uninhabited place,
a wilderness (Zeisberger).
The designation is geographical. According to the tradition of the
Cherokees, they once lived (probably about the fourteenth century)
in the Ohio Valley, and claimed to have been the constructors of the
Grave Creek and other earthworks there.[12] Some support is given to
this claim by the recent linguistic investigations of Mr. Horatio
Hale,[13] and the archaeological researches of Prof. Cyrus Thomas.[14]
They were driven southward by their warlike neighbors, locating their
council fire first near Monticello, Va., and the main body reaching
East Tennessee about the close of the fifteenth century. As late as
1730 some of them continued to live east of the Alleghanies, while, on
the other hand, it is evident, from the proper names preserved by the
chroniclers of De Soto's expedition (1542), that at that period others
held the mountains of Northern Georgia. To the Delawares they remained
_kit-tawa-wi_, inhabitants of the great wilderness of Southern Ohio and
Kentucky.
Delaware traditions distinctly recalled the period when portions of the
Cherokees were on the Ohio, and recounted long wars with them.[15] When
the Lenape assumed the office of peacemaker, this feud ceased, and
was not renewed until the general turmoil of the French-Indian wars,
1750-60. After this closed, in 1768, the Cherokees sought and effected
a renewal of their peaceful relations with the Delawares, and in 1779
they even sent a deputation of "condolence" to their "grandfather," the
Lenape, on the death of the head chief, White Eyes.[16]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Lewis H. Morgan, _Indian Migrations_, in Beach's _Indian Miscellany_,
p. 218.
[2] H. Hale, _Indian Migrations as Evidenced by Language_, p. 24.
(Chicago, 1883.)
[3] See the R. P. A. Lacombe _Dictionnaire de la Langue des Cris.
Introd._, p. xi. (Montreal, 1874.)
[4] See Joseph Howse, _A grammar of the Cree Language_, p. 13, et al.
(London, 1842)
[5] In a note to Mr. Gowan's edition of George Alsop's _Province
of Maryland_, pp. 117-121 (New York, 1869); also, in 1858, in an
article "On the Identity of the Adastas, Minquas, Susquehannocks, and
Conestogas," in the _Amer. Hist. Mag._, Vol. II, p. 294.
[6] _Early Indian History on the Susquehanna_, p. 31.
(Harrisburg, 1883).
[7] _Megnwe_ is the Onondaga _yenkwe_, males, or men, _viri_, and was
borrowed from that dialect by the Delawares, as a general term. Bishop
Ettwein states that the Iroquois called the Delawares, Mohegans, and
all the New England Indians _Agozhagduta_.
[8] Bozman, _History of Maryland_, Vol. I, p. 167.
[9] Heckewelder, _History of the Indian Nations_, p. 80.
[10] Peter Jones, _History of the Ojibway Nation_, p. 32.
[11] _Relation da Jesuites_, 1637, p. 154. The Hurons, at that time,
are stated to have had reliable traditions running back more than two
hundred years. _Relation de 1639_, p. 50.
[12] "The Cherokees had an oration, in which was contained the history
of their migrations, which was lengthy." This tradition related "that
they came from the upper part of the Ohio, where they erected the
mounds on Grave Creek, and that they removed hither [to East Tennessee]
from the country where Monticello is situated." This memory of their
migrations was preserved and handed down by official orators, who
repeated it annually, in public, at the national festival of the green
corn dance. J. Haywood, _Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee_,
pp. 224-237. (Nashville, 1823.) Haywood adds: "It is now nearly
forgotten." I have made vain attempts to recover some fragments of it
from the present residents of the Cherokee Nation.
[13] _Indian Migrations as Evidenced by Language_, p. 22.
[14] Prof. Thomas has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the Cherokees
were mound builders within the historic period.
[15] Loskiel, _Geschichte der Mission_, etc., p. 160; Heckewelder,
_History of the Indian Nations_, p. 54. Bishop Ettwein states that the
last Cherokees were driven from the upper Ohio river about 1700-10. His
essay on the "Traditions and Languages of the Indian Nations," written
for General Washington, in 1788, was first published in the _Bulletin
of the Pa. Hist. Soc._, 1844.
[16] Heckewelder, _Indian Nations_, pp. 88, 327. Mr. H. Hale, in _The
Iroquois Book of Rites_, has fully explained the meaning and importance
of the custom of "condolence." The Stockbridge Indian, Aupaumut, in
his Journal, writes of the Delawares, that when they lose a relative,
"according to ancient custom, long as they are not comforted, they are
not to speak in public, and this ceremonie of comforting each other is
highly esteemed among these nations." _Narrative of Hendrick Aupaumut_,
in _Mems. Hist. Soc. Pa._, Vol. II, p. 99.