The Lenâpé and Their Legends: With the complete text and symbols of the Walam olum, a new translation, and an inquiry into its authenticityBrinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
History
The Lenâpé and Their Legends: With the complete text and symbols of the Walam olum, a new translation, and an inquiry into its authenticity
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Delaware Indians; Delaware language -- Texts; Picture-writing, Indian
Our knowledge of it is limited to a few vocabularies. The earliest
was taken down by Captain John Smith, during his exploration of the
Chesapeake. The most valuable is one obtained by Mr. William Vans
Murray, in 1792, from the remnant in Maryland. It is in the library of
the American Philosophical Society, and has never been correctly or
completely printed.
The Nanticokes broke up early. Between the steady encroachments of the
whites and the attacks of the Iroquois they found themselves between
the upper and the nether millstones.
According to their own statement to Governor Evans, at a conference
in 1707, they had at that time been tributary to the latter for
twenty-seven years, _i.e._, since 1680. Their last head chief, or
"crowned king," Winicaco, died about 1720. A few years after this
occurrence bands of them began to remove to Pennsylvania, and at the
middle of the century were living at the mouth of the Juniata, under
the immediate control of the Iroquois. Thence they removed to Wyoming,
and in 1753, "in a fleet of twenty-five canoes," to the Iroquois lands
in western New York. Others of their nation were brought there by the
Iroquois in 1767; but by the close of the century only five families
survived in that region.[26]
A small band called the _Wiwash_ remained on Goose creek, Dorchester
county, Maryland, to the same date.
_The Conoys._
The fourth member of the Wapanachki was that nation variously called in
the old records _Conoys_, _Ganawese_ or _Canaways_, the proper form of
which Mr. Heckewelder states to be _Canai_.[27]
Considerable obscurity has rested on the early location and affiliation
of this people. Mr. Heckewelder vaguely places them "at a distance
on the Potomac," and supposes them to have been the Kanawhas of West
Virginia.[28] This is a loose guess. They were, in fact, none other
than the Piscataways of Southern Maryland, who occupied the area
between Chesapeake Bay and the lower Potomac, about St. Mary's, and
along the Piscataway creek and Patuxent river.
Proof of this is furnished by the speech of their venerable head chief,
"Old Sack," at a conference in Philadelphia in 1743.[29] His words
were: "Our forefathers came from Piscatua to an island in Potowmeck;
and from thence down to Philadelphia, in old Proprietor Penn's time,
to show their friendship to the Proprietor. After their return they
brought down all their brothers from Potowmeck to Conejoholo, on the
east side Sasquehannah, and built a town there."
This interesting identification shows that they were the people whom
Captain John Smith found (1608) in numerous villages along the Patuxent
and the left bank of the lower Potomac. The local names show them to
have been of Algonkin stock and akin to the Nanticokes.
Conoy, Ganawese, Kanawha, are all various spellings of a derivative
from an Algonkin root, meaning "it is long" (Del. _guneu_, long, Cree
_kinowaw_, it is long,) and is found applied to various streams in
Algonkin territory.[30]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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