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
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.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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