The Lenape Stone; or, The Indian and the MammothMercer, Henry C.
History
The Lenape Stone; or, The Indian and the Mammoth
Mercer, Henry C.
Delaware Indians; Mammoths; Picture-writing, Indian
Far more interesting than Heckewelder's account, is a full version of
the great national song of the Lenape as they sung it in their own
language, with an English translation, and with all the pictographic
devices used to jog the memory of the singer. He may well have needed
them, as the whole song consists of two hundred and two verses.
It was first published in 1836 by the eccentric French-American
philosopher, Rafinesque, in an extravagant work by him entitled "The
American Nations," and is known as the Wallum Olum (literally, painted
sticks), or pictographic traditions of the Lenni Lenape. It contains
the Delaware account of the creation, a deluge, the early migrations
and entire history of the tribe, and one hundred and eighty-four
mnemonic symbols painted upon tablets of wood. "It was obtained" says
Rafinesque, "about 1822,--the symbols from a Dr. Ward of Indiana, who
had received them as a reward for a medical cure from the Delawares,
at Wahapani or White River, in 1820, and the verses from another
individual."
Mr. E. G. Squier, who considered the internal evidence furnished by the
songs sufficiently strong to settle their authenticity, submitted the
manuscript copy of the songs and pictographs in the hand of Rafinesque,
who it appears had never owned the original "painted sticks," to George
Copway, the Chippewa chief, who unhesitatingly, he says, pronounced it
authentic. This manuscript, together with the pictographs, of which
Rafinesque had published none, and Squier but forty, was considered
hopelessly lost until its fortunate discovery a few weeks ago by Dr.
Brinton, by whom it will shortly be published with a new translation.
Passing over its account of the creation and deluge, the narrative goes
on to describe the passage by the Lenape of a large body of water on
the ice (Behring's Straits, says Rafinesque), and their settlement at a
place called _Shinaki_, or the "Land of Firs."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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