The Lenape Stone; or, The Indian and the Mammoth — John Shaqi
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
The symbols appended to the songs, and among which the forms of the
rectangle and circle frequently occur, end with the fifth song;
they appear very arbitrary, and it is certainly disappointing to
find that they bear no resemblance to the carvings upon the Lenape
stone, likewise, as we have supposed, productions of the Lenni Lenape
and dealing with the same subject. Yet we need not be surprised
when we consider the varied and often arbitrary methods of Indian
picture-writing.
In comparing the carvings on the reverse of the Lenape stone with the
Lenape and Huron-Iroquois traditions of their early migration and
struggle with the mound-builders, we have spoken only of probabilities.
Possibly these carvings may refer to the incantations of the prophets
and doctors, to songs for "medicine hunting," or charms against evil
spirits, and not to the history of the tribe, as recounted in the
Wallum Olum and the narratives of Heckewelder and Cusic. Possibly,
too, the modern Indians who have seen the carvings may have entirely
mistaken their subject, as similar signs are used in quite different
kinds of their picture-writing. Yet if we view the chief feature of
the Lenape stone--the mammoth picture--as an example of muzzinabik
or historical picture-writing, an attempt to explain the carvings on
the reverse of the stone as specimens of the same class of writings
does not seem extravagant. Viewed in the light of these legends, and
compared with the fragments of ancient Indian history which chance has
preserved to us, the carvings upon the Lenape stone vividly impress
upon our minds the reality of that dark period of our continent's past,
antecedent to the first coming of the white man, separated from us by
but a few centuries, yet where the boundary line between history and
geology becomes indistinct, when for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
years the Indian lived alone on the "great island," and while those
deep-rooted peculiarities of his character, which civilization has
failed to eradicate, were slowly growing out of his wilderness life.
The ancient presence of the Lenape is often remembered in the heart
of his former dominions. Along the shores of the beautiful river,
whose transatlantic name, applied also to his tribe, he resented, the
arrow-head and tomahawk, everywhere found upon sites of ancient camps
and fishing-grounds, tell of the long centuries of his possession. His
memory lingers in the name and poetry of our Indian summer; and in that
most delightful of autumnal seasons, when a warm wind blowing from the
abode of the Great Spirit stirs the fields of ripened maize, we may
see, where first the Indian's fancy must have seen it, a suggestion of
his head-dress of feathers in the graceful motion of the corn-stalks.
He is immortalized in richly melodious names of rivers, streams, and
mountains, and his memory is forever recalled in the yearly growth of
that noblest of American plants, the Indian corn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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