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
Further, in support of his theory, he gives an Indian tradition of a
great monster known as the Big Buffalo, and obtained, he says, from a
Delaware chief by one of the governors of Virginia during the American
Revolution. Nothing has seemed more interesting in a study of the
carvings on the Lenape Stone than the remarkable similarity between
this tradition of the Lenni Lenape or Delawares and the carvings on
this relic, discovered in the middle of their ancient territory. The
chief, as the account runs, being asked as to the bones at the Big-Bone
Licks in Kentucky, says that it was a tradition handed down from his
fathers that "in ancient times a herd of these tremendous animals came
to the Big-Bone Licks and began a universal destruction of the bear,
deer, elks, buffaloes, and other animals which had been created for the
use of the Indians. That the Great Man above, looking down and seeing
this, was so enraged that he seized his lightning, descended on the
earth, seated himself on a neighboring mountain, on a rock on which his
seat and the print of his feet are still to be seen, and hurled his
bolts among them till the whole were slaughtered except the big bull,
who, presenting his forehead to the shafts, shook them off as they
fell; but missing one at length, it wounded him in the side, whereon,
springing around, he bounded over the Ohio, over the Wabache, the
Illinois, and finally over the great lakes, where he is still living at
this day."
Making due allowance for translation, and a reasonable amount of
garbling, the points of similarity between the carving and the
tradition--the great man above (the sun) looking down, the lightning,
and the big bull presenting his forehead to the shafts, and at length
wounded in the side--are very striking; and if we compare the curious
circle enclosing a dot, on the inclined foreground to the right,
with the "neighboring mountain," and the footprint on the rock of
the tradition, the correspondence seems again too unusual for mere
coincidence. On the other hand, the tradition says nothing of warriors
or wigwams, or of planets, moon, and stars, yet these differences may
naturally be accounted for if we suppose the stone older than the
tradition, and that in the latter the local and matter-of-fact elements
of time, place, and human agency would have been the first to fade away
as time went on. But this is not the only Indian tradition of a great
monster--presumably the mammoth--which has been preserved to us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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