The Reverend Mr. Beatty, in his mission from New York in 1766, to the western Indians, received from a person whom he credited, the following tradition, which he had from some old men among the Delaware tribe: That of old time their people were divided by a river, and one part tarried behind; that they knew not for a certainty how they first came to this continent, but gave this account: that a king of their nation, when they formerly lived far to the west, left his kingdom to his two sons; that the one son making war upon the other, the latter thereupon determined to depart, and seek some new habitation; accordingly he set out accompanied by a number of people, and after wandering to and fro for the space of forty years, they at length came to the Delaware where they settled three hundred and seventy years before, that is, before 1766, which goes back to 1396. The way they kept account of this was by putting a black bead of wampum every year on a belt which they used for that purpose. Rafinesque gives a list of Lenape Kings and says their annals tell of Wolomenap (Hollow Man), the 77th, and that he was king at the falls of the Delaware (Trenton); the first one there, according to the legend. The earliest white travelers in this part of the country looked upon the natives as simply savages and little different from the wild beasts about them, and did not trouble themselves to study their institutions or traditions, and that has been done in comparatively recent times. The Indians found here by the first explorers and travelers were splendid physical specimens, well built and strong, with broad shoulders and small waists, dark eyes, white teeth, coarse black hair, of which the men left but a single tuft on the top of the head to accommodate an enemy’s scalping knife. There were few that were crippled or deformed. History tells us of at least one Indian who was not straight,--of stature, I mean,--and that was Billy Bowlegs, a Seminole chief, who fought in the Florida wars. But he was not a Jersey Indian. The Indians had a habit of anointing their bodies with oil and the fat of beasts and fishes which they claimed protected their skins from the fierce rays of the summer sun and the penetrating cold of winter. As they lived mainly by hunting and fishing, their habitations, which were called “wigwams,” were temporary structures which could easily be removed when occasion required. They generally slept on skin or leaves spread on the bare ground, and some had crude board floors, which inspired Roger Williams to indict these lines: “God gives them sleep on ground or straw, On sedge mats or on board, When English beds of softest down Sometimes no sleep afford.”