Indians of North America -- Ohio; Mounds -- Ohio; Ohio -- Antiquities
The Lenni Lenape (according to the tradition handed down to them
by their ancestors) resided many hundred years ago in a very
distant country in the western part of the American continent. For
some reason which I do not find accounted for, they determined on
migrating to the eastward, and accordingly set out together in a
body. After a very long journey and many nights' encampments
[Footnote: "Many Nights' encampment" is a halt of one year at a
place.] by the way, they at length arrived on the Namaesi-Sipu,
[Footnote: The Mississippi or The River of Fish; Namaes, a fish,
and Sipu a river.] where they fell in with the Mengwe, [Footnote:
The Iroquois, or Five Nations.] who had likewise emigrated from a
distant country, and had struck upon this river somewhat higher
up. Their object was the same with that of the Delawares; they
were proceeding on to the eastward, until they should find a
country that pleased them. The spies which the Lenape had sent
forward for the purpose of reconnoitring, had long before their
arrival discovered that the country east of the Mississippi was
inhabited by a very powerful nation who had many large towns built
on the great rivers flowing through their land. Those people (as I
was told) called themselves Talligew or Tallgewi. Many wonderful
things are told of this famous people. They are said to have been
remarkably tall and stout, and there is a tradition that there
were giants among them, people of a much larger size than the
tallest of the Lenape. It is related that they had built to
themselves regular fortifications or intrenchments, from whence
they would sally out, but were generally repulsed. I have seen
many of the fortifications said to have been built by them, two of
which, in particular, were remarkable. One of them was near the
mouth of the river Huron, which empties itself into the Lake St.
Clair, on the north side of that lake, at the distance of about 20
miles northeast of Detroit. This spot of ground was, in the year
1776, owned and occupied by a Mr. Tucker. The other works,
properly intrenchments, being walls or banks of earth regularly
thrown up, with a deep ditch on the outside, were on the Huron
River, east of the Sandusky, about six or eight miles from Lake
Erie. Outside of the gateway of each of these two intrenchments,
which lay within a mile of each other, were a number of large flat
mounds in which, the Indian pilot said, were buried hundreds of
the slain Talligewi, whom I shall hereafter, with Colonel Gibson,
call Alligewi. Of these intrenchments Mr. Abraham Steiner, who was
with me at the time when I saw them, gave a very accurate
description, which was published at Philadelphia in 1789 or 1790,
in some periodical work the name of which I can not at present
remember.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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