The Lenâpé and their Legends. Rafinesque Constantine Samuel

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СКАЧАТЬ and its branches, including the Minsi or Monseys, among the mountains, the Nanticokes, between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic, and the small tribe called Canai, Kanawhas or Ganawese, whose towns were on tributaries of the Potomac and Patuxent.

      That all these were united in some sort of an alliance, with the Delawares at its head, is not only proved by the traditions of this tribe itself, but by the distinct assertion of the Mohegans and others, and by events within historical times, as the reunion of the Nanticokes, New Jersey and Eastern Indians with the Delawares as with the parent stem.[17]

The Mohegans

      The Mohegans, Mo-hé-kun-ne-uk, dwelt on the tide-waters of the Hudson, and from this their name was derived. Dr. Trumbull, indeed, following Schoolcraft, thinks that they "took their tribal name from maingan, a wolf, and Moheganick = Chip. maniganikan, 'country of wolves.'"[18] They, themselves, however, translate it, "seaside people," or more fully, "people of the great waters which are constantly ebbing or flowing."[19] The compound is machaak, great, hickan, tide ("ebbing tide," Zeis; "tide of flood," Campanius) and ik, animate plural termination.

      The Mohegans on the Hudson are said to have been divided into three phratries, the Bear, the Wolf and the Turtle, of whom the Bear had the primacy.[20] Mr. Morgan, however, who examined, in 1860, the representatives of the nation in Kansas,[21] discovered that they had precisely the same phratries as the Delawares, that is the Wolf, the Turtle, and the Turkey, each subdivided into three or four gentes. He justly observes that this "proves their immediate connection with the Delawares and Munsees by descent," and thus renders their myths and traditions of the more import in the present study.

      Linguistically, the Mohegans were more closely allied to the tribes of New England than to those of the Delaware Valley. Evidently, most of the tribes of Massachusetts and Connecticut were comparatively recent offshoots of the parent stem on the Hudson, supposing the course of migration had been eastward.

      In some of his unpublished notes Mr. Heckewelder identifies the Wampanos, who lived in Connecticut, along the shore of Long Island Sound, and whose council fire was where New Haven now stands, as Mohegans, while the Wapings or Opings of the Northern Jersey shore were a mixed clan derived from intermarriages between Mohegans and Monseys.[22]

The Nanticokes

      The Nanticokes occupied the territory between Chesapeake Bay and the ocean, except its southern extremity, which appears to have been under the control of the Powhatan tribe of Virginia.

      The derivation of Nanticoke is from the Delaware Unéchtgo, "tide-water people," and is merely another form of Unalachtgo, the name of one of the Lenape sub-tribes. In both cases it is a mere geographical term, and not a national eponym.

      In the records of the treaty at Fort Johnston, 1757, the Nanticokes are also named Tiawco. This is their Mohegan name, Otayãchgo, which means "bridge people," or bridge makers, the reference being to the skill with which the Nanticokes could fasten floating logs together to construct a bridge across a stream. In the Delaware dialect this was Tawachguáno, from taiachquoan, a bridge. The latter enables us to identify the Tockwhoghs, whom Captain John Smith met on the Chesapeake, in 1608, with the Nanticokes. The Kuscarawocks, whom he also visited, have been conclusively shown by Mr. Bozman[23] to have been also Nanticokes.

      By ancient traditions, they looked up to the Lenape as their "grandfather," and considered the Mohegans their "brethren."[24] That is, they were, as occasion required, attached to the same confederacy.

      In manners and customs they differed little from their northern relatives. The only peculiarity in this respect which is noted of them was the extravagant consideration they bestowed on the bones of the dead. The corpse was buried for some months, then exhumed and the bones carefully cleaned and placed in an ossuary called man-to-kump (= manito, with the locative termination, place of the mystery or spirit).

      When they removed from one place to another these bones were carried with them. Even those who migrated to northern Pennsylvania, about the middle of the last century, piously brought along these venerable relics, and finally interred them near the present site of Towanda, whence its name, Tawundeunk, "where we bury our dead."[25]

      Their dialect varied considerably from the Delaware; of which it is clearly a deteriorated form. It is characterized by abbreviated words and strongly expirated accents, as tah! quah! quak! su, short; quah! nah! qut, long.

      Our knowledge of it is limited to a few vocabularies. The earliest was taken down by Captain John Smith, during his exploration of the Chesapeake. The most valuable is one obtained by Mr. William Vans Murray, in 1792, from the remnant in Maryland. It is in the library of the American Philosophical Society, and has never been correctly or completely printed.

      The Nanticokes broke up early. Between the steady encroachments of the whites and the attacks of the Iroquois they found themselves between the upper and the nether millstones.

      According to their own statement to Governor Evans, at a conference in 1707, they had at that time been tributary to the latter for twenty-seven years, i. e., since 1680. Their last head chief, or "crowned king," Winicaco, died about 1720. A few years after this occurrence bands of them began to remove to Pennsylvania, and at the middle of the century were living at the mouth of the Juniata, under the immediate control of the Iroquois. Thence they removed to Wyoming, and in 1753, "in a fleet of twenty-five canoes," to the Iroquois lands in western New York. Others of their nation were brought there by the Iroquois in 1767; but by the close of the century only five families survived in that region.[26]

      A small band called the Wiwash remained on Goose creek, Dorchester county, Maryland, to the same date.

The Conoys

      The fourth member of the Wapanachki was that nation variously called in the old records Conoys, Ganawese or Canaways, the proper form of which Mr. Heckewelder states to be Canai.[27]

      Considerable obscurity has rested on the early location and affiliation of this people. Mr. Heckewelder vaguely places them "at a distance on the Potomac," and supposes them to have been the Kanawhas of West Virginia.[28] This is a loose guess. They were, in fact, none other than the Piscataways of Southern Maryland, who occupied the area between Chesapeake Bay and the lower Potomac, about St. Mary's, and along the Piscataway creek and Patuxent river.

      Proof of this is furnished by the speech of their venerable head chief, "Old Sack," at a conference in Philadelphia in 1743.[29] His words were: "Our forefathers came from Piscatua to an island in Potowmeck; and from thence down to Philadelphia, in old Proprietor Penn's time, to show their friendship to the Proprietor. After their return they brought down all their brothers from Potowmeck to Conejoholo, on the east side Sasquehannah, and built a town there."

      This interesting identification shows that they were the people whom Captain John Smith found (1608) in numerous villages along the Patuxent and the left bank of the lower Potomac. The local names show them to have been of Algonkin stock and akin to the Nanticokes.

      Conoy, Ganawese, Kanawha, are all various spellings of a derivative from an Algonkin root, meaning "it is long" (Del. guneu, СКАЧАТЬ