The Lenâpé and their Legends. Rafinesque Constantine Samuel

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      There was a remarkable series of hieroglyphics, some eighty in number, on a rock at Safe Harbor, on the Susquehanna. They have been photographed and described by Prof. T. C. Porter, of Lancaster, but have yet to be carefully analyzed.[102] From its location, it was probably the work of the Susquehannocks, and did not belong to the general system of Algonkin pictography.

      If the rude drawings appended to the early treatises as signatures of native sachems be taken as a guide, little or no uniformity prevailed in the personal signs. The same chieftain would, on various occasions, employ symbols differing so widely that they have no visible relation.[103]

      An interesting incident is recorded by Friend John Richardson when on a visit to William Penn, at his manor of Pennsburg, in 1701. Penn asked the Indian interpreter to give him some idea of what the native notion of God was. The interpreter, at a loss for words, had recourse to picture writing, and describing a number of circles, one inside the other, he pointed to the centre of the innermost and smallest one, and there, "placed, as he said, by way of representation, the Great Man."[104] The explanation was striking and suggestive, and hints at the meaning of the not infrequent symbol of the concentric circles.

      An alleged piece of Delaware pictography is copied by Schoolcraft[105] from the London Archæologia, Vol. IV. It purports to be an inscription found on the Muskingum river in 1780, and the interpretation is said to have been supplied by the celebrated Delaware chief, Captain White Eyes (Coquethagechton). As interpreted, it relates to massacres of the whites by the Delaware chief, Wingenund, in the border war of 1763.

      There is a tissue of errors here. The pictograph, "drawn with charcoal and oil on a tree," must have been quite recent, and is not likely to have referred to events seventeen years antecedent. There is no evidence that Wingenund took part in Pontiac's conspiracy, and he was the consistent friend of the whites.[106] Several of the characters are not like Indian pictographs. And finally, White Eyes, the alleged interpreter in 1780, had died at Tuscarawas, two years before, Nov. 10th, 1778![107]

Record Sticks

      The Algonkin nations very generally preserved their myths, their chronicles, and the memory of events, speeches, etc., by means of marked sticks. As early as 1646, the Jesuit missionaries in Canada made use of these to teach their converts the prayers of the Church and their sermons.[108]

      The name applied to these record or tally sticks was, among the Crees and Chipeways, massinahigan, which is the common word now for book, but which originally meant "a piece of wood marked with fire," from the verb masinákisan, I imprint a mark upon it with fire, I burn a mark upon it,[109] thus indicating the rude beginning of a system of mnemonic aids. The Lenape words for book, malackhickan, Camp., mamalekhican Zeis., were probably from the same root.

      In later days, instead of burning the marks upon the sticks, they were painted, the colors as well as the figures having certain conventional meanings.[110]

      These sticks are described as about six inches in length, slender, though varying in shape, and tied up in bundles.[111] Such bundles are mentioned by the interpreter Conrad Weiser, as in use in 1748 when he was on his embassy in the Indian country.[112] The expression, "we tied up in bundles," is translated by Mr. Heckewelder, olumapisid, and a head chief of the Lenape, usually called Olomipees, was thus named, apparently as preserver of such records.[113] I shall return on a later page to the precise meaning of this term.

      The word signifying to paint was walamén, which does not appear in western dialects, but is found precisely the same in the Abnaki, where it is given by Rasles, 8ramann[114], which, transliterated into Delaware (where the l is substituted for the r), would be w'lam'an. From this word came Wallamünk, the name applied by the natives to a tract in New Castle county, Delaware, since at that locality they procured supplies of colored earth, which they employed in painting. It means "the place of paint."[115]

      Roger Williams, describing the New England Indians, speaks of "Wunnam, their red painting, which they most delight in, and is both the Barke of the Fine, as also a red Earth."[116]

      The word is derived from Narr. wunne, Del. wulit, Chip. gwanatsch = beautiful, handsome, good, pretty, etc.

      The Indian who had artistically bedaubed his skin with red, ochreous clay, was esteemed In full dress, and delightful to look upon. Hence the term wulit, fine, pretty, came to be applied to the paint itself.

      The custom of using such sticks, painted or notched, was by no means peculiar to the Delawares. They were familiar to the Iroquois, and the early travelers found them in common employment among the southern tribes.[117]

      As the art advanced, in place of simple sticks, painted or notched, wooden tablets came into use, on which the symbols were scratched or engraved with a sharp flint or knife. Such are those still in use among the Chipeway, described by Dr. James as "rude pictures carved on a flat piece of wood;"[118] by the native Copway, as "board plates;"[119] and more precisely by Mr. Schoolcraft, as "a tabular piece of wood, covered on both sides with a series of devices cut between parallel lines."[120]

      The Chipeway terms applied to these devices or symbols are, according to Mr. Schoolcraft, kekeewin, for those in ordinary and common use, and kekeenowin, for those connected with the mysteries, the "meda worship" and the "great medicine." Both words are evidently from a radical signifying a mark or sign, appearing in the words given in Baraga's "Otchipwe Dictionary," kikinawadjiton, I mark it, I put a certain mark on it, and kikinoamawa, I teach, instruct him.

Moral and Mental Character

      The character of the Delawares was estimated very differently, even by those who had the best opportunities of judging. The missionaries are severe upon them. Brainerd described them as "unspeakably indolent and slothful. They have little or no ambition or resolution; not one in a thousand of them that has the spirit of a man."[121] No more favorable was the opinion of Zeisberger. He speaks of their alleged bravery with the utmost contempt, and morally he puts them down as "the most ordinary and the vilest of savages."[122]

      Perhaps these worthy missionaries measured them by the standard of the Christian ideal, by which, alas, we all fall wofully short.

      Certainly, other competent observers report much more cheerfully. One of the first explorers of the Delaware, Captain Thomas Young (1634), describes them as "very well proportioned, well featured, gentle, tractable and docile."[123]

      Of their domestic affections, Mr. Heckewelder writes: "I do not believe that there are any people on earth who are more attached to their relatives and offspring than these Indians are."[124]

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