The Study of Lenâpé and Their Mythology. Daniel G. Brinton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ who speaks of White, the writer adds: "The difficulty of the language is so great that none of us can yet converse with the Indians without an interpreter."[34]

      That it was an Algonkin dialect, closely akin to the Nanticoke, is clear from the words and proper names preserved in the early records and locally to this day. The only word which has created doubts has been the name of "a certain imaginary spirit called Ochre."[35] It has been supposed that this was the Huron oki. But it is pure Algonkin. It is the Cree oki-sikow (être du ciel, ange, Lacombe), the Abnaki ooskoo (katini ooskoo, Bon Esprit, matsini ooskoo, Mauvais Esprit, Rasles).

      It was nearly allied to that spoken in Virginia among Powhatan's subjects, as an English boy who had lived with that chieftain served as an interpreter between the settlers and the Patuxent and neighboring Indians.[36]

      The Conoys were removed, before 1743, from Conejoholo to Conoy town, further up the Susquehanna, and in 1744 they joined several other fragmentary bands at Shamokin (where Sunbury, Pa., now stands). Later, they became merged with the Nanticokes.[37]

The Shawnees.

       Table of Contents

      The wanderings of the unstable and migratory Shawnees have occupied the attention of several writers, but it cannot be said that either their history or their affiliations have been satisfactorily worked out.[38]

      Their dialect is more akin to the Mohegan than to the Delaware, and when, in 1692, they first appeared in the area of the Eastern Algonkin Confederacy, they came as the friends and relatives of the former.[39]

      They were divided into four bands, as follows:—

      1. Piqua, properly Pikoweu, "he comes from the ashes."

      2. Mequachake, "a fat man filled," signifying completion or perfection. This band held the privilege of the hereditary priesthood.

      3. Kiscapocoke.

      4. Chilicothe.[40]

      Of these, that which settled in Pennsylvania was the Pikoweu, who occupied and gave their name to the Pequa valley in Lancaster county.[41]

      According to ancient Mohegan tradition, the New England Pequods were members of this band. These moved eastwardly from the Hudson river, and extended their conquests over the greater part of the area of Connecticut. Dr. Trumbull, however,[42] assigns a different meaning to their name, and a more appropriate one—Peguitóog, the Destroyers. Some countenance is given to the tradition by the similarity of the Shawnee to the Mohegan, standing, as it does, more closely related to it than to the Unami Delaware.

      It has been argued that a band of the Shawnees lived in Southern New Jersey when that territory first came to the knowledge of the whites. On a Dutch map, drawn in 1614 or thereabouts, a tribe called Saw wanew is located on the left bank of the Delaware river, near the Bay;[43] and DeLaet speaks of the Sawanoos as living there.

      I am inclined to believe that, in both these cases, the term was used by the natives around New York Bay in its simple geographical sense of "south" or "southern," and not as a tribal designation. It frequently appears with this original meaning in the Waluam Olum.

The Sapoonees.

       Table of Contents

      A tribe called the Sapoonees, or Saponies, is mentioned as living in Pennsylvania, attached to the Delawares, about the middle of the last century.[44]

      They are no doubt the Saponas who once dwelt on a branch of the Great Pedee river in North Carolina, and who moved north about the year 1720.[45]

      They were said to have joined the Tuscaroras, but the Pennsylvania records class them with the Delawares. Others, impressed by the similarity of Sa-po-nees to Pa-nis, have imagined they were the Pawnees, now of the west. There is not the slightest importance to be attached to this casual similarity of names.

      They were called, by the Iroquois, Tadirighrones, and were distinctly identified by them with the nation known to the English as the Catawbas.[46] For a long time the two nations carried on a bitter warfare.

The Assiwikales.

       Table of Contents

      This band of about fifty families, or one hundred men (about three hundred souls), are stated to have come from South Carolina to the Potomac late in the seventeenth century, and in 1731 were settled partly on the Susquehanna and partly on the upper Ohio or Alleghany. Their chief was named Aqueioma, or Achequeloma.

      Their name appears to be a compound of assin, stone; and wikwam, house, and they were probably Algonkin neighbors of the Shawnees in their southern homes, and united with them in their northern migration.[47]

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

      The Lenape or Delawares.

      Derivation of the Name Lenape.—The Three Sub-Tribes the Minsi or Wolf, the Unami or Turtle, and the Unalachtgo or Turkey Tribes—Their Totems—The New Jersey Tribes the Wapings, Sanhicans and Mantas—Political Constitution of the Lenape—Vegetable Food Resources—Domestic Architecture—Manufactures.—Paints and Dyes.—Dogs—Interments—Computation of Time—Picture Writing—Record Sticks—Moral and Mental Character—Religious Belief.—Doctrine of the Soul.— The Native Priests.—Religious Ceremonies.

Derivation of Lenni Lenape.

       Table of Contents

      The proper name of the Delaware Indians was and is Lenapé, (a as in father, é as a in mate). Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull[48] is quite wide of the mark both in calling this a "misnomer," and in attributing its introduction to Mr. Heckewelder.

      Long before that worthy missionary was born, the name was in use in the official documents of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania as the synonym in the native tongue for the Delaware Indians,[49] and it is still retained by their remnant in Kansas as the proper term to designate their collective nation, embracing its sub-tribes.[50]

      The derivation of Lenape has been discussed with no little learning, as well as the adjective lenni, which often precedes it (Lenni Lenape). Mr. Heckewelder stated that lenni means "original, pure," and that Lenape signifies "people."[51] Dr. Trumbull, in the course of a long examination of the words for "man" in the Algonkin dialects, reaches the conclusion that "Len-âpé" denotes "a common adult male," i.e., an Indian man; lenno lenâpé, an Indian of our tribe or nation, and, consequently, vir, "a man of men."[52] He derives these two words from the roots len (= nen), a pronominal possessive, and ape, an inseparable generic particle, "denoting СКАЧАТЬ