tive nations also by the name of the Wapanachki, corrupted by the Europeans into Openaki, Openagi, Abenaquis, and Apenakis, and among the whites, by the name of Delawares, held their principal seats upon the Delaware river, and were acknowledged by nearly forty tribes as their 'grandfathers,' or parent stock. They relate, that many centuries past, their ancestors dwelt far in the western wilds of the American continent, but emigrating eastwardly, arrived after many years on the Namasi Sipu (the Mississippi), or river of fish, where they fell in with the Mengwe, who had also emigrated from a distant country, and approached this river somewhat nearer its source. The spies of the Lenape reported the country on the east of the Mississippi to be inhabited by a powerful nation, dwelling in large towns, erected upon their principal rivers.

"This people, tall and stout, some of whom, as tradition reports, were of gigantic mould, bore the name of Alligewi, and from them were derived the names of the Allegheny river and mountains. Their towns were defended by regular fortifications or intrenchments of earth, vestiges of which are yet shown in greater or less preservation. The Lenape requested permission to establish themselves in their vicinity. This was refused, but leave was given them to pass the river, and seek a country farther to the eastward. But, whilst the Lenape were crossing the river, the Alligewi, becoming alarmed at their number, assailed and destroyed many of those who had reached the eastern shore, and threatened a like fate to the others should they attempt the stream. Fired at the loss they had sustained, the Lenape eagerly accepted a proposition from the Mengwe, who had hitherto been spectators only of their enterprise, to conquer and divide the country. A war of many years duration was waged by the united nations, marked by great havoc on both sides, which eventuated in the conquest and expulsion of the Alligewi, who fled by the way of the Mississippi, never to return. Their devastated country was ap portioned among the conquerors; the Mengwe choosing their residence in the neighborhood of the great lakes, and the Lenape possessing themselves of the lands to the south.

"After many ages, during which the conquerors lived together in great harmony, the enterprising hunters of the Lenape crossed the Alleghany mountains, and discovered the great rivers Susquehannah and Delaware, and their respective bays. Exploring the Sheyichbi country, (New Jersey,) they arrived on the Hudson, to which they subsequently gave the name of the Mohicannittuck river. Returning to their nation, after a long absence, they reported their discoveries; describing the country they had visited as abounding in game and fruits, fish and fowl, and destitute of inhabitants. Concluding this to be the country destined for them by the Great Spirit, the Lenape proceeded to establish themselves upon the four great rivers, the Hudson, Delaware, Susquehannah and Po

tomac, making the Delaware, to which they gave the name of Lenapewihittuck, (the river or stream of the Lenape,) the centre of their possessions.1

"They say, however, that all of their nation who crossed the Mississippi did not reach this country; a part remaining behind to assist that portion of their people who, frightened by the reception which the Alligewi had given to their countrymen, fled far to the west of the Namæsi Sipu. They were finally divided into three great bodies; the larger, one-half of the whole, settled on the Atlantic; the other half was separated into two parts, the stronger continued beyond the Mississippi, the other remained on its eastern bank.

"Those on the Atlantic were subdivided into three tribes; the Turtle or Unamis, the Turkey or Unalachtgo, and the Wolf or Minsi. The two former inhabited the coast from the Hudson to the Potomac, settling in small bodies in towns and villages upon the larger streams, under chiefs subordinate to the great council of the nation. The Minsi, called by the English, Monceys, the most warlike of the three tribes, dwelt in the interior, forming a barrier between their nation and the Mengwe. They extended themselves from the Minisink, on the Delaware, where they held their council seat, to the Hudson on the east, to the Susquehannah on the southwest, to the head waters of the Delaware and Susquehannahı rivers on the north, and to that range of hills now known in New Jersey by the name of the Muskenecun, and by those of Lehigh and Coghnewago in Pennsylvania.

"Many subordinate tribes proceeded from these, who received names from their places of residence, or from some accidental circumstance, at the time of its occurrence remarkable, but now forgotten. Such were the Shawanese, the Nanticokes, the Susquehannas, the Shackamaxons, the Neshamines, the Mantas, and other tribes, resident in or near the province of Pennsylvania at the time of its settlement.

"The Mengwe hovered for some time on the borders of the lakes, with their canoes in readiness to fly should the Alligewi return. Having grown bolder, and their numbers increasing, they stretched themselves along the St. Lawrence, and became, on the north, near neighbors to the Lenape tribes.

"The Mengwe and the Lenape, in the progress of time, became enemies. The latter represent the former as treacherous and cruel, pursuing pertinaciously an insidious and destructive policy towards their more generous neighbors. Dreading the power of the Lenape, the Mengwe resolved, by involving them in war with their distant tribes, to reduce. their strength. They committed murders upon the members of one tribe, and induced the injured party to believe they were perpetrated by

1 Heckewelder's account of the Indians.

another. They stole into the country of the Delawares, surprised them in their hunting parties, slaughtered the hunters, and escaped with the plunder.

“Each nation or tribe had a particular mark upon its war clubs, which, left beside a murdered person, denoted the aggressor. The Mengwe perpetrated a murder in the Cherokee country, and left with the dead body a war club bearing the insignia of the Lenape. The Cherokees, in revenge, fell suddenly upon the latter, and commenced a long and bloody war. The treachery of the Mengwe was at length discovered, and the Delawares turned upon them with the determination utterly to extirpate them. They were the more strongly induced to take this resolution, as the cannibal propensities of the Mengwe had reduced them, in the estimation of the Delawares, below the rank of human beings.1

"Hitherto each tribe of the Mengwe had acted under the direction of its particular chiefs; and, although the nation could not control the conduct of its members, it was made responsible for their outrages. Pressed by the Lenape, they resolved to form a confederation which might enable them better to concentrate their force in war, and to regulate their affairs in peace. Thannawage, an aged Mohawk, was the projector of this alliance. Under his auspices, five nations, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagoes, Cayugas, and Senecas, formed a species of republic, governed by the united counsels of their aged and experienced chiefs. To these a sixth nation, the Tuscaroras, was added in 1712. This last originally dwelt in the western parts of North Carolina, but having formed a deep and general conspiracy to exterminate the whites, were driven from their country, and adopted by the Iroquois confederacy.2 The beneficial effects of this system early displayed themselves. The Lenape were checked, and the Mengwe, whose warlike disposition soon familiarized them with fire arms procured from the Dutch, were enabled, at the same time, to contend with them and to resist the French, who now attempted the settlement of Canada, and to extend their conquests over a large portion of the country between the Atlantic and the Mississippi.

But, being pressed hard by their new, they became desirous of reconciliation with their old enemies; and, for this purpose, if the tradition of the Delawares be credited, they effected one of the most extraordinary strokes of policy which history has recorded.

"The mediators between the Indian nations at war are the women. The men, however weary of the contest, hold it cowardly and disgraceful to seek reconciliation. They deem it inconsistent in a warrior to speak of peace with bloody weapons in his hands. He must maintain a deter

1 The Iroquois or Mengwe sometimes ate the bodies of their prisoners. Heckewelder, 2 N. Y. Hist. Col. 55.

2Smith's New York. Dougl. Summ.

mined courage, and appear at all times as ready and willing to fight as at the commencement of hostilities. With such dispositions, Indian wars would be interminable, if the women did not interfere and persuade the combatants to bury the hatchet and make peace with each other. On these occasions, the women pleaded their cause with much eloquence. 'Not a warrior,' they would say, 'but laments the loss of a son, a brother, or a friend. And mothers, who have borne with cheerfulness the pangs of child-birth, and the anxieties that wait upon the infancy and adolescence of their sons, behold their promised blessings crushed in the field of battle, or perishing at the stake in unutterable torments. In the depth of their grief, they curse their wretched existence, and shudder at the idea of bearing children.' They conjured the warriors, therefore, by their suffering wives, their helpless children, their homes, and their friends, to interchange forgiveness, to cast away their arms, and, smoking together the pipe of amity and peace, to embrace as friends those whom they had learned to esteem as enemies.

"Prayers thus urged seldom failed of their desired effect. The function of the peace-maker was honorable and dignified, and its assumption by a courageous and powerful nation could not be inglorious. This station the Mengwe urged upon the Lenape. They had reflected,' they said, 'upon the state of the Indian race, and were convinced that no means remained to preserve it unless some magnanimous nation would assume the character of the woman. It could not be given to a weak and contemptible tribe; such would not be listened to: but the Lenape and their allies would at once possess influence and command respect.'

"The facts upon which these arguments were founded, were known to the Delawares, and, in a moment of blind confidence in the sincerity of the Iroquois, they acceded to the proposition, and assumed the petticoat. The ceremony of the metamorphosis was performed with great rejoicings at Albany, in 1617, in the presence of the Dutch, whom the Lenape charge with having conspired with the Mengwe for their destruction.

"Having thus disarmed the Delawares, the Iroquois assumed over them the rights of protection and command. But still dreading their strength, they artfully involved them again in war with the Cherokees, promised to fight their battles, led them into an ambush of their foes, and deserted them. The Delawares, at length, comprehended the treachery of their arch enemy, and resolved to resume their arms, and, being still superior in numbers, to crush them. But it was too late. The Europeans were now making their way into the country in every direction, and gave ample employment to the astonished Lenape.

"The Mengwe deny these machinations. They aver that they conquered the Delawares by force of arms, and made them a subject people. And, though it be said they are unable to detail the circumstances of this

conquest, it is more rational to suppose it true, than that a brave, numerous, and warlike nation should have voluntarily suffered themselves to be disarmed and enslaved by a shallow artifice; or that, discovering the fraud practised upon them, they should unresistingly have submitted to its consequences. This conquest was not an empty acquisition to the Mengwe. They claimed dominion over all the lands occupied by the Delawares, and, in many instances, their claims were distinctly acknowledged. Parties of the Five Nations occasionally occupied the Lenape country, and wandered over it at all times at their pleasure.

"Whatever credit may be due to the traditions of the Lenape, relative to their migration from the west, there is strong evidence in support of their pretensions to be considered as the source whence a great portion of the Indians of North America was derived. They are acknowledged as the 'grandfathers,' or the parent stock, of the tribes that inhabited the extensive regions of Canada, from the coast of Labrador to the mouth of the Albany river, which empties into the southernmost part of Hudson's bay, and from thence to the Lake of the Woods, the northernmost boundary of the United States; and also by those who dwelt in that immense country, stretching from Nova Scotia to the Roanoke, on the sea-coast, and bounded by the Mississippi on the west. All these nations spoke dialects of the Lenape language, affording the strongest presumption of their derivation from that stock. The tribes of the Mengwe interspersed throughout this vast region are, of course, excepted. They were, however, comparatively few in number.

"Their language is said to be rich, sonorous, plastic, and comprehensive in the highest degree. It varies from the European idioms chiefly in the conjugation of the verbs, with which not only the agent and patient may be compounded, in every possible case, but the adverbs are also blended; and one word is made to express the agent, the action, with its accidents of time, place, and quantity, and the object effected by them. And, though greatly pliant, it is subjected to rules, from which there are few exceptions. It has the power of expressing every idea, even the most abstract. The Old and New Testaments have been translated into it, and the Christian missionaries have no difficulty, as they assert, of making themselves understood on all subjects by the Indians.1

1 As a specimen, I subjoin a translation of the Lord's Prayer, in the language of the Six Nation Indians:

Soungwaunchă, caurōunkyäugā, tēhsēētǎroan, saulwoneyōustă, és ă, săwanéyou, ōkēttäūhsēlā, ēhněāūwoũng, nã, căurōunkyāūgă, nūgh, wōnshäūgă, nēǎttěwěhnēsālāūgă, taūgwăunăutōrōnōantõūghsick, tōantāngwēlēēwhĕyoūstaŭng, chénéeyeŭt, chăquătaūtaleywhěyōustāünnă, toūghsău, taŭgwaussarěněh, tāwantōtténăugăloughtōunggă, năsăwně, sáchĕăutăngwass, contēhsălhâūnzāīkǎw, ēsâ, săwùŭnēyõu, ésă, săshaūtztă, čsa, soungwasoũng, chénněăuhãūnga, āuwěn.