History, Manners & Customs of Indian Nations (Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States). John Heckewelder
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a place since called Nordman’s Kill, about four miles below where afterwards Albany was built, where this covenant of friendship was first established, and the Mohawks were the active body in effecting this work.”
From these three separate accounts of the Lenape, of the Mahicanni, and of the Mohawks, as related by Mr. Pyrlæus, it appears to be conclusively proved, that the Europeans were already in this country, when the Lenape were persuaded to assume the station of the woman, and that the Dutch were assisting in the plot, and were at least the instigators, if not the authors of it. It was the Dutch who summoned the great council near Albany; the tomahawk was buried deep in the ground, and the vengeance of the Dutch was threatened if it should ever be taken up again; the peace belt was laid across the shoulders of the unfortunate Delawares, supported at one end by the Five Nations, and at the other by the Europeans; all these circumstances point so clearly to European intrigue, that it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the whites adopted this means to neutralize the power of the Delawares and their friends, whom they dreaded, and strengthen the hands of the Iroquois, who were in their alliance.
The Iroquois have denied that these machinations ever took place, and say that they conquered the Delawares in fair battle, and compelled them by force to become women, or in other words that they obliged them to submit to the greatest humiliation to which a warlike spirited people can ever be reduced; not a momentary humiliation, as when the Romans were compelled by the Samnites to pass under the Caudine forks, but a permanent disgrace, which was to last as long as their national existence. If this were true, the Lenape and their allies, who, like all other Indian nations, never considered a treaty binding when entered into under any kind of compulsion, would not have submitted to this any longer than until they could again have rallied their forces and fallen upon their enemy; they would have done long before the year 1755, what they did at last at that time, joined the French in their wars against the Iroquois and English, and would not have patiently waited more than a century before they took their revenge for so flagrant an outrage. Their numbers, acknowledged to have been far superior to that of their Indian enemies, and the vast extent of territory which they possessed, furnished them with ample means to have acted hostilely, if they had thought proper. On the contrary, they lived at peace with the Iroquois, and their European allies, until that decisive war, by which the French lost at once all their extensive possessions on the continent of America.
In addition to these positive proofs, negative evidence of the strongest kind may be adduced. The Iroquois say, indeed, that they conquered the Delawares and their allies, and compelled them to become women. But there is no tradition among them of the particulars of this important event. Neither Mr. Pyrlæus, nor Mr. Zeisberger,46 who both lived long among the Five Nations, and spoke and understood their language well, could obtain from them any details relative to this supposed conquest; they ought, certainly, to have been able to say how it was effected; whether by one decisive fight or by successive engagements, or at least, when the last battle took place; who were the nations or tribes engaged in it; who the chiefs or commanders; what numbers fell on each side; and a variety of other facts, by which the truth of their assertion might have been proved: the total absence of such details appears to me to militate against them in the strongest manner, and to corroborate the statement of their adversaries.
The Delawares are of opinion, that this scheme of the Five Nations, however deeply laid, and meant essentially to injure them, would not, however, have operated against them, but on the contrary, have greatly subserved their national interest, if the Europeans had not afterwards come into the country in such great numbers, and multiplied so rapidly as they did. For their neutral position would greatly have favoured their increase, while the numbers of the other Indian nations would have been reduced by the wars in which they were continually engaged. But unfortunately for them, it happened that the Europeans successively invaded the country which they occupied, and now forms what are called the middle states, and as they advanced from the Atlantic into the interior, drove before them the Lenape and their allies, and obtained possession of their lands; while the Iroquois, who happened to be placed in the neighbourhood of Canada, between the French and English, who were frequently at war with each other, had an enemy, it is true, in the French nation, but had strong protectors in the English, who considered them as a check upon their enemies, and, being the most numerous people, were best able to afford them protection; thus they were suffered to increase and become powerful, while the Lenape, having no friend near them, the French being then at too great a distance, were entirely at the mercy of their English neighbours, who, advancing fast on their lands, gradually dispersed them, and other causes concurring, produced at last their almost entire destruction. Among those causes the treacherous conduct of the Five Nations may be considered as the principal one.
Before that strange metamorphosis took place, of a great and powerful nation being transformed into a band of defenceless women, the Iroquois had never been permitted to visit the Lenape, even when they were at peace with each other. Whenever a Mengwe appeared in their country, he was hunted down as a beast of prey, and it was lawful for every one to destroy him. But now, the woman could not, consistently with her new station and her engagements, make use of destructive weapons, and she was bound to abstain from all violence against the human species. Her late enemies, therefore, found no difficulty in travelling, under various pretences, through her country, and those of her allies, and leaving here and there a few of their people to remain among them as long as they pleased, for the purpose, as they said, of keeping up a good understanding, and assisting them in the preservation of the general peace. But while they were amusing the Lenape with flattering language, they were concerting measures to disturb their quiet by involving them in difficulties with the neighbouring nations. I shall relate one among many instances of a similar conduct. They once sent their men into the Cherokee country, who were instructed secretly to kill one of that nation, and to leave a war club near the person murdered, which had been purposely made after the manner and in the shape of those of the Delawares. Now leaving a war club in an Indian country, is considered by those nations as a formal challenge or declaration of war. The Cherokees, deceived by appearances, and believing that their grandfather the Lenape had committed the murder, collected a large party to go into their country and take their revenge. Meanwhile, the Iroquois sent a messenger to the Lenape, to inform them of the approach of an enemy, who, they had learned from their hunters, was coming towards their settlement, and to advise them to send a number of their men immediately to a certain place, where they would be met by a large body of the Five Nations, who would take the lead, march in front, and fight their battles, so that they would have little else to do than to look on and see how well their friends fought for them. The Lenape, being in no wise prepared to meet a powerful foe, assembled in haste a few of their men, and repaired to the place of rendezvous, where they were disappointed by not meeting any of their pretended protectors. The enemy, however, was close upon them; the Lenape fought with great courage, but were overpowered by an immense superiority of numbers, and defeated with considerable loss. Now the Iroquois made their appearance, and instead of attacking or pursuing the Cherokees, loaded the Delawares with reproaches, for their temerity, as they called it, in having dared, being women, to take the lead in attacking men. They told them that the Five Nations being their superiors, they ought to have waited for them before they attacked the Cherokees, that then their protectors would have fought and defeated them, but that as they had thought proper to act by themselves, they had received the punishment justly due to their presumption.
It was thus that the Five Nations rewarded the confidence that the Delawares had placed in them. Their treachery was not, however, suspected for a long time; but it was at last discovered; it was even found out that in this last engagement, a number of the Iroquois had joined in fight against them with their enemies. The Lenape then determined to unite their forces, and by one great effort to destroy entirely that perfidious nation. This, they say, they might easily have done, as they were then yet as numerous as the grasshoppers at particular seasons, and as destructive to their enemies as these insects are to the fruits of the earth; while they described the Mengwe as a number of croaking frogs in a pond, which make a great noise when all is quiet, but at the first approach of danger, nay, at the very rustling of a leaf, immediately plunge into the water and are silent.
But their attention was now diverted by other scenes. The whites were again landing in great numbers on their coast, in the east and south, and