History, Manners & Customs of Indian Nations (Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States). John Heckewelder
Читать онлайн книгу.
once more engaged all the capacity of their minds. They were lost in admiration at what they saw, and were consulting and deliberating together on what they should do. The Five Nations, who lived out of the reach of all danger, nevertheless also came; but bent on their own interest, while they were instigating the other nations to fall upon the new comers, or drive them off from their shores, by which they caused useless hostilities, in which they did not appear to participate, they were insinuating themselves into the favour of the powerful strangers, professing great friendship for them, persuading them that they were superior to the other Indian nations, that they had controul over them all, and would chastise those who should disturb their peace.
William Penn came, with his train of pacific followers. Never will the Delawares forget their elder brother Miquon, as they affectionately and respectfully call him. From his first arrival in their country, a friendship was formed between them which was to last as long as the sun should shine, and the rivers flow with water. That friendship would undoubtedly have continued to the end of time, had their good brother always remained among them, but in his absence, mischievous people, say they, got into power, who, not content with the land which had been given to them, contrived to get all that they wanted; and when the Lenape looked round for the friends of their brother Miquon, to hear their just complaints, and redress their wrongs, they could not discover them, and had the misfortune to see their greatest enemies, the Mengwe, brought on for the purpose of shutting their mouths, and compelling them to submit to the injustice done them.
They cannot conceive how the English could turn from the people by whom they had been so kindly received and welcomed with open arms; from those who had permitted them to sit down upon their lands in peace, and without fear of being molested by them; who had taken delight in supplying all their wants,47 and who were happy in smoking the pipe of friendship with them at one and the same fire; how they could not only see them degraded and injured by a base and perfidious nation, but join with that nation in sinking them still lower. For to the countenance of the English, they say, is entirely owing the great preponderance which the Iroquois at last attained: they complain that the English did support that enemy against them, that they even sanctioned their insolence, by telling them to make use of their authority as men, and bring these women (the Lenape) to their senses. That they were even insulted and treated in a degrading manner, in treaties to which the English were parties, and particularly in that which took place at Easton,48 in Pennsylvania, in July, 1742,49 when the Six Nations were publicly called on to compel the Delawares to give up the land taken from them by the long day’s walk. But for these repeated outrages, they would not have taken part with the French in the memorable war of 1755.50 Nor, perhaps, would they have done so, had not they been seduced into the measure by the perfidious Iroquois. At the commencement of that war, they brought the war belt, with a piece of tobacco, to the Delawares, and told them: “Remember that the English have unjustly deprived you of much of your land, which they took from you by force. Your cause is just; therefore smoke of this tobacco, and arise; join with us our fathers, the French, and take your revenge. You are women, it is true, but we will shorten your petticoats, and though you may appear by your dress to be women, yet by your conduct and language you will convince your enemies that you are determined not tamely to suffer the wrongs and injuries inflicted upon you.”
Yielding to these solicitations, the Delawares and their connexions took up arms against the English in favor of the French, and committed many hostilities, in which the Iroquois appeared to take no part. Sir William Johnson requested them to use their ascendancy and to persuade the hostile Indians to lay down the hatchet, instead of which, instead of conforming to the ancient custom of Indian nations, which was simply to take the war-hatchet back from those to whom they had given it, they fell on a sudden on the unsuspecting Lenape, killed their cattle, and destroyed their town on the Susquehannah, and having taken a number of them prisoners, carried them to Sir William Johnson, who confined and put them in irons. This cruel act of treachery, the Delawares say, they will never forget nor forgive.
Thus the Lenape, whose principal settlements were then on the frontier of Pennsylvania, took part with the French, and acted hostilely against the English during the whole of the war of 1755. The animosity which mutual hostilities produced between them and the settlers concurred, no doubt, with other causes, in producing the murder of the Conestogo Indians, which took place at the close of that war, in December, 1763, and is feelingly related by Loskiel, part I., ch. 14 and 15.51
The revolutionary war put an end to the exorbitant power of the Iroquois. They were, indeed, still supported by the British government, but the Americans were now the strongest party, and of course against them. They endeavored to persuade the other Indian nations to join them, but their expectations were deceived. At a meeting which took place at Pittsburg in 1775, for the express purpose of deliberating on the part which it became Indians to take in the disturbances which had arisen between the King of Great Britain and his subjects, Capt. White Eyes, a sensible and very spirited warrior of the Lenape,52 boldly declared to a select body of the Senecas, that his Indians would never join any nation or power, for the purpose of destroying a people who were born on the same soil with them. That the Americans were his friends and brothers, and that no nation should dictate to him what part he should take in the existing war. Anticipating the measure which the American Congress took in the succeeding year, he declared himself,53 in behalf of his nation, free and independent of the Iroquois; they had pretended that they had conquered him, they had made a woman of him and dressed him in woman’s apparel, but now he was again a man, he stood before them as a man, and with the weapons of a man he would assert his claim to all yonder country, pointing to the land on the west side of the Allegheny river; for to him it belonged, and not to the Six Nations, who falsely asserted that they had acquired it by conquest. In the year 1778 or 1779, the Lenape bravely asserted their national independence by joining Col. Brodhead’s troops in an expedition against the Senecas.54 If they did not do as much in that war as might have been expected of them, and took only a partial revenge, it was owing to the death of their brave chief, White Eyes, who died of the small pox at Pittsburg, I think, in the year 1780. He was a Christian in his heart, but did not live to make a public profession of our religion, though it is well known that he persuaded many Indians to embrace it.55
Although the Lenape acted independently in the war of 1755, and made a formal declaration of their independence at the beginning of the revolutionary war, yet the Six Nations persevered in their pretensions, and still affected to consider them as women. Finding, however, that this obsolete claim was no longer acknowledged, and that it was useless to insist upon it any longer, they came forward of their own accord, about the time of Wayne’s treaty, and formally declared that the Lenape and their allies were no longer women, but MEN.
The Delawares and Mohicans agree in saying, that from the time of the fatal treaty in which they were persuaded to assimilate themselves to women, and, indeed, ever since the Europeans first came into the country, the conduct of the Iroquois was treacherous and perfidious in the extreme. That it was their constant practice to sally out secretly and commit depredations on the neighbouring nations, with intent to involve them in wars with each other. That they would also commit murders on the frontier settlers, from Virginia to New England, and charge the tribes who were settled in the neighbourhood with the commission of those crimes. That they would then turn negotiators, and effect a peace, always at the expense of the nation whom they had injured. They would sell the lands of other nations to the English and receive the money, pretending to a paramount right to the whole territory, and this, say the Lenape, was their manner of CONQUERING NATIONS!
Chapter II.
Indian Account of the First Arrival of the Dutch at New York Island
The Lenni Lenape claim the honour of having received and welcomed the Europeans on their first arrival in the country, situated between New England and Virginia. It is probable, however, that the Mahicanni or Mohicans, who then inhabited the banks of the Hudson, concurred in the hospitable act. The relation I am going to make was taken down many years since from the mouth of an intelligent Delaware Indian, and may be considered as a correct account of the tradition existing among them of this