Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/154

 126 Sloan's Architectural Review and Builders' Journal. [August, A SAVAGE THICK SETTLEMENT. The general conception, touching the actual mass of a population of savage hunters, in proportion to the area of any particular region, is very vague. When beginning, to themselves, to be incon- veniently crowded, they will not average more than one Indian to a square mile. Then, instead of being distributed evenly throughout the habitable parts of the continent at this rate, they were in scattered clusters, rarely leaving tracts, streams or lake shores, whereon they found a living, or sought a foe ; and as utterly ignorant of most of the land they inhabited, as is the civilized mariner of the ocean beyond the sweep of the trade- winds. The white man encountered the Indian, because the white man kept to the general passes of the country, outside, or between which, were extensive tracts, as new to the red man as to the white. THE UXWOMANING OF THE DELAWARES. This peace-making dignity of the Dela- wares was probably instituted in the time of the grandsires of those who treated with William Penn ; but the body of the nation were growing restive, and, in the days of the grandsons of the participants in Penn's treaty, the Dela- wares having been in the interim, throughout a disturbed and troublous period, much engaged in war, and the Iroquois being greatly weakened, the compact was abrogated, as formally as it had been entered into. Judge Peters says, September, 1825: "Fifty-seven "years ago" [in 1768] "I was present " when the Delawares and Shawanese " were released by the Iroquois or Six "Nations (originally Five) from the " subordination in which they had been "held from the time of their being "conquered ( ! ). The ceremony was " called taking off the petticoat ; and " was a very curious spectacle." Here, we are only sorry that he did not de- scribe it at length, as the "taking off" would have been the converse of the "putting on." It will be marked that, from intermediate alliance, two southern tribes were involved, not parties to the original transaction, one on each side, namely : the Monacans or Tuscaroras, and the Suwanees or Shawanese. In 1770, the seat of the combined Dela- wares and Shawanese was in the eastern parts of the present State of Ohio. In the interval between Penn's first and second visits, about sixty families of Shawanese, driven from home in the south by Indian wars, settled at Cones- toga. We hear of them in 1698. They seem to have applied to the government, in 1682, for protection, which Penn, arriving shortly afterwards from Eng- land, granted. Fresh difficulties were settled afterwards by Penn on his sec- ond arrival, in 1701. THE PENNS WELSH. Onas, a Pen, or Quill, a literal trans- lation of the most obvious sense of Penn's name, which, however, is most likely from the Welsh, and, in that case, means a Mountain. It is a pity the In- dians were not informed of the true etymology, as their oratorical imagery would have been much improved. It lends a certain color to this assumption, that the new name given to Upland, which became the seat of government, was Chester, a town in England, upon the marches of Wales, and anciently within the boundary of the latter king- dom ; although we are told that Penn gave the name " in remembrance of the city whence his friend and companion, Pearson, came." In the following letter to Robert Turner, although Penn does not abso- lutely say his own family is Welsh, his remarks strongly assist our theory : Fifth op First Month, 1681. To Robert Turner: Dear Friend: — My true love in the Lord salute thee, and dear friends, that love the Lord's truth, in those parts.* Thine,
 * Dublin, Ireland.