Page:Historical and Biographical Annals of Columbia and Montour Counties, Pennsylvania, Containing a Concise History of the Two Counties and a Genealogical and Biographical Record of Representative Families.djvu/31

COLUMBIA AND MONTOUR COUNTIES enjoined upon them our splendid Christian code of morals, but the busy traffickers robbed, swindled and debauched and murdered them without hindrance or rebuke. William Penn and Lord Baltimore were more than a century ahead of their age. Their treatment of the Indians is the fairest page in the history of American settlement. In their dealings with the savages they leaned to the side of charity and paid them their own price for the lands purchased, respecting their rights and keeping the compacts made with them. In this respect they earned the unfaltering regard and trust of the natives, the only injuries ever done to the members of the Society of Friends being perpetrated by the renegade allies of the French.

ORIGIN OF THE INDIANS

It is probable that the aboriginal inhabitants of the territory within the limits of this county belonged mainly to the Lenni Lenape, who held that they were the original people and of Western origin. The Delawares claimed that their ancestors lived, many hundred years ago, in the far distant wilds of the West, and were the progenitors of forty other tribes; that after many years of emigration towards the rising sun, they reached the Mississippi river, where they met the Mengwe, who came from a very distant region and had reached that river higher up towards its source; that they found a powerful nation east of the Mississippi, who were called Alligewi, and from whom originated the name of the Allegheny mountains; that the Lenape wished to settle near the Allgewi, which the latter refused, but allowed them to cross the river and proceed farther to the East: that when the Alligewi discovered how multitudinous the Lenape were, they feared their numerical strength and slew the portion that had crossed the river, and threatened to destroy the rest if they should attempt to cross; that the Lenape and Mengwe united their forces against the Allegewi, and conquered and drove them out of that part of the country; that the Lenape and Mengwe lived together in peace and harmony for many years.

Their tradition relates further that some of the Lenape hunters crossed the Allegheny mountains, the Susquehanna and Delaware rivers, and advanced lo the Hudson, which they called the Mohicannituck river; that on their return to their people they represented the country which they had discovered so far towards the rising sun to be without people, but abounding in fish, game, fowls and fruits; that thus the Lenape were induced to emigrate eastward along the Lenape-whittuck, the river of the Lenapes, also called Mack-er-isk-iskan, which the English named the Delaware, in honor of Lord de la Ware, who entered Delaware bay in 1610 and was governor of the Colony of Virginia from about that time until 1618. The Dutch and Swedes called it the South river to distinguish it from the North river, which bears the name of Hudson.

That such was the tradition preserved by the Delawares is truthfully stated by Rev. John Heckewelder, a Moravian missionary, in his “Account of the History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations who once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring Slates," published, in 1819, under the auspices of the historical and literary committee of the American Philosophical Society. The passing remark may here be made that Indian laws and historical events were not preserved on parchment, paper or in books, but were handed down by tradition from one generation to another.

DIFFERENT TRIBES

The Iroquois have a tradition that the valley of the Susquehanna was first inhabited by the Andastcs, a branch of the Lenni Lenape, whose local tribal name was Susquehannocks. These the Iroquois drove out and possessed themselves of the lands. The Shawnees were driven out of Georgia and South Carolina, and came to the mouth of the Conestoga, within the present limits of Lancaster county. Pa., about 1677, and spread thence over what was afterwards Cumberland county, along the west branch of the Susquehanna, in the Wyoming valley, and thence to the Ohio. As early as (if not earlier than) 1719 Delaware and Shawnee Indians were settled on the Allegheny, about 1724, says Bancroft, the Delaware Indians, for the convenience of game, emigrated from the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers to the branches of the Ohio; in 1728 the Shawnees gradually followed them, and they were soon met by Canadian traders, and Ioncaire, an adopted citizen of the .Seneca tribe, used his eloquence to win them to the side of the French.

Over the whole country watered by the