Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/239

Rh were at last compelled to sue for peace, which was granted them on the condition that they should put themselves under the protection of the Mingoes, confine themselves to raising corn, hunting for the subsistence of their families, and no longer have the power of making war. This is what the Indians call making them women. And in this condition the Lenopis were when William Penn first arrived and began the settlement of Pennsylvania in 1682.

(6.) p. 107. From the figurative language of the Indians, as well as from the practice of those we are still acquainted with, it is evident that it was, and still continues to be, a constant custom among the Indians to gather up the bones of the dead, and deposit them in a particular place. Thus, when they make peace with any nation with whom they have been at war, after burying the hatchet, they take up the belt of wampum, and say, “We now gather up all the bones of those who have been slain, and bury them,” &c. See all the treaties of peace. Besides, it is customary when any of them die at a distance from home, to bury them, and afterwards to come and take up the bones, and carry them home. At a treaty which was held at Lancaster with the Six Nations, one of them died, and was buried in the woods a little distance from the town. Some time after a party came and took up the body, separated the flesh from the bones by boiling and scraping them clean, and carried them to be deposited in the sepulchres of their ancestors. The operation was so offensive and disagreeable, that nobody could come near them while they were performing it.

(7.) p. 115. The Oswegàtchies, Connosedàgos, and Cohunnegàgoes, or, as they are commonly called, Caghnewàgos, are of the Mingo or Six-nation Indians, who, by the influence of the French missionaries, have been separated from their nation, and induced to settle there.

I do not know of what nation the Augquàgahs are; but suspect they are a family of the Senecas.

The Nànticocks and Conòies were formerly a nation that lived at the head of Chesapeak bay, and who, of late years, have been adopted into the Mingo or Iroquois confederacy, and make a seventh nation. The Mònacans or Tuscaròras, who were taken into the confederacy in 1712, making the sixth.