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EARLY historians, probably through lack of study of the literary remains of the pioneers and settlers of the seventeenth century, have very much too liberally overestimated the number of Indians in New Jersey at the time when the first settlements by the whites were made here. In this error they but shared the once common belief that the aborigines of North America three hundred years ago were a powerful and numerous people. Recent investigations have proved the inaccuracy of this belief.
The historian Robert Pond estimated the number of fighting men of eighteen given tribes east of the Mississippi River at twenty-seven thousand nine hundred, and total number of souls one hundred and thirty-nine thousand five hundred. An historical account printed in Philadelphia of Colonel Bouquet's expedition in 1763 against the Ohio Indians, asserts that there were then fifty-six thousand five hundred and eighty fighting men of such tribes as the French were in connection with in Canada and the West. Assuming this number to be one fifth of the population, they would have had at that date two hundred and eighty-two thousand nine hundred in the territory now embraced in the United States. According to the figures of the Indian Bureau of the government, there are now about two hundred and seventy-five thousand Indians in the United States, or within a few thousands of as many as ever roamed over the area now embraced within the States and Territories. Statistics and careful investigation have thus shattered the romance of the extinguishment of the Indian race, upon which innumerable pathetic tales have been founded. The conditions of Indian life were in every way opposed to the rapid increase of population.
All the collateral evidence goes to sustain the theory that if Hendrick Hudson could have made a census of the Indians in Scheyichbi (their name for the territory almost identical with the present State of New Jersey), he would not have counted many more than two thousand when, in 1609, he and his companions in the "Half-Moon" skirted the coast of what is now New Jersey. Master Evelin, writing in 1690, used this language: "I doe account all the Indians to be eight hundred;" and Oldmixon, in 1708, computed that they had been reduced to one-fourth that number. Evelyn and Oldmixon were below the mark, but they were much nearer it than those writers who have spoken of the "teeming thousands" of red men. Such miscalculations are largely traceable to circumstances which, in their turn, are a revelation of the physical condition of Scheyichbi when the white man was moving to plant his dominant standards upon its soil. The State of New Jersey is so rich in Indian relics that hasty observers came to the conclusion that it must have supported a comparatively dense Indian population. "So abundant were the Indian villages," says Charles C. Abbott, in his "Stone Age in New Jersey," "that almost every brook that harbors a fish has now lying among the pebbles on its bed or in the turf upon its banks flinty arrow-points or delicate fish-spears." When it is remembered that these remains are in a great proportion those of tribes that came to New Jersey in the seasons for hunting and fishing, and had, their permanent locations beyond its confines, we understand the great attractions of the region for a primitive people, and also the source of the errors that have been made in enumerating the Indians of New Jersey two centuries ago. To them and to the strangers who foraged in it from the North and West it was a land of plenty and fitness. The streams were well supplied with fish, and the forests and the plains with game. The recession of the glaciers had left a soil that so easily absorbed rain that it made quick and prodigal return for the work of the red husbandman, who cultivated Indian corn, pumpkins and beans. The inlets of the bay and sea were opulent with oysters and clams, and when the Indians had eaten of these luscious bivalves their shells were useful for conversion into wampum.
They were of the great Lenni Lenape nation, which then occupied the central portion of what is now the United States, and were hemmed in by the Natches, south of the Potomac River, and the Iroquois, north of the southern border of New York. They had sacredly preserved that curious tradition of an origin in the far West, of a march to the eastward, a joint victory with the Iroquois over the Allegivi (Alleghenies) in a terrible battle and the final establishment of a new home upon the shores of the ocean from which the sun rises. The myth has long ago been resolved into an incident of the sun or fire worship common to prehistoric faiths.
INDIAN TRADITIONS.- A writer in the "History of Philadelphia," published in 1880, gives the following interesting, though fanciful, traditions relating to the origin of our Aborigines:
"As to their origin as members of the human family, they have divers legends. They claim to have come out of a cave in the earth, like the woodchuck and the chipmunk, to have sprung from a snail that was transformed into a human being and taught to hunt by a kind of Manitou, after which it was received into the lodge of the beaver and married the beaver's favorite daughter.
"In another myth a woman is discovered hovering in mid-air above the watery waste of chaos. She has fallen or has been expelled from heaven, and there is no earth to offer her a resting-place. The tortoise, however, rose from the depths and put his broad shield-like back at her service, and she descended upon it and made it her abode, for its dome-like oval resembled the first emergence of dry land from the waters of the deluge. The tortoise slept upon the deep, and round the margin of his shell barnacles gathered, the scum of the sea collected and the floating fragments of the shredded sea-weed accumulated until the dry land grew apace, and by and by there was all that broad expanse of land which now constitutes North America. The woman, weary of watching, worn out with sighs for her lonesomeness, dropped off into a tranquil slumber, and in that sleep she dreamed of a spirit who came to her from her lost home above the skies, and of that dream the fruits were sons and daughters, from whom have descended the human race. Another legend personifies the Great Spirit under the form of a gigantic bird that descended upon the face of the waters and brooded there until the earth arose. Then the Great Spirit, exercising a creative power, made the plants and animals and, lastly, man, who was formed out of the integuments of the dog, and endowed with a magic arrow that was to be preserved with great care, for it was at once a blessing and a safeguard. But the man carelessly lost the arrow, whereupon the Great Spirit soared away upon its bird-like wings and was no longer seen, and man had thenceforth to hunt and struggle for his livelihood.
"Manabohzo, relates the general Algonkin tradition, created the different tribes of red men out of the carcasses of different animals, the beaver, the eagle, the wolf, the serpent, the tortoise, etc. Manabohzo, Messon, Michaboo or Nanabush is a demi-god who works the metamorphoses of nature. He is the king of all the beasts; his father was the west wind, his mother the moon's great-grandfather, and sometimes he appears in the form of a wolf or bird, but his usual shape is that of the gigantic hare. After Manabohzo masquerades in the figure of a man of great endowments and majestic stature, when he is a magician after the order of Prospero; but when he takes the form of some impish elf then he is more tricky than Ariel and more full of hobgoblin devices than Puck.
"Manabohzo is the restorer of the world, submerged by a deluge which the serpent-Manitous have created. He climbs a tree, saves himself and sends a loon to dive for mud from which he can make a new world. The loon fails to reach the bottom; the muskrat, which next attempts the feat, returns lifeless to the surface, but with a little sand from which the Great Hare is able to recreate the world.
"In other legends the otter and beaver dive in vain, but the muskrat succeeds, losing his life in the attempt."
Students of the Aryan legends regarding the creation of the world and the Eastern mythology concerning the birth of demi-gods by the union of a supernatural man with a female human being, will detect at once the kinship of the myths of the Occident with those of the Orient. How far they aid in determining the origin of the American Indians on the Asiatic plateau is a which ethnologists are still busily discussing.
THE LENNI LENAPE, OR DELAWARE INDIANS.- The name Lenni Lenape signifies "original people," and came to be applied to the river upon which they dwelt, until the English decided that the name of the river should be the Delaware. They translated the Indian generic title into Delaware also. With the Iroquois the Delaware formed the Algonquin division of the aborigines, and were at its head; but not later than the middle of the seventeenth century they surrendered their primacy at the dictation of the Iroquois and accepted the humble place of a subordinate nation. In this condition they were bound to abstain from war and in return they were protected from invasion. The pacific relations which existed between them and the Europeans in New Jersey is partially explainable by their virtual abandonment of the belligerent attitude which had been their normal status.
Along the Delaware, from the mouth of the bay northward on the eastern side, were perhaps twenty sub-divisions of the Lenni Lenape people. The names which have been preserved are in some instances generic and in others merely indicate the localities. Isaac Mickle, in his "Reminiscences of Old Gloucester County," hands down those of the Sewapooses, Sicounesses and Naraticous upon Raccoon Creek, the Manteses or Mantas on Mantua Creek and the Armewamexes or Arwames on Timber Creek. These last-named must have extended their possessions over the present limits of Camden County. There are no reasons to suppose that they differed in any way from their neighbors of the Lenape. According to Pastor Campanius, in his "History of New Sweden,"(1) they constructed their lodges by placing a bark roof upon poles, and when they desired to fortify a village they made a palisade of logs and dug a ditch on the outside. They could fashion rude household utensils of pottery and they made dishes of bark and cedar wood and wove baskets of withes. They were utter strangers to the uses of metals until they learned of them from the Europeans, but of stones they made arrow-heads and spear-heads, a queer sort of a "gig" for catching fish, war-clubs, hatchets, axes, daggers and pestles and mortars, with which they pounded corn into meal or clay into paint. The neolithic or new stone implements and weapons unearthed throughout this county belonged to the Lenape Indians, just as the paleolithic or older and ruder stone tools did to the unknown people who preceded them and perished without leaving any records.
THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEF AND OTHER CHARACTERISTICS.- The Indians worshipped a Great Spirit under various forms, but the dance was their sole religious ceremonial. The nature of their belief in a Supreme Being has never been more clearly illustrated than in the following letter written to a friend about 1746 by Conrad Weiser, well known in the early history of Pennsylvania as the great interpreter of the Indian language:
"If by religion people mean an assent to certain creeds or the observance of a set of religious duties, as appointed prayers, singing, preaching, baptism or even heathenish worship, then it may be said the Five Nations (Iroquois Indians) and their neighbors have no religion. But if by religion we mean an attraction of the soul to God, whence proceeds a confidence in and hunger after the knowledge of Him, then this people must be allowed to have some religion among them, notwithstanding their sometimes savage deportment.
For we find among them some traits of a confidence in God alone, and sometimes, though but seldom, a vocal calling upon Him."
Weiser then cites the case of an Indian who accompanied him upon one of his journeys, and who, on being rescued from a fall over a great precipice, exclaimed,- "I thank the great Lord and Governor of this world in that He has had mercy upon me and has been willing that I should live longer."
A few days later, when Weiser himself was in danger of death, the same Indian addressed him thus,- "Remember that evil days are better than good days, for when we suffer much we do not sin; sin will be driven out of us by suffering; but good days will cause men to sin, and God cannot extend His mercy to them; but, contrariwise, when it goeth evil with us God hath compassion on us."
Again, when, in 1760, a number of Indians came from Wyalusing to Philadelphia to confer with Governor Hamilton on various subjects, Chief Papounan is recorded by Conrad Weiser to have said to the Governor,- "I think on God who made us. I want to instructed in His worship and service; the great God observes all that passes in our hearts and hears all that we say to one another."
Of course all these Indians whom he quotes had derived some religious ideas from their communication with the whites: they had, in fact, superimposed these impressions upon the vague and misty idealism which formed the basis of their original devotions.
If the word had been invented in Weiser's day, he might have entitled them Pantheists. It must be kept steadily in mind, however, that Indian sentimentalism concerning the supernatural was very apt to yield to enticements, to plunder, bloodshed and debauchery. Yet they became skilled theological controversialists, if we are to place reliance upon the alleged reply of an Indian chief to a Swedish missionary who preached upon original sin and the necessity for a mediator, at Conestoga, Lancaster County, Pa., in 1710. The story runs that the missionary was so puzzled by the Indian logic that he requested the University of Upsal to furnish him with a confutation of it. The Indian speech, translated from the Latin in which the worthy cleric embalmed it, is in part as follows:
"Since the subject of his (the missionary's) errand is to persuade us to embrace a new doctrine, perhaps it may not be amiss, before we offer him the reasons why we cannot comply with his request, to acquaint him with the grounds and principles of that religion which he would have us abandon. Our forefathers were under a strong persuasion, as we are, that those who act well in this life shall be rewarded in the next, according to the degree of their virtue; and on the other hand, that those who behave wickedly here will undergo such punishments hereafter as are proportionate to the crimes they are guilty of... We think it evident that our notion concerning future rewards and punishments was either revealed immediately from heaven to some of our forefathers and from them descended to us, or that it was implanted in each of us at our creation by the Creator of all things... Does he believe that our forefathers, men eminent for their piety, constant and warm in the pursuit of virtue, hoping thereby to meet everlasting happiness, were all damned? Does he think that we, who are their zealous imitators in good works, earnestly endeavoring with the greatest circumspection to tread the paths of integrity, are in a state of damnation?. . . The Almighty, for anything we know, may have communicated the knowledge of Himself to a different race of people in a different manner. Some say they have the will of God in writing: be it so; their revelation has no advantage above ours since both must be equally sufficient to save, otherwise the end of the revelation would be frustrated... Then say that the Almighty has permitted us to remain in fatal error through so many ages is to represent Him as a tyrant. How is it consistent with His justice to force life upon a race of mortals without their consent and then damn them eternally without opening the door to their salvation?... Are the Christians more virtuous, or rather, are they not more vicious than we? If so, how came it to pass that they are the objects of God's beneficence, while we are neglected? In a word, we find the Christians much more depraved in their morals than ourselves, and we judge of their doctrines by their conduct."
Different styles of painting the body and face were adopted for feasting and for war, and tattooing with charcoal for permanent ornament and for inscribing the "totem," or representative animal or sign upon the individual. The totems also served to distinguish the tribes: as, for instance, those which occupied New Jersey south of the Museonetcong Mountains were the Unamis, or turtle, and the Unalachtgo, or wolf, between whose territories there seems never to have been any definite delineations. The men were warriors, hunters and fishers, while the women tilled the soil and performed all the domestic and household work.
William Penn, in a letter to Henry Savell, dated Philadelphia, 30th of Fifth Month, 1683, affirms that "the natives are proper and shapely," and that he had "never found more natural sagacity, considering them without ye help- I was almost going to say ye spoyle of tradition." But in comparing the testimony of all the pioneers who recorded their impressions, the conclusion is evident that the primitive Indian was characterized by the same vices that mark his descendants in our time.
The red inhabitants on the banks of the Delaware possessed a willingness to be at peace with the white man, if the white man would permit. In proof of their early pacific disposition, it is pertinent to introduce here the evidence of Thomas Budd, who was a party to the conference held at Burlington in 1668. The whites were fearing an attack by the Indians, because the latter were reported as being angered at the whites for having sold them match-coats infected with small-pox. The chiefs were asked to a meeting with the settlers, and when it took place one of them spoke in behalf of all in the following lofty strain, as reported by Budd, and believed not to have been corrupted by any modern improvements upon his text:
"Our young men may speak such words as we do not like nor approve of, and we cannot help that, and some of your young men may speak such words as you do not like, and you cannot help that. We are your brothers, and intend to live like brothers with you; we have no mind to have war; we are minded to live in peace. If we intend at any time to make war, we will let you know of it and the reason why we make war with you; and if you make us satisfaction for the injury done us, for which the war was intended, then we will not make war on you; and if you intend at any time to make war on us, we would have you let us know of it and the reason, and then if we do not make satisfaction for the injury done unto you, then you may make war on us, otherwise you ought not to do it; you are our brothers, and we are willing to live like brothers with you; we are willing to have a broad path for you and us to walk in, and if the Indian is asleep in this path, the Englishman shall pass by and do him no harm; and if an Englishman is asleep in this path, the Indian shall pass him by and say, 'He is an Englishman, he is asleep; let him alone, he loves to sleep.'"
Budd was so moved by this eloquent and amicable demonstration that he added,-
"The Indians have been very serviceable to us by selling us venison, Indian corn, peas and beans, fish and fowl, buck-skins, beaver, otter and other skins and furs; the men hunt, fish and fowl, and the women plant the corn and carry burdens. There are many of them of a good understanding, considering their education, and in their public meetings of business they have excellent order, one speaking after another, and while one is speaking all the rest keep silence, and do not so much as whisper to one another. . . The kings sat on a form and we on another over against them; they had prepared four belts of wampum (so their current money is called, being black and white beads made of a fish shell) to give us as seals of the covenant they made with us; one of the kings, by consent and appointment of the rest, stood up and spoke."
It is interesting to compare the above with the instructions issued by the lords proprietors to Governor Philip Carteret, February 10, 1664,- "And lastly, if our Governors and Councellors happen to find any Natives in our said Province and Tract of Land aforesaid, that then you treat them with all Humanity and Kindness and do not in anywise grieve or oppress them, but endeavor by a Christian carriage to manifest Piety, Justice and Charity, and in your conversation with them, the Manifestation whereof will prove Beneficial to the Planters and likewise Advantageous to the Propagation of the Gospel."
It is a matter of no little difficulty to sift the truth from the voluminous tales of the Swedish, Dutch and English chroniclers who were among the first voyagers and settlers.
It happily remained for the more sober and prosaic clerks who came up the Delaware before and during Penn's days to temper with a regard for truth the temptation to extravagant writing. Easily first among these was Rev. John Campanius, Swedish chaplain of Governor Printz, who resided on Tinicum Island, near the mouth of the Schuylkill, from 1642 to 1648, and was in his leisure hours much of a rover on both sides of the Delaware. Writing of what he saw of the natives in those six years, he said,-
"Their way of living was very simple. With arrows pointed with sharp stones they killed the deer and other creatures. They made axes from stones, which they fastened to a stick, to kill the trees where they intended to plant. They cultivated the ground with a sort of hoe made from the shoulder-blade of a deer or a tortoise shell, sharpened with stones and fastened to a stick. They made pots of clay, mixed with powdered mussel shells burned in fire. By friction they made fire from two pieces of hard wood. The trees they burnt down and cut into pieces for fire-wood. On journeys they carried fire a great way in punk, or sponges found growing on the trees. They burned down great trees, and shaped them canoes by fire and the help of sharp stones. Men and women were dressed in skins; the women made themselves under-garments of wild hemp, of which they also made twine to knit the feathers of turkeys, eagles, etc., into blankets. The earth, the woods and the rivers were the provision stores of the Indians; for they eat all kinds of wild animals and productions of the earth, fowls, birds, fishes and fruits, which they find within their reach. They shoot deer, fowls and birds with the bow and arrow; they take the fishes in the same manner; when the waters are high the fish run up the creeks and return at ebb tide, so that the Indians can easily shoot them at low water and drag them ashore.
"They eat generally but twice a day, morning and afternoon; the earth serves them for tables and chairs. They sometimes broil their meat and their fish; other times they dry them in the sun or in the smoke and thus eat them. They make bread out of the maize or Indian corn, which they prepare in a manner peculiar to themselves: they crush the grain between two great stones, or on a large piece of wood; they moisten it with water and make it into small cakes, which they wrap up in corn leaves and thus bake them in the ashes. They can fast, when necessity compels them, for many days. When traveling or lying in wait for their enemies they take with them a kind of bread made of Indian corn and tobacco juice to allay their hunger and quench their thirst in case they have nothing else on hand. The drink before the Christians came into this country was nothing but water, but now they are very fond of strong liquors.(2) Both men and women smoke tobacco, which grows in their country In great abundance. They have, besides corn, beans and pumpkins, a sort of original dogs with short, pointed ears. . . When a Christian goes to visit them in their dwellings they immediately spread on the ground pieces of cloth and fine mats or skins; then they produce the best they have, as bread, deer, elk or bear's meat, fresh fish and bears fat, to serve in lieu of butter, which they generally broil upon the coals. These attentions must not be despised, but must be received with thankfulness, otherwise their friendship will be turned to hatred. When an Indian visits his friend, a Christian, he must always uncover his table at the lower end, for the Indian will have his liberty; and he will immediately jump upon the table and sit upon it with his legs crossed, for they are not accustomed to sit upon chairs; he then asks for whatever he would like to eat of."
Smith, in his "History of New Jersey," gives in more detail and interest than any other writer, facts relating to the social life of the Indians who dwelt on the east bank of the Delaware. The subjoined description may be accepted as a faithful picture of the Armewamexes, a local name for a small tribe who for a time inhabited the locality of the city of Camden and gave to the supposed island site of the city the name of Aquikansara:
"It was customary with the Indians of West Jersey, when they buried their dead, to put family utensils, bows and arrows and sometimes wampum into the grave with them. When a person of note died far from the place of his own residence they would carry his bones to be buried there. They washed and perfumed the dead, painted the face and followed singly, left the dead in a sitting position and covered the grave pyramidically. They were very curious in preserving and repairing the graves of their dead and pensively visited them; did not love to be asked their judgment twice about the same thing. They generally delighted in mirth; were very studious in observing the virtues of roots and herbs, by which they usually cured themselves of many bodily distempers, both by outward and inward applications. They besides frequently used sweating and the cold bath. They had an aversion to beards and would not suffer them to grow, but plucked the hair out by the roots. . . Their young women were originally very modest and shame-faced, and at marriageable ages distinguished themselves with a kind of worked mats or red and blue bags interspersed with small rows of white and black wampum, or half-rows of each in one, fastened to it and then put round the head down to near the middle of the forehead. The Indians would not allow the mentioning of the name of a friend after death. They sometimes streaked their faces with black when in mourning, but when their affairs went well they painted red. They were great observers of the weather by the moon, delighted in fine clothes, were punctual in their bargains and observed this so much in others that it was very difficult for a person who had once failed herein to get any dealings with them afterward.
"Their language was high, lofty and sententious. Their way of counting was by tens: that is to say, two tens, three tens, etc.; when the number got out of their reach they pointed to the stars or the hair of their heads.
"Their government was monarchical and successive, and mostly of the mothers' side, to prevent a spurious issue. They commonly washed their children in cold water as soon as born, and to make their limbs straight, tied them to aboard and hung it to their back, when they traveled; they usually walked at nine months old. Their young men married at sixteen or seventeen years of age, if by that time they had given sufficient proof of their manhood by a large return of skins of animals. The girls married at thirteen or fourteen, but stayed with their mothers to hoe the ground, bear burdens, etc., for some years after marriage. The marriage ceremony was sometimes thus: the relations and friends being present, the bridegroom delivered a bone to the bride, she an ear of Indian corn to him, meaning that he was to provide meat, she bread.
"Some tribes were commendably careful of their aged and decrepit, endeavoring to make the remains of their lives as comfortable as they could. It was pretty generally so, except in desperate decays; then, indeed, as in other cases of the like kind, they were sometimes apt to neglect them.
"The native Indians were grave, even to sadness, upon any common, and more so upon serious, occasions; observant of those in company; of a temper cool and deliberate; never in haste to speak, but waited for a certainty that the person who spoke before them had finished all he had to say.
Their behavior in public councils was strictly decent and instructive; everyone in his turn was heard according to rank of years. Liberty in its fullest extent was their ruling passion; to this every other consideration was subservient. Their children were trained up so as to cherish this disposition to the utmost; they were indulged to a degree, seldom chastised with blows and rarely chided. They dreaded slavery more than death. Companies of them frequently got together to feast, dance and make merry; this sweetened the toils of hunting; excepting these toils and the little action before described, they scarcely knew any."
THEIR GOVERNMENT.- A rough sort of communal system was the basis of Indian politics and government. Each tribe held its lands in common, and all its males took part in any council that was to decide questions pertaining to the public weal. The administration of government was a matter far from being confided to the chiefs or sachems alone. Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, whose fragmentary "Essay upon Indian Affairs" is invaluable, points out that a nation was composed of a number of tribes, families and towns united by relationship or friendship, each having a particular chief. These components of the nation were united under a kind of federal government, with laws and customs by which they were ruled. Mr. Thomson adds-
"Their governments, it is true, are very lax, except to peace and war, each individual having in his own hand the power of revenging injuries, and when murder is committed, the next relation having power to take revenge by putting to death the murderer, unless he can convince the chiefs and the head men that he had just cause, and by their means can pacify the family by a present and thereby put an end to the feud. The matters which merely regard a town or family are settled by the chiefs and head men of the town; those which regard the tribe, by a meeting of the chiefs from the several towns; and those that regard the nation, such as the making war or concluding peace with the neighboring nations, are determined on in a national council, composed of the chiefs and head warriors from every tribe. Every tribe has a chief or head man, and there is one who presides over the nation. In every town they have a council-house, where the chief assembles the old men and advises what is best. In every tribe there is a place, which is commonly the town in which the chief resides, where the head men of the towns meet to consult on the business that concerns them; and in every matter there is a grand council, or what they call a council fire, where the heads of the tribes and the chief warriors convene to determine on peace or war. In a council of a town all the men of the town may attend, the chief opens the business, and either gives his opinion of what is beat, or takes the advice of such of the old men as are heads of families or meat remarkable for prudence or knowledge. None of the young men are allowed or presume to speak, but the whole assembly at the end of every sentence or speech, if they approve it, express their approbation by a kind of hum or noise in unison with the speaker. The same order is observed in the meetings or councils of the tribes and in the national councils."
LATER HISTORY OF THE DELAWARES.- The declining days of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians began with their acceptance of neutrality at the dictation of the Iroquois, as already alluded to. From thence onward they decreased in numbers and importance until the year 1742, when, at the instance of the Governor of Pennsylvania, they were ordered by the Iroquois sachems to remove westward from their domain in the Delaware Valley. How completely they were
under subjugation to the sturdy braves of the North, the form in which the command was issued to them attests. They were, when they ventured to remonstrate, told that they were women and had no rights in the land except by the consent of their masters, and were menaced with extermination if they resisted. Sadly they obeyed and removed into the interior of Pennsylvania, where they were subsequently joined by their kindred, the Shawanese, from Virginia, and by some fragments of Maryland and other tribes. There they recovered somewhat of their ancient spirit; they made war upon the whites, and after the Revolution they formed a combination with Eastern and Ohio tribes, which forced the Iroquois to remove the stigma of neutrality and womanhood from them.
This compulsory migration was not so thorough, however, but that it failed to include some scattered bands south of Trenton, in this State. In 1749 Governor Belcher wrote that they amounted to no more than sixty families; but three years prior quite an alarm had been created by reports that a large number of Indians from the northeast had come into New Jersey with a view to stirring up the natives to bloodshed, or as allies of white insurgents who had organized to resist enforcement of the laws respecting land-titles. The panic was short-lived, it soon appearing that the errand of the strangers was to listen to Rev. Brainerd, the famous missionary, who was then preaching in Monmouth County. Among these visitors was the Delaware chief Teedyuscung, who had come down from the Susquehanna Valley.
THE LAST INDIANS OF NEW JERSEY.- In 1755 the Indians who remained on the West Jersey side of the Delaware manifested much restlessness because of impositions upon them and the occupation by whites of land which they had not sold. In 1757 laws were passed far their protection, but were of such little effect in restoring order that from May, 1757, to June, 1738, twenty-seven murders of whites were committed in West Jersey by the Minisinks.(3) In October of the latter year Governor Bernard, through the intervention of Teedyuscung, obtained a conference at Easton, Pennsylvania, with the Indians who had not sold out their lands. The whole of the remaining titles were then extinguished for the consideration of one thousand pounds, except that there was reserved to the Indians the right to fish in till the rivers and bays south of the Raritan, and to hunt on all the unenclosed lands. A reservation of three thousand acres was provided for them at Edge Pillock, Burlington County, and here the sixty individuals, who were all that remained of the race that once possessed the soil, were located, and there they and their descendants dwelt until 1802, when they joined the Stockbridge tribe at New Stockbridge, New York. Thirty years later a revival of the claim that they had not been sufficiently compensated for their ancient hunting and fishing privileges in New Jersey led to the mission of Shawuskukhkung, a Christian Indian, who had been educated at Princeton College, and by the whites given the name of Bartholomew S. Calvin. He presented a memorial to the Legislature, which agreed to pay the Indians their full demand of two thousand dollars, although it was clear that the previous settlement had been intended to be final. In a letter to the Legislature on the passage of the bill, Calvin wrote,-
"The final act of official intercourse between the State of New Jersey and the Delaware Indians, who once owned nearly the whole of its territory, has now been consummated, and in a manner which must redound to the honor of this growing State, and, in all probability, to the prolongation of the existence of a wasted yet grateful people. Upon this parting occasion I feel it to be an incumbent duty to bear the feeble tribute of my praise to the high-toned justice which, in this instance, and, so far as I am acquainted, in all former times, has actuated the Councils of this Commonwealth in dealing with the aboriginal inhabitants.
"Not a drop of our blood have you spilled in battle; not an acre of our land have you taken but by our consent. These facts speak for themselves and need no comment. They place the character of New Jersey in bold relief and bright example to those States within whose territorial limits our brethren still linger. Nothing but benisons can fall upon her from the lips of a Lenni Lenape. There may be some who would despise an Indian benediction; but when I return to my people and make known to them the result of my mission, the ear of the Great Sovereign of the universe, which is still open to our cry, will be penetrated with the invocation of blessings upon the generous sons of New Jersey."
WAMPUM. - The following quotations from works issued by the publishers of this book are of special interest:
"Wampum passed as current money between the early whites and Indians. There were two kinds of it, the white and purple. They were both worked into the form of beads, generally each about half an inch long and one-eighth broad, with a hole drilled through them so as to be strung on leather or hempen strings. The white was made out of the great conch or sea-shell, and the purple out of the inside of the mussel shell. These beads, after being strung, were woven by the women into belts, sometimes broader than a person's hand and about two feet long. It was these that were given and received at their various treaties as seals of friendship; in matters of less importance only a single string was given. Two pieces of white wampum were considered to equal in value one of the purple."- "History of Montgomery County." "There is enough concurrent testimony to warrant the conclusion that the original purpose of wampum was exclusively mnemonic. It was a sort of memoria technica, like the knotted cords of the ancient Peruvians, and doubtless, if the Indians had had intelligence to word it out, a system of written language could have been constructed of wampum bead figures as expressive as that of a single code and more serviceable than the Runic arrow-head writing of the Northmen. Wampum was given not only as a present and a courteous reminder, but also as a threat and a warning. Thus, when, at Lancaster, Pa., in 1747, the chiefs of the Five Nations forbade the Lenapes to sell any more land and ordered them to remove to the interior, they emphasized the command by handing them a belt. As money, its use came about in this way: It was a memorandum of exchange, of business transactions. Passyund, of the Munsis, agreed to let his daughter marry the son of Secanee, of the Unamis, and to give with her a dowry of so many beaver skins, in return for which Secanee's son was to hunt so many days for Passyund. How bind the bargain and prove it? By making a mutual note of it in the exchange of wampum. That particular belt or string vouched for that particular transaction. Menanee, on the Allegheny, agrees to sell to Tamanee, on the Delaware, a dozen buffalo robes for forty fathoms of duffle, with buttons, thread and red cloth to ornament. A belt is exchanged to prove the transaction. But that cannot be completed until the goods are exchanged. The next step is easy: to put a certain fixed value on each bead, so that when Tamanee pays a belt to Menanee for his robes, Menanee can at once hand the belt over to the trader who has the goods and get from him the duffle and the trimmings. Viewed in this light, wampum takes rank as an instrument of as various and important uses as any ever employed by man. It is as if the rosary of the pious Catholic were suddenly invested with the powers of a historical monument, a diplomatic memorandum and a business 'stub' book, a short-hand inscription system which is equally understood by tribes of every variety of language and dialect, a currency of uniform value and universal circulation in the exchange of a continent, a bank of deposit, a jewelry and personal ornament, all in one. There is no parallel instance in all the economic history of mankind of an article so utterly useless and valueless in itself acquiring such a wide and multifarious range of derivative values and uses."- "History of Philadelphia."
(1)"The Indians of this region had no towns or fixed places of habitation; they mostly wander around from one place to another and generally go to those places where they think they are most likely to find the means of support. . . When they travel they carry their mats with them wherever they go and fix them on poles, under which they dwell. When they want fire they strike it out of a piece of dry wood, of which they find plenty."
(2) It is believed to be a fact, and a remarkable one too, that the North American Indians are, with the exception of the Eskimo, the only people on the face of the globe who did not make for themselves some intoxicating or stimulating liquor.
(3) New Jersey Historical Collection, page 61.
SOURCE: Page(s) 4-16, History of Camden County, New Jersey, by George R. Prowell, L.J. Richards & Co. 1886
Published 2007 by the Camden County Genealogy Project