Delaware Location
Originally in 1600, the Delaware River Valley from Cape
Henlopen, Delaware north to include the west side
of the lower Hudson Valley in southern New York.
The Delaware were not migratory and appear to have
occupied their homeland for thousands of years
before the coming of the Europeans. During the next
three centuries, white settlement forced the Delaware to
relocate at least twenty times. By 1900 they had lived in:
Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, Ohio, Ontario, Michigan, Indiana, Missouri,
Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Wisconsin, Kansas, and
Oklahoma. However, a government plan to move some
of the Delaware to Minnesota was never carried out.
Population
In 1600 the Delaware may have numbered as many
as 20,000, but several wars and at least 14 separate
epidemics reduced their population to around 4,000
by 1700 - the worst drops occurring between 1655 and
1670. Since the Delaware afterwards absorbed peoples
from several other Algonquin-speaking tribes, this figure
remained fairly constant until 1775. By 1845 it had fallen
to combined total of about 2,000 Delaware and Munsee
in both the United States and Canada. The 1910 census
gave about the same result, but the current Delaware
population has recovered to almost 16,000, most
of whom live in Oklahoma. Nearly 10,000 Delaware
are in eastern Oklahoma and, until very recently, were
considered part of the Cherokee Nation. After a long
struggle with the Bureau
of Indian Affairs (BIA), they
regained federal recognition in September,
1996 as
the Delaware Tribe of Indians with their tribal offices in
Bartlesville.
The other federally recognized group is the
Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma.
Sometimes
called the Absentee Delaware, its 1,000 members are
descendants
of a Missouri-Texas splinter group,
many of whom reside near of the tribal
headquarters at Anadarko.
There currently are 2,000 Munsee on three reserves in southern
Ontario:
the Delaware of Grand River; Moravians of the
Thames; and Muncey of the Thames.
In the United States,
there are Munsee descendants in the 1,500 member
Stockbridge-Munsee
tribe in northern Wisconsin and a mixed
Munsee-Ojibwe community near Ottawa,
Kansas. The
federally-recognized Delaware tribes in Oklahoma
only recognize
two eastern groups: the Sand Hill Band
of Lenape and the Nanticoke-Lenape.
They are uncertain
about the two tribes recognized by the State of New
Jersey.
The Ramapough Mountain Indians (Ramapo Mountain People)
in the northern part
of the New Jersey have almost 2,500 members
. Although there is some mention
of possible Tuscarora ancestry,
they appear to be a mixture of Munsee, Mattabesic
(Ramapo from southwest Connecticut), Pompton (Wappinger)
and Metoac descendants.
The Ramapo request for federal
recognition was denied in 1993. Just northeast
of Philadelphia is
the 600 member Powhatan-Renape Nation at Rancocas, New
Jersey -
apparently a mix of Unami Delaware, Nanticoke, and Powhatan.
Other
Delaware groups without federal or state recognition include:
the Brotherton
Indians (Wisconsin)
and the Eastern Lenapi Nation (Pennsylvania).
Names
Delaware is not a Native American name. Exploring the
Atlantic coast north of Jamestown in 1610, Captain Samuel
Argall discovered a large bay which
he named in honor of Sir
Thomas West, Third Lord de la Warr and the first
governor
of the Virginia. Apparently, Governor West was unimpressed
with
this honor and returned to England without ever bothering
to gaze upon his
namesake. However, the name stuck. English
colonists later used Delaware for
the bay, the river and the
native peoples who lived there. The Delaware called
themselves
Lenape translated either as "original people" or "true men."
The
Swedish form was Renape. For many Algonquin, the
Lenape were the "grandfathers,"
a term of great respect stemming
from the widespread belief that the Lenapi
were the original tribe
of all Algonquin-speaking peoples, and this often
gave the Lenapi
the authority to settle disputes between rival tribes. Other
names: Akotcakanea (Iroquois), Anakwanoki (Cherokee),
Delua (Delaas) (Spanish
Texas), Loup (French "wolf"),
Mattawa (Mathe, Mathwa) (Nanticoke),
Narwahro
(Wichita), and Tcakanea (Iroquois).
Language
Algonquin with three dialects:
Munsee, Unami, and Unalactigo. Munsee was
distinct from the other two and apparently
was more closely related to Mahican.
Sub-Tribes
Three divisions based on differences in dialect and location
rather than any political relationship. By 1700 the Unalactigo
had been absorbed by the Unami and in many ways the Munsee
had become a separate tribe. Numbers following a name
indicate more than one village of this name, while a tribal
name indicates either a Munsee village or mixed population.
Munsee (before 1682):
"people of the stoney country" (Minassiniu, Minisink,
Minsi,
Moncy, Monthey, Mundock, Muncey, Munsi,
and Muncie). The northernmost group
of the Lenape,
they occupied the headwaters of the Delaware River
where Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, and New York meet
including the Catskill Mountains on the west
side of the
lower Hudson Valley. Four of the Munsee tribes
were sometimes
known collectively as the
Esopus (Espachomy): Catskill, Mamekoting,
Waranawonkong,
and Wawarsink.
Munsee Tribes or villages:
Cashiehtunk, Catskill (Katskill), Lackawaxen (2),
Macharienkonick, Mamekoting, Marechkawieck,
Meochkonck, Minisink, Mengakonia, Mohickon,
Outauninkin, Pakadasank, Papagonk, Peckwes,
Schepinakonck, Shawangunk, Waoranec,
Waranawonkong, Wawarsink (Waoranecker,
Warwarsing), Waywayanda, Wildwyck, and Wysox.
Unami (Wename) (before 1682):
"people down river" occupied the northern two-thirds
of New Jersey (including Staten Island) and the
adjoining portions of eastern Pennsylvania to just south of
Philadelphia.
Ahaimus, Aquackanonk, Armeomeck, Assunpink,
Axion (Atsayonck, Atsayongky), Brotherton,
Calcefar, Coacquannok, Coaxen, Communipaw
(Gamaoenapa), Cranbury, Crosswick (Crossweeksung)
Edgepillock (Indian Mills), Eriwonec (Armewamese,
Armewamex, Erinonec, Ermamex), Gweghkongh,
Hackensack, Haverstraw (Haverstroo), Hespatingh,
Keskaechquerem, Konekotay, Lehigh (Gachwechnagechga),
Hockanetcunk, Macock, Matanakon (Matikonghy),
Matovancon, Mechgachkamic, Meggeckessou,
Meletecunk (Metacunk), Momakarongk,
Mooharmowikarun, Mookwungwahoki, Mosilian
(Mosinan),
Muhhowekaken, Muhkarmhukse, Muhkrentharne,
Navasink, Nittabonck
(Nittabakonck), Neshamini,
Neshannock, Nyack (2) (Nayack), Okehocking
(Okahoki,
Okanickon), Paatquacktung, Passayunk
(Passajung), Pavonia, Pemickpacka, Playwicky,
Pocopson (Poaetquissingh, Pocaupsing), Raritan
(Sanhikan), Ramcock (Ancocus, Rancocas, Rankoke
Rarncock, Remahenonc, Remkoke), Sawkin,
Schuykill, Shackamaxon,
Soupnapka, Tappan, Waoranec,
Weepink, Welagamika, Wickquakonick (Wicoa),
Wichquaquenscke, and Yacomanshaghking.
Unalactigo (before 1682):
"people near the ocean" inhabited both sides
of the lower Delaware River below Philadelphia
including Delaware Bay in what would currently be
northern Delaware, southeast Pennsylvania, and southern New Jersey.
Amimenipaty, Assomoche, Atayonek, Big Siconese,
Chikohoki (Chihohock, Chilohoki), Cranbury, Hickory
, Hopokohacking, Kahansuk, Kechemech, Little
Siconese (Chiconesseck), Manta (Mantes),
Memankitonna, Minguannan (Minguahanan,
Minguarinari), Nantuxet, Naraticon (Naraticonck
, Narraticong), Quenomysing (Quineomessinque)
, Roymount, Sewapoo (Sewapoi), Sickoneysinck
(Siconese, Sikonessink), Tirans, and Watcessit.
Moravian Missions (1740-1837):
Beginning about 1740 near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
,
Moravian (United Brethren) missionaries from
Germany began to work
among the
Delaware.
As the Lenape moved west, the missionaries
went with them.
Moravian
converts are sometimes
referred to in Delaware treaties with the
United
States
as the "Christian Indians."
Pennsylvania:
Bethlehem, Friedenshuetten, Friedenstadt,
Gnadenhuetten
(2), Goshgoshunk (Munsee),
Languntennenk, Lawunakhannek (Munsee),
Meniolagomeka (Munsee), Nain, Sheshequin (Munsee), and Wechquetank.
Ohio:
Captive's Town, Gnadenhuetten, Lichtenau,
Salem,
Schoenbrunn (Munsee) Michigan: New
Gnadenhuetten, and New Salem
(Pequottink)
Indiana:
Woapimintschi
Ontario:
Moraviantown, Shoenfeldt, and Watchtower
Pennsylvania Villages (1682-1779):
Adjouquay, Alamingo, Allaquippa (Alquippa),
Alleghany, Assinisink (Munsee), Bald Eagle's
Nest, Big Island, Black Leg's, Brandywine,
Catawaweshink, Cattawisa (Lappapitton's Town),
Chinklacamoose (Seneca), Clistowacka,
Conemaugh, Custaloga's Town (1), Frankstown,
Hickorytown (Munsee-Seneca), Hociundoquen,
Hogstown, Jacob's Cabins, Jedakne (Iroquois)
, John's Town (Munsee), Kalbauvane,
Kanhanghton, Katamoonchink, Kickenapawling
(Quemahoning) (Iroquois), Kindassowa, King Beaver's
Town (Shinga's Old Town), Kishakoquilla (2),
Kiskemeneco, Kiskiminetas, Kittaning (Attigu»)
(Iroquois), Kushkuski (Kuskuski) (Iroquois),
Lawunkhannek (Seneca), Logstown (Chininqu») (Shawnee-Mingo)
, Loyalhanning (Iroquois), Macharienkonck (Munsee),
Macocks, Mahusquechikoken (Munsee-Seneca),
Meniolagomeka, Nescopeck (Iroquois), Nockamixon,
Nutimy's Town (Shawnee- Mahican), Ostonwackin
(Cayuga-Oneida), Paxtang (Shawnee), Pematuning,
Playwickey, Pohkopophunk, Punxsutawny (Gnat Town)
, Queenashawakee, Queonemysing, Sawcunk (Saukunk)
(Shawnee-Mingo), Schipston, Seven Houses, Sewickley
(Shawnee-Mingo), Shamokin (Shawnee-Iroquois-Tutelo)
, Shannopin, Shenango (3) (Iroquois), Sheshequin (Seneca),
Shinga's Town (1), Teedyuskung, Tioga (Munsee-Nanticoke-
Mahican-Saponi-Tutelo), Tulpehocken, Tunkannock, Venango
(Seneca-Shawnee-Wyandot-Ottawa),
Walagsmika, Wekeeponall (Queen Esther's Town),
Welagameka, Wickquacoingh (Wico), Wilawane, Wyalusing (Munsee-
Iroquois), and
Wyoming (Munsee-Iroquois
-Shawnee-Mahican-Nanticoke).
New York Villages (1690-1779):
Alaping, Kanestio (Seneca), Kohhokking (Painted Post),
Lackawanna, Oswego, Otseningo (Iroquois-Nanticoke-Mahican),
Pasigachkunk, Passycotcung, Shingiss, and Skehandowa (Iroquois)
Ohio Villages (1740-1829):
Achsinnink (Assisink), Auglaize, Beaverstown,
Big Cat's (Buckongamelas), Bullet's Town, Chilohocki,
Coshocton (Goschochgung,
Koshachkink)
(Munsee-Shawnee-Seneca), Custaloga's Town (2),
Grapevine Town,
Greentown, Hockhocking
(Hockhogen, Hockhocken, Shinga's New Town)
, Hopocan,
Jeromestown, Killbuck's Town (1),
Kihshanschican, Kiskominitoes, Kokosing
(Owl's Town), Le Gris, Mahoning, Mohican
John's Town,
Murderingtown, Muskingum,
Newcomerstown (Gekelemukpechuenk), New Hundy
(Munsee), Kekelemukpechink), Newtown (3) (Iroquois),
Old Hundy (Munsee), Pipestown (3), Salt Lick,
Shenango (3), Shingastown (1), Snakestown,
Sonnontio (Shawnee-Mingo), Three Legs,
Tom's
Town, Tullihas (Mahican-Caughnawaga),
Tuscarawas (Wyandot), White Eyes (Coquetakeghton)
,
White Woman, Will's Creek, and Will's Town
Indiana Villages (1770-1820):
Anderson's Town (Wapeminskink) (Munsee),
Black Hawk, Buckstown (Buckongahela's Town, Wapekommekoke),
Hockingpomska's Town, Killbuck's Town (1), Kiktheswemund, Little
Munsee Town (Munsee), Outaunink (Munsee),
Tetepachksit's Town, and Woapikamikunk (Woapikamunk)
Culture
A common tradition shared by most Algonquin maintains
that the Lenape, Nanticoke, Powhatan, and Shawnee
were, at some
point in the past, a single tribe which
lived in the Lenape homeland. Linguistic
evidence
and migration patterns tend to support this, leaving only
the question
of "when." In 1836 Constantine Rafinesque
published a book in which he described
the Walam Olum,
a series of pictograph-etched wooden sticks which were used
by the Lenape to record their history. It begins with their
departure from
Siberia and follows their movement across
North America until they reached
the Atlantic Ocean.
Rafinesque's reputation has ranged from pioneering genius
to charlatan, and the sticks have since disappeared. The
question is whether
an oral tradition like the Walam
Olum could have survived for 14,000 (perhaps
40,000) years,
and most scholars question its authenticity.
Occupying the area between northern Delaware
and New
York, the Lenape were not really a single tribe in 1600 but
a set
of independent villages and bands. There was no
central political authority,
and Lenape sachems, at best,
controlled only a few villages usually located
along the
same stream. The three traditional Lenape divisions (Munsee,
Unami,
and Unalactigo) were based on differences in dialect
and location. There
was, however, a common sense of being
"Lenape" from a shared system of three
matrilineal clans which
cut across their village and band organizations. Among
the
Unami and Unalactigo, the Turtle clan ranked first, followed
by the Wolf
and Turkey. The Munsee apparently only had Wolf and Turkey.
According to an American legend, the Lenape chief Tammany
sold Manhattan to the Dutch in 1626 for twenty-five dollars
in trade goods - an event commemorated in the name of a
New York City political
machine noted mainly for its corruption.
There are a few things wrong with
this story: his name was
Tammanend, not Tammany; and he sold Philadelphia to the
English in 1682, not Manhattan to the Dutch in 1626!
Despite the European insistence that they were one,
the Lenape were not a unified tribe until after
they had moved to Ohio in the 1740s. Even then
their tribal organization followed
the pattern of their
traditional clans. The tribal council was composed
of
three sachems (captains), one each from the Turtle
, Wolf, and Turkey clans with the "head chief" almost always
being a member of the Turtle. These were hereditary positions
from selected families but still required election for
confirmation
. War chiefs, however, were chosen on the basis of proven ability.
The Lenape have been described as a warm
and hospitable
people. Their natural instinct was to be accommodating and
peaceful, but this masked a temper which, if provoked, could
react with terrible
violence. Unami and Unalactigo villages
were generally not fortified, but
because of their proximity to
the Mohawk, the Munsee towns were. Villages were occupied
during summer with populations of several hundred. There was
no concept of individual land ownership, but Lenape separated to
defined family
hunting territories (sometimes community owned)
in the winter. Three types
of wigwams were used: round with
dome roof, oblong with arched roof, and
oblong with a ridge
pole. Dugout canoes were used rather than the familiar
birchbark variety from the Great Lakes. Men did the hunting
and fishing, but
most of the Lenape's diet came from farming
which was solely the responsibility of the women. Corn, squash,
beans, sweet potatoes, and tobacco were grown, and
fields often covered more than 200 acres.
Men removed all facial hair and the women often colored their
faces
with red ocre. Tattooing was common to both sexes. Older men
wore their hair long, but warriors usually had a scalp lock greased
to stand erect. Although this hairstyle is often called a
"Mohawk,"
it was common to most of the eastern tribes. Lenape sachems
wore only a single eagle feather and there was nothing that
resembled the Sioux war bonnet. Clothing
was made from
deerskins, and decorated with shell beads or porcupine quills,
feather mantels, and other ornaments. The Lenape used a lot
of copper which
they obtained from the western Great Lakes
through trade. Hammered into ornaments,
it was also fashioned
into pipes and arrowheads. By 1750 the Lenape had become
very stylish in their dress, favoring silver nose rings and
clothing decorated
with bright cloth purchased from European traders.
There was no formal marriage
ceremony,
but the Lenape were usually monogamous.
Religious ceremonies were centered around a dedicated "big house."
Dreams were considered very significant, so Lenape priests were
divided into two classes: those who interpreted dreams and divined
the future; and those dedicated to healing. The dead were buried
in shallow graves, but method varied considerably: flexed,
extended,
individually, and sometimes groups. The Lenape believed in a
afterlife,
but without the Christian concept of heaven and hell - a source
of considerable frustration for Moravian missionaries. Lenape were
reluctant to tell their real name, and the use of
nicknames was very
common. The real name of Captain Pipe, the head of the
Delaware
Wolf clan in 1775 was Konieschquanoheel "maker of daylight."
His
nickname, however, was Hopocan meaning "tobacco pipe" -
hence his historical name of Captain Pipe.
History
Contact between the Lenape and the Swannuken, "salt water
people," began early. In 1524 Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian
navigator in the service of France, entered New York harbor
through the strait which bears his name. Anchoring off Staten
Island, he met native peoples who
most likely were Lenape
. They were friendly and curious and probably would
have
remained that way had he not tried to kidnap some of them
before departing.
During the next 80 years, most of the
coastal Algonquin learned the hard
way to beware of the
European ships which occasionally stopped to raid their
villages for slaves. After Verrazano, the next "official"
contact for the
Lenape was in 1609 when Henry Hudson,
employed by the Dutch East India Company
to search
for the Northwest Passage, explored Delaware Bay. Hudson
soon realized
this was a dead-end and continued north along the
New Jersey coast until
he reached the mouth of the Hudson River in September.
After years of being victimized by European slave raids, the
Lenape on the New Jersey coast had become unfriendly.
Before entering the river, Hudson anchored for a short
time off Sandy Hook where he had a hostile encounter
with Navasink (Unami Delaware). However, Hudson pressed
on and entered the river and stopped near the north end of
Manhattan Island. Longboats were lowered to explore the
area, one of which promptly became lost in a fog bank near
the Hellgate. When the fog parted, the crew suddenly saw
a group of Wappinger canoes approaching, and the nervous
sailors apparently fired first. The response was a barrage of
arrows which killed one crewmember and wounded two
others. Hudson continued upriver until the water became
too shallow near Albany. The Mahican in this area had no
experience with Europeans and were friendly and eager
to trade. Hudson exhausted
his trade goods in exchange
for fur and started home in October. Passing
the lower river,
he had another skirmish with the Wappinger before
reaching
the open sea and returning to Europe.
Hudson's employers were disappointed he had not found a
shortcut to China but impressed with the furs he had gotten
from the Mahican, and other Dutch traders visited to the
Hudson River the following year. Ignoring the
Wappinger and Delaware at the mouth of the river,
they concentrated on the Mahican and Mohawk
upstream, and after arranging a truce between these
tribes, a permanent trading post (Fort Nassau) was
erected
on Castle Island just below Albany. Within a few
years, the Dutch had expanded
their trade to
include the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers.
Although it was not something they wanted, the Dutch
fur trade aggravated intertribal competition for hunting
territory and brought widespread warfare to the region.
Along the lower Connecticut, the Pequot began to dominate
and conquer their Mattabesic and Nipmuc neighbors
to
control the trade with the Dutch, while on the Hudson, a
pre-existing
rivalry between the Mahican and Mohawk
exploded into war during 1617. The
war suspended
trade and forced the temporary closure of Fort Nassau
until
the Dutch could arrange a peace the following year.
In 1624, the Dutch brought
30 families to the area and
built a new post (Fort Orange) on the west bank
of the
Hudson at Albany. At the same time, they tried to use the
Mahican
as middlemen to open trade with the Algonkin
and Montagnais (French allies)
on the St. Lawrence River.
Trade with their enemies was something the Mohawk
would not tolerate, and they attacked the Mahican.
After four years of fighting,
the Mahican were defeated
and forced east of the Hudson, after which the
Mohawk
became the dominant Dutch trading partner along the Hudson.
The competition between the Mohawk and Mahican
also affected the Munsee. As early as 1615, the
Mohawk had begun taking
hunting territory from
them which formerly had been shared. As a result,
some
Munsee supported the Mahican during the
war, and by 1628 several of the northern
Munsee
groups had been conquered by the Mohawk an
d forced to pay tribute.
The Unami and Unalactigo
to the south also paid a price for their trade with
the Dutch. Beginning about 1626, they were attacked
by the Susquehannock
(Minqua) from the Susquehanna
Valley to the west. Long-time enemies of the
Iroquois
, the Susquehannock not only sought better access to
the Dutch but
were concerned that, if the Mohawk
defeated the Mahican, they would also
seize the Delaware Valley.
There had been wars between the Lenape and Susquehannock
before contact, but the sheer numbers of the Lenape (3 to 1)
had always been
adequate to keep the highly-organized Susquehannock at bay.
Dutch trade and Mohawk conquests, however, provided
sufficient motivation for an onslaught unlike anything the Lenape
had experienced. Between 1630 and 1635, the Susquehannock
attacked Lenape villages in southeast Pennsylvania and drove them
across the Delaware River into New Jersey or south into northern
Delaware. It was a brutal war with great destruction and loss of life,
but the fur trade continued throughout the conflict which allowed
the
Europeans to observe what was happening. Both Dutch and English
traders along the lower Delaware reported burned villages and many
dead. At the same time (1633-35), smallpox struck the Hudson and
Delaware Valleys for the first time. By the time the Swedes arrived
on the lower Delaware River in 1638, the fighting had ended. The
Lenape, however, having lost half of their original population, were
forced to abandon most of their villages west of the Delaware
River, and, as a condition of peace, become a subject people. The
Lenape sold some land to the Swedes that year but first had
to ask for permission to do so from the Susquehannock.
In general, the Lenape got along well with the Swedes.
Unfortunately,
most of the beaver in the Delaware Valley were gone by 1640, so
the Swedes tended to ignore the Lenape in favor of the
Susquehannock.
One exception to this, however, was that they provided firearms
to the
Munsee who were a Susquehannock ally against the Iroquois. The
Susquehannock
allowed the Lenape to hunt west of the river as long
as they paid their tribute.
This allowed the Lenape to participate in the
fur trade but created major
changes in their society as their men became
hunters for profit. Meanwhile,
the Dutch were furious about the Swedish
colony on the lower Delaware for
a number of reasons: loss of trade; they
had claimed the area for themselves;
and the Swedish colony was founded
by Pieter Minuit, a former governor of
New Netherlands. They might
well have done something but were distracted
by worsening relations
with the lower Hudson tribes and the advance of English
settlement into
western Connecticut after the Pequot War (1637).
Compared to the English, there were not
many Dutch
in North America. At first, there were only a few fur
traders.
Settlement did not occur until 30 Dutch families
arrived at Albany in 1624, the same year the Mahican-
Mohawk war began. The violence and length of this conflict
not only slowed the Dutch fur trade along the Hudson
but forced them
to shift the focus of their settlement downstream.
In 1625 Pieter Minuit, then governor of New Netherlands,
purchased Manhattan from the Metoac tribe of the same name
and built Fort Amsterdam at the south end of the island.
Farmers were brought to supply food for the garrison,
and at this point, Dutch
relations with the lower Hudson
tribes turned sour. The first indication of
trouble to come
occurred shortly after the Dutch purchased a small tract
on
Delaware Bay from the Unalactigo in 1629 and a second
parcel at Cape May (southeast
New Jersey) in 1631. A small
settlement (Swanendael) was started at Cape
May in 1631,
but during an argument, a Dutch colonist killed a Lenape sachem,
and the Sickoneysinck retaliated by killing all of the 32 Dutch
colonists. The Dutch made no further attempts to colonize the
lower Delaware River until after they had captured New Sweden in
1655.
Because New Netherlands was a trade monopoly
operated
by the Dutch West India Company, there was little economic
opportunity
for anyone besides its stockholders. For this reason
, there was very little
immigration from the mother country to the
New World. The company attempted
to remedy this in 1629 by
selling patroonships to investors willing to bring
in new settlers,
but, this had little effect until it gave up its fur trade
monopoly in
1639. The number of Dutch colonists increased afterwards,
and
settlement spread to the Bronx and across the Hudson to
the Hackensack Valley
and Staten Island. The Dutch were
required by law to purchase the lands which
they occupied,
but it was common for sales to involve brandy and fraud.
Even
when transactions were conducted honestly, problems
arose from differing
native and European concepts of land ownership.
In the accordance with the law, the
Patroon David De Vries
purchased land on Staten Island from the Raritan believing, in
the European custom, he had obtained exclusive rights to its
use. However, the Raritan thought they had only agreed to
share the land. In any event, the Raritan never thought the
sale had anything to do with their right to hunt the animals
which lived there ...like those pigs the Dutch farmers
were
raising! Livestock was easy prey for native hunters, and to
make matters
worse, the Dutch allowed their animals to
roam freely in the woods, which
often resulted in their
invading the unfenced native corn fields with disastrous
results. The offending animal was usually killed, but sometimes
the damage was so severe, the Raritan also took further revenge
on its relatives. In any case, the Raritan acquired a taste for
pork, and Dutch farmers demanded to be compensated for
their losses. To the Raritan, the idea of someone
owning animals was ridiculous.
In 1639 a new director-general arrived at New Amsterdam.
Governor Kieft was a stern, moralistic man with instructions from
the company to bring discipline and order to the colony. Besides
new regulations to deal with the moral laxness of the Dutch
colonists, Kieft
chose to deal with the neighboring tribes
through intimidation rather than
negotiation. One of his first
actions was to send an armed sloop to the Tappan
villages to
demand a tribute of corn and wampum. The Tappan had always
been
peaceful and even sold some of their land to Dutch. They
reluctantly paid
but could not believe the Dutch would treat them
this way. In July, 1640
several pigs disappeared from the De Vries
plantation. The obvious conclusion
was that the Raritan were
responsible, but as it would turn out, the culprits
were Dutch.
Kieft chose to deal with this "major crisis" with a show of
military
force. In September, he sent 100 men to Staten Island to
punish the Raritan for the theft. Several Raritan were killed,
one of their sachems taken hostage, and the corpse of another
mutilated.
The Raritan retaliated in the "Pig War" by burning De
Vries' plantation and killing four of his field-hands.
Kieft responded by ordering the extermination of the
Raritan and offered a bounty of ten fathoms of wampum
for each Raritan head brought to him at Fort Amsterdam
, but only a few Metoac warriors from Long Island "took
up the hatchet" against the Raritan. The Raritan retreated
west into New Jersey, and Kieft's generous offer netted
him only one head. However, other problems arose. In 1642 a
Wecquaesgeek
(Wappinger) warrior took revenge for the earlier
murder of his uncle by the
Dutch by killing a Dutchman. Kieft
demanded the Wecquaesgeek turn the murderer
over to him for
punishment and, when refused, sent an punitive expedition
to
destroy their village. Fortunately, his men got lost enroute, but the
Wecquaesgeek learned of their narrow escape and made peace
. Meanwhile, the
murderer had found refuge with another tribe,
so the frustrated Kieft never
did get his hands on him. A similar s
ituation developed that year with the
Hackensack across the
river in New Jersey, the "Whiskey War." The Hackensack were
already angry about a questionable purchase and occupation of
some of their land by Myndert Van der Horst, when the son
of one of their sachems was lured to a Dutch establishment and
gotten drunk. When he awoke, he discovered his Dutch hosts
had relieved him of his beaver skin coat. He got even by putting
an arrow into a worker who was thatching the roof of Van der
Horst's home.
Kieft made his usual demand for the surrender
the killer and got the
usual response - the warriors had fled to another
tribe. The Hackensack,
however, were ready to resolve things in the tradition
manner with a
payment of wampum to "cover the dead." Unfortunately, their
sachems
refused to visit Fort Amsterdam to make arrangements because they
were certain the madman Kieft would put them in his jail. That
summer,
the
Narragansett sachem Miontonimo came from Rhode Island with 100
warriors and
visited the Metoac tribes on Long Island and the Wappinger
and Mahican along
the Hudson to recruit allies for a war he was planning
against the Mohegan in Connecticut. While an intertribal war in an
English
colony should have been of little concern, Kieft's growing
difficulty with the
tribes near New Amsterdam made him conclude that a general
uprising was
being planned against both the Dutch and English.
Meanwhile, English traders along the Connecticut River in 1640
had tried
to lure the Mohawk away from the Dutch with offers of firearms.
To
counter this, the Dutch reversed their previous policy and began selling
large guns and ammunition to the Mohawk and Mahican in whatever
amounts they wanted. Not only did this dramatically escalate the
violence
in the Beaver Wars in the St. Lawrence Valley and Great Lakes,
but
it upset
the balance of power along the lower Hudson. The peace which
ended
their
war in 1628 had also bound the Mohawk and Mahican into an
alliance, and by
1642 they were even forming joint war parties against the
Montagnais (French allies)
to the north. Because of their continuous trade with the Dutch,
fur was becoming
scarce in their homelands, but the Dutch also accepted wampum
as payment for
trade goods. Located in the interior, neither the Mahican or
Mohawk had access
to this commodity, but the Wappinger and Delaware on the
lower river did. Their
solution was for the Mohawk to demand tribute in wampum
from the Munsee west
of the river while the Mahican went after the Wappinger
on the east side.
For obvious reasons, the Dutch had restricted the sale of
firearms to the
tribes near their settlements on the lower Hudson. The Munsee
could get guns from the Swedes, but the Wappinger were ill
prepared to resist the Mahican. In the winter of 1642-43, 80
heavily-armed Mahican warriors came to the Wecquaesgeek
villages demanding tribute. The Wecquaesgeek refused, and in
the melee which followed, 17 were killed and many of their
women and children captured. To escape the Mahican, the
Wecquaesgeek fled south to what they thought was the
protection of the Dutch settlements. After a two-week
stay on Manhattan, they moved across the Hudson to
the Hackensack villages near Pavonia (Jersey City) and
Corlear's Hook. Because of their
recent confrontations
with the Dutch, the Wecquaesgeek were not especially
friendly, and there were incidents. At this point Kieft ignored
the
advice
of his council and decided to exterminate the Wecquaesgeek
to set an example
to the other "Wilden" (wild men). On February
25th, 1643 the Dutch made a
surprise night attack on the sleeping
Wecquaesgeek villages killing 80 at
Pavonia and another 30 at
Corlear's Hook. Dutch soldiers reportedly brought
the heads
of their victims back to Fort Amsterdam and played kickball with
them.
As the news of the massacre spread, the
Hackensack and
Tappan joined with the other Wappinger tribes in attacks
against
the outlying Dutch farms, Wappinger War (Governor Kieft's
War, 1643-45). The
Dutch were driven inside Fort Amsterdam, and
preparing for a possible siege,
Kieft added fuel to the fire by
confiscating corn from the Metoac on Long
Island killing three
Canarsee in the process. The war spread to include warriors
from at least 20 tribes: Tappan, Haverstraw, Hackensack,
Navasink and Raritan
from the Unami (and possibly some of Munsee)
from the west of the Hudson;
from the opposite side, the Wecquaesgeek,
Sintsink, Kitchawank, Nochpeem,
Siwanoy, Tankiteke, and Wappinger;
and finally Canarsee, Manhattan, Matinecock,
Massapequa, Merrick, Rockaway
, and Secatoag from the Metoac on Long Island.
With only 250 men against
1,500 warriors, the Dutch were in danger of being
overwhelmed. However,
the Mohawk and Mahican remained loyal, and Kieft was
able to sign a treaty
of friendship and trade with them at Fort Orange. The
Mohawk and Mahican
did not intervene in the fighting, but the very possibility
they would was enough to
keep tribes from joining the Wappinger.
Kieft then offered 25,000 guilders to the English colonists
in
Connecticut for 150 men to help put down the uprising. Two
companies were formed under the leadership of John Underhill
and joined the fight in 1644. The first combined Dutch-English
expedition was sent against the Raritan on Staten Island,
but the Raritan abandoned their villages and fled into northern
New Jersey. The Tappan and Hackensack proved equally difficult to
corner, but the Wappinger and Metoac had nowhere to retreat and
were badly mauled. Before a peace was signed at Fort Orange in
August,
1645, more than 1,600 Wappinger and their allies had been killed. By the
terms of the treaty, the Wappinger and Metoac became subject to
the
Mohawk and Mahican and were required to pay an annual tribute in
wampum. This effectively gave the Mohawk and Mahican control
of the wampum trade of western Long Island and the lower Hudson.
During the years following, Dutch immigration increased
dramatically and swelled the population of New Netherlands
from 2,000 in 1648 to more than 10,000 in 1660. As settlement
swallowed more native land, anger and bitterness continued to smolder,
especially among the Lenape and Munsee west of the Hudson, after
the
Dutch, without bothering to consult them, purchased some of Lenape
land from the Susquehannock in 1651. That same
year war broke
out along the upper Susquehanna River between the Susquehannock
and the Mohawk. Although the Swedes supplied them with arms, the
Susquehannock were relatively few, and as the war dragged on for five
years, they were forced
to call upon their Munsee and Lenape allies.
Dutch support of the Mohawk
in this conflict added to the tension with the
Lenape and Munsee along the
lower Hudson. War and epidemic combined
to cause a rapid drop in the Lenape
population. Smallpox began in Virginia
during 1654 and by 1657 had spread
north through the Lenape villages into
New England. The Dutch finally seized
the Swedish colony on the lower
Delaware in 1655. Deprived of their support
from the Swedes, the Munsee
and Susquehannock were forced to ask for peace,
to which the Mohawk,
also exhausted from the long conflict, agreed.
Relations with the Wappinger and Metoac were also strained. In
1655
a Dutch farmer shot and killed a Wappinger woman he caught stealing a
peach from one of the trees in his garden. 200 Wappinger warriors
suddenly arrived on Manhattan to kill the farmer and got into a
fight
with Dutch militia. After taking revenge, they crossed to the west side
of
the Hudson and burned the Dutch settlements there. Before the "
Peach War"
ended, 50 Dutch were dead. However, the Wappinger were
not always innocent victims. After 1645, the Mahican had used
them to
collect their tribute from the Metoac. Any failure to pay brought
Wappinger
raids on the Metoac villages which the Dutch made no effort to
prevent. By
1658 the Metoac grown tired of this situation and decided to
correct it by
killing all of the Dutch on Long Island. However, the English
colonists
on the island warned the Dutch which prevented a major uprising.
Governor Peter Stuyvesant responded with troops but, after promising to
halt the Wappinger raids, was still forced to ransom 50 Dutch
colonists held by the Metoac.
In the midst of all this, a more serious confrontation was taking
shape to the north with the Munsee in the Esopus Valley (Kingston,
New York). Although there may have been a Dutch fort or trading
post in this location as early as 1614, actual settlement did not
begin
until 1652. Because of the suspicious nature of the land sales
involved, the Esopus (Catskill, Mamekoting, Wawarsink, and
Waranawonkong) were inclined to oppose this, and there were
several incidents of violence. Because the Munsee were involved
in a war with the Mohawk as allies of the Susquehannock, serious
trouble did not occur until after the end of the
Mohawk-Susquehannock
war in 1656. After several Dutch were killed in attacks in 1657,
Stuyvesant arrived with troops from New Amsterdam and began
construction of a fort. At
a conference, the Esopus attempted to blame
the Minisink for the attacks, but Stuyvesant refused to accept this and
issued a humiliating challenge to
the Esopus sachems to fight him
right there if they wanted a war. His offer
to purchase the disputed
lands only increased the tension, and the meeting
ended on a hostile
note. Stuyvesant departed but left 50 soldiers to garrison
the fort.
The situation worsened the following year, and 1658 marks the
beginning of 20 years of death and destruction for the Lenape.
After the murder of a Jesuit priest, war resumed along the St.
Lawrence between the French and Iroquois. At the same time,
the western Iroquois (Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga) attacked the
Susquehannock which, of course, drew the Munsee and Lenape
into the fighting as Susquehannock allies. Meanwhile, the Mahican
had ended their alliance with the Mohawk in 1655 and gone over
to the side of their enemies in western New England, a French-inspired
alliance of the Pennacook, Pocumtuc, Sokoki (western Abenaki).
Forced to fight this many wars, the Iroquois came to the Dutch in
1658 and demanded help. The Dutch
promised arms and, in one
of their few positive accomplishments that year,
convinced the
Mahican to desert their New England allies and
make peace with
the Mohawk.
In September of 1659, a group of Esopus who had been hired by a
Dutch
farmer to husk his corn decided to spend their wages on brandy.
They
became drunk and obnoxious but were a nuisance rather than a danger.
However, a group of Dutch vigilantes killed them which started
the First
Esopus War (1659-60). The Esopus attacked the Dutch settlements
in the
Esopus Valley, prisoners were burned alive, and the colonists
besieged
for three long weeks before Stuyvesant (delayed by hostilities
with the
Metoac on Long Island) arrived with 200 men. The Esopus retreated
west into the mountains
but continued to raid. After the failure of the
Mahican and Mohawk to arrange
a truce, and the Dutch launched
an offensive in the spring of 1660. They
destroyed the Esopus fort
near Wiltmeet in March followed by other battles
in April and May.
Esopus prisoners were sold as slaves to the sugar plantations
on
Curacao. The Hackensack made another attempt to mediate in June
, and threatened
with war by the Mahican and Mohawk, the Esopus
(already fighting the Seneca)
finally agreed to meet with the Dutch.
The treaty forced the Esopus to surrender most of their land in
the
valley and did not sit well. Only the threat of war with the
Mohawk
and Mahican kept the agreement intact, but the Mohawk learned
that the Mahican were once again trying to arrange trade between
the
Dutch and Sokoki (Mohawk enemies), and another Mohawk
-Mahican war erupted in 1662. With the Mohawk and Mahican
busy fighting each other, the Esopus attacked Dutch settlements the
following June (Second Esopus War 1663-64) killing 24 and
taking 45 captives at Wiltwyck. Stuyvesant sent reinforcements,
including 46 Massapequa warriors from Long Island. The
Esopus retreated into the mountains again and continued to raid
the Dutch farms in the valley. An
expedition under Martin
Creiger was sent after them but produced little. However,
Creiger's second effort inflicted heavy casualties. Stuyvesant
ordered the
taking of Esopus children as hostages to force a peace,
but the Esopus retreated
even deeper into the Minisink country, and a
third Dutch expedition in October
could not reach them. A Wappinger
sachem managed to arrange a prisoner exchange
in
November, but the fighting continued.
In the spring, Stuyvesant received orders to exterminate
the Esopus and called in the Mohawk. Combining with the
Seneca, the Mohawk destroyed the Munsee capital at
Minisink on the upper Delaware River. Hundreds were
killed as other Munsee villages suffered similar fates.
Under attack from all directions, the Esopus made
peace with the Dutch in May, 1664. However, the
Munsee war with the Iroquois did not end until
the final defeat of the Susquehannock in 1676.
The Munsee afterwards were a
conquered
people subject to the Iroquois. The Dutch suffered
a similar fate
in September of 1664 when an English fleet
captured New Amsterdam. New Netherlands
suddenly
become New York but little changed for the Munsee in
the Hudson
Valley - the Dutch colonists stayed, and the
English quickly signed treaties
of trade and friendship
with the Mohawk and Mahican (who remained at war
with each other until 1672). However, for the Unami in
New Jersey, the takeover
was a turning point. English
colonists were far more numerous than the Dutch,
and
the conquest of New York opened new areas for their
settlement. The Dutch
had at least paid for native lands,
but the English claimed the land by right
of discovery
and paid only when absolutely necessary. Connecticut
Puritans
founded Newark in 1666 and began expanding into New Jersey.
For the most part, the Lenape in the Delaware Valley had not
participated in the Esopus war, not because they had
no
sympathy for the Munsee, but because they had their hands
full helping the Susquehannock in their war with the Iroquois
. The Iroquois first went after the Susquehannock allies by
attacking the Lenape villages in the Delaware Valley
during the 1660s. In 1661 the Susquehannock were
decimated by smallpox, and the epidemic soon spread
with equal devastation to the Lenape. War and epidemic
caused another massive population loss for the Lenape
between 1660 and 1670, but it still took the Iroquois
until 1675 to defeat the Susquehannock. Under the
terms of surrender, Susquehannock control of the
Lenape passed to
the Iroquois League. Forced
to pay annual tribute at Conestoga after 1677,
the Lenape became part of the "covenant chain" -
an unequal alliance in which only the Iroquois had
power or could speak in council. In general, the
Iroquois regarded the Lenape,
and other members of the chain as inferiors.
After the Susquehannock had driven the Lenape east of the
Delaware River during the 1630s, the Unalactigo had
gradually been absorbed by the Unami. By the time the
Susquehannock allowed the Lenape to reoccupy the
west side of the river during the 1660s, there were really
only two divisions: Unami and Munsee. When the English
began colonizing New Jersey and the lower Delaware after
1666, the Lenape were generally hostile because they were
aware of the mistreatment given the Powhatan and Nanticoke
(many of whom had joined the Lenape) by the Virginia and
Maryland colonists. There had already been some skirmishes
with the English colonists in Maryland (1658-61), but this
was resolved by a treaty in 1661 and Maryland's subsequent
aid to the Susquehannock in their war with the Iroquois.
The Lenape sold some
of their northern New Jersey lands
to the English in 1673 and 1681, but as
mentioned
the English often took land without paying. This led to
confrontations with the Sawkin, Rankoke, and Soupnapka in
1675 which required a peace conference with
New York's governor Edmund Andros.
In 1682 Charles II granted Pennsylvania to a religious dissenter,
William Penn. Having been expelled from Oxford and
arrested
for his Quaker beliefs, Penn entertained the curious notion that
his grant did not override native rights to the land. Before
beginning his
"Holy Experiment" - a colony with religious
tolerance - Penn sent William Markham to negotiate the
purchase of southeast Pennsylvania. In November,
Penn arrived and signed a treaty at Shackamaxon
(Philadelphia) with Tammamend, the sachem chosen
by several groups of Lenape to represent them for the occasion
. The agreement has been described by Voltaire as "the one
treaty with the Indians
that the whites never broke."
Believing the land west of the Lenape belonged
to
the Susquehannock, Penn returned to England without
establishing the western
boundaries of his purchase.
When he returned in 1699, he discovered the
Susquehannock
needed Iroquois permission
to sell land. The Lenape
did also but had failed
to mention this in 1682.
During Penn's lifetime, things went relatively well. To make
room for the English, the Lenape moved west to the upper
Schuykill, Brandywine, and Lehigh valleys. By 1718, the
Iroquois had assumed complete control of the affairs of the
Lenape - an arrangement encouraged by Pennsylvania
governors to insure the Lenape would not come under
the influence of the French. The "covenant chain" provided
little benefit for the Delaware, usually only demands for
warriors to serve as Iroquois auxiliaries, two-thirds of whom
were killed in the King William's War (1689-96). The
admission of the Tuscarora as the sixth member of the Iroquois
League in 1722 only emphasized the Iroquois' low opinion
of the Lenape. Settlers in Pennsylvania continued to push west
against the uncertain boundaries of the 1682 treaty. Germans
from New York moved to the upper Schuykill, and the
Brandywine villages were next. After they ceded the cession
of the Susquehanna Valley in 1732, all that remained of the
Lenape homeland was a small part of New Jersey and the
Lehigh Valley (Allentown) in northeast Pennsylvania.
Upon his death in 1718, Penn's three sons by his second marriage
inherited his estate but none of his honesty. In 1737 Pennsylvania
authorities "found" the infamous Walking Purchase agreement,
a treaty supposedly signed in 1686 in which the Lenape ceded the
land between the junction of Delaware and Lehigh Rivers as far
west as a man could walk in a day and a half (about 40 miles). This
was bad enough, but Penn's son Thomas hired three of the fastest
men in the colony and offered a prize
to the one who could cover
the greatest distance. Running on a prepared
path, the winner
went twice the distance the Delaware had anticipated which
cost
them most of the Lehigh valley. Realizing they had been cheated,
the
Delaware expected the Iroquois to defend their interests, but
the Iroquois
were furious that the Delaware had signed a treaty
without their permission.
Pennsylvania also took the precaution
of bribing them to stay angry and
enforce the agreement. The
ultimate humiliation came during a 1742 meeting
of the Delaware,
Iroquois, and the Pennsylvania governor. When the Delaware
sachem Nutimus rose to protest the Walking Purchase, the
Iroquois representative
Canasatego silenced him with, "We
conquered you. You are women, we made
women of you.
Give up claims to your old lands and move west. Never
attempt
to sell land again. Now get out."
No longer having land of their own, the
Unami were
ordered to join the other Delaware living at Shamokin
and
Wyoming
on the upper Susquehanna, lands
now claimed by Iroquois from their
conquest
of the
Susquehannock. For years, the "grandfathers" had
taken in
refugees
from other Algonquin tribes starting
with the Powhattan who had left
Virginia
after their
war with the English (1622-32). They settled for a
time in
Maryland
only to be forced north into
Pennsylvania when settlement began along
the
east
side of Chesapeake Bay. More Powhatan came
after second war with
the
English in 1644. Munsee
and Wappinger arrived after their wars with the
Dutch
(Wappinger, 1643-45) and (Esopus 1659-64) followed by
Wicomiss and
Assateague
from the east shore of Chesapeake
Bay in 1669. There were New England
Algonquin
after the King
Phillip's War (1675-76), and then Shawnee, the first
group
settling among the Lenape in 1692 at Pequa Creek near Lancaster.
Since
the
Iroquois considered the Shawnee as enemies, there were
objections to
this
until the Mahican intervened on their behalf. The
Conoy (Piscataway)
arrived
in 1711; Saponi and Tutelo after
1722; Nanticoke in 1743; and several
hundred
Mahican between 1724 and 1742.
By this time, the Munsee were almost a separate tribe from the
other Lenape. Although under the supervision of the Oneida
and Cayuga,
most of the Munsee were allowed to remain on
their original lands, now
claimed by the Iroquois. This served
to protect their homeland from
settlement, since the English
during the early years had no desire to
challenge the power
of the Iroquois. However, war and epidemic had
reduced the
Munsee and Wappinger populations on the lower Hudson to
10%
of
their original size by 1700. Since many of the lands
were now
unoccupied, the Iroquois allowed the Munsee in
1677 to sell a large
tract to newly-arrived French Huguenots,
which only served to whet the
appetites of the colonists for more.
The Iroquois had no objections to
settlement along the lower Hudson
River, but they opposed settlement
near their homeland to the extent
of threatening the English with war
in 1726. As their lands were sold,
most of the Munsee, with the
exception of few families, moved west
to Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley
where Moravian missionaries
began their work among them in 1740.
For the Iroquois, the Indian reservation they were running along
the
upper Susquehanna for members of covenant chain was a source
of
much-needed manpower to counter the French-Algonquin
alliance which had
driven them from the Great Lakes between
1687 and 1701. Like all
reservations, it was crowded and
unhealthy, and despite the fact that
new tribes displaced by
settlement were added on a regular basis, its
population continued
to fall. A fever (probably malaria) raged along
the Susquehanna in
1744, and alcohol abuse was a serious problem.
People began
to pick up and leave. The Mingo (adopted Iroquois) and
Shawnee
were the first. For the Shawnee, moving west was just a return
to
their homeland. As early as 1724, small groups of Shawnee
had been
moving to the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers
in
western Pennsylvania, land made vacant during the fighting
of the
Beaver
Wars (1630-1700). Angered by the Walking
Purchase and Iroquois insults,
small
groups of Delaware also
left the Susquehanna, without Iroquois
permission, between 1
742 and 1749 to join the Shawnee and Mingo. In
1751
some of the Mingo,
Delaware, and Shawnee in western
Pennsylvania accepted the invitation
of
the Wyandot
(Huron ) to settle in eastern Ohio. The Delaware had
split
into
two groups: those in the west along the upper
Ohio River; and the
Munsee and
about one-third of the
Unami who had remained on the upper
Susquehanna
or
the Wyoming Valley in the east.
At the time, Ohio was claimed by the French, British, and
Iroquois but had been empty for almost a century following
its conquest
by the Iroquois during the Beaver Wars.
The mixed Delaware, Shawnee,
and Mingo villages
which arose in western Pennsylvania and Ohio after
1740
supposedly owed their allegiance to the Iroquois
League but in truth
were
independent of its authority
. Concerned that these tribes would fall
under
French influence,
the British urged the Iroquois to have them return to
the
Susquehanna, but when the Iroquois ordered them to do
so, they were
ignored.
French authority in the area was
based on their alliance with Great
Lakes
Algonquin
which had been created to fight the Iroquois.
However, by
1740
the unity of this coalition had
been seriously undermined by
competition from
British traders. The situation became critical during
the King George's
War
(1744-48) after a British
blockade of Canada cut the supply of French
trade
goods. By 1747 even loyal allies of the French
like the Wyandot and
Miami
were conspiring to trade with the British.
Meanwhile, settlement had claimed most of the
available arable
land east of the Appalachians, and
with the Iroquois determined to keep
the upper
Susquehanna, the British began to look seriously
at expanding
into western Pennsylvania and
Ohio. At the Treaty of Lancaster signed
in 1744,
the Iroquois gave permission for the British to
build a
trading post at the forks of the Ohio
(Pittsburgh), but both
Pennsylvania
and
Virginia interpreted the agreement as the Iroquois
cession of their
claims to Ohio to themselves.
Pennsylvania's claim was more modest and
in
eastern Ohio, but Virginia saw itself as master
of the entire Ohio
Valley
west to the Illinois River
including Kentucky and lower Michigan. Plans
for opening the area to settlement got underway
in 1747 when Virginia
granted
a charter to the Ohio
Company. Pennsylvania considered the Ohio
tribes
as
being subject to the Iroquois, but when
they refused the League's
orders
to return to the
Susquehanna, it was obvious something needed
to be
done.
At the second Treaty of Lancaster
(1748) with the Iroquois, Shawnee,
and
Delaware,
the governor of Pennsylvania urged the Iroquois to "
remove
the
petticoat" from the Delaware and restore
the Ohio tribes to the
covenan
chain as a barrier against the French.
<> No longer able to ignore the defection of their "women,
" the
Iroquois created a system of half-kings (special Iroquois emissaries)
to represent the Ohio tribes (who numbered 10,000 by this time)
in
their councils. This seemed to satisfy the Delaware and Shawnee,
and
when Pierre C»loron led a French expedition to the Ohio River in
1749 to expel British traders and mark the boundary of French
territory
with lead plates, his reception was unfriendly, with the
Ohio tribes
demanding to know by what right the French were
claiming Iroquois land.
Smallpox hit the Delaware in 1751,
just as they were beginning to leave
the mixed villages and
organize themselves into a separate tribe. Their
council fire
was located at Coshocton on the Muskingum River in Ohio
.
At Logstown in 1751, the Iroquois recognized the selection
of Shingas
as the head chief of the Delaware. Although his
authority
was not accepted by the Delaware still on the
Susquehanna, the Delaware
had
become an organized tribe
In the same treaty, however, the Iroquois
confirmed
their
1744 cession of land at the forks of the Ohio.
With British traders subverting the loyalty
of their allies,
and the Mingo, Delaware and Shawnee defying their
authority,
the French decided to use force to enforce their claims to Ohio.
They
turned
first to the Detroit tribes (Wyandot, Ottawa,
Potawatomi, and Ojibwe),
usually
their most dependable allies
, but they tribes were thinking of trading
with
the British themselves
and did not want to fight the Ohio tribes. In
June
of 1752, Charle
s Langlade, a French-Ojibwe mixed blood, led a war party
of 250 Ojibwe and Ottawa from Mackinac and destroyed the
Miami village
and
British trading post at Piqua, Ohio. After
the initial shock, the
tribes
of the French alliance fell into place
and the French followed their
success
by building a line o
f forts across western Pennsylvania to block
British
access to
Ohio. Most Delaware and Shawnee had no desire to be
controlled by
the French and turned to the Iroquois for
help. To the Iroquois, the
French and British seemed like
two thieves fighting over their land but
they decided the
French were the more immediate threat. In 1752 the
League
signed the Logstown
Treaty reconfirming their 1744
cessions and giving the British
permission to build a
blockhouse at Pittsburgh. Before it was finished,
the French burned it.
In May, 1754 a conference was held at Albany between
representatives of the British colonies and Iroquois League to
prepare
for war with the French. Unable to defend Ohio,
the Iroquois ceded it
to Pennsylvania, but they fully intended
to keep the Wyoming and
Susquehanna Valleys. Unfortunately,
an Albany trader managed to get
some of the minor Iroquois
representatives drunk, and when they sobered
up, they
discovered they had signed an agreement with a
Connecticut
land company opening the
Susquehanna
and Wyoming Valleys to settlement. Rather than achieving
unity,
the conference ended with the Iroquois furious with
the British about
this
treaty, Pennsylvania protesting
Connecticut's attempt to claim its
territory,
and the
Delaware threatening to kill any whites who tried to
settle in
the
Wyoming Valley. Meanwhile, Virginia had
decided to act on its own and
sent
an expedition
commanded by a 22-year-old militia major named
George
Washington
to demand the surrender of Fort
Duquesne, the new fort the French had
built
at Pittsburgh.
Major Washington got himself into a fight with French
soldiers
and started the French and Indian War (1754-63).
<> When the Ohio tribes learned that the Iroquois had ceded
Ohio at
Albany, they saw another betrayal like the
"Walking Purchase." Even the
Iroquois half-kings
joined their revolt and declared Ohio
belonged to
the tribes which lived there. Deciding that both the
British
were
as much their enemies as the French, the Delaware
and Shawnee chose to
remain
neutral and wait to see what
was going to happen. "What happened" was
that
Britain
sent General Edward Braddock with a regiment of regular
soldiers
to the colonies with orders to destroy the French forts.
An experienced
soldier,
Braddock had a unusually high
regard for his own abilities and those of
his
troops matched
by an equally low opinion of colonial militia and
Indians.
Refusing to use "savages," he dismissed the fifty scouts
provided him by the
Susquehanna Delaware and relegated
the militia to chopping trees and
driving
supply wagons.
When he was ready, Braddock marched his 2,200 man
army
into
the wildness hacking out a road towards Fort
Duquesne. The French
easily
followed Braddock's slow progress,
but without help from the Delaware,
Shawnee,
and Mingo,
they found it difficult to supply their forts. Since not one
Delaware
and only four Shawnee warriors were willing to help them to
defend Fort
Duquesne,
they were forced to bring 300 French and
600 allies from Canada and the
Great
Lakes. This small force
proved more than adequate. On July 9, 1755,
just
south of
present-day Pittsburgh, Braddock blundered into an ambush.
977
of
his men were killed including 63 of 83 officer
, one of whom was
Braddock
himself.
The reaction in the British colonies to the news of
Braddock's
defeat was stunned disbelief followed by rage.
Pennsylvania seized and hanged a Delaware-Shawnee delegation
sent to
protest
the Iroquois sale of Ohio, and the neutrality of the
Delaware and
Shawnee
ended with an outpouring of rage accumulated
from all the years of the
Iroquois
calling them "women." Some accounts
of the French and Indian War leave
the
impression that most of the warfare
occurred in upstate New York and
the
"Indians" were fighting for the
French. Neither is correct. Delaware
and
Shawnee attacks on the
Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia frontiers
were
never intended
to support the French but to punish the British. By
1758,
more than
2,500 colonists had been killed - the greatest loss suffered
by
the
British in this conflict and an explanation for the hatreds
harbored
by the "Long Knives" (Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiersmen)
when they
began
to occupy the Ohio Valley. Shingas - now known
as "Shingas the
Terrible"
- raided settlements along the Susquehanna
and invited the Delaware
living
there under Iroquois supervision to
join his war parties. At first they
refused,
but the raids created
such hatred among the colonists, the eastern
Delaware
went over the edge.
At the time of the King George's War, a few Munsee and Wappinger
families were still living along the lower Hudson. Scattered in a few
small bands, they were peaceful and posed no danger to their white
neighbors, but in 1745 French allies from Canada attacked settlements
just to the north. Warned of a possible attack on the lower river
settlements that fall, British colonists massacred several Munsee
families near Walden, New York. The other Munsee and Wappinger
immediately left for Pennsylvania. They returned the following year but
no longer felt safe. After the outbreak of the French and Indian War,
Abenaki raiders from St. Francois captured
the Mahican village of Schaghticoke north of Albany in August, 1755 and
took
its people back with them to Quebec. The sudden defection of the
Schaghticoke made the British question the loyalty of all natives in
the area. In December the Munsee and Wappinger in the Hudson Valley
were urged to leave the back country and move closer to the settlements
for their "protection." On March 2nd, 1756 vigilantes led by William
Slaughter (nice name) massacred nine
Munsee in the Esopus Valley. The remaining Wappinger and Munsee fled
west
to Wyoming or north to Mohawk and Oneida villages and never returned to
the
Hudson.
Meanwhile, the Munsee had attacked the Moravian mission
at
Gnadenhuetten (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania)in November,
1755 massacring 11
missionaries. When the Susquehanna
Delaware joined the fighting, and
all hell broke loose.
Ignoring Iroquois orders for them to stop, 300
eastern
Delaware warriors combined with 700 of their relatives
from the Ohio
spread
death and destruction on the frontier
in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and
New
York. In April,
Pennsylvania declared war on the Delaware and offered
bounties
for scalps and prisoners. New Jersey followed
suit that June. A line of
forts
and blockhouses, including Fort
Augusta at Shamokin, Fort Allen on
Lehigh
River, and Fort
Gardinier near Minisink, was built to protect the
settlements
.
In September colonial militia under Colonel John Armstrong
attacked and
burned
the principal Delaware village of Kittaning
on the Allegheny River. The
chief,
Captain Jacobs was killed,
but most of the Delaware escaped taking the
100
white prisoners
they held with them. Meanwhile, some of the eastern
Delaware
under Teedyuskung had tired of the war and made peace at Easton,
Pennsylvania
in August, 1756. At the time, the British Indian agent,
Sir William
Johnson,
asked the Iroquois to "remove petticoat" from
these Delaware so they
could
be used against the French. While
it was obvious the Delaware were no
longer
"women," the Iroquois
still refused to acknowledge them as warriors.
The "women" still "on the warpath" defied
another Iroquois order to
lay down their arms, and the raids continued.
During
the summer
of 1757, Munsee raids struck Orange and Duchess Counties in
New
York and the frontier in northern New Jersey. The primary
motivation
for
the hostility of the Pennsylvania Delaware was
their anger over being
cheated
out of their lands at Minisink and
the massacre of the Munsee families
in
the Esopus Valley the
year before. After another Munsee attack hit
Walpack, New
Jersey in the spring of 1758, a second peace conference
was held
at Easton in October. As a matter of courtesy, the Iroquois
were
allowed to speak for the Delaware and Munsee, but their
authority
over them was gone. The Second Treaty of Easton
provided for payments
for the Munsee and Pompton
lands taken by New Jersey without
compensation;
purchased the remaining Delaware lands in New Jersey;
established a 3,000 acre reservation at Brotherton;
and most
importantly for the Delaware in the west -
Pennsylvania unilaterally
renounced its claim to the
lands west of the Appalachian Mountains
which
had been ceded by the Iroquois at Albany in 1754.
The news of agreement immediately reached Ohio, and the
Delaware
and Shawnee offered no resistance to the c
apture of Fort Duquesne by
General John Forbes in November.
Rebuilt as Fort Pitt, this was the
site of the peace treaty signed
between the Ohio Delaware and British
in July, 1759. Fort Niagara
fell to the British that same month, and
after the fall of Quebec
in September, the struggle between France and
Great Britain for
North America was over. When the treaty was signed at
Fort Pitt,
the Delaware
were holding more than 600 white prisoners at a
Caughnawaga (Christian
Iroquois)
village on the Ohio River.
The British wanted them returned, and the
exchange
occurred in 1761. Surprisingly, almost half of the white
captives
refused
repatriation and stayed with the Delaware
and Shawnee. After a final
treaty
at Lancaster in 1762,
the Delaware expected the British to leave Fort
Pitt,
but
this did not happen. Garrisoned with 200 soldiers, it
remained as
an
annoying symbol of British authority in the region.
As his soldiers occupied French forts in the Great Lakes and Ohio
Valley, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the British commander in North America,
decided the former French allies were a conquered people.
Ignoring
the
advice of William Johnson, Amherst ended the practice of annual
gifts
to treaty chiefs, raised prices on trade goods, and restricted their
supply, especially gunpowder and rum. By 1761 the Seneca were
passing a
war belt calling for an uprising, but only the Delaware and
Shawnee
responded. Johnson uncovered the plot during a meeting
at Detroit with
the tribes of the old French alliance. The unrest
continued, and other
belts were circulated by the Illinois and the
Caughnawaga. However, it
took a religious movement to unite the
tribes against the British. This
came from the Delaware Prophet,
Neolin (The Enlightened) who the
British referred to as the
"Impostor." From his village near the Ohio
River, Neolin
urged the rejection of the white man's
trade goods (especially rum)
and a return to traditional native culture
and
values. His teachings
gained a large following among the Delaware, but
his
most
important convert was Pontiac, the Ottawa chief at Detroit.
The Ottawa were one of the most French allies, Pontiac's
acceptance of Neolin's new religion provided a basis for the
Delaware,
Shawnee and Mingo to unite with the tribes of the
French alliance
against the British. In what has been called
the Pontiac Conspiracy
(1763), Pontiac secretly organized
a general uprising which caught the
British totally by surprise.
After it began in May, the rebellion
captured nine of the twelve
British forts west of the Appalachians.
However, an informer
warned the
garrison, and Pontiac failed in the critical mission
he had reserved
for
himself of taking Fort Detroit. The
Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo
surrounded
Fort Pitt
cutting if off from the outside world and then attacked the
Pennsylvania
frontier killing 600 colonists. In an effort
to break the siege at Fort
Pitt,
Amherst wrote its
commander, Captain Simeon Ecuyer, suggesting that he
deliberately infect the tribes outside the fort by giving them
blankets
and handkerchiefs infected with smallpox. Ecuyer
did exactly this, and
the resulting epidemic spread from the
Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo to
the Cherokee
in Tennessee and then the entire Southeast.
The uprising collapsed after it failed to take Forts Pitt,
Niagara, and Detroit. The French refused to help and
even urged their allies to stop. During a bloody two-day
battle at
Bushy
Run just east of Pittsburgh, Colonel Henry Bouquet
defeated a Delaware,
Shawnee,
and Mingo ambush and reached
Fort Pitt in August. The Delaware and
Shawnee
retreated west into
Ohio but continued their raids in Pennsylvania.
After
his failure to
take Detroit, Pontiac's allies began to desert him. In
the
summer
of 1764, they attended a conference with William Johnson at
Fort
Niagara
and made peace with the British. In August,
Colonel John Bradstreet,
with
1,200 men, advanced
west along the south shore of Lake Erie to attack
the
remaining
hostile Ojibwe, Wyandot, and Ottawa at Detroit. Enroute
,
Bradstreet
met with the Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo
chiefs at Presque Isle (Erie,
PA)
and concluded a preliminary
peace treaty. Bradstreet reached Detroit in
September,
where
another treaty was signed with the remainder of Pontiac's allies.
Meanwhile, General Thomas Gage had rejected
Bradstreet's
treaty with the Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo because it
had
been signed without first consulting William Johnson.
Bradstreet was
ordered
to move south and attack the
Delaware and Shawnee villages in Ohio. At
the
same time
, Bouquet's army moved west from Fort Pitt trapping the
Delaware and Shawnee between. In November, the
Delaware and Shawnee
signed a peace with the British
at Coshocton and released the 200 white
prisoners they
were holding. Pontiac made his own peace with the
British
in 1765, but was disgraced by his capitulation and failure to
take Detroit. With his own people defying him, he left the
area and
moved west to the Illinois country where he still
had a considerable
following. During a visit to Cahokia
in the spring of 1769,
he was murdered by a Peoria (Illinois) warrior.
Connecticut had never renounced its claim
to the land
ceded by the Iroquois in that drunken treaty signed at
Albany.
With a terrible sense of timing, the Susquehanna Company
brought the
first
Connecticut settlers to the Wyoming Valley
(Wilkes-Barre) in the spring
of
1763. In April the newcomers
decided to encourage the Delaware to leave
the
area by setting
fire to the house of Teedyuskung, the Delaware sachem
who
had been the first to make peace with the British at Easton in
1756.
Teedyuskung
was asleep inside the house at the time,
his slumber aided by some rum
provided
to him free of charge
by the whites, and the next time he woke up he
was
in the
spirit world. The Delaware village was also torched, and its
residents
forced to flee for their lives. When the Pontiac
uprising began that
May,
the Ohio Delaware attacked
settlements in the Juanita, Tuscarora, and
Cumberland
Valleys, and in the fall, they combined with the Seneca to
raid the
Wyoming
Valley in retaliation for the murders and
burnings in April.
Pennsylvania
once again offered a bounty
for Delaware scalps, and Colonel John
Armstrong
attacked
the Delaware village at Big Island. In October a Delaware
war
party
killed 26 colonists during a raid near Allentown. Since
the innocent
were
always easier to find, a mob of Lancaster
colonists (Paxton Boys)
murdered
20 peaceful Christian
Conestoga (Susquehannock) in December.
Threats of mob violence forced the Moravians and Quakers to
evacuate the converts from their Pennsylvania missions. For
more than a
year, 140 Christian Delaware were confined in a
Philadelphia warehouse
under the constant danger of massacre.
Before being sent to New York,
56
had died from smallpox.
William Johnson convinced the Mohawk to punish
the
Delaware for joining Pontiac, and they destroyed Kanhanghton
and six
other
Delaware villages on the Susquehanna. With
settlement taking their land
in
the Wyoming and Susquehanna
Valleys, the last of the Pennsylvania
Delaware
left for Ohio in
1764. The Movarian missionaries made plans to follow
them
west.
Shaken by the uprising, the British government issued the
Proclamation
of 1763 closing the frontier west of the Appalachians to
further
settlement. In the east, the law angered the colonists and
started
them on the path to revolution. In the west, the frontiersmen
simply ignored it and settled illegally in western Pennsylvania
beginning with the Redstone and, appropriately enough, Cheat
Rivers.
The British military simply could not stop them. By
1774, there were
50,000 whites west of the Appalachians.
The Ohio tribes would call these squatters the "Long Knives"
(Mechanschican in Delaware). They were Pennsylvania and
Virginia
frontiersmen who by this time had been fighting
Native Americans for
several generations, and no government
(French, British, or American
after
1775) was going keep
them from taking the Ohio Country from the
"Injuns."
Unable to enforce the law, the British realized its very
existence was pushing the colonies towards revolt,
and in 1768 they met
at Fort Stanwix with the
Iroquois to negotiate a treaty to open Ohio
and
western Pennsylvania to settlement. Without consulting
the tribes
which lived there, the Iroquois ceded the
Ohio Country. They also sold their remaining lands in
the Susquehanna
and
Wyoming Valleys which resulted
in a civil war as Connecticut and
Pennsylvania
militias
fought each other for control of the area. When news of
Fort
Stanwix
agreement reached Ohio, the Shawnee
sent overtures of alliance to all
the
Great Lakes and Ohio
Valley tribes including the Cherokee and
Chickasaw.
In the initial steps towards the formation of the western
alliance
, meetings were held on the Scioto River in Ohio in 1770 and
1771, but the failure of the Pontiac Rebellion was still fresh,
and
William Johnson was able to thwart the effort by
threatening war with
the
Iroquois which left the
Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo to face the
invasion
by themselves. Having seen this before, the Delaware
made
preparations to move and in 1770 obtained
permission from the Miami to
settle in Indiana.
The Movarian missionaries were the most gentle
element in the settlement of
the Ohio Valley. Beginning in 1
772, they followed 400 of their Delaware
converts
to
Ohio and built three missions along the Tuscarawas and
Muskingum
Rivers.
By 1775 the traditional Delaware
had accepted the Moravian villages as
equal
members,
and the influence of the Moravian Delaware at c
ouncils
encouraged
other Delaware to seek
a peaceful accommodation with the Long Knives.
Both Virginia and Pennsylvania claimed the area around
Pittsburgh,
but Virginia's claim included Kentucky. The Iroquois had
ceded thi
s area at Fort Stanwix, but it was also claimed by the
Cherokee.
Treaties signed at Watonga (1774) and Sycamore Shoals (1775)
extinguished the Cherokee claims but totally ignored the Shawnee.
When
Virginia sent
survey crews to Kentucky in 1774, there were
clashes with Shawnee
warriors
who were prepared to defend their
hunting territory south of the Ohio.
As
tensions rose in April
Michael Cresap organized a party of vigilantes
near
Wheeling
which killed several Shawnee. The Delaware chief Bald Eagle
was
ambushed, scalped, and his body placed upright in a sitting
position in
his canoe to float down the river to his tribesmen.
The following
month,
other frontiersmen massacred the
family of Logan, a Mingo war chief, at
Yellow Creek
(Stuebenville, Ohio). The Shawnee chief Cornstalk
went to
Fort
Pitt to keep the peace by getting the
whites to "cover the dead." The
Delaware
also offered
to mediate, but Logan went to the Shawnee-Mingo
village at
Wakatomica and recruited a war party. His g
ruesome retaliation killed
13
whites - none of whom
had anything to do with the murder of his family.
In Lord Dunmore's War (Cresap's War,1774), settlers
along the
upper Ohio moved into the safety of their bloc
khouses, until the
governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, a
rrived with 2,500 militia.
Wakatomica was destroyed
as well as five other villages in the area.
The
Delaware s
tayed neutral, and the Detroit tribes refused the Shawne
e war
belt.
This left Cornstalk's Shawnee and the Mingo
alone to attack a portion
of
Dunmore's army near Poin
t Pleasant (West Virginia) as it was preparing
to
invade
Ohio. Forced to withdraw after a hard-fought battle
heavy
casualties
on both sides, the Shawnee signed a
peace treaty agreeing not to settle
south
of Ohio. This op
ened Kentucky for white settlement, and as the Americ
an
Revolution began in the New England in 1775, new
towns sprang up at
Boonesboro and
Harrodsburg. The
battle at Point Pleasant has sometimes been called the
"
opening shot of the revolution," and in many ways, this i
s correct.
The
war in the east may have been about "no t
axation without
representation,"
but in the Ohio Valley, it was about land.
The British urged the Ohio tribes to attack the settlements
because the Americans were trying to take Ohio -
a very
obvious lie, since the Americans wanted everything, not
just
Ohio.
Only the Detroit tribes, Seneca, Mingo, and
some Shawnee, sided with
the
British at first, but their
raids and indiscriminate American
retaliation
were
enough to start a spiral towards total war. The D
elaware remained
neutral,
and their head chief W
hite Eyes (Koquethagachton) even addressed the
Congress
in Philadelphia during 1776. However
, this meant little, since the new
government
had
almost no control over the actions of the Lon
g Knives west of the
Appalachians.
Cornstalk kept
his Shawnee neutral until taken hostage at Fort R
andolph
in
1777 and later murdered. The Sha
wnee retaliated with raids in
Pennsylvania
and Ke
ntucky. In February, 1778 General Edward Han
d left Fort Pitt with
Pennsylvania
militia for a puni
tive raid. He never found any hostile warriors but
attacked
two peaceful Delaware villages killing the
brother, and wounding the
mother
of Captain Pip
e (head of the Wolf Clan). Hand's infamous "Squ
aw
Campaign"
ended Pipe's neutrality, but for th
e moment, he was held in check by
the
other
chiefs, White Eyes (Turtle Clan) and Killbuck (T
urkey
Clan).
In September all three signed a trea
ty at Fort Pitt with the Americans
-
the first
treaty between the United States and Native Americans.
Among other things, the Americans promised not to take any
Delaware land; to protect them from the British; and if
desired, they
could have a representative in Congress. In
return the Delaware became
American allies and would
permit the construction of a fort in their
territory. Unlike
Penn's 1682 treaty with the Delaware, this one was
immediately broken. The commander at Fort Pitt,
General Lachlan
McIntosh, asked the Delaware to
join him in an attack on Detroit. Since this would
have involved
fighting British-allies with whom they
were at peace, the Delaware
declined. However, to
show his good will, White Eyes agreed to escort
McIntosh to the proposed site of Fort Laurens (Bolivar, Ohio).
He was
murdered enroute, but the Delaware were told he died
of "smallpox."
Fort Laurens soon proved isolated and indefensible,
but the Americans
had killed their best friend on the Delaware
council. Many Delaware did
not accept the explanation, and the pro
-British faction began to unite
around Captain Pipe. Killbuck attempted
to keep them neutral, but it
did not help when frontiersmen tried in 1779
to kill a Delaware
delegation enroute to Philadelphia for a meeting with
Congress. As
tensions built, many of the Munsee left Ohio for what
they thought was
the safety of the Seneca villages in New York.
This placed them
directly in the path of Colonel Daniel Brodhead's
offensive up the
Allegheny Valley in support of General John
Sullivan's 1779 campaign
against the Iroquois. The Munsee
villages were also destroyed, and they
retreated to southern
Ontario. When the war ended, most stayed in
Canada and did not return to the United States.
In the spring of 1780, the British launched an offensive to
seize
the Ohio valley as well as St. Louis and New Orleans.
The result was a
major escalation in the warfare in the west.
That April Captain
Henry Bird left Detroit with 600 warriors
to attack Kentucky. By the
time
he reached the Ohio River
there were almost 1,200. Throughout the
summer,
the
Americans took a terrible beating in Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
By
this
time, most of the Delaware had joined Captain Pipe at
Pluggys Town
(Delaware,
Ohio) against the Long Knives.
Only Killbuck remained loyal to the
Americans
who
ignored his requests for a fort to protect Coshocton.
Threatened by
Wyandot
and Mingo warriors, he
relocated to Fort Pitt, and the hostiles took
over
the
Delaware capitol. In the spring of 1781, Killbuck guided
Brodhead's
militia
to Coshocton. Before the attack, a
chief trying to negotiate surrender
was
tomahawked
by a soldier while he was speaking to Brodhead (militia
discipline
was this bad). Coshocton was burned. Orders to spare women
and children were generally followed, but 15 male prisoners
were
executed by tomahawk. By the summer of 1781, the
only neutral Delaware
were the Moravians. After a council
of war at Chillicothe, new raids
hit the American settlements.
The Moravian villages lay on one of the
main warpaths,
and as a result they were harassed by both sides. In the
fall
the British ordered their arrest, and a Wyandot war
party gathered the
Moravians
and escorted them to
Captive's Town on the upper Sandusky. Food was
scarce,
and some of them returned to Gnadenhuetten
that winter to salvage the
corn
from their abandoned
fields. In March a Delaware war party returning
from
a raid in Pennsylvania passed through on its way
back to northern Ohio.
Close
on their heels were
160 Pennsylvania volunteers from Washington County,
Pennsylvania
commanded by Colonel David Williamson.
Finding the Moravians at
Gnadenhuetten,
Williamson
placed them under arrest. In the democratic style of
frontier
militia, a vote was taken whether to take the
prisoners back to Fort
Pitt
or kill them. The decision
was to execute them. The Moravians were
given
the
night to prepare. In the morning, two slaughter houses
were
selected,
and 90 Christian Delaware - 29 men,
27 women, and 34 children - were
taken
inside in small
groups and beaten to death with wooden mallets. Among
the
victims was old Abraham, a Mahican and the first
convert the Moravians
had
made in Pennsylvania.
Afterwards, the troops burned Gnadenhuetten and
the
other Moravian missions. Then loaded down with plunder
from their
victims, they took it home with them
to their wives and children in
Pennsylvania.
Word of the massacre spread to the other Delaware,
and in June
they joined the Wyandot to defeat a large
force of Pennsylvania
militia (Battle of Sandusky) sent t
o attack the Sandusky villages. The
Wyandot
captured
the commanding officer, Colonel William Crawford, and
honoring
a
request from Captain Pipe, they turned him
over to the Delaware.
Crawford
suffered a slow, terrible
death (burned at stake) to atone for the
Gnadenhuetten
Massacre. The war continued in 1782 with the Shawnee
inflicting a major
defeat
on Kentucky militia at Blue Licks
(Daniel Boone's son was killed in
this
battle), and the Mingo
burning Hannastown in Pennsylvania. In November
George
Rogers Clark attacked the Shawne
e villages on Scioto River. The Treaty
of
Paris ended the
Revolutionary War in 1783, but the war between the
Ohio
tribes
and Long Knives continued with few
interruptions until 1795. The
British
in 1783 asked
their allies to stop the attacks, but so much blood
had
been
spilt few listened. For their part, most of the
frontiersmen did not
consider
the peace with the British
as extending to "Red Devils." George Rogers
Clark
asked
Congress for permission to raise an army to conquer all
of the
Ohio
tribes. Politely thanked for his past services,
the request was denied.
Meanwhile,
Simon De Peyster,
the British agent at Detroit, was encouraging
the
formation
of an alliance to fight the Americans.
<> With a new war threatening, the Delaware decided
their old
villages in east-central Ohio were vulnerable
and relocated most of
them to northwestern Ohio and
southern Indiana. The new locations were
crowded,
and the Delaware habit of hunting for profit created
friction
with neighboring tribes. Some of the Delaware
and Shawnee peace
factions separated
from the
militants in 1784 and moved to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri
in
Spanish
Louisiana. The Spanish found them useful as a
buffer against the
Americans
and protection against Osage
horse thieves. In 1788 the Spanish
governor
sent emissaries
to the Shawnee and Delaware in Ohio inviting others to
immigrate
,
and in 1793 Baron de Carondelet, the Spanish governor of Louisiana,
made
a formal land grant (25 miles square) at Cape Girardeau to the
Missouri
Shawnee
and Delaware. They remained here until 1807 when
American settlement
began
in the area. By 1815 most of the Cape
Girardeau Delaware and Shawnee
(Absentee
Delaware and
Shawnee) had left for Texas where they were welcomed by
Spanish
government as a defense against Comanche raiders. The departure
of
these
moderates left the Delaware and Shawnee war
factions in control back in
Ohio.
The Munsee who were forced to leave the
lower Hudson
Valley in 1756 eventually ended up with the Oneida in
upstate New York. As a result of the efforts of the Reverend
Samuel
Kirkland, many of them became Christians. Other
Christian converts
joined them after the war: the remaining
Stockbridge from western
Massachusetts(1786);
Brotherton Indians from Connecticut and Long
Island
(Mohegan, Metoac, and Mattabesic) (1788); and a group
of Unami
(mostly Raritan) Brotherton from New Jersey (1801)
-
closing the Brotherton Reservation which had been created by
the
Treaty
of Easton in 1758. Although patriots who rendered
valuable service to
the
American army during the Revolutionary
War, the Oneida, Brotherton, and
Stockbridge slowly lost their
lands to New York land speculators. In
1822 they sold their
remaining lands in New York and moved to a
reservation
established for the Oneida near Green Bay, Wisconsin.
In
1856 a separate reserve was created
for the Stockbridge,
Brotherton, and Munsee on land purchased from the
Menominee.
Despite their bad experiences through the years,
a tradition
persisted among the Ohio tribes which
allowed the Iroquois
to handle their negotiations
with the British and Americans. The
Iroquois,
however,
had almost been destroyed by the Americans and would
never
regain
the power and influence they enjoyed
before the war. Treating them as a
conquered
enemy,
the Americans forced a treaty upon the New York
Iroquois in 1784
which
confirmed the cession of
Ohio they had made in 1768. The Iroquois name
still
carried weight, and the British brought the
Mohawk sachem Joseph Brant
west
from
Ontario to encourage the formation of an alliance
to keep the
Americans
out of Ohio. The western
alliance was born at a meeting held at the
Wyandot
villages on the upper Sandusky in 1783. Its first
capitol was at the
Shawnee
village of Wakatomica
, but this was burned by the Americans in 1786
,
and
the council fire was moved in November to
Brownstown, a Wyandot village
just
south of Detroit.
Besides the Delaware, the membership ultimately
included:
Miami, Wyandot, Iroquois, Wyandot, Kickapoo
, Fox, Sauk, Shawnee,
Ottawa,
Ojibwe
Chickamauga (Cherokee), and Potawatomi.
Although the Delaware war faction dominated their affairs, the
natural instinct of the "grandfathers" was towards compromise
and
resolution of disputes. This re-asserted itself within the
alliance,
and
the Delaware became one of its more moderate
members. The new
government of
the United States also wished
to avoid war and, if possible, settle the
dispute
through treaty. In
January, 1785 the Delaware, Ojibwe, Ottawa and
Wyandot
sign
ed the Treaty of Fort McIntosh acknowledging American sovereignty
in
Ohio and agreeing to the boundary of the frontier at the Tuscarawas
and
Muskingum
Rivers. However, neither the government nor the alliance
chiefs could
enforce
the agreement as long as their constituents did not
really want peace.
A
similar treaty was signed at Fort Finney with the
Shawnee in 1786, but
many
alliance warriors demanded the Ohio, not the
Muskingum as the boundary,
while
the Long Knives would not be satisfied
until they had the entire Ohio
Valley.
Congress, meanwhile, had sold the
land rights to a New Jersey syndicate
and
the Ohio Company to pay
its war debts. Americans flooded into Ohio and
took
native land as
squatters. There were 12,000 whites north of the Ohio in
1785
and
more coming all the time. Short of starting a civil war, the
American
military
commander, General Josiah Harmar, could not stop them.
The Fort McIntosh Treaty did not even receive the
approval of the
majority of the Delaware, and as a
result, Captain Pipe was replaced by
Big Cat as head
of the Wolf Clan. War resumed almost before the ink
was
dry when Miami and Kickapoo warriors attacked
American settlements
along the lower Wabash in southern
Indiana during the spring
of 1786. George Rogers Clark
arrived at Vincennes in relief that fall
with
Kentucky militia,
but Harmar ordered him to disband. The alliance
chiefs
also tried to slow the slide towards war. That fall they
ordered a
truce,
until their new demands had time to
reach the Congress in Philadelphia.
For
some reason
, it was delayed until July and by that time, the fighting
had
already resumed. After a summer of raids, Benjamin L
ogan and his
Kentucky
militia retaliated with an attack
against Shawnee villages in southern
Ohio.
In December
, the American governor Arthur St. Clair asked the alliance
for
a meeting at Fort Harmar on the falls of Muskingum. The alliance
council
agreed to settle for the Muskingum as the border
, but there were
serious
divisions.
The Joseph Brant demanded the council repudiate all treaties
ceding any part of Ohio and left in disgust for Ontario. The Miami,
Kickapoo, and Shawnee also pulled out, but the Delaware,
Wyandot, and
Detroit tribes decided to attend. The result was
chaos. In July, 1788
soldiers building the council house for the
meeting were attacked by an
Ottawa-Ojibwe war party, and
the Kickapoo ambushed an army convoy on
the Wabash. The
meeting began in December with the Americans furious
and half
the alliance determined to ignore any agreement. The Treaty of
Fort Harmar (January, 1789) proved worthless. After Patrick
Brown's
Kentuckians attacked the Wabash villages that summer,
the Shawnee and
Miami were able to establish a consensus in the
alliance council favoring war. With the militants dominating the
alliance, the Americans decided in 1790 to resolve the matter
with
force. Faced with another war, the Moravian Delaware
left Ohio for
southern Ontario. Known as
the Moravians of the
Thames, by 1792 they had established themselves in
a
peaceful
community at Moraviantown only to have it burned to
the ground
by
an American army in 1813.
Little Turtle's War (1790-94) began with
a series of disasters for
the Americans as they attempted to destroy
the
alliance villages
in northwest Ohio. Josiah Harmar's army of militia
was
ambushed
on the upper Wabash in 1790 with more than 200 casualties.
The
following
year, Arthur St. Clair suffered an even greater
humiliation in western
Ohio
(worst defeat ever inflicted on an
American army by Native Americans -
600
dead, 400 wounded)
. At Philadelphia, President George Washington
exploded in a
rage when told. When he calmed down, he sent "Mad"
Anthony
Wayne to Ohio.
Wayne established himself at Fort Washington
(Cincinnati) and during
the
next two years made careful preparations
to destroy the alliance. While
a
line of forts was built aimed directly
at northwest Ohio, Wayne trained
a
"Legion" of disciplined regulars
to back the militia. Meanwhile, the
prolonger war was causing the
alliance to come undone. The Wabash
tribes (Piankashaw, Kickapoo,
Illinois, Potawatomi) made a separate
peace with the Americans in
1792,
and the Fox and Sauk left because the alliance was having
trouble
feeding
its warriors.
Although the British were still encouraged the war, the Americans
had opened negotiations with them to end their support of the
alliance
and to agree to abandon the forts they still occupied
on American
territory. Peace overtures were also made to the
alliance, but the
Shawnee
in 1792 killed two of the American
representatives enroute to meet with
the
alliance council. The
following year, however, the Delaware protected
the
American
delegation because it included Hendrick Aupamut, a Stockbridge
(Mahican),
with many Delaware relatives. The peace negotiations
that summer
failed,
and in October, Wayne began his advance into
northwest Ohio. After a
Shawnee
attack on Fort Recovery failed to
stop Wayne, a council was held on the
banks
of the Maumee. Only
the Miami, Shawnee and Wyandot favored war, but
even
the Miami
war chief Little Turtle was beginning to think the alliance
would
lose
and urged negotiations. He was replaced by the Shawnee Blue
Jacket, and
on August 20th, the alliance was defeated at the
Battle of Fallen
Timbers. To avoid a fight with Wayne's army,
the British at Fort Miami
closed their gates to the
retreating warriors. The war for Ohio was
over.
Wayne burned the alliance villages along the Maumee and
destroyed
the stored food supply to insure a hungry winter.
Then he returned to
Fort Greenville and waited. In August
of 1795, the alliance chiefs
signed the Fort Greenville Treaty
agreeing to peace and ceding all of
Ohio except the northwest
corner. The treaty left the Delaware without
land, and with the
exception of Captain Pipe's small band on the upper
Sandusky,
they relocated, with the permission of the Miami, to White
River in east-central Indiana near the site of present-day Muncie
. Some
of their villages were
located in southern Indiana near the
Ohio River which placed them in
the
path of the next wave of
American expansion. Indiana was never a happy
place
for
the Delaware who felt like squatters on Miami land. After
their
defeat
in the fight for Ohio, there was social disintegration,
the men refused
to
farm, and alcohol abuse became a serious. In
1801 the Shawnee chief
Blue
Jacket tried to resurrect the alliance
at Brownstown, but there was
little
enthusiasm for this. The
Moravians opened a mission, but the Delaware
had
had
enough of the whiteman's religion for the moment. It closed in
1806.
The leading chief of the Delaware was Tetepachksit of the Turtle
Clan. He had an impossible and thankless job. As
a "peace
chief," he was responsible for dealing with the Americans and
therefore
was often in danger of being killed by his own people.
In 1803 the
Delaware
ceded part of their land in southern Indiana
, but this created a
problem
with the Miami who felt they still owne
d the land and that the Delaware
had
no right to sell it. A second
treaty was needed in 1806 to resolve
this.
Meanwhile, the Long Knives
had resumed their encroachment which the
government
made little
effort to stop. It was the right time for a prophet, and in
1805
a
Shawnee named Lalawethika received a vision after which he
changed
his
name to Tenskwatawa (the Open Door). His message
was similar to what
Neolin's
had been in 1763 except for an
ugly side where anyone disagreeing with
Tenskwatawa
was
killed as a witch or traitor. His brother was Tecumseh, a
spell-binding
orator and respected Shawnee war leader whose dream was to unite
all of
the
tribes against further American expansion. To do this, it was
essential
for
Tecumseh to win the support of the Wyandot (keepers of
the council fire
of
the western alliance) and the Delaware
(grandfather tribe of all
Algonquin).
Since his message was so familiar, the Delaware listened
with
great interest to what Tenskwatawa words. The results
were deadly. In
March, 1806 the Delaware followers of the
Prophet began to kill the
Christian converts, accusing them of
witchcraft. Although he was not a
Christian, the head chief
Tetepachksit was struck down by his own son
and
burned to death. Another elderly Delaware chief, Hockingpomsa,
narrowly escaped the same fate. When the Delaware witch hunt
ended in
April, the Delaware leadership had passed to William
Anderson
(Kecklawhenund), a man strongly opposed to Tecumseh
and the Prophet. By
1808 Tecumseh had received a promise of
British support. When the
"peace chiefs" signed the Treaty of Fort
Wayne in 1809 ceding more than
3,000,000 acres of southern I
ndiana and Illinois, Tecumseh denounced
the treaty, threatened
the chiefs who signed with death, and promised
territorial governor
William Henry Harrison the provisions would never
be carried out.
In 1810 his followers executed the Wyandot chief
Leatherlips.
The reaction of the Brownstown council was to
denounce
Tenskwatawa as a witch.
<> Without the Delaware and Wyandot, Tecumseh was forced to build
his
coalition among the tribes of the western Great Lakes. In time, he
would command the allegiance of almost 3,000 warriors, but it
was not
enough. He went south in 1811 to recruit the Choctaw,
Creek and
Cherokee, but during his absence, Harrison attacked
and burned
Prophetstown (Tippecanoe). At the outbreak of the
War of 1812
(1812-14), most Delaware, Shawnee and Wyandot
remained neutral or supported the Americans. After the death of
Little
Turtle
in July, the Miami joined Tecumseh and sent a war
belt to the Delaware
which
William Anderson did not accept.
Things did not go well for the
Americans at first, and Detroit
and several other forts fell. Harrison
took command and in early
1813 occupied the upper Sandusky. At the same
time, he moved
the Delaware from Indiana to Piqua, Ohio "for their own
safety."
That summer almost 10,000 Indians were "safe" at Piqua, and
Harrison began an offensive which, following Perry's naval victory
on
Lake Erie, recaptured Detroit and invaded southern Ontario
. After
Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of Thames in southern
Ontario in
October, his movement collapsed.
In 1814 the Delaware returned to Indiana from Piqua where
they
were joined by a group of Stockbridge from New York.
In July they
signed the second Treaty of Greenville as American
allies ending their
hostilities with the Kickapoo, Miami, Ottawa and
Potawatomi who had
sided with Tecumseh and the British. Indiana
became a state in 1816 and
immediately began to pressure the
federal government for the removal of
Native Americans from its t
erritory. Two centuries of standing in front
of the European advance
across North America had cost the Delaware 90%
of their original
population and left them scattered from Texas to
Canada. The
1,000 Delaware in Indiana had no doubt what the outcome
would
be of a confrontation with the State of
Indiana and, at the St. Marys
Treaty in October, 1818, ceded their
Indiana lands and agreed to
move west of the Mississippi. Between 1820
and 1822, the
Delaware left Indiana and moved to the James Fork of the
White River in
southwest
Missouri. Only 100 Delaware r
emained behind on their small reserve at
Pipestown
on the
upper Sandusky in Ohio. However, the Stockbridge
remained in
Indiana
until 1834 when the finally left for Wisconsin.
Missouri was a worse experience than Indiana for the Delaware.
Although the Osage had ceded the land to the United States in 1
808,
they continued to use it for hunting and when they encountered
Delaware, they regarded them as intruders. The Osage were also
skilled
horse thieves, and the Delaware were often victims. There
was nothing
personal about
this, since the Cherokee and Kickapoo
who had also been relocated to
the
same area had similar experiences
with the Osage. After a Delaware
hunting party was attacked in
1824 and an Osage horse raid in 1826, the
Delaware
and Kickapoo
united against the Osage. The government had to intervene
to
prevent
war, and a treaty was signed between the parties at St. Louis
in
1826.
Unfortunately, this did little good. The basic problem was the
area
had
been over-hunted for years, and there was just not enough game to
feed
everyone. Bad feelings over Tecumseh and the Delaware sale
of Miami
land
in Indiana had also persisted. These almost led to
another war, until
the
Miami reminded their "grandfathers" that they
had given them land when
they
were landless in 1795.
In August, 1829 the Ohio Delaware ceded their reserve and
agreed
to join the Delaware west of the Mississippi.
The thought of another
100 mouths to feed made the
Delaware on the James Fork agree to
exchange their
Missouri lands for a new reserve in northeast Kansas
just
north of the Shawnee - subject to their approval (they had
learned). The new location proved satisfactory, and in
December, 1829
the Delaware arrived
in Kansas and
settled on the Missouri River north of its junction
with
the
Kansas (Kansas City). Unfortunately,
much of Delaware's new land had
formerly
belonged
to the Pawnee, and the United States had neglected to
inform
the
Pawnee before relocating the Delaware. In
1831 a Delaware hunting party
on
the plains was attacked
by Pawnee warriors. Meanwhile, the Kansas
Delaware
signed a treaty at St. Louis in October surrendering the
abandoned
lands
of the Spanish grant given the Cape
Girardeau Delaware (Absentee
Delaware) who had
moved to Texas. The Absentee Delaware were living in
Mexican territory at the time and received nothing for their
old lands,
but the Delaware chiefs from Kansas who
signed on their behalf got
$100/year for life.
<> The following March, the Pawnee attacked another Delaware
hunting
party only this time a Delaware chief was killed. The
Delaware formed a
war party and burned the main Pawnee
village on the Republican River.
To avoid a war, the
government negotiated a treaty with the Pawnee in
1833
recognizing the right of the Delaware to hunt in the area.
It also
threatened to stop the Delaware's annuity payments
if they did not stop
attacking the plains tribes! This ended
most confrontations, but in
1835
a Delaware hunting party killed
12 Pawnee they caught trying to steal
their
horses. Many
Delaware became professional buffalo hunters which created
problems
and confrontations with the other plains tribes,
especially the Sioux
and
Cheyenne. Delaware hunting parties
were attacked: by Santee Sioux near
Des
Moines, Iowa in
1841; Sioux and Cheyenne on the Smokey Hill River in
Kansas
in 1845; and by Sioux on the upper Platte in 1852.
The Delaware,
Shawnee
and Kickapoo also joined the
Potawatomi during a brief war between
the
emigrant
tribes and Pawnee during 1850. <> After agreeing to removal in
1829, it took the Ohio Delaware
almost three years before they joined the other Delaware in
Kansas in
1832. Two groups of Moravian Munsee also left
their reserve in
southern Ontario in 1837 and 1838 and
emigrated to Kansas. Despite
these new
arrivals, the Delaware
still had more than enough land to sell some of
it
to the Wyandot
when they were removed from Ohio to Kansas in 1843. The
Absentee
Delaware (Red River Delaware) from the old
Cape Girardeau Band remained
in
Texas and allied themselves
with the Texas Republic in 1836. In 1854
they were moved to a
reservation with the Caddo and Tonkawa on the
upper Brazos
River. They served as scouts for the Texas Rangers until
1859
when they were expelled to Oklahoma and settled at the Wichita
Agency (Anadarko) with the Caddo, Tonkawa, Kitsai and
Wichita. By 1874
they had merged with the Caddo and by
the turn of the century had
almost disappeared as a separate
group (less than 100). They were
considered as part of the
Wichita and Affiliated Bands until given a
separate identity and federal recognition.
From their reserve in northeast Kansas, the Delaware became
very
much a part of the American movement across the
west.
Delaware scouts served with Colonel Henry Dodge's
1835 expedition to
meet
the Comanche, and in 1837 eighty
-seven Delaware enlisted in the
American army
and saw service
in the Seminole War. Delaware also served as scouts and
buffalo
hunters for immigrant wagon trains crossing the plains during the
1840s
and
50s. They participated in all three of the Fremont exp
editions (1842,
1844,
and 1845), and during the last one, twelve
Delaware who had volunteered
as
scouts ended up serving as
American soldiers in the capture of
California
during the Mexican
War (1846-48). Another 30 Delaware joined Alexander
Doniphan's
Missouri volunteers and saw service as part of Stephen Watts Kearny's
conquest
of New Mexico. By 1854, "civilization" had once again caught
up with
the
Delaware in Kansas, and Congress was ready to open Kansas
and Nebraska
to
settlement. In May the Delaware were pressured into
signing a treaty
reducing
their reserve to 275,000 acres with the excess land
to be sold at
auction
to whites. By the end of the month, Congress had
passed the
Kansas-Nebraska
Act, which not only opened the area to
settlement, but allowed slavery
to
be decided by "popular sovereignty."
In a prelude to the Civil War,
thousands
of white men arrived on the
lands of red men to kill each other over
the
enslavement of black men.
The result was a period of lawless mayhem
known
as "Bleeding Kansas."
<> The Delaware, Wyandot, and Shawnee sided with the
anti-slavery
forces and offered to defend Lawrence
against possible attacks from
Missouri. In 1860 the
Delaware signed the Treaty of Sarcoxieville
agreeing
to allot their remaining lands. The treaty was an good
example
of corruption and bribery of tribal officials.
While each individual
Delaware was given only 80
acres, the head chief received 640 acres and
the other
chiefs
320. In addition, the treaty authorized the chiefs
to draw annual
salaries
of $1,500 from tribal trust fund.
Excess land was to be sold to
Leavenworth,
Pawnee &
Western Railroad. Although they were still not citizens
at
this
time, the Delaware declared for the Union at the
outbreak of the Civil
War.
Ultimately, 170 of the 200
able-bodied Delaware men of military ages
served
in
the Union Army - mainly in the 6th and 15th Kansas
Volunteer
Cavalry.
In 1862 a group of Kansas Delaware
and Shawnee attacked the Wichita
Agency
in southern
Oklahoma which had been seized by the Confederates.
The
agency
was destroyed forcing the Tonkawa who
lived there to pack up and head
back
to Texas.
Very few of them made it. Their old enemies, the
Comanche
caught
them in the open east of the
Wichita mountains and killed almost all of
them.
During the war, Delaware soldiers also fought
several engagements
against
Confederate
Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw units.
Ignoring the service of Delaware and Shawnee to the
Union, the
Kansas legislature in 1863 called for the
removal of all Indians from
Kansas. On July 4th, 1866 the D
elaware signed their final treaty with
the United States
which allowed the Secretary of the Interior to sell
their
remaining Kansas lands to the Missouri River Railroad
Company.
Individual Delaware, if they wished
, could keep their 80 acre
allotments and
become
American citizens, but in a situation reminiscent
of the
burnings in
the Wyoming Valley in 1763,
the Delaware Council House mysteriously
burned
afterwards. Most Delaware took the "hint," and o
f the 1,160
Delaware in Kansas, 985 of them decided t
o move to Oklahoma. The 1854
treaty had reserved four
sections for the Moravian Munsee, but white
squatters had
forced the sale of these lands in 1857. Rather than leave
with
the other Delaware, the Munsee chose to join the Swan
Creek and
Black River bands of the Ojibwe near Ottawa,
Kansas. Much of this
group's land was lost to allotment in
1859. Some of the
Munsee returned to Canada at this time,
but the others stayed in Kansas
with
the Ojibwe. The two
groups eventually merged, accepted allotment and
citizenship
,
and most of their descendants still live in the vicinity.
In April 1867 the Delaware and Cherokee signed an agreement
whereby the Delaware would pay $280,000 for Cherokee land
in northern Oklahoma and become part of the Cherokee Nation
. The arrangement was mutually beneficial, since with almost $
1,000,000 in their tribal fund, the Delaware were landless with
money, while after the Civil War, the Cherokee were poor with
more land than they needed. The Delaware had a difficult move
to Oklahoma in 1868. Once there, they found themselves
unwelcome by the Osage (old enemies from Missouri)
and the Cherokee (opposite side during the Civil War).
While the Delaware intended to maintain a separate identity
and tribal organization, they assumed the purchase gave them
full voting rights and citizenship
in Cherokee Nation. The
Cherokee disagreed, and the dispute finally had to
be
resolved through a long court battle fought during the 1890s.
As part of the Cherokee Nation, the
Delaware in
Oklahoma were able to avoid allotment until the
Curtis Act (1895)
dissolved tribal governments and
forced allotment in 1901. The Delaware felt
that since
they had purchased their land from the Cherokee,
they were immune.
However, in a 1904 decision, the
federal courts ruled that the government
had not conferred
ownership on Native Americans, but only the "right of
occupancy." Therefore, the sale of land by Cherokee in 1
867 had only given the Delaware the right to occupy the
land during their own lifetimes. As a result, the Delaware
lands were allotted in 1907 just like everyone else's - 160
acres to each head of household with the excess being sold
to whites. In 1979
the BIA terminated the separate tribal
status of the Delaware and Shawnee
living among Cheroke
e in eastern Oklahoma in favor of the Cherokee Nation.
Following a legal battle covering almost 20 years, the
Delaware, who were
the first tribe to sign a treaty with t
he United States, have just been
successful in reversing
this decision and regaining federal recognition
as
a separate tribe, the Delaware Tribe of Indians.
