that year, William Penn formed a solemn treaty with Connodaghtoh, king of the Susquehannah Minquays or Conestogo Indians, Wopaththa (alias Opessah), King of the Shawanese, Weewhinjough, chief of the Ganawese, inhabiting at the head of the Patowmeck; also, Ahoakassongh, brother to the emperor or great king of the Onandagoes of the Five Nations, and others. The Minquays and Shawanese had by that time become residents of Lancaster County. Some Ganawese, in consequence of the encroachments of the Virginians, found soon after this hospitable shelter in the neighborhood of Conestogo. Secretary Logan visited them at their settlement, some miles above Conestogo, at a place called Connejaghera, above the fort.

In the spring of 1706 the Conestogos, Shawanos, and Ganawese Indians, upon the Susquehanna, came to confer with the government at Philadelphia. The chief of the Conestogos exhibited a white belt with twentyone rows, with three hands wrought in it in black. He said that this was a pledge of peace formerly delivered by the Onandagos to the Nanticokes, when they made them tributaries; that the Nanticokes were under some apprehension of danger from the Five Nations, and had brought this belt with them to Conestogo, with another like it, in order that, whichever route the Confederates should take, one of the belts might be exhibited to them before they passed through Pennsylvania, and that they might see that they had made peace and that the provincial government was at peace with the neighboring Indians.

In 1707 Gov. Evans visited Conestogo and met there some Nanticokes from Seven Towns who had waited ten days to see him and were on their way to Onandago whither they were carrying, as a tribute, twenty belts of wampum. From the Governor's report it appears that he first arrived at Pequehan, a Shawanese settlement, where he saw Opessah and some other chiefs, at 9 miles from Pequehan, at a place called Dekanoagah, on the Susquehanna, he met in conference some Senecas, Shawanese, Canois and Nanticokes. He returned to Pequehan and stayed there until the morrow. While there some Shawanese arrived from Carolina to settle.

In 1717 Governor Keith met chiefs of "the Conestogo or Mingo Indians, the Delawares, Shawanese and Ganawese, all inhabitants upon or near the river Susquehanna" in conference at Conestogo.

At a council held at Conestogo in 1721-22, by Mr. Logan and Col. French, there were present Conestogos, Shawanese, Ganawese, Cayugas and Delawares.

The warrant for the survey of Springetsburg manor, issued in 1722, recites that the three nations of Indians on the north side of the Susquehanna, the Conestogos, Shawanese and Conoys, were disturbed, etc.

At a conference held in 1723 Whiwhingee, a Ganawese chief, enumer

ates four nations on the Susquehanna, viz.: Conestogos, Shawanos, Ganawese and Delawares.

In 1728 disturbances arose between the Conestogos and Shawanese, and the latter reported the arrival of a hostile band of Flathead Indians.

In 1729 the county of Lancaster was marked off; and it should be remembered that most of the foregoing notices have respect to the district of country then known as Chester county and comprising within its limits Lancaster county.

In 1734 the Ganawese are spoken of as settled between Pextang and Conestogo.

In 1742, at the treaty of Philadelphia, there were some Shawanese; four Conestogos who spoke the Oneyiut (or Oneida) language; and four "Canoyido" or Nanticokes of Conestogo.

In 1744, Canassatego stated that the Conoy Indians had resolved to remove to Shamokin, and at a conference held in the same year at Philadelphia with some Delawares from the Upper Susquehanna, one of the chiefs stated that the Conoys from below had moved higher up, to be near them.

The foregoing data are produced here for the sole purpose of determining the nationality of the Indians of Lancaster county: fuller particulars and much matter relating to them, but having no direct bearing on the question under consideration, are reserved for the next chapter. Meanwhile the details given warrant the following general

statement:

"It appears that for some period before the year 1608,1 down to about the year 1680, Lancaster County, or that portion of it which lies upon the Susquehanna, was inhabited by a number of Indians known to the Colonists as Susquehannocks. These people were objects of attack to the Five Nations. They were in possession of arms, obtained originally from the French; who were, therefore, indirectly at least, known to them. About the year 1631, a regular traffic was opened with them from Claiborne's trading post; and upon the settlement of Maryland under Lord Baltimore, wars, treaties and purchases were had with them from that colony. They were sometimes in arms against their neighbors of the aboriginal stock. They at length became dependent upon the protection of the whites against the New York Confederacy; and finally, before the arrival of William Penn, they were overthrown and absorbed by the Five Nations. A settlement was soon planted by the conquerors at Conestogo, which subsequently became the chief post and place of council of the Indians seated on the Susquehanna, below its fork. The residents there were of the Five Nations; chiefly of the Seneca tribe, but comprising sometimes Oneidas, Cayugas and Tuscaroras. About

1 Foulke, 1. c. p. 212, sq.

the year 1698, some Shawanese from the southward applied to the Conestogos, and through these to William Penn's government, for permission to settle near Conestogo; which being granted, they established themselves upon Pequea Creek, under Opessah, their principal chief. They remained there during at least a quarter of a century, branching off, however, above Conestogo, and westward of the river. Opessah retained his position at their head until the year 1711, when he abdicated, and an election took place, which resulted in the nominal elevation of Lakundawanna to the successorship; but the people being refractory, there was an interregnum in effect, which lasted several years. As early as 1728, a few of them emigrated to the Ohio, and these were gradually followed by the remainder; so that before the middle of the eighteenth century they had wholly removed from the county of Lancaster.

"Soon after the arrival of the Shawanese, or about the year 1700, some Ganawese, from the Potomac, were upon application to the Proprietor, and upon the security of the Conestogos and Shawanese, permitted to remove within the province. They fixed their principal village between Pextang and Conestogo, and kept it there for at least thirty years. The Nanticokes of Maryland, made frequent visits to Conestogo, and at length some of them settled near it, those called Conoys (who are sometimes confounded with the Nanticokes, as in the reports of treaties, and sometimes distinguished from them, as by Mr. Heckewelder, who says they were the same as the Ganawese,) subsequently appeared in the same vicinity, as did also a body of Delawares. The former began to shift their ground before the year 1744; the latter, although occasionally mentioned as present in conference with the provincial government, never occupied a prominent post, and they soon retired to the Juniata. As early as 1711 there were Palatines settled near the Pequea, who were promptly admitted to the friendship of the neighboring tribes. From first to last the paramount authority of the Five Nations is manifested in the superintendence of their organ, the Conestogo Council, and in the respect yielded to this by the surrounding Indians. Peace and free intercourse were manifested amongst all of them, until after their villages began to be disturbed by the general movement of their brethern to the North and West.

"It must be obvious that any traditions respecting the tribes above mentioned, while they remained within the limits of Lancaster county, had their origin prior to the year 1763; and if of much older date than this, they must have been derived through persons who were living whilst the Indian settlements presented that diversity of aspect which has just been sketched. The first border settlers were not very competent judges of historical matters, nor very nice critics upon aboriginal peculiarities; and whatever facts were within the sphere either of their

perception or their comprehension, come to us now over a tract of nearly a century of time. While, therefore, we yield something to that probability of truth which locality or integrity may create, we have little reason to prefer any account orally transmitted, in circumstances and during an interval of time such as have existed in the present case, if that account is inconsistent with the general testimony of writers upon the subject. Perhaps, in this respect, no part of our State was more unfavorably situated than Lancaster county, prior to the year 1750. Ten years before this, the Indians had been embarrassed by the advance of the borderers; and probably still earlier there were apparent symptoms of that antipathy, which has generally marked the intercourse of frontiermen and savages. At least four or five considerable villages of different tribes were within the county; smaller villages were scattered around these. Different dialects, different customs, were in close proximity. That must be a singularly fortunate tradition which, faithful to its original, could convey to us living at the middle of the nineteeenth century, accurate details of the customs of one of those villages-uncorrupted specimens of one of those dialects as they were in the first quarter of the eighteenth century."

CHAPTER II. .

FROM THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA TO THE ARRIVAL OF WILLIAM PENN.

In an official report drawn up by a Dutch Chamber [A. D. 1598] from documents and papers placed in their hands, December 15, 1644, it is said that "New Netherland, situate in America, between English Virginia and New England, extending from the South (Delaware) River, lying in latitude 3810, to Cape Malabar, in latitude 41°, was first frequented by the inhabitants of this country in the year 1598, and especially by those of the Greenland Company, but without making any fixed settlements, only as a shelter in the winter; for which purpose they erected there two little forts on the South and North Rivers, against the incursions of the Indians."1

Sir Walter Raleigh's discovery of the Delaware cannot be substantiated by evidence.

Lord Delaware, on his passage to Virginia, is said to have touched at Delaware Bay in 1610, and "from this circumstance the Bay probably received his name, and may have given to him the credit of its discovery, as it was so called in a letter from Captain Argall, written from Virginia in 1612." But, if this be true, it was a year after the well-known visit of Henry Hudson, who is now almost universally regarded as the discoverer of the Delaware. Henry Hudson, an Englishman by birth, in the service of the Dutch East India Company, reached the Delaware in the "Yagt Halve Maan" (Yacht Half-Moon) on August 28, 1609. The journals of Hudson and of Robert Juet, his mate, have been preserved in the Transactions of the N. Y. Historical Society. The honor of the discovery and the right to the land are claimed by the English on account of Hudson's birth, and by the Dutch on account of his having been at the time in their service and sailed under their flag.

The Delaware River and Bay have been known by different names. The Indians called it Poutaxat, Mariskitton, and Makerisk-Kiskon, Lenape-Wihittuck or the stream of the Lenape; the Dutch called it Zuydt or South River, Vassan River, Prince Hendrick's or Charles' River; the Swedes denominated it New Swedeland Stream; Heylin, in his Cosmography, calls it Arasapha; and the English named it Delaware. Campanius says it was so named after Mons. de la Warre, a captain under Jacques Cartier, and that it was discovered in 1600. If this be true, it 1 O'Callaghan quoted by Hazard. 2 N. Y. Histor. Collections, 1609.