and the third the turkey. The Unami were accorded the pre-eminence, their symbol meaning the great tortoise upon which the world rested. There were also various tribes of the Lenape in New Jersey.

The Shawnees were originally a Southern tribe. They were a restless, roving set. While acknowledging the Lenape as grandfather, they were not always filial in their relations. About 1700 a considerable number of them wandered northward and settled in Pennsylvania, and with the Delawares, after the estrangement of about 1750, became the most vigorous enemies of the whites. A tribe of the Iroquois dwelling on the Susquehanna in Lancaster County, the Conestogas, had also an unfortunate history in their relations to the whites and are frequently mentioned.

The government of the Indians was effective for their purposes.

They had no writings of consequence; but oral traditions had great vitality. The head man of the tribe was the Sachem, and the wise men with him formed the council. His authority extended over his tribe in relation to peace questions only. In case of war a council composed of approved braves made all decisions. Important conclusions were reached only after grave deliberation, in which experi ence and wisdom had their due weight. An Indian council was a dignified and oftentimes an eloquent and far-seeing body.

The vividness with which treaties were handed down from father to son made them fairly secure. While per

fidious to the last degree to confessed enemies, the Indians were faithful to their allies. In Pennsylvania they stood by their compacts with the whites, and were quick to see and appreciate a similar spirit in the other party. Nor were the agreements of their Sachems put aside as invalid by rebellious subjects. Respect for authority, the sacredness of decisions regularly made, obedience to the acts and the traditions of their tribe were kneaded into their early education. The belts of wampum and the parchments and papers containing their foreign obligations were, at periodic

intervals, laid out before the young men of the tribe and, with solemn advice, each document was connected with its peculiar bond, and its sacredness impressed upon them. There were, of course, unsettled questions between the tribes, and this required the purchase of land over and over again from different claimants, but an open, wellunderstood sale was not denied or evaded.

The government of the tribe acknowledged its accountability for the crimes of individuals. A murderer of a white was denounced and surrendered for punishment. There were, of course, reprobates who would not live within the laws of the tribe, and were looked upon with contempt. So long as their crimes were petty they were tolerated. But if they passed beyond a certain grade of criminality they were disowned by the tribe and could make no claim for protection.

The position of a Sachem was not hereditary in strict line of descent, though it was perhaps confined to certain families. Among the Lenape the chief of each sub-tribe was selected by those of the other two. The Sachem of the Unami, the Turtle Chief, was the acknowledged head of the Lenape nation.

William Penn said with regard to these Delaware Indians, "Do not abuse them, but let them have but justice and you win them." The experience of all those who treated them fairly seemed to confirm this sentiment. It was not alone the purchase of their lands which favorably inclined them to the Pennsylvania settlers in the early days, but the evident justice which characterized all the dealings of the whites. To this they responded fully. Even when exasperated by inequitable treatment in later times, they distinguished between the unarmed Quaker, who quietly pursued his labors among them, and the armed frontiersman of other sects. Only three Friends were murdered by them, and these suffered because they became distrustful; one went to a fort, the other two took guns to their fields, where the Indians had seen them many a time before unarmed. The dependence on warlike instruments induced a belief

that they had given up their Quaker connections, and they suffered with the rest. The whole Pennsylvania experience proves that the Indians, degraded in many respects as the whites found them, and still more degraded as they left them, possessed in a high degree the ideas of fidelity to obligations, gratitude for favors, and honorable response to fair treatment.

The missionary Heckewelder says, "William Penn, said they, when he treated with them, adopted the ancient mode of their ancestors, and convened them under a grove of shady trees where the little birds in the boughs were warbling their sweet songs. In commemoration of these conferences (which are always to the Indians a subject of pleasing remembrance), they frequently assembled together in the woods, in some shady spot as nearly as possible similar to those where they used to meet their brother Mignon (their name for Penn), and there lay all his 'words' or speeches with those of his descendants on a blanket or clean piece of bark, and with great satisfaction went successively over the whole. This practice (which I have frequently witnessed) continued until the year 1780, when the disturbances which then took place put an end to it, probably forever."

General W. H. Harrison says of the Delaware Indians, "A long and intimate knowledge of them in peace and war, as enemies and friends, has left upon my mind the most favorable impression of their character for bravery, generosity, and fidelity to their engagements."

Before the traditions of their acquaintance with the whites had disappeared, their story as told to friendly missionaries was most pathetic. They met the "Long Knives" in Virginia, the Dutchmen in New York, and the "Yangees" in New England. In all cases their experience was the same. They gave them land and provisions, but the whites wanted more and more. Land was plenty, and for a long time they granted everything. Then the whites demanded their best sections and took them by force. They protested and finally fought, only to be conquered and retire. They were weak

ened by rum, decimated by small-pox and other diseases, overcome by craft and guile, and in a century from the time of the first settlement of Virginia the best of their chiefs were mourning over the results which, in the face of a general degradation, they and their people were too weak successfully to resist.

The Delawares cultivated their fields and did not depend on the chase alone. Corn was their principal food, but they also had squashes, beans, sweet potatoes, and tobacco. William Penn, who lived among them a short time, says, "Their diet is maize or Indian corn, divers ways prepared, sometimes roasted in the ashes, sometimes beaten, or boiled with water, which they call homine. They also make cakes not unpleasant to eat. They have, likewise, several sorts of beans and peas that are good nourishment, and the woods and rivers are their larder."

They made simple vessels of clay, effective but inferior in decorations to those of many savage tribes. They had copper, derived either from the Lake Superior region or from northern New York. The most of their instruments were, however, of stone, and they showed remarkable skill in their manufacture. They made mortars and pestles for pounding their corn, axes for weapons and for wood cutting, while innumerable quartz, jasper, and slate spear- and arrow-heads have been ploughed up by Pennsylvania farmers.

They knew how to extract paints and dyes from various woods and vegetables, while the white, red, and blue clays quarried from the neighborhood of White and Red Clay Creeks in Pennsylvania and Delaware made the country widely known among them as the Place of Paint.

With these paints they became quite skilful in pictographic signs. They wrote history and preserved the tablets, which, unfortunately, were usually on perishable material, though a few engraved stones have been dug up. They recorded on trees the result of a hunt or warlike foray in signs any Indian of their tribe could readily understand. Two instances may be given to show how readily an Indian turned to signs to express his meaning.

In 1701 William Penn asked an Indian interpreter to give him some idea of the national notion of God. Not being able to readily answer this in words, he drew a number of concentric circles, and in the centre placed the "Great Man."

A Shawnee had a horse which was claimed by a white man. The Indian insisted on his ownership, but the other being unwilling to relinquish his claim, the Indian seized a piece of charcoal from the hearth and on the door drew two pictures, which were so vivid that the settler could not fail to understand. One represented the white man taking the horse, the other the Indian scalping the white man. horse remained the property of the Indian.

The

They preserved their myths and records on notched, burned, or painted sticks, each mark indicating some particular event or story, which was duly impressed on each generation. Each stick was about six inches long, and they were tied in bundles and placed in the care of a custodian.

Their ideas of property were communistic. Though they sold land, it took them a long time to absorb the white idea of exclusive ownership. They only sold, in their estimation, the privilege to live on it, without diminishing their own claims to hunting and fishing privileges. An Indian placed his horses in the mowing field of the missionary Heckewelder. When remonstrated with, he replied, "Can you make the grass grow? Nobody can except the Great Man. The grass which grows out of the earth is common to all, the game in the woods is common to all. For friendship's sake, however, I shall never put my horses in your meadow again."

While liberal to their friends, they were, in the highest degree, vindictive and cruel to their enemies. A belt of black wampum with a red hatchet painted on it was a symbol of war, and war of the most vigorous kind followed. They delighted in a quiet inroad into the heart of the enemy's territory, a sudden and murderous blow when they were supposed to be far away, and as sudden a retreat. They knew no mercy to man, woman, or child.