IV.
2. Sittamaganat, Raf. translates "Path Leader." The word tamaganat appears in other verses, as w'tamaganat, IV, 37; tamaganat, IV, 55; tamaganend, V, 2. I derive it from the root tam, literally to drink, but generally, to smoke tobacco, as in Roger Williams' Key wut-tammagon, a pipe ([see above, page 49]). Hence I take tamagamat to be the pipe-bearer, he who had charge of the Sacred Calumet. If it is objected that this puts the use of tobacco by the Lenape too remote, I reply that we do not know when they began to use it, and moreover, this may be an anachronism of tradition.
13, 14. The lands toward the four cardinal points are described from a centre where the tribe was then located. Neither Rafinesque nor Squier understood this, and their renderings do not mention the territories North and West. From the description, I should place the then location of the tribe in Western New York and Northern Ohio.
16. The four names seem to be appellatives of different tribes. One of the extinct tribes remembered in Chipeway tradition was the Assigunaik, Stone People (Schoolcraft, History and Statistics of the Ind. Tribes, Vol. I, p. 305).
25. The legend here relates that the cultivation of maize began after they had reached a low latitude, presumably Southern Indiana or Ohio. The legend of the New England Indians was that a crow flew down from the great God Kitantowit, bringing in one ear a grain of corn, in the other a bean, and taught them the cultivation of these plants. (Roger Williams, Key into the Language of America, p. 114.) See further, [ante, p. 48].
34. Wisawana, the Yellow River. There is a small river, so-called, in the State of Indiana, a branch of the Kankakee, called on Hough's "Map of the Indian Names of Indiana" We-tho-gan, a corruption of wisawanna. (See Hough's map, in Twelfth Annual Report of the Geology and Natural History of Indiana, 1883.) When the Minsi made their first migration west, about 1690, they directed their course to this spot, where they were found by Charlevoix in 1721.
36. Tamenend, the name of the celebrated chief now better known to us as Tammany, who dealt with William Penn. Heckewelder translates it as "Affable." This is the first of the name. A second is mentioned, V, 32. The friend of Penn was the third.
46. Towakon pallitonep, Raf. translates "father snake, he was mad!"
48. Perhaps this line should be translated: "They speak well of the east; many go to the east."
49. Nemassipi, Fish River. In the MS. this name was first written mixtu sipi. The name "Fish River" was applied to various streams by the Delawares, but never, so far as I know, to the Mississippi. In the present connection it seems to refer either to the St. Lawrence, about the Thousand Isles, or else its upper stream, the Detroit River, both of which were famous fishing spots.
50. Talligewi. No name in the Lenape legends has given rise to more extensive discussion than this. It is usually connected with Alligewi and this again with Alleghany. This seems supported by Loskiel, who, writing on the authority of Zeisberger, says, "Nun nennen die Delawaren die ganze Gegend, so weit die Gewässer reichen, die in dem Ohio fallen, Alligewinengk, welches so viel bedeutet, als das Land, in welches sie sich aus weit entfernten Orten begeben haben." (Geschichte der Mission, etc., p. 164.)
The meaning here assigned to Alligewinengk, "land where they arrived from distant places," is evidently based on the resolution of the compound into talli, there, icku, to that place, ewak, they go, with a locative final. The initial t is often omitted in adverbial compounds of talli (itself a compound of ta, locative particle, and li, to), as allamunk, in there.
Bishop Ettwein gives to the word a different meaning. He writes: "The Delawares call the western country Alligewenork, which signifies a War-Path; the river itself they call Alligewi Sipo." (Legends and Traditions, etc., in Bull. of the Pa. Hist. Soc. p. 34.) Here the derivation would be from palliton, to fight, ewak, they go, and a locative, "they go there to fight." The omission of the initial p was not uncommon, as Campanius gives ayuta = alliton, to make war. (Catechismus, p. 141.)
Basing his opinion on an expression in the Journal of C. F. Post, to the effect that Alleghany means "fine or fair river," Dr. J. H. Trumbull analyzes it into wulik, hanne, sipu, which he translates "best, rapid-stream, long-river" (Connect. Hist. Soc. Colls. Vol. II).
Rafinesque, in the MS. of the Walum Olum, gives Talligewi the translation "there found," from talli, there, and I know not what word for "found."
There have not been wanting those who would derive the name Alleghany from Iroquois roots, as the Seneca De-o-na-ga-no, "cold water" (Amer. Hist. Mag. Vol. IV, p. 184). But there is no probability that the word is Iroquois.
Whatever its origin, the name was not confined to the Alleghany river, but included the whole of the Upper Ohio, as the interpreter Post distinctly says.
The Rev. Mr. Heckewelder was of opinion that Talligewi was a word foreign to the Algonkin, a nomen gentile of another tribe, adopted by the Delawares, just as they adopted Mengwe for the Iroquois from the Onondaga Yenkwe, men ([see above, page 14]). It is not necessarily connected with Alleghany, which may be pure Algonkin. He says, "Those people called themselves Talligeu or Talligewi." (Indian Nations p. 48.) The accent, as he gives it, Tallige'wi, shows that the word is, Talliké, with the substantive verb termination, so that Talligewi means, "He is a Talliké" or, "It is of (belongs to) the Talliké."
This appears to me the most probable supposition of any I have quoted, and it reduces our quest to that of a nation who called themselves by a name which, to Lenape ears, would sound like Talliké. Such a nation presents itself at once in the Cherokees, who call themselves Tsa'laki. Moreover, they fill the requirements in other particulars. Their ancient traditions assign them a residence precisely where the Delaware legends locate the Tallike, to wit, on the upper waters of the Ohio ([see above, page 17]). Fragments of them continued there until within the historic period, and the persistent hostility between them and the Delawares points to some ancient and important contest.
Name, location and legends, therefore, combine to identify the Cherokees or Tsalaki with the Tallike, and this is as much evidence as we can expect to produce in such researches. I can see no reason whatever for Dr. Shea's opinion that the Lenape "in their progress eastward drove out of Ohio the Quappas, called by the Algonkins, Alkanzas or Alligewi, who retreated down the Ohio and Mississippi." (Shea, Notes to Alsop's Maryland, p. 118.)
The question remains, whether the Tallike were the "Mound Builders." It is not so stated in the Walum Olum. The inference rather is that the "Snake people," Akowini or Akonapi, dwelt in the river valleys north of the Ohio river, in the area of Western Ohio and Indiana, where the most important earthworks are found—and singularly enough none more remarkable than the immense effigy of the serpent in Adams County, Ohio, which winds its gigantic coils over 700 feet in length on the summit of a bold bluff overlooking Brush Creek.
According to the Red Score, the Snake people were conquered by the Algonkins long before the contest with the Tallike began. These latter lay between the position then occupied by the Lenape and the eastern territory where they were found by the whites. In other words, the Tallike were on the Upper Ohio and its tributaries, and they had to be driven south before the path across the mountains was open. For this reason they are called wapawullaton, "possessing the East," that is, with reference to the then position of the Lenape in southwestern Ohio.
54. Talamatan. This was the Lenape name of the Huron-Iroquois or Wyandots. It is found in the form Telamatinos in a "List of 11 Nations living West of Allegheny" present by deputy at a Conference in Philadelphia, 1759 (Minutes of the Prov Council of Penna., Vol. VIII, p. 418). Heckewelder gives Delamattenos (Ind. Nations, p. 80).
Rafinesque translates the name in one place by "not Talas," and in another by "not of us," from Len. matta, not, Latin nos, us. That the Lenape did not speak Latin made no difference in his linguistic theory, as he held all languages to be at core the same! On the Hurons, [see above, p. 16].