History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighbouring States.

by John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder

III. The Lenape.

This is the most widely extended language of any of those that are spoken on this side of the Mississippi. It prevails in the extensive regions of Canada, from the coast of Labrador to the mouth of Albany river which falls into the southernmost part of Hudson’s bay, and from thence to the Lake of the Woods, which forms the north-western boundary of the United States. It appears to be the language of all the Indians of that extensive country, except those of the Iroquois stock, which are by far the least numerous. Farther to the north-west, in the territories of the Hudson’s Bay Company, other Indian nations have been discovered, such as the Blackfoot Indians, Sussee Indians, Snake Indians, and others, whose languages are said to be different from the Iroquois and the Lenape, but we are not able to form a very correct judgment respecting those idioms from the scanty vocabularies which have been given us by Mackenzie, Umfreville and other travellers. We must wait for further light before we decide.

Out of the limits of Canada few Iroquois are found, except the remnants of those who were once settled in the vicinity of the great Lakes, in the northern parts of the now State of New York. There are yet some Wyandots in the vicinity of Detroit. All the rest of the Indians who now inhabit this country to the Mississippi, are of the Lenape stock, and speak dialects of that language. It is certain that at the time of the arrival of the Europeans, they were in possession of all the coast from the northernmost point of Nova Scotia to the Roanoke. Hence they were called Wapanachki, or Abenakis, men of the East. La Hontan gives us a list of the Indian nations of ancient Acadia, all speaking dialects of the Abenaki, or as he calls it, of the Algonquin. They were the Abenakis, Micmacs, Canibas, Mahingans (Mohicans), Openangos, Soccokis, and Etchemins, from whom all Nova Scotia, (excepting the peninsula,) and a part of the now district of Maine, were once called by the French the country of the Etchemins. He does not speak of the Souriquois, who are also known to have inhabited Acadia, and likewise spoke a dialect of the Lenape.

In the interior of the country we find every where the Lenape and their kindred tribes. The Miamis, or Twightwees, the Potowatomies, the Messissaugees, the Kickapoos, all those Indian nations who once inhabited, and parts of whom still inhabit the interior of our country on this side of the Mississippi and the great Lakes, are unquestionably, from their dialects, of Lenape origin. The Shawanos, it is said, formerly dwelt upon the river Savannah, in Georgia, and a part of them remaining in that country, associated with the Creeks, still retain their language.[129] As far as we are able to judge from the little knowledge that has been transmitted to us of the language of the Indians who once inhabited Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, they all appear to have belonged to the same stock, the Nanticokes have been shewn to have been intimately connected with the Lenape, and among those who called them grandfather. Two pretty copious vocabularies of their language, in the possession of the Historical Committee of the American Philosophical Society, one of them communicated by Mr. Jefferson and the other by myself, prove it beyond a doubt to have been a dialect of the Lenape.[130] The Canai or Kanhawas, who have given their name to a river in Virginia which empties itself into the Ohio, are known to have been of the same stock. The Indian names of rivers, mountains, and towns, through that vast extent of country, appear generally derived from the Lenape language.

The Baron de La Hontan, is one of the first writers, I believe, who have spoken of the universality of this idiom; but it is extraordinary that he has not said a word of the Lenni Lenape, that great and powerful nation. He calls this language the Algonquin tongue, although he describes that people as “an erratic sort of savages, who, like the Arabs, had no settled abode,”[131] and admits, that at the time when he wrote, their number did not exceed 200. What he says on this subject, however, is so much to my purpose, that I hope I shall be permitted to make a small extract from it.

“There are,” says the Baron, “but two mother tongues in the whole extent of Canada, which I confine within the limits of the Mississippi; they are the Huron and the Algonquin. The first is understood by the Iroquois, for the difference between these two is no greater than that between the Norman and the French. The second, namely the Algonquin, is as much esteemed among the savages as the Greek and Latin are in Europe; though it would seem that the aborigines, to whom it owes its original, disgrace it by the thinness of their nation, for their whole number does not amount to two hundred.”[133]

What the Baron says here of this language is very correct; but why does he call it the Algonquin, and ascribe its origin to that miserable wandering tribe? He had the Abenakis at hand, whom in another place he puts at the head of the tribes inhabiting Nova Scotia, and who still preserved the generic name of the whole nation, Wapanachki, which the French have softened to suit the analogy of their own tongue, by which name the different nations and tribes of the Lenape stock still recognise each other to this day. It is probable that he did not sufficiently understand their language,[134] to have much conversation with them, otherwise they would have informed him that they derived their origin from a great and powerful nation residing in the interior of the country, whom they revered as their grandfather, at whose door the great national council fire was kept constantly burning, whose badge was the Turtle, and whose supremacy was acknowledged by all the kindred tribes.

Father Charlevoix, who also speaks of the universality of this language, commits the same error in ascribing its origin to the Algonquins. “In the southern part of Hudson’s Bay,” says he, “the trade is carried on with the Matassins, the Monsonies, the Christinaux (Knisteneaux), and the Assinipoils, the three first of which speak the Algonquin language.”[135] In a later publication, (I think by a Mr. Winterbotham,) of which, during my travels, some years ago, I had merely a glance, I found by some words he had put down in the language of those people, that they were Minsi or Monseys, a branch of the wolf tribe of the Lenape. So indeed, one of their names, Monsonies, seems of itself to indicate. The name of the Matassins, means in their language a tobacco pipe, and so it does in the Monsey to this day. And they all speak the Algonquin, a language, say both Charlevoix and La Hontan, universally known for a thousand leagues round. The last mentioned author subjoins a vocabulary of what he calls the Algonquin tongue, which bears a greater affinity to the language of the Unamis or Turtle[136] tribe of the Lenape than that does to the idiom of the Monsey or Wolf tribe of the same nation. I find many words in the Algonquin (as given by La Hontan), which are exactly the same as in the Unami, while others bear more resemblance to the Chippeway, also a dialect of the Lenape, spoken by a tribe in connexion with the Delawares, and who call them grandfather.

There can be no doubt, therefore, that this universal language, so much admired and so generally spoken by the Indian nations, is that of the Lenni Lenape, and is improperly named the Chippeway by Carver, and the Algonquin by La Hontan. The celebrated Professor Vater, in his excellent continuation of Adelung’s Mithridates, calls the class of languages derived from this source, “the Chippewayo-Delawarian, or Algonkino-Mohican stock.”[137] It is, perhaps, indifferent for philological purposes, whether a language be called the Delaware or the Chippeway, the Algonquin or the Mohican; but every body must be sensible of the inconvenience of those long compound names, which leave no fixed or determinate idea upon the mind. For the purpose of general description it seems better to designate the languages of those connected tribes by the name of their common grandfather, the Lenni Lenape, or by the generic denomination universally adopted among them, Wapanachki, or Abenaki. I have preferred the former as a mark of respect to an ancient and once powerful nation, and in the hope that her name may be preserved, at least, in the records of philological science.

This beautiful language, and those which are derived from it, though more has been written upon them than on any of the other languages of these parts of the North American continent, are as yet but little known. The grammar of the Natick dialect published by Eliot, at Cambridge in Massachusetts, in the year 1666, has long been out of print, and is to be found only in very few libraries in the United States; Dr. Edwards’s little tract on the Mohican language, although printed twice, does not appear to have had much circulation, and is not alone sufficient to give an idea of the forms and construction of these Indian dialects. Zeisberger’s Delaware spelling book is but a collection of words, and does not contain any grammatical explanations. The learned Vater has taken immense pains, from the scanty helps within his reach, to discover the grounds and principles of these idioms, and what he has written on the subject is a proof of what talents and industry can effect with little means. But still the matter is not sufficiently understood. There is in the library of the society of the United Brethren in this town, an excellent MS. grammar of the Lenni Lenape, written in German by Zeisberger. I understand that the Historical Committee of the American Philosophical Society are going to publish an English translation of this valuable work. I rejoice in the prospect of this publication, which will give a clear and satisfactory view of the true genius and character of the languages of the Indian nations. At the request of the same Committee, I have endeavoured to give some further development of the principles which that grammar contains, in a series of letters to their Secretary, which, I am informed, are also to be printed. This supersedes the necessity of my entering here into more details on this interesting subject. I hope the result of these publications will be to satisfy the world that the languages of the Indians are not so poor, so devoid of variety of expression, so inadequate to the communication even of abstract ideas, or in a word so barbarous, as has been generally imagined.