HISTORY
OF THE
SHAWANOE INDIANS.
There is a tradition among the Shawanoes, in regard to their origin, which is said to be peculiar to that tribe. While most of the aborigines of this country believe that their respective races came out of holes in the earth at different places on this continent, the Shawanoes alone claim, that their ancestors once inhabited a foreign land; but having determined to leave it, they assembled their people and marched to the sea shore. Here, under the guidance of a leader of the Turtle tribe, one of their twelve original subdivisions, they walked into the sea, the waters of which immediately parted, and they passed in safety along the bottom of the ocean, until they reached this island.[1]
The Shawanoes have been known by different names. The Iroquois, according to Colden's history of the "Five Nations," gave them the appellation of Satanas. The Delawares, says Gallatin, in his synopsis of the Indian tribes, call them Shawaneu, which means southern. The French writers mention them under the name of Chaouanons; and occasionally they are denominated Massawomees.
The orthography of the word by which they are generally designated, is not very well settled. It has been written Shawanos, Sawanos, Shawaneu, Shawnees and Shawanoes, which last method of spelling the word, will be followed in the pages of this work.
The original seats of the Shawanoes have been placed in different sections of the country. This has doubtless been owing to their very erratic disposition. Of their history, prior to the year 1680, but little is known. The earliest mention of them by any writer whose work has fallen under our observation, was in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Mr. Jefferson, in his "Notes on Virginia," says that when captain John Smith first arrived in America a fierce war was raging against the allied Mohicans, residing on Long Island, and the Shawanoes on the Susquehanna, and to the westward of that river, by the Iroquois. Captain Smith first landed on this continent in April, 1607. In the following year, 1608, he penetrated down the Susquehanna to the mouth of it, where he met six or seven of their canoes, filled with warriors, about to attack their enemy in the rear. De Laet, in 1632, in his enumeration of the different tribes, on either side of the Delaware river, mentions the Shawanoes.—Charlevoix speaks of them under the name of Chaouanons, as neighbors and allies in 1672, of the Andastes, an Iroquois tribe, living south of the Senecas. Whether any of the Shawanoes were present at the treaty[2] made in 1682, under the celebrated Kensington elm, between William Penn and the Indians, does not positively appear from any authorities before us; that such, however, was the fact, may be fairly inferred, from the circumstance that at a conference between the Indians and governor Keith, in 1722, the Shawanoes exhibited a copy of this treaty written on parchment.
To the succeeding one made at Philadelphia, in February, 1701, the Shawanoes were parties, being represented on that occasion, by their chiefs, Wopatha, Lemoytungh and Pemoyajagh.[3] More than fifty years afterward, a manuscript copy of this treaty of commerce and friendship, was in the possession of the Shawanoes of Ohio, and was exhibited by them. In 011 1684, the Iroquois, when complained of by the French for having attacked the Miamis, justified their conduct on the-ground, that they had invited the Santanas (Shawanoes) into the country, for the purpose of making war upon them.[4] The Sauks and Foxes, whose residence was originally on the St. Lawrence, claim the Shawanoes as belonging to the same stock with themselves, and retain traditional accounts of their emigration to the south.[5] In the "History of the Indian Tribes of North America," when speaking of the Shawanoes, the authors say, "their manners, customs and language indicate a northern origin; and, upwards of two centuries ago, they held the country south of Lake Erie. They were the first tribe which felt the force and yielded to the superiority of the Iroquois. Conquered by these, they migrated to the south, and from fear or favor, were allowed to take possession of a region upon the Savannah river; but what part of that stream, whether in Georgia or Florida, is not known; it is presumed the former." Mr. Gallatin speaks of the final defeat of the Shawanoes and their allies, in a war with the Five Nations, as having taken place in the year 1672. This same writer, who has carefully studied the language of the aborigines, considers the Shawanoes as belonging to the Lenape tribes of the north. From these various authorities, it is apparent that the Shawanoes belonged originally to the Algonkin-Lenape nation; and that during the three first quarters of the seventeenth century, they were found in eastern Pennsylvania, on the St. Lawrence, and the southern shore of Lake Erie; and generally at war with some of the neighboring tribes. Whether their dispersion, which is supposed to have taken place about the year 1672, drove them all to the south side of the Ohio, does not very satisfactorily appear.
Subsequently to this period, the Shawanoes were found on the Ohio river below the Wabash, in Kentucky, Georgia and the Carolinas. Lawson, in his history of Carolina in 1708, speaks of the Savanoes, 012 removing from the Mississippi to one of the rivers of South Carolina. Gallatin quotes an authority which sustains Lawson, and which establishes the fact that at a very early period in the history of the south, there was a Shawanoe settlement on the head waters of the Catawba or Santee, and probably of the Yadkin. From another authority it appears, that for a time the Shawanoes had a station on the Savannah river, above Augusta; and Adair, who refers to the war between the Shawanoes and Cherokees, saw a body of the former in the wilderness, who, after having wandered for some time in the woods, were then returning to the Creek country. According to John Johnston,[6] a large party of the Shawanoes, who originally lived north of the Ohio, had for some cause emigrated as far south as the Suwanoe river, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico. From thence they returned, under the direction of a chief named Black Hoof, about the middle of the last century, to Ohio. It is supposed that this tribe gave name to the Suwanoe river, in 1750, by which name the Cumberland was also known, when Doctor Walker, (of Virginia) visited Kentucky.