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.)