In 1822 Rafinesque procured in Kentucky a record pictured on wood giving some of the legends of the Lenape Indians. This record is called the Walam Olum or Red Score. The original is not in existence so far as is known, but a manuscript copy made by Rafinesque in 1833 is preserved. The first accurate reproduction of this, figures and text, was published in 1885 in “The Lenape and their Legends,” with complete text and symbols of the Walam Olum, by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, of Philadelphia.
Dr. Brinton thus summarizes the narrative of the Walam Olum:
“At some remote period the ancestors of the Lenape dwelt probably in Labrador. They journeyed south and west to the St. Lawrence, near Lake Ontario. Next they dwelt for some generations in the pine and hemlock regions of New York, fighting often with the Snake people and the Talega, agricultural nations, living in fortified towns in Ohio and Indiana. They drove out the former but the latter remained in the Upper Ohio and its branches. The Lenape, now settled on the streams in Indiana, wished to remove to the East to join the Mohegans and others of their kin who had moved there directly from northern New York. So they united with the Hurons to drive out the Talega from the Upper Ohio, which was not fully accomplished for many centuries, some Cherokees lingering there as late as 1730.”
The Indians almost universally believed the dry land they knew to be a part of a great island surrounded by waters whose limits were unknown and beyond which was the home of the Light and Sun. The Delawares believed that the whole was supported by a fabled turtle, whose movements caused earthquakes, and who had been their first preserver; their legend in that respect being as follows: Back in the far distant past there was a great overflow of water, submerging the earth, and but few people survived. They took refuge on the back of a turtle. Presently a loon flew by, which they asked to dive and bring up the land. Trying, but failing in the immediate vicinity, he tried afar off and returned with a small quantity of earth in his bill. The turtle, guided by the loon, swam to the place where the earth was found and the survivors there settled and repeopled the land.
It will probably be a matter of some surprise to most of you to learn that there is authority for believing that New Jersey was a wilderness, uninhabited by human beings until the year 1396, when King Wolomenap (Hollow Man) led his people into the Delaware Valley where they settled and overran New Jersey.
The Reverend Mr. Beatty, in his mission from New York in 1766, to the western Indians, received from a person whom he credited, the following tradition, which he had from some old men among the Delaware tribe: That of old time their people were divided by a river, and one part tarried behind; that they knew not for a certainty how they first came to this continent, but gave this account: that a king of their nation, when they formerly lived far to the west, left his kingdom to his two sons; that the one son making war upon the other, the latter thereupon determined to depart, and seek some new habitation; accordingly he set out accompanied by a number of people, and after wandering to and fro for the space of forty years, they at length came to the Delaware where they settled three hundred and seventy years before, that is, before 1766, which goes back to 1396. The way they kept account of this was by putting a black bead of wampum every year on a belt which they used for that purpose. Rafinesque gives a list of Lenape Kings and says their annals tell of Wolomenap (Hollow Man), the 77th, and that he was king at the falls of the Delaware (Trenton); the first one there, according to the legend.
The earliest white travelers in this part of the country looked upon the natives as simply savages and little different from the wild beasts about them, and did not trouble themselves to study their institutions or traditions, and that has been done in comparatively recent times.
The Indians found here by the first explorers and travelers were splendid physical specimens, well built and strong, with broad shoulders and small waists, dark eyes, white teeth, coarse black hair, of which the men left but a single tuft on the top of the head to accommodate an enemy’s scalping knife. There were few that were crippled or deformed.
History tells us of at least one Indian who was not straight,—of stature, I mean,—and that was Billy Bowlegs, a Seminole chief, who fought in the Florida wars. But he was not a Jersey Indian.
The Indians had a habit of anointing their bodies with oil and the fat of beasts and fishes which they claimed protected their skins from the fierce rays of the summer sun and the penetrating cold of winter.