[36] The word “Hittuck,” in the language of the Delawares, means a rapid stream; “Sipo,” or “Sipu,” is the proper name for a river.
[37] [The Indians of this town proved troublesome neighbors to a small company of Moravians, who, in the spring of 1740, were employed by Whitefield to erect a large dwelling near its site, which he designed for a school for negroes. The town lay near the centre of a tract of 5,000 acres (now Upper Nazareth township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania), which Whitefield bought of William Allen, which he named Nazareth, and which, in 1741, he conveyed to the Moravians. Captain John and his clan of Delawares vacated their plantation in the autumn of 1742, and in the following year, the Moravians commenced their first settlement, and named it Nazareth. Whitefield’s house is still standing.]
[38] Loskiel, part I., ch. 10.
[39] The Reverend C. Pyrlæus, a pupil of Conrad Weiser, of whom he learned the Mohawk language, and who was afterwards stationed on the Mohawk River, as a Missionary, has, in a manuscript book, written between the years 1742 and 1748, page 235, the following note which he received from a principal chief of that nation, viz.: “The Five Nations formerly did eat human flesh; they at one time ate up a whole body of the French King’s soldiers; they say, Eto niocht ochquari; which is: Human flesh tastes like bear’s meat. They also say, that the hands are not good eating, they are yozgarat, bitter.”
Aged French Canadians have told me, many years since, while I was at Detroit, that they had frequently seen the Iroquois eat the flesh of those who had been slain in battle, and that this was the case in the war between the French and English, commonly called the war of 1756.
At a treaty held at the Proprietors house in Philadelphia, July 5th, 1742, with the Six Nations, none of the Senecas attended; the reason of their absence being asked, it was given for answer, “that there was a famine in their country, and that a father had been obliged to kill two of his children, to preserve the lives of the remainder of the family.” See Colden’s History of the Five Nations, part II., page 52. See also the minutes of that treaty, printed at Philadelphia, by B. Franklin, in 1743, p. 7, in the Collection of Indian Treaties in the library of the American Philosophical Society.
[40] Loskiel, part I., ch. 1.
[41] The Rev. C. Pyrlæus, in his manuscript book, page 234, says: “The alliance or confederacy of the Five Nations was established, as near as can be conjectured, one age (or the length of a man’s life) before the white people (the Dutch) came into the country. Thannawage was the name of the aged Indian, a Mohawk, who first proposed such an alliance.” He then gives the names of the chiefs of the Five Nations, which at that time met and formed the alliance, viz.: “Toganawita, of the Mohawks; Otatschéchta, of the Oneidas; Tatotarho, of the Onondagos; Togaháyon, of the Cayugas; Ganiatariò and Satagarùyes, from two towns of the Senecas, &c.,” and concludes with saying: “All these names are forever to be kept in remembrance, by naming a person in each nation after them,” &c., &c.
[42] Loskiel, part I., ch. 10.
[43] Loskiel, part I., ch. 10.