93 Loskiel, part I., ch. 10.

94 [After the peace of 1763 there was comparative quiet on the Western frontiers, until the inauguration of the “Dunmore War,” in the spring of 1774—a contest which the last royal governor of Virginia is said to have excited, in order to divert the attention of the colonists from the oppressive acts of England towards them. The initial military movement in this war was Col. Angus McDonald’s expedition against the Shawanese town of Waketameki, just below the mouth of the Waketameki Creek, within the limits of the present county of Muskingum, Ohio. The battle fought on the 10th of October, 1774, at the junction of the Great Kanawha and the Ohio, between the garrison of Point Pleasant, under General Andrew Lewis, and the flower of the Shawanese, Delawares, Mingoes, and Wyandots, led by the Cornstalk, the Shawano king, in which the confederate Indians were routed, was speedily followed by a peace.]

95 See, in Loskiel’s History, part II., ch. 10, his account of the visit of this chief to the Christian Indian Congregation at Bethlehem.

96 For “Shawanos” read “Nanticokes.”

97 [In 1726, John Harris, a Yorkshireman, settled at the mouth of the Paxton Creek, traded largely with the neighboring Indians, cleared a farm, and kept a ferry. John Harris, Jr., his son, born on the Paxton in the above-mentioned year, inherited from his father 700 acres of land, on a part of which Harrisburg was laid out in 1785.]

98 Zeningi, according to Loskiel.

99 For “Schschequon” read “Shechschequon.”

100 [For “Christian” read “Christopher.”]

101 Loskiel, part I., ch. 9.

102 For “Tawachguáno” read “Tayachguáno.”

103 [Now the Clinton, on whose banks New Gnadenhütten was built by David Zeisberger in the summer of 1782.]

104 [The first mission established by the Moravians among the northern tribes of Indians, was among a clan of Mohegans, in the town of Pine Plains, Dutchess County, New York, where Christian Henry Rauch, of Bethlehem, began his labors as an evangelist in July of 1740.]

105 Collections Massach. Histor. Soc., vol. I., p. 195; vol. IV., p. 67; vol. IX., p. 92.

106 Collections Massach. Histor. Soc., vol. IX., p. 76.

107 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. IX., p. 77. Trumbull’s History of Connecticut, vol. I., p. 28.

108 The Atlantic Ocean.

109 P. 235.—This MS. is in the library of the Society of the United Brethren at Bethlehem.

110 Loskiel, part II., ch. 9.

111 Mr. Zeisberger wrote a complete dictionary of the Iroquois language, in three quarto volumes, the first of which, from A to the middle of H, is unfortunately lost. The remainder, which is preserved, contains upwards of 800 pages, which shews that, at least, the Indian languages are not so poor as is generally imagined. It is German and Indian, beginning with the German.112]

112 [This work, entitled “Deutch und Onondagaishes Wörterbuch,” i. e., Lexicon of the German and Onondaga Languages, complete in 7 vols., MS., is deposited in the Library of the American Philosophical Society, at Philadelphia. Also a complete grammar of the Onondaga by the same author.]

113 This word should be pronounced according to the powers of the German Alphabet.

114 Being, or Spirit.

115 An old Indian told me about fifty years ago, that when he was young, he still followed the custom of his father and ancestors, in climbing upon a high mountain or pinnacle, to thank the Great Spirit for all the benefits before bestowed, and to pray for a continuance of his favour; that they were sure their prayers were heard, and acceptable to the Great Spirit, although he did not himself appear to them.

116 When, between the years 1760 and 1768, the noted war-chief Pontiac had concerted a plan of surprising and cutting off the garrison and town of Detroit, while in the act of delivering an impressive peace oration, to the then commandant Major Gladwyn, the turning of the belt was to have been the signal of the attack by his forces, who all had their guns, which previously had been cut off to large pistol length, hidden under their blankets. So I have been informed by some of the most respectable inhabitants of Detroit, and by the Indians themselves.

117 For “once” read “sometimes.”

118 For “should” read “deserved to.”

119 For “to” read “out at.”

120 Dele “outside of the door and.”

121 Grammatica Grœnlandico-Danico-Latina, edita à P. Egede, Hafniæ, 1760, 8vo.

Dictionarium Grœnlandico-Danico-Latinum, adornatum à P. Egede, Hafniæ, 1750, 8vo.

122 For “Thornhallesen” read “Thorhallesen.”

123 [The Moravians have been conducting a successful mission in Greenland since 1733. In 1761, David Crantz, one of their clergymen, sailed for that distant country to collect material for a history, touching its physical aspect and resources, the manners and customs of the native tribes. Crantz’s work was published at Barby, Saxony, in 1765, under the title of “Historie von Grönland, enthaltend die Beschreibung des Landes und der Einwohner insbeomdere, die Geschichte der dortigen Mission der evangelischen Brüder zu Neu-Herrnhut und Lichtenfels.” An English Translation appeared in London, in 1766.]

124 The Hurons, a great while, perhaps centuries ago, became disunited from the Iroquois; many wars took place between them, and the former withdrew at last to remote places, where they settled, and were discovered by French Missionaries and traders: of this last I was repeatedly assured during my residence at Detroit, between 1781 and 1786.

125 Carver says that there are in North America, four different languages, the Iroquois to the east, the Chippeway or Algonkin to the northwest, the Naudowessie to the west, and the Cherokee, &c. to the south. Travels, ch. 17, Capt. Carver, though he appears to have been in general an accurate observer, resided too short a time among the Indians to have a correct knowledge of their languages. [Mr. Heckewelder quotes here and elsewhere from “Three Years’ Travels through the Interior Parts of North America for more than Five Thousand Miles, &c.,” by Capt. Jonathan Carver of the Provincial Troops in America, Phila., 1796. Those tribes of the Naudowessies among whom Carver resided for five months, dwelt about the River St. Pierre, 200 miles above its junction with the Mississippi. This was the extreme westerly point reached by the adventurous traveller. The entire nation of the Naudowessies, according to Carver, mustered upwards of 2000 fighting men.]

126 Le grand Voyage du pays des Hurons, par Samuel Sagard, Paris, 1632. To which is added, a Dictionary of the Huron language, with a preface.

127 Philos. Trans. Abr., vol. lxiii., p. 142.

128 Hist. of the Five Nations, p. 14.

129 Barton’s New Views, Ed. 1798. Prelim. Disc., p. 32.

130 The late Dr. Barton, in the work above quoted, append., p. 3,132 seems to doubt this fact, and relies on a series of numerals which I once communicated to him, and was found among the papers of the late Rev. Mr. Pyrlæus. But it is by no means certain that those numerals were taken from the language of the Nanticokes, and the vocabularies above mentioned leave no doubt as to the origin of that dialect.

131 Letter v.

132 For “page 3” read “page 5.”

133 Letter xxv.

134 He says that it is not copious, and is only adapted to the necessities and conveniences of life. These are the ideas which strangers and philosophers, reasoning à priori, entertain of Indian languages; but those who are well acquainted with them think very differently. And yet the Baron says that the Algonquin is “the finest and the most universal language on the Continent.”

135 Letter xi., p. 276.

136 It should be properly Tortoise; but this word seems in a fair way to be entirely superseded by Turtle, as well in England as in this country.

137 Chippewäisch-Delawarischer, oder Algonkisch-Moheganischer, Stamm. Mithrid., part III., vol. iii., p. 337.

138 Vater in Mithrid., part III., vol. 3, p. 283, quotes De Laet, Novus Orbis, pp. 98, 103, Du Pratz, vol. 2, pp. 208, 9, Rochefort, Histoire Natur. des Antilles, pp. 351, 394, and Hervas, Catologo delle Lingue, p. 90; none of which works I have it in my power to consult.

139 Mithrid., ibid.

140 Loskiel, part I., ch. 1.

141 Duvallon, Vue de la Colonie Espagnole du Mississippi, quoted by Vater, in Mithrid., ibid., p. 297.

142 The Bibliotheca Americana records 45 grammars and 25 dictionaries of the languages spoken in Mexico only, and 85 works of different authors on religious and moral subjects written or translated into some of those languages.

143 For “or” read “nor.”

144 For “met” read “saw.”

145 For “days” read “hours.”

146 Loskiel, part III., ch. 9.

147 For “December” read “November.”

148 [Pipe, a leader of the Wolf tribe of the Monseys, was residing in the Ohio country at the time of Bouquet’s expedition against the Delawares and Shawanon of the Muskingum and Scioto, in 1764. When the Moravians entered the valley of the former river, he was at home on the Walhonding, about 15 miles above the present Coshocton. In the border wars of the Revolution, he at first declared against the Americans, withdrawing with the disaffected Delawares to the Tymochtee creek, a branch of the Sandusky, within the limits of the present Crawford County. While here, he was a serviceable tool in the hands of the British at Detroit. To the Moravian mission among his countrymen he was for many years unjustifiedly hostile. Eventually, however, he regarded the work apparently with favor. It was the Pipe who doomed Col. William Crawford to torture, after the failure of the latter’s expedition against Sandusky in the summer of 1782. After the treaty of Fort Harmar in January of 1789, Pipe threw all his influence on the side of those of his people who now resolved at all hazards to uphold peace with the United States. He died a few days before the defeat of the confederated Indians by Wayne, near the rapids of the Maumee.]

149 See Loskiel, part III., ch. 9, p. 704, German text, and p. 165, Eng. Trans.

150 It will be understood that he speaks here throughout for himself and his nation or tribe, though always in the first person of the singular, according to the Indian mode.

151 Meaning his nation, and speaking, as usual, in the first person.

152 Meaning women and children.

153 Prisoners.

154 To make his language agree with the expression live flesh.

155 For “with” read “of.”

156 According to the powers of the English alphabet, it should be written Koo-ek-wen-aw-koo.

157 Rogers’s Key into the Language of the Indians of New England, ch. vi.

158 For “they” read “the Chippeways and some other nations.”

159 [In Green township, in what is now Ashland County.]

160 For “your” read “yon.”

161 After the word “nation” insert “which they do not approve of.”

162 [Alexander McKee, Matthew Elliott, and Simon Girty,—the first some time a British agent among the Indians, the second with a captain’s commission from the commandant at Detroit, the third as brutal, depraved, and wicked a wretch as ever lived,—deserted with a squad of soldiers from Fort Pitt, in March of 1778. This trio of renegade desperadoes, henceforth, in the capacity of emissaries of the British at Detroit (with their savage allies), wrought untold misery on the frontiers, even till the peace of 1795.]

163 For “they sure” read “they are sure.”

164 For “reply” read “answer.”

165 The pronouns in the Indian language have no feminine gender.

166 For “decide” read “say.”

167 For “man” read “men.”

168 Between “is” and “even” insert “sometimes.”

169 For “an old Indian” read “several old men.”

170 [The fort, built by Franklin in the early winter of 1756, stood on the site of Weissport, on the left bank of the Lehigh, in Carbon County, Penna. The well of the fort alone remains to mark its site.]

171 For “road” read “course.”

172 [The road from Easton, via Ross Common and the Pocono, to Wilkes-Barré, formerly called the Wilkes-Barré turnpike.]

173 [Mr. Heckewelder had been despatched by the Mission Board at Bethlehem to Fairfield, on the Retrenche, (Thames,) in Upper Canada, where the Moravian Indians settled in 1792, to advise with them and their teachers, concerning a return to the valley of the Tuscarawas, in which the survey of a grant of 12,000 acres of land, made by Congress, had recently been completed. Pursuant to his instructions, he proceeded from Fairfield to the Tuscarawas, to make the necessary preparations for a colony that was to follow in the ensuing autumn, and re-founded Gnadenhütten. The village of Goshen, seven miles higher up the river, was built in October, on the arrival of David Zeisberger and the expected colony from the Retrenche.]

174 [The Wyandot village of Upper Sandusky was three miles in a south-easterly direction from the site of the present town of Upper Sandusky, the county-seat of Wyandot County, Ohio. Lower Sandusky, a trading-post and Wyandot town, was situated at the head of navigation on the Sandusky. Fremont, the county-seat of Sandusky County, marks its site. Here the Moravian missionaries and their families were most hospitably entertained by Arundel and Robbins for upwards of three weeks, while awaiting the arrival of boats from Detroit, on which they were to be taken as prisoners of war to that post. It was through British influence that the Mission on the Muskingum had been overthrown in the early autumn of 1781, and that its seat was transferred to the Sandusky. Fort McIntosh stood on the present town of Beaver, Beaver County, Pennsylvania. It was erected in October of 1778 by General McIntosh, then in command of the Western Department.]

175 For “where” read “whence.”

176 [On the 18th October, 1755, a party of Indians fell upon the settlers on the Big Mahanoy, (now Penn’s Creek, in Union County, Penna.,) killed and carried off twenty-five persons, and burned and destroyed all the buildings and improvements.—Colonial Records, vol. 6, p. 766.]

177 For “Duke Holland” read “Luke Holland;” the same where the name again occurs.

178 Indian stockings.

179 [The three Commissioners set out from Fort Washington (Cincinnati) for the Indian country in June of 1792, but never returned. Despite the failure of this mission, General Rufus Putnam was without delay despatched on a similar errand, and at Post Vincennes, on the Wabash, in September of the above mentioned year, concluded a treaty of peace with a number of the Western tribes. Mr. Heckewelder was associated by the War Department with Putnam in this perilous undertaking.]

180 [Cornstalk, the well-known Shawano king, while held by the Americans in the fort at Point Pleasant, at the mouth of the Kanhawa, was murdered by some soldiers of the garrison, in revenge for the loss of one of their companions, who had met his death while hunting, at the hands of a British Indian.]

181 The Bible.

182 The Indians gave this name to General Wayne, because they say that he had all the cunning of this animal, who is superior to all other snakes in the manner of procuring his food. He hides himself in the grass with his head only above it, watching all around to see where the birds are building their nests, that he may know where to find the young ones when they are hatched.

183 This is not applicable to the Iroquois of the present time.

184 [A Monsey of Wyalusing, at whose persuasion the Moravian Indians settled on that stream in 1765, who became one of their number, following them to the Big Beaver and the Tuscarawas, where he died in May of 1775. Papunhank’s name occurs frequently in the annals of Provincial history between 1762 and 1765.]

185 [The Chinglacamoose, now the Moose, empties into the Susquehannah in Clearfield County, Penna.]

186 Dele again.

187 Bethlehem.

188 [“The serenity of Michael’s countenance,” writes Loskiel, “when he was laid in his coffin, contrasted strangely with the figures scarified upon his face when a warrior. These were as follows: upon the right cheek and temple, a large snake; from the under lip a pole passed over the nose, and between the eyes and the top of the forehead, ornamented at every quarter of an inch with round marks, representing scalps; upon the upper cheek, two lances crossing each other; and upon the lower jaw, the head of a wild boar.”]

189 See Loskiel, part I., ch. 3.

190 See Loskiel, part I., ch. 11.

191 For “very often” read “sometimes.”

192 For “inches” read “feet.”

193 For “of” read “on.”

194 Podophyllum peltatum.

195 [Mr. Heckewelder was in this year residing at New Gnadenhütten on the Huron (now the Clinton), Michigan, where the Moravian Missionaries ministered to their converts for upwards of three years, subsequent to their compulsory evacuation of the Tuscarawas valley.]

196 They call them Doctols; because the Indians cannot pronounce the letter R. The Minsi or Monseys call them “Mĕdéu,” which signifies “conjuror.”

197 [Gelelemend, i. e., a leader, (whose soubriquet among the whites was Kill-buck,) a grandson of the well-known Netawatwes, was sometime chief counsellor of the Turkey tribe of the Delaware nation, and after the death of Captain White Eyes, installed temporarily as principal chief. He was a strenuous advocate of peace among his people in the times of the Revolutionary war; and being a man of influence, drew upon himself, in consequence, the implacable animosity of those of his countrymen who took up arms against the Americans. Even after the general peace concluded between the United States and the Indians of the West in 1795, his life was on several occasions imperilled by his former opponents. Gelelemend united with the Moravian Indians, at Salem, on the Petquotting in the summer of 1788, where, in baptism, he was named William Henry, after Judge William Henry, of Lancaster. He died at Goshen, in the early winter of 1811, in the eightieth year of his age. He is said to have been born in 1737, in the neighborhood of the Lehigh Water Gap, Carbon County, Pa. William Henry Gelelemend was one of the last converts of distinction attached to the Moravian Mission among the Indians.]

198 [Goschachking, sometime the capital of the Delaware nation, stood on the Muskingum, immediately below the junction of the Tuscarawas and the Walhonding. On its site stands Coshocton. The town was destroyed by Gen. Brodhead in 1781.]

199 For “Americans” read “white men.”

200 The following extract from the Detroit Gazette, shews that this superstitious belief of the Indians in the powers of witchcraft, still continues in full force, even among those who live in the vicinity of the whites, and are in the habit of constant intercourse with them.

From the Detroit Gazette of the 17th of August, 1818.

On the evening of the 22d ult. an Indian of the Wyandot tribe was murdered by some of his relatives, near the mouth of the river Huron, on lake Erie. The circumstances, in brief, are as follows:

“It appears that two Wyandots, residing at Malden, and relatives to the deceased, had been informed by Captain Johnny, an Indian living on the Huron river, and also a relative, that a Shawanee Indian had come to his death by the witchcraft of an old Indian woman and her son Mike, and that in order to avert the vengeance of the Shawanee tribe, it would be necessary to kill them—and furthermore, that the death of Walk-in-the-water, who died last June, was caused by the same old woman’s witchcraft. It was determined to kill the old woman and her son—and for that purpose they crossed over on the 22d ult. and succeeded in the course of the evening in killing the latter in his cabin. The old woman was not at home. The next day, while endeavouring to persuade her to accompany them into the woods, as they said, to drink whiskey, they were discovered by Dr. William Brown and Mr. Oliver Williams, who had received that morning intimations of their intentions, and owing to the exertions of these gentlemen, the old woman’s life was preserved and one of the Indians taken, who is now confined in the jail of this city—the others escaped by swiftness of foot.

“On the examination of the Indian taken, it appeared that the old woman, shortly after the death of the Shawanee, had entered his cabin, and in a voice of exultation, called upon him, saying—’Shawanee man! where are you?—You that mocked me; you thought you would live forever—you are gone and I am here—come—Why do you not come?’ &c.—She is said to have made use of nearly the same words in the cabin of Walk-in-the-water, shortly after his death.”

201 War-hatchet: from which we have made tomahawk.

202 The Indians call the American continent an island; believing it to be (as in fact, probably, it is) entirely surrounded with water.

203 For “killed” read “eaten.”

204 Mr. Pyrlæus lived long among the Iroquois, and was well acquainted with their language. He was instructed in the Mohawk dialect by the celebrated interpreter Conrad Weiser. He has left behind him some manuscript grammatical works on that idiom, one of them is entitled: Affixa nominum et verborum Linguæ Macquaicæ, and another, Adjectiva, nomina et pronomina Linguæ Macquaicæ. These MSS. are in the library of the Society of the United Brethren at Bethlehem.

205 For “Pauksit” read “P’duk-sit.”

206 See page 101.

207 Probably alluding to a tradition which the Indians have of a very ferocious kind of bear, called the naked bear, which they say once existed, but was totally destroyed by their ancestors. The last was killed in the New York state, at a place they called Hoosink, which means the Basin, or more properly the Kettle.

208 The same whom Mr. de Volney speaks of in his excellent “View of the Soil and Climate of the United States.” Supplement, No. VI., page 356, Philadelphia Edition, 1804.

209 See ch. 29, p. 225.

210 See ch. 28, p. 221.

211 See ch. 2.

212 Dele “lands or.”

213 This word means liquor, and is also used in the sense of a medicinal draught, or other compound potion.

214 [Shingask, which signifies boggy or marshy ground overgrown with grass, a brother of Tamaqua, or King Beaver, ranked first among Indian warriors in the times of the so-called French and Indian war. The frontiers of Pennsylvania suffering severely from the forays of this Delaware and his braves, Governor Denny, in 1756, set a price of £200 upon his head or scalp. Mr. Heckewelder, in a “Collection of the Names of Chieftains and Eminent Men of the Delaware Nation” states that Shingask, although an implacable foe in battle, was never known to treat a prisoner with cruelty. “One day,” he goes on to say, “in the summer of 1762, while passing with him near by where two prisoners of his—boys of about twelve years of age—were amusing themselves with his own boys, as the chief observed that my attention was arrested by them, he asked me at what I was looking. Telling him in reply that I was looking at his prisoners, he said, ‘When I first took them, they were such; but now they and my children eat their food from the same bowl or dish;’ which was equivalent to saying that they were in all respects on an equal footing with his own children, or alike dear to him.”]

215 A kind of round buckle with a tongue, which the Indians fasten to their shirts. The traders call them broaches. They are placed in rows, at the distance of about the breadth of a finger one from the other.

216 The same whom I have spoken of above, page 184, No. 4.

217 For “Albany” read “Pittsburg.”