Iroquois County, Illinois - Chapter 17: The Shawnees and Dela Wares, 1880

Chapter 17: The Shawnees and Dela Wares

THE SHAWNEES were a branch of the Algonquin family, and in manners and customs bore a strong resemblance to the Delawares. They were the Bedouins of the wilderness, and their wanderings form a notable instance in the history of the nomadic races of JSTorth America. Before the arrival of the Europeans th&- Shawnees lived on the shores of the great lakes eastward of Cleveland. At that time the principal Iroquois villages were on the northern side of the lakes, above Montreal, and this tribe was under a species of subjection to the Adirondacks, the original tribe from whence the several Algonquin tribes are alleged to have sprung, * and made ' ' the planting of corn their business."

"The Adirondacks, however, valued themselves as delighting in a more manly employment, and despised the Iroquois in following a business which they thought only fit for women. But it once happened that game failed the Adirondacks, which made them desire some of the young men of the Iroquois to assist them in hunting. These young men soon became much more expert in hunting, and able to endure fatigues, than the Adirondacks expected or desired ; in short, they became jealous of them, and one night murdered all the young men they had with them." The chiefs of the Iroquois complained, but the Adirondacks treated their remonstrances with contempt, without being apprehensive of the resentment of the Iroquois, "for they looked upon them as women."

The Iroquois determined on revenge, and the Adirondacks, hearing of it, declared war. The Iroquois made but feeble resistance, and were forced to leave their country and fly to the south shores of the lakes, where they ever afterward lived. " Their chiefs, in order to raise their people's spirits, turned them against the Satarias, a less warlike nation, who then lived on the shores of the lakes." The Iroquois soon subdued the Satanas, and drove them from their country, f

Wandekings Of The Shawnees

In 1632 the Shawnees were on the south side of the Delaware.* From this time the Iroquois pursued them, each year driving them farther southward. Forty years later they were on the Tennessee, and Father Marquette, in speaking of them, calls them Chaouanons, which was the Illinois word for southerners, or people from the south, so termed because they lived to the south of the Illinois cantons. The Iroquois still waged war upon the Shawnees, driving them to the extremities mentioned in the extracts quoted from Father Marquette' s journal, f To escape further molestation from the Iroquois, the Shawnees continued a more southern course, and some of their bands penetrated the extreme southern states. The Suwanee River, in Florida, derived its name from the fact that the Shawnees once lived upon its banks. Black Hoof, the renowned chief of this tribe, was born in Florida, and informed Gen. Harrison, with whom for many years he was upon terms of intimacy, that he had often bathed in the sea.

"It is well known that they were at a place which still bears their name;}: on the Ohio, a few miles below the mouth of the Wabash, some time before the commencement of the revolutionary war, where they remained before their removal to the Sciota, where they were found in the year 1774 by Gov. Dunmore. Their removal from Florida was a necessity, and their progress from thence a flight rather than a deliberate march. This is evident from their appearance when they presented themselves upon the Ohio and claimed protection of the Miamis. They are represented by the chiefs of the Miamis and Delawares as supplicants for protection, not against the Iroquois, but against the Creeks and Seminoles, or some other southern tribe, who had driven them from Florida, and they are said to have been literally sans provant et sans culottes [hungry and naked]. §

After their dispersion by the Iroquois, remnants of the tribe were found in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but after the return of the main body from the south, they became once more united, the Pennsylvania band leaving that colony about the same time that the Delawares did. During the forty years following that period, the whole tribe was in a state of perpetual war with America, either as British colonies or as independent states. By the treaty of

§Gen. Harrison's Historical Address, pp. 30, 31. This history of the Shawnees, says Gen. Harrison, was brought forward at a council at Vincennes in 1810, to resist the pretensions of Tecumseh to an interference with the Miamis in the disposal of their lands, and however prallinpr the reference to these facts must have been to Tecumseh, he was unable to deny them.

In 1819 they were divided into four tribes, - the Pequa,f the Mequachake, the Chillicothe, and the Kiskapocoke. The latter tribe was the one to which Tecumseh belonged. They were always hostile to the United States, and joined every coalition against the government. In 1806 they separated from the rest of the tribe, and took up their residence at Greenville. Soon afterward they removed to their former place of residence on Tippecanoe Creek, Indiana.:}:

At the close of Gen. Wayne's campaign, a large body of the Shawnees settled near Cape Girardeau, Missouri, upon a tract of land granted to them and the Delawares in 1793, by Baron de Carondelet, governor of the Spanish provinces west of the Mississippi. §

From their towns in eastern Ohio, the Shawnees spread north and westward to the headwaters of the Big and Little Miamis, the St. Mary's, and the Au Glaize, and for quite a distance down the Maumee. They had extensive cultivated fields upon these streams, which, with their villages, were destroyed by Gen. Wayne on his return from the victorious engagement with the confederated tribes on the field of "fallen timbers." Gen. Harmer, in his letter to the Secretary of War, communicating the details of his campaign on the Maumee, in October, 1T90, gives a fine description of the country, and the location of the Shawnee, Delaware and Miami villages, in the neighborhood of Fort Wayne, as they appeared at that early day. We quote: "The savages and traders (who were, perhaps, the worst savages of the two) had evacuated their towns, and burnt the principal village called the Omee,*\\ together with all the traders' houses. This village lay on a pleasant point, formed by the junction of the rivers Omee and St. Joseph. It was situate on the east f " In ancient times they had a large fire, which, being burned down, a great puffing and blowing was heard among the ashes; they looked, and behold a man stood up from the ashes! hence the name Piqua - a man coming out of the ashes, or made of ashes."

| Account of the Present State of the Indian Tribes Inhabiting Ohio : Archaeologia Americana, vol. 1, pp. 274, 275. Mr. Johnson is in error in locating this band upon the Tippecanoe. The prophets' town was upon the west bank of the Wabash, near the mouth of the Tippecanoe.

§ Treaties with the Several Indian Tribes, etc.: Government edition, 1837. The Shawnees and Delawares relinquished their title to their Spanish grant by a treaty concluded between them and the United States on the 26th of October, 1832.

1 "The army returned to this place [Fort Defiance] on the 27th, by easy inarches, laying waste to the villages and corn-fields for about fifty miles on each side of the Miami [Maumee]. There remains yet a great number of villages and a great quantity of corn to be consumed or destroyed upon the Au Glaize and Miami above this place, which will be effected in a few days." Gen. Wayne to the Secretary of War: American State Papers on Indian Affairs, vol. 1, p. 491.

Country Of The Shawnees

bank of the latter, opposite the mouth of St. Mary, and had for a long time past been the rendezvous of a set of Indian desperadoes, who infested the settlements, and stained the Ohio and parts adjacent with the blood of defenseless inhabitants. This day we advanced nearly the same distance, and kept nearly the same course as yesterday ; we encamped within six miles of the object, and on Sunday, the 17th, entered the ruins of the Omee town, or French village, as part of it is called. Appearances confirmed accounts I had received ' of the consternation into which the savages and their trading allies had been thrown by the approach of the army. Many valuables of the traders were destroyed in the confusion, and vast quantities of corn and other grain and vegetables were secreted in holes dug in the earth, and other hiding places. Colonel Hardin rejoined the army."

' ' Besides the town of Omee, there were several other villages situate upon the banks of three rivers. One of them, belonging to the Omee Indians, called Kegaiogue,* was standing and contained thirty houses on the bank opposite the principal village. Two others, consisting together of about forty-five houses, lay a few miles up the St. Mary's, and were inhabited by Delawares. Thirty-six houses occupied by other savages of this tribe formed another but scattered town, on the east bank of the St. Joseph, two or three miles north from the French village. About the same distance down the Omee River, lay the Shawnee town of Chillicothe, consisting of fifty-eight houses, opposite which, on the other bank of the river, were sixteen more habitations, belonging to savages of the same nation. All these I ordered to be burnt during my stay there, together with great quantities of corn and vegetables hidden as at the principal village, in the earth and other places by the savages, who had abandoned them. It is computed that there were no less than twenty thousand bushels of corn, in the ear, which the army either consumed or destroy ed.-'f

The Shawnees also had a populous village within the present limits of Fountain county, Indiana, a few miles east of Attica. They gave their name to Shawnee Prairie and to a stream that discharges into the "Wabash from the east, a short distance below "Williamsport.

* Ke-ki-ong-a. - "The name in English is said to signify a blackberry patch [more probably a blackberry bush] which, in its turn, passed among the Mianiis as a symbol of antiquity." Brice's History of Fort Wayne, p. 23.

fGen. Banner's Official Letter. It will be observed that Gen. Harmer treats the French Omee or Miami village as a separate town from that of Ke-ki-ong-a. His description is so minute, and his opportunities so favorable to know the facts, that there is scarcely a probability of his having been mistaken.

In 1854 the Shawnees in Kansas numbered nine hundred persons, occupying a reservation of one million six hundred thousand acres. Their lands were divided into severalty. They have banished whisky, and many of them have fine farms under cultivation. Being on the border of Missouri, they suffered from the rebel raids, and particularly that of Gen. Price in 1864. In 1865 they numbered eight hundred and forty-five persons. They furnished for the Union army one hundred and twenty-five men. The Shawnees have illustrated by their own conduct the capability of an Indian tribe to become civilized.*

THE DELAWARES called themselves Lenno Lenape, which signifies "original" or "unmixed" men. They were divided into three clans : the Turtle, the Wolf and the Turkey. When first met with by the Europeans, they occupied a district of country bounded eastwardly by the Hudson River and the Atlantic ; on the west their territories extended to the ridge separating the flow of the Delaware from the other streams emptying into the Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay.f

They, according to their own traditions, "many hundred years ago resided in the western part of the continent ; thence by slow emigration, they at length reached the Alleghany River, so called from a nation of giants, the Allegewi, against whom the Delawares and Iroquois (the latter also emigrants from the west) carried on successful war ; and still proceeding eastward, settled on the Delaware, Hudson, Susquehanna and Potomac rivers, making the Delaware the center of their possessions.:}:

By the other Algonquin tribes the Delawares were regarded with the utmost respect and veneration. They were called "fathers," "grandfathers," etc.

" When William Penn landed in Pennsylvania the Delawares had been subjugated and made women by the Iroquois." They were prohibited from making war, placed under the sovereignty of the Iroquois, and even lost the right of dominion to the lands which they had occupied for so many generations. Gov. Penn, in his treaty with the Delawares, purchased from them the right of possession merely, and afterward obtained the relinquishment of the sovereignty from the Iroquois. § The Delawares accounted for their humiliating relation to the Iroquois by claiming that their assumption of the role of women, or mediators, was entirely voluntary on their part.

Delawares Become Avomen

They said they became "peacemakers," not through compulsion, but in compliance with the intercession of different belligerent tribes, and that this position enabled their tribe to command the respect of all the Indians east of the Mississippi. While it is true that the Delawares were very generally recognized as mediators, they never in any war or treaty exerted an influence through the possession of this title. It was an empty honor, and no additional power or benefit ever accrued from it. That the degrading position of the Delawares was not voluntary is proven in a variety of ways. " We possess none of the details of the war waged against the Lenapes, but we know that it resulted in the entire submission of the latter, and that the Iroquois, to prevent any further interruption from the Delawares, adopted a plan to humble and degrade them, as novel as it was effectual. Singular as it may seem, it is nevertheless true that the Lenapes, upon the dictation of the Iroquois, agreed to lay aside the character of warriors and assume that of women."* The Iroquois, while they were not present at the treaty of Greenville, took care to inform Gen. Wayne that the Delawares were their subjects - " that they had conquered them and put petticoats upon them." At a council held July 12, 1742, at the house of the lieutenant-governor of Pennsylvania, where the subject of previous grants of land was under discussion, an Iroquois orator turned to the Delawares who were present at the council, and holding a belt of waumpum, addressed them thus: "Cousins, let this belt of waumpum serve to chastise you. You ought to be taken by the hair of your head and shaked severely, till you recover your senses and become sober. . . . But how came you to take upon yourself to sell land at all ? " referring to lands on the Delaware River, which the Delawares had sold some fifty years before. "We conquered you ; we made women of you. You know you are women, and can no more sell land than women ; nor is it fit you should have the power of selling lands, since you would abuse it." The Iroquois orator continues his chastisement of the Delawares, indulging in the most opprobrious language, and closed his speech by telling the Delawares to remove immediately. "We don't give you the liberty to think about it. You may return to the other side of the Delaware, where you came from ; but we don't know, considering how you had demeaned yourselves, whether you will be permitted to live there, "f accordance with the rules of justice and equity. The result was that during a period of sixty years peace and the utmost harmony prevailed. This is the only instance in the settling of America by the English where uninterrupted friendship and good will existed between the colonists and the aboriginal inhabitants. Gradually and by peaceable means the Quakers obtained possession of the greater portion of their territory, and the Delawares were in the same situation as other tribes, - without lands, without means of subsistence. They were threatened with starvation. Induced by these motives, some of them, between the years 1740 and 1750, obtained from their uncles, the Wyandots, and with the assent of the Iroquois, a grant of land on the Muskingum, in Ohio. The greater part of the tribe remained in Pennsylvania, and becoming more and more dissatisfied with their lot, shook off the yoke of the Iroquois, joined the French and ravaged the frontiers of Pennsylvania. Peace was concluded at Easton in 1758, and ten years after the last remaining bands of the Delawares crossed the Alleghanies. Here, being removed from the influence of their dreaded masters, the Iroquois, the Delawares soon assumed their ancient independence. During the next four or five decades they were the most formidable of the western tribes. While the revolutionary war was in progress, as allies of the British, after its close, at the head of the northwestern confederacy of Indians, they fully regained their lost reputation. By their geographical position placed in the front of battle, they were, during those two wars, the most active and dangerous enemies of America.*

The territory claimed by the Delawares subsequent to their being driven westward from their former possessions, is established in a paper addressed to congress May 10, 1779, from delegates assembled at Princeton, New Jersey. The boundaries of their country, as declared in the address, is as follows: "From the mouth of the Alleghany River, at Fort Pitt, to the Yenango, and from thence up French Creek, and by Le Boeuf,! along the old road to Presque Isle, on the east. The Ohio River, including all the islands in it, from Fort Pitt to the Ouabache, on t/ie south - thence up the River Ouabache to that branch, Ope-co-mee-cah^ and up the same to the head thereof; from thence to the headwaters and springs of the Great Miami, or Rocky River ; thence across to the headwaters and springs of the most northwestern branches of the Scioto River ; thence to

* In the battle of Fallen Timbers there were three hundred Delawares out of seven hundred Indians who were in this engagement: Colonial History of Massachusetts, vol. 10.

Make Peace

the westernmost springs of Sandusky River ; thence down said river, including the islands in it and in the little lake, * to Lake Erie, on the west and northwest, and Lake Erie on the north. These boundariescontain the cessions of lands made to the Delaware nation by the Wayandots and other nations, f and the country we have seated our grandchildren, the Shawnees, upon, in our laps ; and we promise togive to the United States of America such a part of the above described country as would be convenient to them and us, that they may have room for their children's children to set down upon.":}:

After Wayne's victory the Delawares saw that further contests with the American colonies would be worse than useless. They submitted to the inevitable, acknowledged the supremacy of the Caucasian race, and desired to make peace with the victors. At the treaty of Greenville, in 1795, there were present three hundred and eighty-one Delawares, - a larger representation than that of any other Indian tribe. By this treaty they ceded to the United States the greater part of the lands allotted to them by the Wyandots and Iroquois. For this cession they received an annuity of $1,000.§

Father: | Your children all well understand the sense of the treaty which is now concluded. We experience daily proofs of your increasing kindness. I hope we may all have sense enough to enjoy our dawning happiness. Many of your people are yet among us. I trust they will be immediately restored. Last winter our king came forward to you with two; and when he returned with your speech to us, we immediately prepared to come forward with the remainder, which we delivered at Fort Defiance. All who know me know me to be a man and a warrior, and I now declare that I will for the future be as steady and true a friend to the United States as I have heretofore been an active enemy. "-[

This promise of the orator was faithfully kept by his people. They evaded all the efforts of the Shawnee prophet, Tecumseh, and the British who endeavored to induce them, by threats or bribes, to> violate it.**

** Bu-kon-ge-he-las was a warrior of great ability. He took a leading part in maneuvering the Indians at the dreadful battle known as St. Glair's defeat. He rose from a private warrior to the head of his tribe. Until after Gen. Wayne's great victory

The Delawares remained faithful to the United States during the war of 1812, and, with the Shawnees, furnished some very able warriors and scouts, who rendered valuable service to the United States during this war.

After the treaty of Greenville, the great body of Delawares removed to their lands on White River, Indiana, whither some of their people had already preceded them.

Their manner of obtaining possession of their lands on White River is thus related in Dawson's Life of Harrison: "The land in question had been granted to the Delawares about the year 1770, by the Piankeshaws, on condition of their settling upon it and assisting them in a war with the Kickapoos. " These terms were complied with, and the Delawares remained in possession of the land.

The title to the tract of land lying between the Ohio and White Rivers soon became a subject of dispute between the Piankeshaws and Delawares. A chief of the latter tribe, in 1803, at Yincennes, stated to Gen. Harrison that the land belonged to his tribe, "and that he had with him a chief who had been present at the transfer made by the Piankeshaws to the Delawares, of all the country between the Ohio and White Rivers more than thirty years previous." This claim was disputed by the Piankeshaws. They admitted that while they had granted the Delawares the right of occupancy, yet they had never conveyed the right of sovereignty to the tract in question.

Gov. Harrison, on the 19th and 27th of August, 1804, concluded treaties with the Delawares and Piankeshaws by which the United States acquired all that fine country between the Ohio and Wabash Rivers. Both of "these tribes laying claim to the land, it became in 1794, he had been a devoted partisan of the British and a mortal foe to the United States. He was the most distinguished warrior in the Indian Confederacy; and as it was the British interests which had induced the Indians to commence, as well as to continue, the war, Buck-on-ge-he-las relied upon British support and protection. This support had been given so far as relates to provisions, arms and ammunition; but at the end of the battle referred to, the gates of Fort Miamis, near which the action was fought, were shut, by the British within, against the wounded Indians after the battle. This opened the eyes of the Delaware warrior. He collected his braves in canoes, with the design of proceeding up the river, under a flag of truce, to Fort Wayne. On approaching the British fort he was requested to land. He did so, and addressing the British officer, said, " What have you to say to me?" The officer replied that the commandant wished to speak with him. "Then he may come here," was the chief's reply. " He will not do that," said the sub-officer; "and you will not be suffered to pass the fort if you do not comply." "What shall prevent me?" "These," said the officer, pointing to the cannon of the fort. "I fear not your cannon," replied the intrepid chief. "After suffering the Americans to insult and treat you with such contempt, without daring to fire upon tJietn, you cannot expect to frighten me." Buck-on-ge-he-las then ordered his canoes to push off from the shore, and the fleet passed the fort without molestation. A note [No. 2]: Memoirs of Gen. Harrison.

necessary that both should be satisfied, in order to prevent disputes in the future. In this, however, the governor succeeded, on terms, perhaps, more favorable than if the title had been vested in only -one of these tribes ; for, as both claimed the land, the value of each claim was considerably lowered in the estimation of both ; and, therefore, by judicious management, the governor effected the purchase upon probably as low, if not lower, terms that if he had been obliged to treat with only one of them. For this tract the Piankeshaws received $700 in goods and $200 per annum for ten years; the compensation of the Delawares was an annuity of $300 for ten years.

The Delawares continued to reside upon White River and its branches until 1819, when most of them joined the band who had -emigrated to Missouri upon the tract of land granted jointly to them und the Shawnees, in 1T93, by the Spanish authorities. Others of their number who remained scattered themselves among the Miamis, Pottawatomies and Kickapoos ; while still others, including the Moravian converts, went to -Canada. At that time, 1819, the total number of those residing in Indiana was computed to be eight hundred souls. *

In 1829 the majority of the nation were settled on the Kansas and Missouri rivers. They numbered about 1,000, were brave, enterprising hunters, cultivated lands and were friendly to the whites. In 1853 they sold to the government all the lands granted them, excepting a reservation in Kansas. During the late Rebellion they sent to the United States army one hundred and seventy out of their two hundred able-bodied men. Like their ancestors they proved valiant and trustworthy soldiers. Of late years they have almost entirely lost their aboriginal customs and manners. They live in nouses, have schools and churches, cultivate farms, and, in fact, bid fair to become useful and prominent citizens of the great Republic.

* Their principal towns were on the branches of White River, within the present limits of Madison and Delaware counties, and the capital of the latter is named after -the "Muncy" or " Mon-o-sia " band. Pipe Creek and Kill Buck Creek, branches of White River, are also named after two distinguished Delaware chiefs.