THE HURONS

The Hurons, Wyandots, or Wendats, were another Iroquois people, who seem at some remote epoch, to have come into contact with the Lenape. The latter called them Delamattenos, (1) and claimed to have driven them out of a portion of their possessions. A Chipeway tradition also states that the Hurons were driven north from the lake shores by Algonkin tribes. (2) We know, from the early accounts of the Jesuits, that there was commercial intercourse between them and the tribes south of the lakes, the materials of trade being principally fish and corn. (3) The Jesuit Relations of 1648 contain quite a full account of a Huron convert who, in that year, visited the Lenape on the Delaware River, and had an interview with the Swedish Governor, whom he took to task for neglecting the morals of his men.

THE CHEROKEES

The Cherokees were called by the Delawares Kittuwa (Kuttoowauw, in the spelling of the native Aupaumut). This word I suppose to be derived from the prefix, kit, great, and the root tawa (Cree, yette, tawa), to open, whence Tawatawik, an open, i.e., uninhabited place, a wilderness (Zeisberger).

The designation is geographical. According to the tradition of the Cherokees, they once lived (probably about the fourteenth century) in the Ohio Valley, and claimed to have been the constructors of the Grave Creek and other earth-works there. (4) Some support is given to this claim by the recent linguistic investigations of Mr. Horatio Hale, (5) and the Archaeological researches of Prof. Cyrus Thomas. (6) They were driven southward by their warlike neighbors, locating their council fire first near Monticello, Va., and the main body reaching East Tennessee about the close of the fifteenth century. As late as 1730 some of them continued to live east of the Alleghanies, while, on the other hand, it is evident, from the proper names preserved by the chroniclers of De Soto's expedition (1542), that at that period others held the mountains of Northern Georgia. To the Delawares they remained kit-tawa-wi, inhabitants of the great wilderness of Southern Ohio and Kentucky.

Delaware traditions distinctly recalled the period when portions of the Cherokees were on the Ohio, and recounted long wars with them. (7) When the Lenape assumed the office of peacemaker, this feud ceased, and was not renewed until the general turmoil of the French-Indian wars, 1750-60. After this closed, in 1768, the Cherokees sought and effected a renewal of their peaceful relations with the Delawares, and in 1779 they even sent a deputation of "condolence" to their "grandfather," the Lenape, on the death of the head chief, White Eyes. (8)

_____________________Footnotes____________

1)Heckewelder, History of the Indian Nations, p.80

2) Peter Jones, History of the Ojibway Nation, p.32.

3) Relation des Jesuites, 1637, p. 154. The Hurons, at that time, are stated to have had reliable traditions running back more than two hundred years. Relation de 1639, p.50.

4) "The Cherokees had an oration, in which was contained the history of their migrations, which was lengthy." This tradition related "that they came from the upper part of the Ohio, where they erected the mounds on Grave Creek, and that they removed hither (to East Tennessee) from the country where Monticello is situated." This memory of their migrations was preserved and handed down by official orators, who repeated it annually, in public, at the national festival of the green corn dance. J. Haywood, Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, pp.224-237. (Nashville, 1823.) Haywood adds: "It is now nearly forgotten." I have made vain attempts to recover some fragments of it from the present residents of the Cherokee Nation.

5) Indian Migrations as Evidenced by Language, p.22.

6) Prof. Thomas has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the Cherokees were mound builders within the historic period.

7) Loskiel, Geschichte der Mission, etc., p. 160; Heckewelder, History of the Indian Nations, p.54. Bishop Ettwein states that the last Cerokees were driven from the upper Ohio river about 1700-10. His essay on the "Traditions and Languages of the Indian Nations," written for General Washington, in 1788, was first published in the Bulletin of the Pa. Hist. Soc., 1844.

8) Heckewelder, Indian Nations, pp.88,327. Mr. H. Hale, in The Iroquois Book of Rites, has fully explained the meaning and importance of the custom of "condolence." The Stockbridge Indian, Aupaumut, in his Journal, writes of the Delawares, that when they lose a relative, "according to ancient custom, long as they are not comforted, they are not to speak in public, and this ceremonie of comforting each other is highly esteemed among these nations." Narrative of hendrick Aupaumut, in Mems. Hist. Soc. Pa., Vol. II, p. 99.