the most active and formidable enemies of America.* The decisive victory of General Wayne (1794) dissolved the confederacy; and the Delawares were the greatest sufferers by the treaty of Greenville of 1795.

The greater part of the lands allotted them by the Wyandots was ceded by that treaty, and they then obtained from the Miamis a tract of land on the White River of Wabash, which, by the treaty of Vincennes of 1804, was guarantied to them. by the United States. But the Miamis having contended the ensuing year, at the treaty of Grouseland, that they had only permitted them to occupy the territory, but had not conveyed the soil to them, the Delawares released the United States from that guarantee. They did not take part with the British in the last war, and, together with some Mohicans and Nanticokes, remained on White River till the year 1819, when they finally ceded their claim to the United States. Those residing there were then reduced to about eight hundred souls. A number, including the Moravian converted Indians, had previously removed to Canada; and it is difficult to ascertain the situation or numbers of the residue at this time. Those who have lately removed west of the Mississippi are, in an estimate of the War Department, computed at four hundred souls. Former emigrations to that quarter had however taken place, and several small dispersed bands are, it is believed, united with the Senecas and some other tribes.

The appended vocabularies of the Delaware and Minsi are extracted from those in manuscript received from Mr. Heckewelder, and which make part of Mr. Duponceau's valuable collection.

Captain Smith, the founder of the first permanent British Colony in Virginia, has given us the names of six tribes on the eastern shore of Virginia and Maryland. The two most southern, the Acomack and Acohanock, spoke the Powhattan language. Thence to the mouth of the Susquehanna,

*We have, in the tenth Volume of the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1st series), two accounts of the Indians engaged in the battle on the Miami, where they were defeated by General Wayne. According to one, there were five hundred Delawares out of fifteen hundred Indians who were in the action; according to the other, three out of seven hundred.

he designates the Wighcomocos, the Kuskarawaock, the Ozimies, and the Tockwoghs, amounting together to four hundred and sixty warriors. He makes no mention of the Nanticokes, but, on his map, a village of that name is placed on the Choctanck River; and we are informed by Mr. Heckewelder that the Nanticokes were called by the Delawares Tawachguáno, in which name that of Tockwoghs is easily recognised. In more recent times, all the Indians of the eastern shore of Maryland have been embraced under the general designation of Nanticokes. We learn from Charles Thompson,* that they were forced by the Five Nations to enter into an alliance with them; a fact easily accounted for, by the erection of the Maqua fort twelve miles from Newcastle, by their geographical situation, and by their weakness. During the first part of the eighteenth century they began to migrate up the Susquehanna, where they had lands allotted to them by the Six Nations, and were after a while admitted as a seventh nation into that confederacy. At the treaty of 1758, Tokaaio, a Cayuga chief, spoke in behalf of the five younger nations, to wit, the Cayugas, the Oneidas, the Tuscaroras, the Nanticokes and Conoys, and the Tuteloes. The Conoys were either a tribe of the Nanticokes or intimately connected with them. Charles Thompson calls the nation Nanticokes or Conoys, but confounds them with the Tuteloes. Mr. Heckewelder thinks the Conoys to be the same people with the Kanhawas. This last name is identical with that of the western river Kanhawa, and it might have been supposed that the Kanhawas were a tribe living on that river, and that called by the Five Nations Cochnowas, which at the conferences of Lancaster (1744) they said they had destroyed. But it seems certain that the Indians on the heads of the Potomac were called Ganawese and Canhawaas.†

The Nanticokes and Conoys, being the allies of the Six Nations, remained on the Susquehanna till the commencement of the war of the revolution, when they removed to the west and joined the British standard. They do not appear to exist any longer as a nation, but are still found, mixed with other tribes, both in the United States and in Canada.

The vocabulary of their language is extracted from two manuscripts in Mr. Duponceau's collection, one taken by Mr.

Appendix to Jefferson's Notes on Virginia.

See hereafter under the head of Susquehannocks.

Heckewelder in 1785, from a Nanticoke chief living in Canada; the other taken in 1792, by the late William Vans Murray, and sent by him to Mr. Jefferson. It was taken from an old woman called Mrs. Muberry, the widow of their last chief, who lived at Locust Necktown, Goose Creek, Choctank River, Dorset County, Maryland. The village consisted of five wigwams and two board houses. The few surviving Indians. spoke exclusively their own language among themselves. That particular tribe called itself Wiwash. Winikako, the last great Sachem, died about 1720. The tribe consisted then. of more than five hundred souls.*

Captain Smith, in the year 1608, sailed from James River to the head of Chesapeake Bay. He found the western shore deserted from the Patapsco upwards. The Tockwoghs or Nanticokes were fortified east of the Susquehanna to defend themselves against the Massawomeks, the name given by the Chesapeake Indians to the Five Nations. And he met, at the head of the bay, eight canoes full of those Massawomeks, on their return from an expedition against the Tockwoghs. Two days higher up the river lived the Susquehannocks, amounting to near six hundred warriors, and who were also "pallisadoed in their towns to defend themselves from the Massawomeks, their mortal enemies."

In the years 1730-1740, the Five Nations complained, that the inhabitants of Maryland encroached on their lands. The treaty of Lancaster, in the year 1744, was held principally for the purpose of settling those differences, and also the claim set. up by the same Indians to the western parts of Virginia. The Maryland commissioners there stated, that the Susquehanna Indians, by a treaty above ninety years since (1654), had yielded to the English the greatest part of the lands possessed by Maryland from Patuxent River on the western, as well as from Chocktank River on the eastern side of the great Bay of Chesapeake. It would seem from that declaration, that the Nanticokes were, in those early times, included by the government of Maryland in the general designation of Susquehanna Indians.

To this Canassatego, the Onondago chief, replied, that they acknowledged the validity of the deed, "and that the Conestogoe or Susquehanna Indians had a right to sell those lands to Maryland, for they were then theirs; but since that time,

* Mr. Vans Murray's Letter to Mr. Jefferson.

we have conquered them and their country now belongs to us; and the lands we demanded satisfaction for, are no part of the lands comprised in those deeds; they are the Cohongorontas (Potomac) lands; those you have not possessed one hundred years, no, nor above ten years, and we made our demands so soon as we knew your people were settled in these parts. These have never been sold, but still remain to be disposed of."

The Five Nations agreed in the sequel to sell their claim to the lands in dispute on the Potomac as high up as two miles above the junction of the North and South Branch. It appears therefore that the Susquehannocks, whose territory extended east of the Susquehanna north of the Nanticokes, possessed the country west and southwest of the said river as far as the Potomac. In the course of the conferences at the same treaty, Gachradodow, another Indian chief, in answer to some observations from the Virginia commissioners, said, "Though great things are well remembered among us, yet we don't remember that we were ever conquered by the Great King, or that we have been employed by that Great King to conquer others; if it was so, it is beyond our memory. We do remember, we were employed by Maryland to conquer the Conestogoes, and that the second time we were at war with them, we carried them all off."*

Evans corroborates these facts in the Analysis of his Map. He says that the Iroquois gave the finishing stroke to the Susquehannocks; but that Bell, in the service of Maryland, had previously given them a blow, from which they never recovered, by the defeat of many hundred at the fort on the east side of the Susquehanna, three miles below Wright's Ferry (now Columbia). Wherefore, he says, the Iroquois claimed only northwest of a line drawn from Conewago Falls to the North Mountain where it crosses the Potomac, and thence along the said mountains to James River. Evans adds, that the Susquehannocks had abandoned the western shore of Maryland before being conquered, and that the English found it mostly a derelict.

* Chalmers, in his Annals, p. 249, says that, in 1660, the Susquehanna Indians assisted Maryland against the Sanadoa (Oneidas), and he quotes Bacon's Laws, 1661. The British had no intercourse with the Five Nations till after 1664, when they took possession of New York.

The author of the Preface to the Treaty of Lancaster of 1744 further informs us, that the residue of the Conestogoes (or Susquehannocks), who were carried away by the Five Nations, were adopted by the Oneidas, and, when they had forgotten their language, were sent back to Conestogo, where they were then living and speaking Oneida. We find accordingly, in the list of Indians who attended the treaty of Lancaster in 1742, four of them designated as Conestogo Indians that speak the Oneida language, and with genuine Iroquois names. Four others are designated as Canoyias or Nanticokes of Conestogo, where a part had in fact at first removed, and remained some time before they proceeded to the western branch of the Susquehanna.

This destruction of the Susquehannocks must have taken place subsequent to the year 1664, since it was effected jointly by Maryland and the Five Nations, and probably before the arrival of William Penn in Pennsylvania (1680). But the records of Maryland are wanted to elucidate their history.

It appears, however, that a remnant was left besides those carried away by the Oneidas. A portion probably fled toward the River Delaware, where they are mentioned by some of the early writers, and may subsequently have returned to their abodes. William Penn at an early period, anxious to strengthen his claim against the pretensions of Lord Baltimore, obtained a cession of land on the Susquehanna from the Indians, whoever they may have been, who resided there. And this was confirmed in the year 1701, by a treaty made with the Susquehanna and Potomac Indians, but in presence and under the sanction of an Onondago Chief. At that treaty Connoodaghtoh is styled King of the Susquehanna, Minquaes, or Conestogo Indians; and those inhabiting the head of the Potomac are called Ganawese.

*

Mr. Heckewelder, speaking of the Conoys, says, that they are the people we call Canais, Conoys, Canaways, Kanhawas, Canwese; and, in another place, † that the Canai settled at a distance, on the shores of the Susquehanna and of the Potomac. Colden mentions, under the year 1677, Canagesse Indians, ‡ and in 1684, the Cahnawaas, meaning certainly the same people, as Indians friends of Virginia, against whom the Five

*Historical Account, p. 26.

† Ibid. p. 74. Colden, Hist. Five Nations, Part I. Chap. iii. p. 38. § Ibid. p. 57.