522 THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 
William Penn found the Delawares and Shawnees* still occupying this 
region, and it was with them that he coneluded the famous treaty of 
which it has been said that it is the only one ever made that was not 
ratified by an oath, and that it is the only one that was never broken. 
Speaking of their manner of life, he says that ‘‘ their diet is maize or 
Indian corn, divers ways prepared; sometimes roasted in the ashes, 
sometimes beaten and boiled with water, which they call hominy.”t 
Loskiel, A. D. 1788, takes up the story, and tells us that corn was the 
chief product of their plantations.t He also says that ‘the men hunt 
and fish and provide meat for the household, keep their wives and chil- 
dren in clothing, build and repair the houses or huts, and make fences 
around the plantations, occasionally assisting in the labors of the field 
and garden.§ The corn is stowed in caches, and they keep the situa- 
tion of these caches secret, as if found out they would have to supply 
every needy neighbor.” This, he adds, ‘‘may occasion a famine, for 
some are so lazy that they will not plant at all, knowing that the more 
industrious can not refuse to divide their store with them.” || They 
also did more or less barter, especially in pipes, the material for which, 
a red marble, is rare, and found only on the Mississippi. ‘A more 
common sort is made of a kind of ruddle dug by the Indians living to 
the west of the Mississippi, on the Marble River, who sometimes bring 
it to these countries for sale.” § 
At this point it seems proper to refer briefly to the fact noticed by 
Gen. Parker, that the Delawares were, at this time, a conquered tribe, 
and held their lands on sufferance. In the figurative language of the 
Indians, the Iroquois had put petticoats on them. Whether this was a 
rhetorical flourish, and merely meant that they had been conquered, or 
whether it was intended to signify that the Delaware warriors had been 
forbidden to take part in manly pursuits, and were restricted to the 
occupations usually followed by the women, I am not prepared to say. 
That they were forbidden to dispose of the land they occupied is clear 
from the speech of Canassatego, an Iroquois sachem, at the treaty of 
Lancaster, A. D. 1744;** but, on the other hand, it is equally evident 
*Harvey, History of the Shawnee Indians, p. 1: Cincinnati, 1855. This tribe is, 
said to have been the custodian or keeper of the parchment copy of the great treaty 
of 1682. Atleast they had it in 1722, and showed it to Goy. Keith: Hist. of Shaw- 
nees, p. 32. Parkman, in Conspiracy of Pontiac, vol. 11, p. 229, says: “‘They had 
parchment copies of treaties with Penn.” 
tPenn’s letter quoted in Harvey’s History of the Shawnee Indians, p. 14: Cincin- 
nati, 1855. 
tLoskiel, Mission of the United Brethren among the Indians of North America, p. 66: 
London, 1794. 
§ Ibid., p. 59. 
|| Lbid., p, 68. 
q [bid., p.51. Compare Kalm, Travels, vol. u, p. 42. 
**«We conquered you; we made women of you; you know you are women, and 
can no more sell land than women.” Colden, History of the Five Nations, vol. 1, p. 
80: London, 1767. See also Speech of John Hudson, the Cayuga Chief, A. D., 1758, 
