PREFACE. vu 



splendid opportunities had the early Quakers to pre- 

 serve to US a much-desired knowledge of the aborig- 

 inal people of the Delaware valley, and what trivial 

 facts have they left on record ! Later, such men as 

 the Brainerds might have taught us much; they have 

 left us only the record of their own laborious but fruit- 

 less lives. Such pitiful incidents of the past are now 

 well-nigh forgotten, and well they may be. 



The Indians, to whom Aryan civilization proved a 

 curse, and whose last days here were embittered by 

 the bigotry that beset them, have left imperishable 

 traces on every acre of the Delaware valley, which now 

 afford to him who loves to ramble a ceaseless round of 

 pleasure in gathering their weapons, ornaments, domes- 

 tic implements, and even the toys of their children. 



From these, indeed, we can reconstruct fairly well 

 the story of their lives ; perhaps better than could those 

 who, desirous of bettering them temporally and eter- 

 nally, only succeeded in depriving them of their lands 

 and embittering their lives; and, of this long river 

 valley, perhaps no spot is more profusely supplied with 

 the relics of the Indians than what I believe to be the 

 Trakonick neighborhood mentioned by Campanius, and 

 particularly the shores of the little creek I assume to 

 be Poaetquissings. 



So much, at least for the present, of the people who 

 dwelt here in pre-European times. The stream as it 

 is to-dav will now command our attention. 



