'^"JK'^Tof*^' APPALACHIAN REGION ANCIENT TRIBES — HOFFMAN 209 



also sent good guides with them, whom the boys followed with a great noise, shot 

 at them with their quarrels [blunt arrows] until the one fell here and the other 

 there. Such a miserable departure and end these poor people had, from which 

 we can observe the awful cruelty of the Minquas. These Minquas are of two 

 kinds. Black and White Minquas. 



The author of the preceding passage, Peter Lindestrom, follows 

 it with another indicating some famOiarity with these Indians. 



Besides I further want to relate about the bloodletting of the savages and their 

 wonderful medicines, which I have seen at least a hundred times among these 

 savages. 



When the savage undertakes to march a long journey, the first day he has 

 marched, in the evening, when he strikes camp, he makes up a fire, takes a piece 

 of flint as long as a finger which he has prepared and fitted for tliis purpose, sharp 

 as a razor, with this he cuts himself all over his body into the deepest flesh, on his 

 arms, thighs and legs, the depth of a finger, according to the depth of the flesh, 

 deeper or less, standing then before the fire to shake off the blood, which runs off 

 him, as if one had butchered an ox. When he has allowed as much blood to run 

 off as he thinks proper, then he takes a kind of ointment, which he smears over his 

 body, wherever he has cut himself. Before morning, it is healed over and run 

 together, and blue streaks remain after it just as when one burns oneself with 

 powder, wherefore the savages appear entirely striped and streaky and especially 

 the Minquas. This is now [something about] the blood letting and cutting of the 

 savages, from which one can observe that they are patient and not tinder-skinned. 

 When now the savage has thus removed some blood, he may march and run as 

 fast and as far as he wants to, he will not tire. [Lindestrom, 1925, pp. 241-245.] 



At almost the same time (1656) the records of the Virginia Assembly 

 report that, 



. . . many western and inland Indians are drawne from the mountaynes, 

 and lately sett downe near the falls of James river, to the number of six or seaven 

 hundred. [Virginia Assembly, 1823 a, p. 402.] 



After due consideration the Assembly resolved to remove these foreign 

 Indians from the borders of the colony by peaceful or martial means, 

 charging Col. Edward Hill to carry out the resolution and to enlist 

 the aid of the Pamunkey chief Tottopottomoy. From later sources 

 which describe Tottopottomoy's defeat and death at the hands of 

 these Indians it would appear that they were Siouan and not Iroquoian. 

 However, these two battles — with the Black JVlinqua and with the 

 Nahyssan and JVlahock — almost certainly are not unrelated (see 

 "Richahecrian-Black JVlinqua Connection"). 



Decisive as their capture of Rique may have been, it did not end 

 entirely the Erie threat, for in September of 1655 the Onondaga 

 delegation to Quebec, "representing all the upper Iroquois Nations," 

 asked "for French Soldiers, to defend their villages against the inroads 

 of the Cat Nation, with whom they are at open war" (Thwaites, ed., 

 1896-1901, vol 42, pp. 49, 53). By 1656, however, the tide of war had 

 gone against the Erie to such an extent that some surrendered vol- 

 untarily, and the Iroquois again proclaimed their total destruction 



