MOONEY] DKLAWAKK TRADITIONS THE NAMK TALLIGEWI 19 



parent tribe and remove to the south. Six other chief.s follow in suc- 

 cession until we come to the seventh, who ''went to the Talega moun 

 tains." By this time the Dela wares have reached the ocean. Other 

 chiefs succeed, after whom "the Easterners and the AVolves" — prob- 

 alily th(> Mahican or Wappinger and the Munsee — move off to the 

 northeast. At last, after si.x more chiefs, "the whites came on the 

 eastern sea," by wliich is probaiily meant the landing of the Dutch on 

 Manhattan in I •")(»'.* (T). We may consider this a tally date, approxi- 

 mating the beginning of the seventeenth century. Two more chiefs 

 rule, and of the second we are told that "He fought at the south; he 

 fought in the land of the Talega and Koweta," and again the fourth 

 chief after the coming of the whites "went to the Talega." We have 

 thus a traditional record of a war of concjuest carried on against the 

 Talligewi by four successive chiefs, and a succession of at)out tMcnty- 

 tive chiefs between the final expulsion of that ti'ilie and the appearance 

 of the whites, in which interval the Nanticoke, Shawano, Mahican, 

 and ^lunsee branched off from the parent tribe of the Delawares. 

 A\'itliout venturing to entangle ourselves in the devious maze of Indian 

 ch ronology , it is sufficient to note that all this implies a very long period 

 of time — so long, in fact, that during it several new tribes, each of 

 whii'h in time developed a distinct dialect, branch off from the main 

 Lenape' stem. It is distinctly stated that all the Talega went south 

 after their final defeat: and from later references we find that they took 

 refuge in the mountain country in the neighborhood of the Koweta 

 (the Creeks), and that Delaware war parties were still making raids 

 upon both these tribes long after the first a})pearance of tlie whites. 



Although at first glance it might be thouglit that the name Tallige-wi 

 is liut a corruption of Tsalagi, a closer study leads to the opinion that it 

 is a true Delaware word, in all prol)ability connected with iraloh or 

 ii-nloh. signifying a cave or hole (Zeisl)erger). whence we find in the 

 Walam Olum the word oligonvmk rendered as "at the place of ca\es.'' 

 It would thus be an exact Delaware rendei'ing of the same name, 

 "people of the cave coiuitrv." by wiiich, as we have seen, the Ciicro- 

 kee were commonly known among the triljes. Whatever may i)e the 

 origin of the name itself, there can be no reasonable doul)t as to its 

 applit'ation. "Name, location, and legends combine to identify the 

 Cherokees or Tsalaki witii tlie Tallikc; and this is as iinicli e\ idenceas 

 we can expect to produce in such researches."' 



The Wyandot confirm the Delaware story and fix the idcntitication of 

 the expelled trit)e. According to their tradition, as narrated in 1S(I2, 

 the ancient fortifications in the Ohio valley had i)een crectt^d in the 

 cours(> of a long war b(>tween themselves and the Cherokee, which 

 resulted finally in the defeat of the latter." 



The traditions of the Cherokee, so far as they have been preserved, 



iBrintoii. D.G., Walam Olum, p. 231; Phila.. 18x.'>. 

 ^Schoolcmft, H. R., Notes im the Iroquois, p. lii'2; Albany. 1S47. 



