MooNEY] NOTKS AND PARALLELS 497 



104. The easteun tkimks (]>. :?7S): Miuinre — The Delaware^ derive tlieir jKipular 

 name from the river u|)oii wliicli, in tlie earliest colonial period, they had their prin- 

 cipal settlements. They call themselves Leria'pi' or Loii-lena'pe, a terra apparently 

 signifying "real, or original men," or "men of our kind." To the cognate tribes 

 of the Ohio valley and the lakes they were known as Wapanm/ki, "easterners," the 

 name being extended to include the closely related tribes, the Mahican, Wappinger 

 (i. e. Wapanaq'ki), Nanticoke, and (^onoy. By all the widespread tribes of kindred 

 Algonquian stock, as well as by the Winnebago, Wyandot, and Cherokee, they were 

 addressed under the respectful title of "grandfather," the domineering Iroi|Uiiis 

 alone refusing to them any higher designation than "nephew." 



Their various bands and subtribes seem originally to have occupied the whole 

 basin of Delaware river, together with all of New Jersey, extending north to the 

 waterehed of the Hudson and west and southwest to the ridge .separating the waters 

 of the Delaware and Susquehanna. Immediately north of them, along the lower 

 Hudson and extending into IMas.«achusetts and Connecticut, were the closely affili- 

 ated Mahican and Wappinger, while to the south were their friends and kindred, 

 the Nanticoke and Conoy, the former in Delaware and on the eastern shore of Mary- 

 land, the latter between Chesapeake bay and the lower Potomac. All of these, 

 although speaking different languages of the common Algonquian stock, asserted 

 their traditional origin from the Delawares, with whom, in their declining days, 

 most of them were again merged. The Delawares proper were organized into three 

 divisions, which, according to Brinton, were subtribes and not clans, although each 

 of the three had a totemic animal by whose name it was commonly known. These 

 three subtribes were: (1) The Minsi or Miuisee (people of the "stony country" ?), 

 otherwise known as the Wolf tribe, occupying the hill country about the head of 

 the Delaware; (2) the Unami (people "downstream"), or Turtle trilje, on the 

 middle Delaware, and (8) the Unalachtgo (people " near the ocean " ?), or Turkey 

 tribe, in the southern part of thi' common territory. Of these the Turtle tribe 

 assumed precedence in the council, while to the Wolf tribe belonged the leadership 

 in war. Each oi these three was divided into twelve families, or embryonic clans, 

 bearing female names. In this connection it may be mentioned that the Delawares 

 now residing with the Wichita, in Oklahoma, still use the figure of a turtle as their 

 distinctive cattle brand. 



Of the history of the Delawares it is only possible to say a very few words here. 

 Their earliest European relations were with the Dutch and Swedes. In l(i82 they 

 made the famous treaty with William Penn, which was faithfully observed on lioth 

 sides for sixty years. (iraduall\- forced 1)ackward by the whites, they retired first 

 to the Susquehanna, then to the upper Ohio, where, on the breaking out of the 

 French and Indian war in 1754, they ranged themselves on the side of the French. 

 They fought against the Americans in the Revolution, and in the war of 1812, hav- 

 ing by that time been driven as far west as Indiana. In 1818 they ceded all their 

 lands in that State ami were assigned to a reservation in Kansas, where they were 

 joined by a considerable body that had emigrated to Missouri, in company with a 

 band of Shawano, some years before, by permission of the Spanish government. 

 About the close of tlu^ Revolution another portion of the tribe, including most of 

 those who had been Christianized by Moravian missionaries, had fled from Ohio and 

 taken up a permanent abode on Canadian soil. In 1867 the main body of those in 

 Kansas removed to Indian Territory and became incorporated with the Cherokee 

 Nation. A smaller band settled on the Wichita reservation in Oklahoma. The pre- 

 sentnumberof Delawares is, approximately, 1,600, viz: "^Moravians and IMunseesof 

 the Thames," Ontario, 475; incorporated in Cherokee Nation, 870 (in 1898); on 

 Wichita reservation, 95; Munsee in Kansas and incorporated with Stockbridges in 

 Wisconsin, perha))s 100; Delawares, etc., with Six Nations, in New York, .50. 



Of their former allies, the Wappinger and Conoy have long since disappeared 



19 ETii— 01 32 



