534 



SHAWNEE 



[b. a. e. 



that they were joined here by that part 

 of the tribe which had settled at Pequea, 

 which was abandoned about 1730. When 

 the Delawares and Munsee were forced to 

 leave the Delaware r. in 1742 they also 

 moved over to the Wyoming valley, then 

 in possession of the Shawnee, and built a 

 village on the k. bank of the river oppo- 

 site that occupied by the latter tribe. In 

 1740 the Quakers began work among the 

 Shawnee at Wyoming and were followed 

 two years later by the Moravian Zinzen- 

 dorf. As a result of this missionary labor 

 the Shawnee on the Susquehanna re- 

 mained neutral for some time during the 

 French and Indian war, which began in 

 1754, while their brethren on the Ohio 

 were active allies of the French. About 

 the year 1755 or 1756, in consequence of 

 a quarrel with the Delawares, said to 

 have been caused by a childish dispute 

 over a grasshopper, the Shawnee aban- 

 doned the Susquehanna and joined the 

 rest of their tribe on the upper waters of 

 the Ohio, where they soon became allies 

 of the French. Some of the eastern 

 Shawnee had already joined those on the 

 Ohio, probably in small parties and at 

 different times, for in the report of the 

 Albany congress of 1754 it is found that 

 some of that tribe had removed from 

 Pennsylvania to the Ohio about 30 years 

 previously, and in 1735 a Shawnee band 

 known as Shaweygria (Hathawekela), 

 consisting of about 40 families, described 

 as living with the other Shawnee on Alle- 

 gheny r., refused to return to the Susque- 

 hanna at the solicitation of the Delawares 

 and Iroquois. The only clue in regard to 

 the number of these eastern Shawnee is 

 Drake's statement that in 1732 there were 

 700 Indian warriors in Pennsylvania, of 

 whom half were Shawnee from the S. 

 This would give them a total population 

 of about 1,200, which is probably too 

 high, unless those on the Ohio are in- 

 cluded in the estimate. 



Having shown the identity of the Sa- 

 vannah with the Shawnee, and followed 

 their wanderings from Savannah r. to the 

 Ohio during a period of about 80 years, 

 it remains to trace the history of the 

 other, and apparently more numerous, 

 division upon the Cumberland, who pre- 

 ceded the Carolina band in the region of 

 the upper Ohio r. , and seem never to have 

 crossed the Alleghanies to the eastward. 

 These western Shawnee may possibly 

 be the people mentioned in the Jesuit 

 Relation of 1648, under the name of 

 " Ouchaouanag, " in connection with the 

 Mascoutens, who lived in n. Illinois. In 

 the Relation of 1670 we find the "Chaoua- 

 non" mentioned as having visited the Il- 

 linois the preceding year, and they are 

 described as living some distance to the 

 s. E. of the latter. From this period until 



their removal to the N. they are fre- 

 quently mentioned by the French writers, 

 sometimes under some form of the col- 

 lective Iroquois name Toagenha, but gen- 

 erally under their Algonquian name 

 Chaouanon. La Harpe, about 1715, called 

 them Tongarois, another form of Toa- 

 genha. All these writers concur in the 

 statement that they lived upon a large 

 southern branch of the Ohio, at no great 

 distance e. of the Mississippi. This was 

 the Cumberland r. of Tennessee and Ken- 

 tucky, which is called the River of the 

 Shawnee on all the old maps down to 

 about the year 1770. When the French 

 traders first came into the region the 

 Shawnee had their principal village on 

 that river near the present Nashville, 

 Tenn. They seem also to have ranged 

 northeastward to Kentucky r. and south- 

 ward to the Tennessee. It will thus 

 be seen that they were not isolated from 

 the great body of the Algonquian tribes, 

 as has frequently been represented to 

 have been the case, but simply occupied 

 an interior position, adjoining the kindred 

 Illinois and Miami, with whom they kept 

 up constant communication. As previ- 

 ously mentioned, the early maps plainly 

 distinguish these Shawnee on the Cum- 

 berland from the other division of the 

 tribe on Savannah r. 



These western Shawnee are mentioned 

 about the year 1672 as being harassed by 

 the Iroquois, and also as allies and neigh- 

 bors of the Andaste, or Conestoga, who 

 were themselves at war with the Iroquois. 

 As the Andaste were then incorrectly 

 supposed to live on the upper waters of 

 the Ohio r., the Shawnee would natu- 

 rally be considered their neighbors. The 

 two tribes were probably in alliance 

 against the Iroquois, as we find that when 

 the first body of Shawnee removed from 

 South Carolina to Pennsylvania, about 

 1678, they settled adjoining the Cones- 

 toga, and when another part of the same 

 tribe desired to remove to the Delaware 

 in 1694 permission was granted on condi- 

 tion that they make peace with the Iro- 

 quois. Again, in 1684, the Iroquois justi- 

 fied their attacks on the Miami by assert- 

 ing that the latter had invited the Satanas 

 (Shawnee) into their country to make 

 war upon the Iroquois. This is the first 

 historic mention of the Shawnee — evi- 

 dently the western division — in the coun- 

 try N. of the Ohio r. As the Cumber- 

 land region was out of the usual course 

 of exploration and settlement, but few 

 notices of the western Shawnee are 

 found until 1714, when the French trader 

 Charleville established himself among 

 them near the present Nashville. They 

 were then gradually leaving the country 

 in small bodies in consequence of a war 

 with the Cherokee, their former allies, who 



