94 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



has been washed entirely away by the freshets, and nothing 

 remains to mark its former position. 



TWENTY-EIGHTH REGULAR MEETING. 



October 19, 1880. 



An Inquiry Into the History and Indentity of the Shaw- 

 nee Indians. 



By C. C. KOYCE. 



Mr. Royce said his paper should be considered as merely 

 tentative and subject to corrections of either a minor or rad- 

 ical character as the results of future inquiries may justify. 



The Shawnees were the Bedouins and one may almost say 

 the Ishmaelites of the North American tribes. As wanderers 

 they were without rivals among their race, and as fomenters 

 of discord their genius was marked. Their original home 

 is not certainly known. It is not probable that it ever will 

 be. 1st. In the year 1608, Captain John Smith, of Virginia, 

 in voyaging up the Chesapeake found the neighboring tribes 

 living in dread of a tribe known to them as "Massa- 

 womekes," who lived beyond the mountains, whence the 

 Potomac River has its sources, upon a great salt water or 

 lake. He encountered seven canoes full of them at the head 

 of the bay and remarks that their dexterity in their canoes, 

 made of the bark of trees, anal well luted with gum, gave 

 evidence of their residence upon some great water. 



Smith's map of 1629, locates the Massawomekes upon the 

 south shore of a supposed large body of water in about the 

 direction and location of Lake Erie. 



Gallatin and Bancroft have assumed that the Massawo- 

 mekes and the Five Nations were identical. In contradiction 

 of this is the fact that at the date of Smith's travels, the most 

 westerly of the Five Nations — the Seneca — was not in posses- 

 sion of the country west of the Genesee River. From that 



