Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet | Page 3

written Shawanos, Sawanos,
Shawaneu, Shawnees and Shawanoes, which last method of spelling
the word, will be followed in the pages of this work.
The original seats of the Shawanoes have been placed in different
sections of the country. This has doubtless been owing to their very
erratic disposition. Of their history, prior to the year 1680, but little is
known. The earliest mention of them by any writer whose work has
fallen under our observation, was in the beginning of the seventeenth
century. Mr. Jefferson, in his "Notes on Virginia," says that when
captain John Smith first arrived in America a fierce war was raging
against the allied Mohicans, residing on Long Island, and the
Shawanoes on the Susquehanna, and to the westward of that river, by
the Iroquois. Captain Smith first landed on this continent in April, 1607.
In the following year, 1608, he penetrated down the Susquehanna to the
mouth of it, where he met six or seven of their canoes, filled with
warriors, about to attack their enemy in the rear. De Laet, in 1632, in
his enumeration of the different tribes, on either side of the Delaware
river, mentions the Shawanoes.--Charlevoix speaks of them under the
name of Chaouanons, as neighbors and allies in 1672, of the Andastes,
an Iroquois tribe, living south of the Senecas. Whether any of the
Shawanoes were present at the treaty[A] made in 1682, under the
celebrated Kensington elm, between William Penn and the Indians,
does not positively appear from any authorities before us; that such,

however, was the fact, may be fairly inferred, from the circumstance
that at a conference between the Indians and governor Keith, in 1722,
the Shawanoes exhibited a copy of this treaty written on parchment.
[Footnote A: "This treaty," says Voltaire, "was the first made between
those people (the Indians) and the Christians, that was not ratified with
an oath, and that was never broken."]
To the succeeding one made at Philadelphia, in February, 1701, the
Shawanoes were parties, being represented on that occasion, by their
chiefs, Wopatha, Lemoytungh and Pemoyajagh.[A] More than fifty
years afterward, a manuscript copy of this treaty of commerce and
friendship, was in the possession of the Shawanoes of Ohio, and was
exhibited by them. In 1684, the Iroquois, when complained of by the
French for having attacked the Miamis, justified their conduct on
the-ground, that they had invited the Santanas (Shawanoes) into the
country, for the purpose of making war upon them.[B] The Sauks and
Foxes, whose residence was originally on the St. Lawrence, claim the
Shawanoes as belonging to the same stock with themselves, and retain
traditional accounts of their emigration to the south.[C] In the "History
of the Indian Tribes of North America," when speaking of the
Shawanoes, the authors say, "their manners, customs and language
indicate a northern origin; and, upwards of two centuries ago, they held
the country south of Lake Erie. They were the first tribe which felt the
force and yielded to the superiority of the Iroquois. Conquered by these,
they migrated to the south, and from fear or favor, were allowed to take
possession of a region upon the Savannah river; but what part of that
stream, whether in Georgia or Florida, is not known; it is presumed the
former." Mr. Gallatin speaks of the final defeat of the Shawanoes and
their allies, in a war with the Five Nations, as having taken place in the
year 1672. This same writer, who has carefully studied the language of
the aborigines, considers the Shawanoes as belonging to the Lenape
tribes of the north. From these various authorities, it is apparent that the
Shawanoes belonged originally to the Algonkin-Lenape nation; and
that during the three first quarters of the seventeenth century, they were
found in eastern Pennsylvania, on the St. Lawrence, and the southern
shore of Lake Erie; and generally at war with some of the neighboring
tribes. Whether their dispersion, which is supposed to have taken place
about the year 1672, drove them all to the south side of the Ohio, does

not very satisfactorily appear.
[Footnote A: Proud's History of Pennsylvania.]
[Footnote B: Colden.]
[Footnote C: Morse's Report.]
Subsequently to this period, the Shawanoes were found on the Ohio
river below the Wabash, in Kentucky, Georgia and the Carolinas.
Lawson, in his history of Carolina in 1708, speaks of the Savanoes,
removing from the Mississippi to one of the rivers of South Carolina.
Gallatin quotes an authority which sustains Lawson, and which
establishes the fact that at a very early period in the history of the south,
there was a Shawanoe settlement on the head waters of the Catawba or
Santee, and probably of the Yadkin. From another authority it appears,
that for a time the Shawanoes had a station on the Savannah river,
above