My Favorite things about Smokesignals.
Our Favorite CIA Smokesignal Sites
Angelfire - Free Home Pages
Free Web Building Help
Angelfire HTML Library
HTML Gear - free polls, guestbooks, and more!
Tekumthi' quake
George Washington's moves
Dutch Wyandot relations
The Walum Olum or Lenape Red Score
Nyawe pechthelo; Wanishi temike= Thank you for visiting our page at Angelfire.
Please come back and visit again! Shinatina hey
Tecumseh and William Henry http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Cove/8286/harrison.html
Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison engage in one of their more acrimonious debates
concerning the legitimacy of Harrison's land purchases. While Tecumseh strongly believed
that the United States should not be given any more Native American territory, Harrison
just as fervently believed it was the destiny of the United States to expand from
ocean to ocean.
After the signing of the "Treaty of Fort Wayne," which sold three million acres of land for a single payment in goods of $7,000 and a small annual subsidy, to be divided among the tribes signing the treaty, Tecumseh met with Governor Harrison.
"Brother, I wish you to give me close attention, because I think you do not clearly understand. I want to speak to you about promises that the Americans have made.
You recall the time when the Jesus Indians of the Delawares lived near the Americans, and had confidence in their promises of friendship, and thought they were secure, yet the Americans murdered all the men, women, and children, even as they prayed to Jesus?
The same promises were given to the Shawnee one time. It was at Fort Finney, where some of my people were forced to make a treaty. Flags were given to my people, and they were told they were now the children of the Americans. We were told, if any white people mean to harm you, hold up these flags and you will then be safe from all danger. We did this in good faith. But what happened? Our beloved chief Moluntha stood with the American flag in front of him and that very peace treaty in his hand, but his head was chopped by an American officer, and that American Officer was never punished.
Brother, after such bitter events, can you blame me for placing little confidence in the promises of Americans? That happened before the Treaty of Greenville. When they buried the tomahawk at Greenville, the Americans said they were our new fathers, not the British anymore, and would treat us well. Since that treaty, here is how the Americans have treated us well: They have killed many Shawnee, many Winnebagoes, many Miamis, many Delawares, and have taken land from them. When they killed them, no American ever was punished, not one.
It is you, the Americans, by such bad deeds, who push the men to do mischief. You do not want unity among tribes, and you destroy it. You try to make differences between them. We, their leaders, wish them to unite and consider their land the common property of all, but you try to keep them from this. You separate the tribes and deal with them that way, one by one, and advise them not to come into this union. Your states have set an example of forming a union among all the Fires, why should you censure the Indians for following that example?
But, Brother, I mean to bring all the tribes together, in spite of you, and until I have finished, I will not go to visit your President. Maybe I will when I have finished, maybe. The reason I tell you this, you want, by making your distinctions of Indian tribes and allotting to each particular tract of land, to set them against each other, and thus to weaken us.
You never see an Indian come, do you, and endeavor to make the white people divide up?
You are always driving the red people this way! At last you will drive them into the Great Lake, where they can neither stand nor walk.
Brother, you ought to know what you are doing to the Indians. Is it by direction of the president you make these distinctions? It is a very bad thing, and we do not like it. Since my residence at Tippecanoe, we have tried to level all distinctions, to destroy village chiefs, by whom all such mischief is done. It is they who sell our lands to the Americans. Brother, these lands that were sold and the goods that were given for them were done by only a few. The Treaty of Fort Wayne was made through the threats of Winnemac, but in the future we are going to punish those chiefs who propose to sell the land.
The only way to stop this evil is for all the red men to unite in claiming an equal right in the land. That is how it was at first, and should be still, for the land never was divided, but was for the use of everyone. Any tribe could go to an empty land and make a home there. No groups among us have a right to sell, even to one another, and surely not to outsiders who want all, and will not do with less.
Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds, and the Great Sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?
Brother, I was glad to hear what you told us. You said that if we could prove that the land was sold by people who had no right to sell it, you would restore it. I will prove that those who did sell did not own it. Did they have a deed? A title? NO! You say those proves someone owns land. Those chiefs only spoke a claim, and so you pretended to believe their claim, only because you wanted the land. But the many tribes with me will not agree with those claims. They have never had a title to sell, and we agree this proves you could not buy it from them. If the land is not given back to us, you will see, when we return to our home from here, how it will be settled. It will be like this:
We shall have a great council, at which all tribes will be present. We shall show to those who sold that they had no rights to the claims they set up, and we shall see what will be done to those chiefs who did sell the land to you. I am not alone in this determination, it is the determination of all the warriors and red people who listen to me. Brother, I now wish you to listen to me. If you do not wipe out that treaty, it will seem that you wish to kill all the chiefs who sold the land! I tell you so because I am authorized by all tribes to do so! I am the head of them all! All my warriors will meet together with me in two or three moons from now. Then I will call for those chiefs who sold you this land, and we shall know what to do with them. If you do not restore the land, you will have had a hand in killing them!
I am Shawnee! I am a warrior! My forefathers were warriors. From them I took my birth into this world. From my tribe I take nothing. I am the master of my own destiny! And of that I might make the destiny of my red people, of our nation, as great as I concieve to in my mind, when I think of Weshemoneto, who rules this universe! The being within me hears the voice of the ages, which tells me that once, always, and until lately, there were no white men on all this island, that it then belonged to the red man, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Spirit who made them, to keep it, to traverse it, to enjot its yield, and to people it with the same race. Once they were a happy race! Now they are made miserable by the white people, who are never contented but are always coming in! You do this always, after promising not to anyone, yet you ask us to have confidence in your promises. How can we have confidence in the white people? When Jesus Christ came upon the earth, you killed him, the son of your own God, you nailed him up!! You thought he was dead, but you were mistaken. And only after you thought you killed him did you worship him, and start killing those who would not worship him. What kind of people is this for us to trust?
Now, Brother, everything I have said to you is the truth, as Washemoneto has inspired me to speak only truth to you. I have declared myself freely to you about my intentions. And I want to know your intentions. I want to know what you are going to do about taking our land. I want to hear you say that you understand now, and you will wipe out that pretended treaty, so that the tribes can be at peace with each other, as you pretend you want them to be. Tell me, Brother. I want to know.
After this meeting, both Tecumseh and Harrison were convinced that war was only a matter of time. As word of Tecumseh's opposition to the Treaty spread, Native Americans became less and less cooperative with the U.S. government, and tribes that had been quiet for the past 15 years began once again to attack white settlements.
In the fall of 1811, Tecumseh headed off with a band of warriors to attempt to enlist the aid of the large tribes in the South - the Chickasaws, Choctaws, and the Creeks. Afraid that Harrison might attack Prophetstown while he was gone, he tried to smooth matters with Harrison before he left, and he told Teskwatawa not to do anything to provoke the governor. Unfortunately, his powers of persuasion did not work well with the southern tribes, whose experience with the whites so far had been much less hostile than that of their northern breathren - in part beacause they were mostly farmers and were less dependent on vast tracts of land for their survival. Only the Creeks agreed to send a group of warriors north, and these were only to observe the situation. Tecumseh returned home in early January 1812 - and discovered that Prophetstown had been destroyed.
Just as Tecumseh had feared, Harrison had decided to strike the headquarters of the Indian coalition while their most competent military leader was gone and had rounded up approximately 1,000 militiamen from Kentucky and Indiana. His men were inexperienced in war, as was he - but the same was true of the men remaining in Prophetstown, and Tenskwatawa, who the inhabitants of Prophetstown looked to as a leader, vacillated between peace offerings and war threats as Harrison and his men approached. Finally on Noember 6, 1811, Tenskwatawa gathered the warriors of Prophetstown and told them that the Great Spirit had visited him. The Great Spirit had said that the Prophetstown forces should strike Harrison's men before the next sunrise., when the darkness would confuse the soldiers. In addition, he, the Prophet, would stand on a knoll near the battlefield, working his magic to make Indians immune to the white man's bullets. The warriors set out to surround Harrison's men.
Around four o'clock in the morning on November 7, a sentry's shot rang out in Harrison's camp, alerting the soldiers to the attack. The element of surprise lost, Tenskwatawa's men immediately opened fire on the Americans, taking a heavy toll on the American troops but suffering greatly when the soldiers returned fire. Both armies were undisciplined, and the conflict at times resembled a mob action, but Harrison proved a capable leader and kept his men engaged in the two-hour battle. Tenskwatawa, on the other hand, was far removed from the fighting, working his ineffective magic. When dawn came, the Indian troops began to retreat, only to discover that Tenskwatawa had preceded them and was nowhere to be found. The Indians scattered, and Harrison's men entered and destroyed the abandoned Prophetstown. "Letter from Harrison 1806"
"Shawnee's Reservation"[ "Homepage"
© 1997 shawnee_1@yahoo.com
The French and Indian War
Washington's decisive involvement in the French and Indian War, in which he served as lieutenant colonel of the newly formed Virginia Regiment, was due in part to the backcountry knowledge and map-making skills he had gained from surveying. In 1753, one year before Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie called for additional troops under Washington's command to defend Virginia's Ohio Valley frontier, Washington was chosen to deliver an ultimatum to the French at Fort Le Boeuf (site of present-day Waterford, Pennsylvania), insisting that they withdraw from the valley. When his report of this venture, The Journal of Major George Washington, was printed in Williamsburg and then reprinted in London, it catapulted him onto the world stage.
Although an engraved map was issued with the London edition of his journal, Washington prepared a sketch map of his journey to accompany the original publication.10 There are three known manuscript versions of this historically important map, two housed in the British Public Record Office and one in a private collection. Although older published maps were available to British colonial interests, this sketch map alone represents the state of geographical knowledge at the outbreak of the war. Together with Washington's report, the map dramatically illustrates the French threat in the Ohio Valley. It also contains one of the first references to the construction of a strategic fort at the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, the site of present-day Pittsburgh. Washington's role in beginning the French and Indian War seems to have been inescapable. He not only volunteered to deliver the message to the French authorities but produced a propaganda map highlighting the French threat and ambushed a French detachment in the war's first skirmish in 1754.
Washington As Land Speculator: (Top)
Building a Gentleman's Estate
In 1752 Washington made his first land purchase, 1,459 acres along Bullskin Creek in Frederick County, Virginia. This act inaugurated the second and more profitable phase of his cartographic career, in which he assumed the role of land speculator. Over the next half century Washington would continue to seek out, purchase, patent, and eventually settle numerous properties. His will, executed in 1800, lists 52,194 acres to be sold or distributed in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Kentucky, and the Ohio Valley. In addition to these properties, Washington also held title to lots in the Virginia cities of Winchester, Bath (now Berkeley Springs, West Virginia), and Alexandria, and in the newly formed City of Washington.
A Plan of Mr. Clifton's Neck Land, 1760
In 1758 Washington left military service and returned to civilian life and in January 1759 married Martha Custis, a wealthy widow. No sooner had the couple settled at Mount Vernon, which had become Washington's home, than he begin to expand the estate. In 1760 a neighbor, William Clifton, approached Washington with an offer to sell a 1,806-acre tract on the northern border of the estate, and the two men settled on a price of £1,150 sterling. Shortly afterwards, however, Clifton agreed to sell the same tract of land to another neighbor, Thomson Mason, for a slightly higher price. Despite Clifton's original agreement and a series of angry letters, Washington eventually paid £1,250 sterling to secure the land for himself.11 The area became the Washingtons' River Farm.
The Geography and Map Division has two manuscript maps that Washington drew of the land he purchased from Clifton. The earlier is a map Washington copied in 1760, presumably during the purchase of the property. Titled Plan of Mr. Clifton's Neck Land from an original made by T.H. in 1755 and copied by G. Washington in 1760, the map includes survey courses and distances of the perimeter and of each field under cultivation in the tract. The map also includes a lengthy list of farmers working the property. In 1766 Washington prepared a map of a much smaller portion of the property, entitled A Plan of My Farm on Little Hunting Creek. This map covers an 846-acre portion between Little Hunting Creek and the smaller Poquoson Creek. Both items are among the earliest extant maps of individual farms at Mount Vernon.
Over the course of his life, Washington maintained an interest in his farm, even while serving as President. Between 1786 and 1799 Washington exchanged nearly thirty letters with Arthur Young, a British agricultural supporter, in an attempt to refine and improve his farming methods. In a December 12, 1793 letter to Young, Washington enclosed a map of his farms which described the total amount of acreage on the Union, Dogue Run, Muddy Hole, Mansion House, and River Farms as well as the type of crops under cultivation.
Washington As Land Speculator: (Top)
Western Lands and the Bounty of War
Washington's lifelong interest in land speculation is illustrated in the fight over bounty lands promised to the veterans of the Virginia Regiment who fought with him in the French and Indian War. In this episode Washington acted on behalf of his fellow veterans as well as vigorously, sometimes aggressively, in staking out his own land claims.
In 1754, Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie issued a proclamation designed to encourage enlistment in the local militia for the war against the French. In addition to their pay, those who enlisted in Lieutenant Colonel George Washington's fledgling Virginia Regiment were offered a share in two hundred thousand acres west of the Ohio River. Unfortunately for the men who fought under Washington in the Braddock and Forbes expeditions against the enemy at Fort Duquesne, they were not to see these bounty lands until more than twenty years had passed, during which time Washington led the struggle to secure their title.
At first, the formal conclusion in 1763 of the worldwide war between Britain and France, of which the French and Indian War had been a part, aroused hope that the land would be quickly granted. These expectations were overshadowed by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which (among other provisions) forbade colonial governors from issuing land grants west of the Allegheny Mountains. Yet Washington chose to forge ahead, as evinced by a September 1767 letter to William Crawford, a Pennsylvania surveyor:
. . . I can never look upon the Proclamation in any other light (but this I say between ourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians. It must fall, of course, in a few years, especially when those Indians consent to our occupying those lands. Any person who neglects hunting out good lands, and in some measure marking and distinguishing them for his own, in order to keep others from settling them will never regain it. If you will be at the trouble of seeking out the lands, I will take upon me the part of securing them, as soon as there is a possibility of doing it and will, moreover, be at all the cost and charges surveying and patenting the same . . . . By this time it be easy for you to discover that my plan is to secure a good deal of land. You will consequently come in for a handsome quantity.12
Washington was clearly willing to take considerable risks in seeking out choice land for himself. In the same letter, however, he warned Crawford "to keep the whole matter a secret, rather than give the alarm to others or allow himself to be censured for the opinion I have given in respect to the King's Proclamation." He concluded by offering Crawford an alibi should his behavior be called into question. "All of this can be carried on by silent management and can be carried out by you under the guise of hunting game, which you may, I presume, effectually do, at the same time you are in pursuit of land. When this is fully discovered advise me of it, and if there appears a possibility of succeeding, I will have the land surveyed to keep others off and leave the rest to time and my own assiduity." In fact, the letter marked the beginning of a very profitable fifteen-year partnership. Less than two weeks after he had received it, Crawford informed Washington about several tracts in the vicinity of Fort Pitt, and the two men continued to collaborate until Crawford's death in 1782.
Eight survey tracts
along the Kanawha River,
1774?
Washington persisted in his attempts to secure the military bounty lands. In 1769, Governor Botetourt of Virginia at last gave him permission to seek out a qualified surveyor and to notify all claimants that surveying would proceed. Once the surveying was completed the land could be divided among the remaining Virginia Regiment veterans or their heirs. Washington arranged to have Crawford appointed the "Surveyor of the Soldiers Land." In the fall of 1770 Washington, Crawford, and a fellow veteran named Dr. James Craik set out from Fort Pitt by canoe to explore possible sites for the bounty lands, making notes and observations as they journeyed to the junction of the Ohio and Great Kanawha Rivers and several miles up the Great Kanawha.
The next year, Crawford began to survey the tracts he and Washington had identified on the Great Kanawha expedition. Eight of these tracts are shown on a composite map now in the collections of the Geography and Map Division that Washington drew in1774 from Crawford's surveys. Out of a total of 64,071 acres apportioned on the map, 19,383, or approximately 30 percent, were patented in Washington's name. In a 1794 letter to Presley Neville, Washington said that these lands were "the cream of the Country in which they are; that they were the first choice of it; and that the whole is on the margin of the Rivers and bounded thereby for 58 miles."13In addition to Washington's acreage the map shows the lands surveyed and apportioned to other Virginia Regiment members, including Colonel Joshua Fry, Colonel Adam Stephen, Dr. James Craik, George Mercer, George Muse, Colonel Andrew Lewis, Captain Peter Hog, Jacob Van Braam, and John West. Several of these individuals were distinguished in their own right. Joshua Fry, for example, was one half of the team which produced the well-known 1755 Map of Inhabited Parts of the State of Virginia, considered to be one of the finest examples of colonial mapping; Jacob Van Braam had been Washington's interpreter at Fort Necessity in the French and Indian War; and Dr. James Craik was Washington's lifelong friend and physician.
Washington As Land Speculator: (Top)
Cartography and Leadership in Revolutionary Times
A map of the most inhabited part of Virginia, 1755
Any discussion of Washington's cartographic career would be incomplete without reference to the American Revolution. Deeply concerned about the lack of accurate maps available to his army, Washington created the office of Geographer to the Continental Army and appointed Robert Erskine to fill it in July 1777. Erskine, a Scottish-born engineer and inventor, may have come to Washington's attention with his plans for "Marine Chevaux de Frise" designed to block British ships from sailing up the Hudson River.14 Erskine's assistants in his Continental Army post included William Scull, author of a 1770 map of Pennsylvania and grandson of the noted cartographer Nicholas Scull; Simeon DeWitt, who would later become Surveyor General of New York State; and Thomas Hutchins, author of A Topographical Description of Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, published in 1778.15
Washington died at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1799. In 1810 the executors of his estate prepared an inventory of Mount Vernon's contents. While Washington had a fairly extensive library, he was not a voracious reader and probably acquired many of the volumes as gifts. The library inventory listed more than ninety maps and atlases, including John Henry's 1777 Map of Virginia; Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson's Map of the State of Virginia; Reading Howell's 1777 Map of Pennsylvania; Thomas Hutchins's Map of the Western Part of Parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and North Carolina; Lewis Evans's Map of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Delaware; "Sundry Plans of the Federal District" (including "One Large Draft"); Thomas Jefferys's West India Atlas and American Atlas; Molls Atlas; William Faden's North America Atlas; Christopher Colles's 1789 Survey of the Roads of the United States; and Jedidiah Morse's 1789 American Geography. These items might be found on any serious map collector's list of desiderata today.16
Jedidiah Morse is remembered not only for publishing the first geographic work in America, but for a short section in his 1789 American Geography that (according to the historian Rosemarie Zagarri) is actually the first and only authorized biography of Washington. Colonel David Humphreys, one of Washington's aides-de-camp during the American Revolution, originally conceived the project as a full-scale biography to be edited by Washington himself, but it was never finished. At some point Morse received a summary and published it in American Geography without attribution.17 Given Washington's experience organizing the western frontiers of Virginia as a public surveyor, the impact of the map and report he made of his expedition to the Ohio Valley in 1754, and his lifelong involvement with the making and using of maps, it is altogether fitting that he should have been celebrated in the first American geography.
Edward Redmond
Senior Reference Librarian
Geography and Map Division
Library of Congress
Washington, DC
Dutch and Wyandot notes
Delaware Papers
Dutch Period 1658-1664
Gehring, Charles T.
New York Historical Manuscripts. Records translated from the Dutch language have added a new dimension to early American history. This book is one of a series by the New Netherland Project.http://www.godutch.com/catalogue/bookN.asp?id=362
The Island at the Center of the World
The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America
Shorto, Russell
In a landmark work of history, Russell Shorto presents astonishing information on the founding of our nation and reveals in riveting detail the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today. ”Russell Shorto’s dramatic adventure tale about the settling of Manhattan will transform the way we look at American history. The Dutch colony, founded just three years after the Puritans landed in Massachusetts, quickly became the gateway for Germans, Italians, Jews, Scandinavians, Africans, and others who created the pluralistic mix that would define a new nation. Shorto’s book recounts the fascinating struggle between Peter Stuyvesant and the lesser-known but more influential Adriaen van der Donck, whose appreciation for individual tolerance laid the foundation for our Bill of Rights and helped to create our national character. It’s also the story of the remarkable age of exploration led by Henry Hudson and others who spread the culture of the European Renaissance to a distant wilderness. Based on a wealth of documents that scholars began translating thirty years ago, Shorto has produced both a triumph of scholarship and a rollicking narrative. The result is an exciting drama about the roots of America’s freedoms.” - Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, 400 pages, Paperback
Indian Affairs in Colonial New York
The Seventeenth Century
Trelease, Allen W.
This book is a classic in the study of Indian-European relations in seventeenth-century New York. First published in 1960, it remains the only one-volume history to explore these complex relations, which profoundly affected the economy and politics of the colony. Allen W. Trelease, professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, describes the Dutch period that followed Henry Hudson’s voyage in 1609 and New Netherland’s dealing with the Algonquian bands of the Hudson Valley and long Island. The second half of the book, treating the English period after 1664, emphasized the colonist’s relations with the Iroquois. - ‘[A] most important book … on the history of contacts between American Indians and the colonial powers … It is a piece of ethnohistorical research and writing of the best sort” – William N. Fenton, American AnthropologistMaps, notes, bibliography, and index, 379 pages, Paperback
A Journey Into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 1634-1635
Gehring, Charles T. and Starna, William A.
The Journal of Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert.8 illustrations, 120 pages, Paperback
In Mohawk Country
Early Narratives about a Native People about a Native People
Snow, Dean R. and Gehring, Charles T. and Starna, William A.
Various narratives written by Dutch merchants, French Jesuit missionaries, English soldiers and other literate observers provide often biased but always fascinating accounts of the Mohawks and their valley near present day Albany, New York.
The Wyandot (sometimes formerly referred to as the Huron) are a First Nations/Native American people originally from Ontario, Canada, and surrounding areas.
The shamans of a Wyandot tribe were called Arendiwane (or Arendi wane, Orendi wane).
According to Wyandot mythology, Iosheka created the first man and woman and taught them many skills, including all their religious ceremonies and rituals, the ability to fight evil spirits, healing, and the use of the sacrament of tobacco.
Wyandanch is a hamlet (and census-designated place) located in Suffolk County, New York. As of the 2000 census, the CDP had a total population of 10,546.
Wyandanch is a community in the Town of Babylon. HistoryThis village is named after Chief Wyandanch, a leader of the Montauk tribe during the 17th-century. Geography Wyandanch is located at 40°44'50" North, 73°22'6" West (40.747098, -73.368275)GR1.
Wyandotte Cave, one of the largest natural caverns in the United States, S Ind., W of New Albany; discovered in 1798. There are 23 mi (37 km) of passages and several large and beautiful chambers on five levels. Saltpeter was mined there until the middle of the 19th cent.
Wyandot is the Iroquoian language traditionally spoken by the people known variously as Wyandot, Wendat, or Huron. It was last spoken primarily in Oklahoma and Quebec.
Wyandot no longer has any native speakers, but is being studied and promoted as a second language.
to KS they came http://www.wyandot.org/1844.htm
"Mrs. Lucy Armstrong, wife of John M. Armstrong, gave the following account of the building of the first church ever erected by the people of Kansas: At the close of the meeting in January, 1844, Rev. Esq. Gray-Eyes proposed that the brethren should come together soon and cut down trees, hew logs, make a church,a good hewed.log house, about thirty by forty feet, located about three miles from the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers. It was completed [in May 1844].
Jun 4, 1844...
"Rev. Wheeler returned to the Wyandots with his family; and reached the mouth of the Kansas River on the 4th day of June, 1844. During the winter Rev. Wheeler had [developed] plans to be adapted [when he returned to Kansas to continue] the mission work, [but upon arriving in Kansas he found the] conditions [under which the Wyandots were living] so materially changed [from what he expected] that after his return he called the principal men together to council with him. By treaty stipulation the Government promised to give them five-hundred dollars each year for educational purposes, which they offered to turn over in aid of the mission; [however], Rev. Wheeler advised that they should adapt the district school plan, employing their own teachers, and pay them from money they were to get from the Government; after learning reasons given in support of his advice, they decided to accept it, and they straightaway went to work to put it into operation. They divided their territory into two districts, built school houses, employed their teachers, and set them to work, and the result was gratifying in the highest degree and proved beneficial in more ways than one; for it inspired them with a footing of self-reliance which served as a stimulant to independent effort; in many directions and became an incentive, which led them in rapid strides on their march to civilization. Under this arrangement, Rev. Wheeler was relieved of much labor, care, and responsibility and at the same time relieved the missionary society of a very great expense. Rev. Wheeler now had time to visit with and encourage those who had been gathered into the fold and to visit and exhort the irreligious to seek and secure the Christians hope; and his efforts for good were not lacking in encouragement."
From the Obituary of Rev. James Wheeler
The Great Flood of 1844
"The spring of 1844 was warm and very dry until in May, when it began to rain, and continued for six weeks, rain falling every day. The result was the Kaw River rose so high that what is now Kansas City, Kansas, and West Kansas City, Missouri, were covered with fourteen feet of water; the Missouri backed up to the mouth of Line Creek; Jersey Creek was backed up to the crossing on the Parallel road."'50
The flood of 1844 occurred from the 13th to 16th of June. The following extract from an eye-witness report stated:
"The Missouri River at about the 13th was only a few feet over the bottom lands, but the great volume of water that came down the Kansas River madly rushing against the mighty Missouri caused a seething waters to pile up at the mouth, no doubt several feet higher than they would have had they met at the point of junction more obliquely.
On the morning of the 14th, Col. Wm. M. Chick, who was temporarily occupying with his family a house he owned, which stood on the east side of Turkey Creek, not far southeast of the State Line house,
During this day, the 15th, the Wyandotte rescuers were busy saving persons and property in the West Kansas bottom until darkness closed their labors, theirs being the only boat that operated on that day, and after that none was needed for nothing was left to save of life or property." At early dawn brave hearts and strong arms were ready for the rescue. Isaac Walker, Ethan Long, Russell Garret,
David Froman, and Tall Charles, of Wyandotte, soon made their way with the boat, cutting their way through the woods, to poor old Tromley, who they found perched in a tree
History of Kansas City, Illustrated 1881 WH Miller
"The long, continued rains were succeeded by dry and hot weather, and the overflowed vegetable matter decomposing, caused much sickness among the Wyandots, and by the 1st of November, one-hundred of them were dead - being one-seventh of the whole number who had come to the country only fifteen months before. The species of sickness which prevailed the most and made the most havoc in the nation were chills and fever, and bloody flux. It is stated that there was not a single well person in the nation by the latter part of the fall of 1844. The town of Wyandotte, having these discouragements of poverty and sickness to contend with, could not be expected to, grow - neither did it."
A.T. Andreas History of the State of Kansas - 1883
THE WYANDOTS
The Wyandot tribe was anciently divided into twelve clans, or gentes. Each of these had a local government, consisting of a clan council presided over by a clan chief. These clan councils were composed of at least five persons, one man and four women, and they might contain any number of women above four. Any business pertaining purely to the internal affairs of the clans was carried to the clan councils for settlement. An appeal was allowed from the clan council to the tribal council. The four women of the clan council regulated the clan affairs and selected the clan chief. The office of clan chief was in a measure hereditary, although not wholly so. The tribal council was composed of the clan chiefs, the hereditary sachem, and such other men of the tribe of renown as the sachem might with the consent of the tribal council call to the council-fire. In determining a question the vote was by clans, and not by individuals. In matters of great importance it required a unanimous vote to carry a proposition.
The names of the ancient clans of the Wyandot tribe are as follows:
1. Big Turtle.
2. Little Turtle.
3. Mud Turtle.
4. Wolf.
5. Bear.
6. Beaver.
7. Deer.
8. Porcupine.
9. Striped Turtle.
10. Highland Turtle, or Prairie Turtle.
11. Snake.
12. Hawk.
These clan names are all expressed in Wyandot, words so long and hard to properly pronounce that they are omitted here. They are written in what the Wyandots call the Order of Precedence and Encampment, as I have recorded them above. On the march the warriors of the Big Turtle Clan marched in front, those of the Little Turtle Clan marched next to them, and so on down to the last clan, except the Wolf Clan, which had command of the march and might be where its presence was most necessary. The tribal encampment was formed "on the shell of the Big Turtle," as the old Wyandots said. This means that the tents were arranged in a circular form as though surrounding the shell of the Big Turtle. The Big Turtle Clan was placed where the right fore-leg of the turtle was supposed to be and the other clans were arranged around in their proper order, except the Wolf Clan, which could be in the center of the inclosure on the turtle's back, or in front of it where the turtle's head was supposed to be, as it was thought best. In ancient times all their villages were built in this order, and in the tribal council the clans took this order in seating themselves, with the sachem either in the center or in the front of the door of the council chamber.
These clans were separated into two divisions, or phratries. The first phratry consisted of the following tribes:
1. Bear.
2. Deer.
3. Snake.
4. Hawk.
The second phratry consisted of the following tribes:
1. Big Turtle.
2. Little Turtle.
3. Mud Turtle.
4. Beaver.
5. Porcupine.
6. Striped Turtle.
7. Highland Turtle, or Prairie Turtle.
The Mediator, Executive Power, and Umpire of the tribe was the Wolf Clan, which stood between the phratries, and bore a cousin relation to each.
All the clans of a phratry bore the relation of brothers to one another, and the clans of one phratry bore the relation of cousins to those of the other phratry.
Their marriage laws were fixed by this relationship. Anciently a man of the first phratry was compelled to marry a woman of the second phratry, and vice versa. This was because every man of a phratry was supposed to be the brother of every other man in it, and every woman in the phratry was supposed to be his sister. The law of marriage is now so modified that it applies only to the clans, a man of the Deer Clan being permitted to marry a woman of Bear, Snake, Hawk, or any other clan but his own. Indeed, even this modification has now almost disappeared. If a man of the Deer Clan married a woman of the Porcupine Clan, all of his children were of the Porcupine Clan, for the gens always follows the woman and never the man. The descent and distribution of property followed the same law; the son could inherit nothing from his father, for they were always of different clans. A man's property descended to his nearest kindred through his mother. The woman is always the head of the Wyandot family.
Five of the ancient clans of the Wyandots are extinct. They are as follows: (1) Mud Turtle; (2) Beaver; (3) Striped Turtle; (4) Highland, or Prairie Turtle; (5) Hawk.
Those still in existence are as follows: (1) Big Turtle; (2) Little Turtle; (3) Wolf; (4) Deer; (5) Bear; (6) Porcupine; (7) Snake.
The present government of the Wyandot tribe is based on this ancient division of the tribes. An extract from the Constitution may be of interest. It was adopted September 23, 1873:
It shall be the duty of the said Nation to elect their officers on the second Tuesday in July of each year. That said election shall be conducted in the following manner. Each Tribe (clan), consisting of the following Tribes: The Big and Little Turtle, Porcupine, Deer, Bear, and Snake, shall elect a chief; and then the Big and Little Turtle and Porcupine Tribes shall select one of their three chiefs as a candidate for Principal Chief. The Deer, Bear, and Snake Tribes shall also select one of their three chiefs as candidate for Principal Chief; and then at the general election to be held on the day above mentioned, the one receiving the highest number of votes cast shall be declared the Principal Chief; the other shall be declared the Second Chief. The above-named tribes shall on the above named election day elect one or more sheriffs.
The Wolf Tribe shall have the right to elect a chief whose duty shall be that of Mediator.
In case of misdemeanor on the part of any Chief, for the first offense the Council shall send the Mediator to warn the party; for the second offense the party offending shall be liable to removal by the Mediator, or Wolf and his Clan, from office.
The origin of these clans is hidden in the obscurity of great antiquity. They are of religious origin. We learn something of them from the Wyandot mythology, or folk-lore. The ancient Wyandots believed that they were descended from these animals, for whom their clans were named. The animals from which they were descended were different from the same species to-day. They were deities, zoological gods. The animals of the same species are descended from them. These animals were the creators of the universe. The Big Turtle made the Great Island, as North America was called, by the Wyandots, and he bears it on his back to this day. The Little Turtle made the sun, moon, and many of the stars. The Mud Turtle made a hole through the Great Island for the sun to pass back to the East through after setting at night, so he could arise upon a new day. While making this hole through the Great Island the Mud Turtle turned aside from her work long enough to fashion the future home of the Wyandots, their happy hunting grounds to which they go after death. The sun shines there at night while on his way back to the East. This land is called the land of the Little People, a race of pigmies created to assist the Wyandots. They live in it, and preserve the ancient customs, habits, beliefs, language and government of the Wyandots for their use after they leave this world by death. These Little People come and go through the "living rock," but the Wyandots must go to it by way of a great underground city where they were once hidden while the works of the world were being restored after destruction in a war between two brothers who were gods.
All Wyandot proper names had their foundation in this clan system. They were clan names. The unit of the Wyandot social and political systems was not the family nor the individual, but the clan. The child belonged to its clan first, to its parents afterwards. Each clan had its list of proper names, and this list was its exclusive property which no other clan could appropriate or use. They were necessarily clan names.
The customs and usages governing the formation of clan proper names demanded that they be derived from some part, habit, action or peculiarity of the animal from which the clan was supposed to be descended. Or they might be derived from some property, law, or peculiarity of the element in which such animal lived. Thus a proper name was always a distinctive badge of the clan bestowing it.
When death left unused any original clan proper name, the next child born into the clan, if of the sex to which the vacant name belonged, had such vacated name bestowed upon it. If no child was born, and a stranger was adopted, this name was given to such adopted person. This was the unchangeable law, and there was but one proviso or exception to it. When a child was born under some extraordinary circumstances, or peculiarity, or with some distinguishing mark or a stranger adopted with these, the council-women of the clan informed themselves of all the facts and devised a name in which all these facts were imbedded. This name was made to conform to the ancient law governing clan proper names if possible, but often this could not be done. These special names died with their owners, and were never perpetuated.
The parents were not permitted to name the child; the clan bestowed the name. Names were given but once a year, and always at the ancient anniversary of the Green Corn Feast. Anciently, formal adoptions could be made at no other time. The name was bestowed by the clan chief. He was a civil officer of both his clan and the tribe. At an appointed time in the ceremonies of the Green Corn Feast each clan chief took an assigned position, which in ancient times was the Order of Precedence and Encampment, and parents having children to be named filed before him in the order of the ages of the children to be named. The council-women stood by the clan chief, and announced to him the name of each child presented, for all clan proper names were made by the council-women. This he could do by simply announcing the name to the parents, or by taking the child in his arms and addressing it by the name selected for it.
The adoption of a stranger was into some family by consent, or at the instance of the principal woman of the family. It was not necessary that the adoption be made at the Green Corn Feast. The adoption was not considered complete, however, until it was ratified by the clan chief at the Green Corn Feast. This ratification might be accomplished in the simple ceremonial of being presented at this time to the clan chief by one of the Sheriffs. His clan name was bestowed upon him, and he was welcomed in a few well-chosen words, and the ceremony was complete. Or the adoption might be performed with as much display, ceremony and pomp as the tribal council might, from any cause, decree. The tribal council controlled in some degree the matter of adoptions. In ancient times, when many prisoners of war were brought in it determined how many should be tortured and how many adopted.
Lalemant says the original and true name of the Wyandots is Ouendat.
In history the Wyandots have been spoken of by the following names:
1. Tionnontates,
2. Etionontates,
3. Tuinontatek,
4. Dionondadies,
5. Khionontaterrhonons,
6. Petuneux or Nation du Petun (Tobacco).
They call themselves: -
1. Wehn'-duht, or
2. Wehn'-dooht.
They never accepted the name Huron, which is of French origin.
The Wyandots have been always considered the remnant of the Hurons That they were related to the people called Hurons by the French, there is no doubt. After having studied them carefully for almost twenty years, I am of the opinion that the Wyandots are more closely related to the Senecas than they were to the ancient Hurons.
Both myth and tradition of the Wyandots say they were "created" in the region between St. James's Bay and the coast of Labrador. All their traditions describe their ancient home as north of the mouth the St. Lawrence.
In their traditions of their migrations southward they say they came to the island where Montreal now stands. They took possession of the country along the north bank of the St. Lawrence from the Ottawa River to a large lake and river far below Quebec.
On the south side of the St. Lawrence lived the Senecas, so the Wyandot traditions recite. The Senecas claimed the island upon which the city of Montreal is built. The Senecas and Wyandots have always claimed a cousin relation with each other. They say that they have been neighbors from time immemorial. Their languages are almost the same, each being the dialect of an older common mother-tongue. They are nearly alike as are the Seneca and Mohawk dialects. The two tribes live side by side at this time, and each can speak the tongue of the other as well as it speaks its own.
When the Wyandots came to the St. Lawrence, and how long they remained there, cannot now be determined. Their traditions say that they were among those that met Cartier at Hochelaga in 1535. According to their traditions, Hochelaga was a Seneca town.
It has been the opinion of writers upon the subject that the Wyandots migrated from the St. Lawrence directly to the point where they were found by the French. Whatever the fact may be, their traditions tell a different story. Their route was up the St. Lawrence, which they crossed, and along the south shore of Lake Ontario. They held this course until they arrived at the Falls of Niagara, where they settled and remained for some years.
The Wyandots removed from the Falls of Niagara, the site now occupied by Toronto, Canada. Their removal from. Niagara was in consequence of the Iroquois coming into their historic seat in what is now New York. This settlement they called by their word which means "plenty," or "a land of plenty." They named it so because of the abundance of game and fish they found, and of the abundance of corn, beans, squashes and tobacco they raised. The present name of that city is only a slight change of the old Wyandot name, which was pronounced "To-run-to."
As the Iroquois pushed farther westward, the Wyandots became uneasy because of former wars with them and finally abandoned their country at Toronto and migrated northward. Here they came in contact with the Hurons, who tried to expel them, but were unable to do so. The French found them in alliance with the Hurons, but record that they had but recently been at war with that people. When the Jesuits went among the Hurons the Wyandots were a part of the Huron Confederacy. Their history from this point is well known.
If it turns out that there is any reliance to be placed in the traditions of the Wyandots, they were found in their historic seat about one hundred and five years from the time they were first seen by the French at Montreal in 1535. Their migration from the St. Lawrence, by way of the Niagara Falls and Toronto to the Blue Mountains on the shores of the Nottawassaga Bay, occurred after the French first came to Canada.
The Wyandots were involved in the general ruin wrought by the Iroquois.
The Wyandots came to Kansas from Upper Sandusky, Ohio, in the summer of 1843. They stopped about Westport, Mo., and some of them camped on the south and east side of the Kansas River north of the Shawnee line, the land being now in Kansas City, Kansas. By the terms of the treaty made at Upper Sandusky, March 17,1842, the Wyandots were given one hundred and forty-eight thousand acres of land, to be located in the Indian country which became Kansas. The lands there to be had did not suit them. Their reservation was located on the Neosho. They were far advanced toward civilization, and did not wish to live so far from a civilized community. They had attempted to purchase a strip of land seven miles wide by twenty-five miles long adjoining the State of Missouri from the Shawnee, but that tribe finally refused to sell. The Wyandots justly complained that they had given both the Shawnees and Delawares homes in Ohio, and now neither tribe really desired to sell them a home in the West. But the Delawares did, at length sell them thirty-nine sections in the fork of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, now the eastern part of Wyandotte County, for forty-eight thousand dollars. They moved on this tract in the winter of 1843-44.
The first Mission ever founded in the world by the Methodist Episcopal Church was among the Wyandots at Upper Sandusky. This mission was brought bodily to Kansas by the Wyandots. It is now the Washington Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, Kansas City, Kansas. The division in the Methodist Episcopal Church caused dissension in the Wyandot nation, and the Church South, in that Nation, organized at that time. This Church also is an active organization in Kansas City, Kansas, at this time. This author has in his collection of historical papers the records of the Sandusky Mission and the documents relating to the separation of the Church in Kansas.
By treaty concluded by the Wyandots with the United States at Washington, D. C., January 31, 1855, they dissolved their tribal relations and became citizens of the United States. They took their lands in severalty, and the entire reservation was surveyed and allotted to the members of the tribe as citizens. The titles to the land held in Wyandotte County are based on the U. S. patents to these allotments. The towns of Armstrong, Armourdale, Wyandotte, and old Kansas City, Kansas, were consolidated by act of the legislature into the present Kansas City, Kansas.
The unsettled times in Kansas prior to and during the Civil War worked hardship on many of the Wyandots. They lost their property and became very poor. By treaty made February 23, 1867, the Government provided a reservation of twenty thousand acres of land on the Neosho, in what is now Oklahoma, for these Wyandots. They immediately gathered there and resumed their tribal relations. Most of the Wyandot people are now to be found there.
A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans , written and compiled by William E. Connelley, transcribed by Carolyn Ward, 1998. http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1918ks/v1/ch10p9.html
