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Delaware Government
In 1682, the seat of the Delaware
government was at Shackamaxon, now Germantown, Pennsylvania. There Penn found them and made
his famous treaty with them. Although extremely warlike, they had
surrendered their sovereignty to the Iroquois about 1720. They were
pledged to make no war, and they were forbidden to sell land. All the
causes of this step were not known. Because of it the Iroquois claimed to
have made women of the Delaware. They freed themselves of this opprobrium
in the French and Indian War.
The steady increase of the whites drove the Delaware
from their ancient seat. They were crowded off the waters of the Delaware,
and settled on the Susquchanna. As early as 1742 they were to be found
about Wyoming. It was soon impossible for them to remain there, and they
went back of the mountains to the head waters of the Allegheny. They
slowly spread down this stream, living for some time on the Beaver. At
that time the Wyandot were holding the western country for their kindred,
the Iroquois. Seeing the Delaware hard pressed, the Wyandot tendered them
a home, and suggested that they seat themselves on the Tuscarawas River,
an upper branch of the Muskingum. They were later visited by the
Moravians, who established missions among them, chiefly those living on
the Tuscarawas. These missions were in a flourishing condition when the
Revolutionary War came on. That struggle put these Christian Indians in a
false position. They wished to remain on their farms and by their
churches. The heathen Indians about Upper Sandusky accused them of being
in the confidence of the whites of Western Pennsylvania. At the same time
the whites accused them of being in league with the heathen Indians. They
became an offense to both parties. Divisions in the tribe had already
appeared. White Eyes, the great chief, the friend of the Americans, was
gradually superseded by Hopocan, or Captain Pipe, as head chief. Pipe was
the head of the war faction, in the interest of the British
at Detroit. Through his influence the Christian Indians and their teachers
were forcibly removed to Upper Sandusky. Returning in the winter to gather
their corn, they were set upon by a force from Western Pennsylvania under
Captain Williamson. Nearly a hundred were murdered in cold blood after
capture and confinement in a cabin. This only provoked more frequent and
deadly Indian forays, to stop which, another force was raised in
Pennsylvania to invade the Indian country about Upper Sandusky. Colonel
William Crawford commanded this expedition, which met with disaster.
Crawford was captured, and Captain Pipe burned him at the stake.
The first treaty ever made
with an Indian tribe by the United States was concluded with the Delaware
at Fort Pitt, September 17, 1778. It was signed by Andrew Lewis, Thomas
Lewis, White Eyes, The Pipe, and John Kill Buck. It provided for the
formation of an Indian State with a representative in Congress.
The Delaware had part in all the wars against the
Western settlers. These wars were terminated by Wayne's victory. Prior to
this the Delaware had commenced to settle on the White River, in Indiana,
by permission of the Miami and Piankashaw. They continued their westward
migration, crossing the Mississippi on the invitation of the Spanish
Government of Louisiana. One Lorimer, who was afterwards commandant of the
post at St. Genevieve, induced the Delaware and Shawnees to accept the
offer of the Spaniards. There were Delaware about St. Louis before this,
however. In 1788 a band of them attacked residences on the outskirts of
that town. A Frenchman named Duchouquet was slain at Chouteau's Pond by a
band of Delaware in that year. Here is an incident in the life of the
Delaware band at Cape Girardeau:
The Delawares and Shawnees built several villages in
the neighborhood of Cape Girardeau; and, after the
establishment of the United States government, so sensible were they of
the good results of its working, that they determined to fashion a
government as near like it as their knowledge and circumstances admitted,
and resolved to adopt the habits of civilization. They gave up the chase,
buried the tomahawk, and devoted themselves for a little season to the
pursuits of agriculture. In their first criminal court, three men were
convicted of murder, and without any time for repentance they were taken
back of one of the villages, there tomahawked, their bodies burnt upon a
pile, and the ashes scattered to the winds.
It is stated in the treaty of November 7, 1825, with
the Shawnees, that the Delaware abandoned the Cape Girardeau reservation
in 1815. Most of these found their way to Texas by the year 1820. Some of
them wandered westward, and settled in Southwest Missouri. On the 3d of
October, 1818, those members of the tribe still residing on the White
River, in Indiana, made a treaty at St. Mary's, Ohio, ceding their lands
and agreeing to remove west of the Mississippi to a home to be provided
for them, but which was not described. Under the terms of this treaty, the
remnant of the Delawares settled on a reservation on the James Fork of the
White River. This tract embraced parts of the following Missouri counties:
Greene, Taney, Christian, Barry, McDonald, Newton, Jasper, and Lawrence.
They were followed there by the Peorias and Piankashaw, or portions of
these tribes, for in 1828, they had towns on the White River. That of the
Piankashaw was just above the present Forsythe, and a village some six
miles below contained both Piankashaw and Peorias. The Delaware were not
well pleased with the Ozark country, but the old members of the tribe with
whom this author has discussed the matter could never give any
satisfactory reason as to why they were displeased. Most of them said
there was plenty of game, but the country was too hilly. It was perhaps
because the Indian loves to roam and move from place to place.
September 24, 1829, there was
concluded at Council Camp on the James Fork of White River, between the
present towns of Springfield and Ozark, a supplementary article to the St.
Mary's treaty. By the terms of this supplementary article the Delaware
gave up their reservation in Missouri. In consideration of this cession
they were given a reservation in the fork of the Missouri and Kansas
rivers described as follows: “The country in the fork of the Kansas and
Missouri Rivers, extending up the Kansas River, to the Kansas Line, and up
the Missouri River to Camp Leavenworth, and thence by a line drawn
Westwardly, leaving a space ten miles wide, north of the Kansas boundary
line, for an outlet.”
The tribe moved to this reservation immediately, the
representatives sent out to make an examination of it endorsing their
approval on the treaty on the 19th of October at Council Camp, at the fork
of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. In 1830 many of the scattered Delaware
arrived, and by 1832, the tribe were almost all on this Kansas River
reservation. It was a magnificent tract of land, and many times larger
than the tribe required. Their settlements were made in what is now
Leavenworth County, and in the western part of Wyandotte County.
In their new home the Delaware came to rely to some
extent on the buffalo, to secure which they had been given the outlet
north of the Kansa lands. On their excursions into the buffalo country
they met the wild tribes of the Plains. These natives resented the
appearance in their ancient domain of the newcomers. They made war on the
Delaware hunters. In the fall of 1831, two Delaware and their wives were
encamped on the buffalo-plains and engaged in hunting. The camp was
attacked by the Pawnees, who killed the two men and one of the women. The
woman having the child was a little distance from the camp at the time,
and she escaped, with her child. There was a straggling camp of Delaware
at that time on the Arkansas, in the Creek country. On the 22d of October
Rev. Isaac McCoy saw the Delaware woman, who had escaped the Pawnee
massacre, at that village. She had carried her child from the upper waters
of the Republican, subsisting it and herself on wild grapes and berries.
She had been afraid to flee in the direction of her home toward the
Missouri, and to escape the Pawnees she had gone in a direction they least
expected her to take.
These persecutions the Delaware resolved to put an end
to. In 1832 Suwaunock or “Capt. Suwaunock,” as he signed the supplementary
treaty of 1829, assembled the Delaware warriors to make war on the Pawnees
for these and other murders. He led his force against the Republican
Pawnee village—the town where Pike had hauled down the Spanish flag and
raised the Stars and Stripes. He fell upon the Pawnee town and destroyed
it. Some of the Pawnee warriors were away on a buffalo hunt, but if they
had been present the result would have been the same. No Indians surpassed
the Delaware in courage and warlike spirit. They raided far into Mexico,
and one was present at the murder of Dr. Whitman, at the Mission near
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