A Nation of Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters Among the Delaware Indians 9780812201994

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Introduction: “We Are But a Women Nation”
Chapter One: The Power of Life: Gender and Organization in Lenape Society
Chapter Two: Living Traditions in Times of Turmoil: Meniolagomekah
Chapter Three: Powerful Women: Disruptive and Disorderly
Chapter Four: Mapping the Future: Women and Visions
Chapter 5: Metaphors and National Identity: Delawares-as-Women
Chapter 6: What the Hermit Saw: Change and Continuity in the History of Gender and Encounters
Abbreviations
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments

Citation preview

A Nation of Women

Early American Studies Series editors: Daniel K. Richter, Kathleen M. Brown, and David Waldstreicher Exploring neglected aspects of our colonial, revolutionary, and early national history and culture, Early American Studies reinterprets familiar themes and events in fresh ways. Interdisciplinary in character, and with a special emphasis on the period from about 1600 to 1850, the series is published in partnership with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

A Nation of Women Gender and Colonial Encounters Among the Delaware Indians

Gunlög Fur

University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia

Copyright © 2009 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN 978-0-8122-4182-2 Fur, Gunlög Maria. A nation of women : Delaware gender relations and colonial encounters / Gunlög Fur. p. cm. — (Early American studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8122-4182-2 (alk. paper) 1. Delaware women—Social conditions—17th century. 2. Delaware women—Social conditions—18th century. 3. Delaware Indians—History. 4. Delaware Indians—Social life and customs. 5. Sex role—Middle Atlantic States—History. 6. Middle Atlantic States—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. I. Title. E99.D2F87 2009 974.004'97345—dc22 2008051591

Contents

Preface

vii

Introduction: “We Are But a Women Nation”

1

One

The Power of Life: Gender and Organization in Lenape Society 15

Two

Living Traditions in Times of Turmoil: Meniolagomekah 51

Three

Powerful Women: Disruptive and Disorderly Women

Four

Mapping the Future: Women and Visions

Five

Metaphors and National Identity: Delawares-as-Women 160

Six

What the Hermit Saw: Change and Continuity in the History of Gender and Encounters 199 List of Abbreviations Notes

213

Index

243

Acknowledgments

211

249

127

101

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Preface

I did not set out to write a book about gender. In fact, I was not particularly interested in the topic at all. What did interest me was trying to understand as much as I possibly could about how Lenape Indians lived their lives around the time that they first encountered people from across the great sea and how that encounter altered their society and the world they knew. Therefore, I began mining archives and published primary sources for anything relating to the Lenapes (or Delawares, as they were subsequently known) written by English, Swedish, Dutch, German, or even French colonists. This is where I met a woman named Notike, a woman who more than anyone else came to change the direction of my research. She appears—so far as I know—in only three documents, and the circumstances of her emergence was a land dispute, ostensibly between Swedish and Dutch colonists concerning land along the west bank of the Delaware River. But her very appearance in these documents unveiled an equally important internal confrontation among Lenapes regarding control over and alienation of land. Clearing the brush surrounding Notike’s intervention in Swedish and Dutch colonial politics forced me to come to grips with issues of gender, and as I did so I discovered that Delaware history, as well as contact history, cannot be told intelligibly without reflecting on gender and its function in human societies. Thus, I stumbled on my subject by chance, or so I thought, caught by the nagging notion that I was observing a picture where one object stood out of place. The problem I had with the picture I was beholding was that it contained only men. Reading Swedish, Dutch, and English sources from the seventeenth century more or less convinced me that a friend of mine was correct when she commented that her people had thought that “the Swedes were a race of only men, as they had to do all the labor of planting themselves.” That the colonists were predominantly male was true of some colonial ventures, although Sweden did indeed encourage (or force) families to emigrate. However, looking at the same sources, the Native populations emerged as equally unbalanced. This of course was not true then or now, and the only reasonable explanations for the absence of women that I could

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Preface

find were based on feminist theories regarding the double marginalization of colonized women. As I entered the search for Notike’s story I uncovered more and more women. I became convinced that it was both possible and necessary to write them into history in order for me to be able to envision adequately Delaware experiences in the past. I found that this history was about relationships—relationships between and among women and men, Indians and whites, mortals and divine spirits. This book is my attempt at understanding these relationships. It is an offering to a people who once met with people from my country, fought with them, fed and clothed them, and created links to them, an offering that I hope will demonstrate the necessity of taking Delaware experiences seriously in the endeavor to uncover and interpret the complex web of interactions that led to the growth of the Middle Atlantic colonial world, as well as to the more or less forced removal of a coastal people to places such as Oklahoma and Ontario.

Introduction: “We Are But a Women Nation”

“We are but a women nation,” explained a young Delaware man in 1758 to a visiting delegation from the Pennsylvania colonial government, and presented three strings of white wampum signifying the peaceful intent of Minisink Delawares living north of the Delaware Water Gap. Ten years later a Moravian missionary expedition up the Beaver River in western Pennsylvania came upon a “Women’s Town,” inhabited primarily by Delaware women who had chosen not to marry. These two snapshots, of peaceful feminized men and independent Amazonian women, occur prominently among the depictions of Delaware Indians in their encounters with European colonists during the eighteenth century. Yet, to contemporaries the name Delaware might just as easily have conjured up the image of a murderous Indian brave in the form of Shingas the Terrible, whose name spread fear in frontier settlements during the Seven Years War. These contrasting representations of Delaware Indians from the colonial world of the mid-eighteenth century contain seemingly bewildering gender dimensions. Encounters in Northeastern North America between Europeans and Native Americans present an astonishing and challenging world of gender metaphors and practices, and the Delawares offer a multitude of examples. Few metaphors are more familiar yet mystifying than the one that describes the entire Delaware nation as women. Popularized in the writings of James Fenimore Cooper, the image of Delaware men made into women by their Iroquois overlords sparks both curiosity and discomfort. Many attempts have been made, throughout the centuries, to explain this seeming affront to a whole population of male Delawares. A worse insult than being called “woman” might have been hard to imagine for a white man, both in the eighteenth century and later. Perhaps that is why defenses for the bravery and virtue of the Delaware Nation became cloaked in evocative and emotional language. E. M. Ruttenber wrote: “Through the thick and gloom . . . through all the degradation and reproach which was heaped

2

Introduction

upon them as a ‘nation of women,’ there runs a thread of light revealing their former greatness . . . promising that their dead shall live again. Not in the eternal darkness which shuts in the Eries is that light lost, but from its prison house breaks in brilliancy, redeeming the past, and wringing from their ancient subjugators, shivering under adverse fortune, the greeting— Brothers.” In Ruttenber’s interpretation the Delawares signaled their redemption through the use of the greeting “Brothers.” By clarifying that they were relating to both friends and foes as men they cleared themselves of the “thick and gloom” of “degradation” inherent in the appellation “women.” To Ruttenber the gendered language of the encounter recounted above could not spell anything but reproachful subjugation. He was not alone in his sentiment. For over two hundred years scholars have faced the conundrum of why it came to pass that the Delawares for more than a century were known in diplomatic contexts as “women.”1 Who were these people who were collectively referred to as women? And, equally intriguing, what were the roles and responsibilities of women among these people? This book will address these questions, the historical conditions that made such a gendered designation possible, and its significance. I examine concepts and practices concerning the meaning of female and male in Lenape—or Delaware—society in its meeting with European colonization in various forms, from the first Dutch and Swedish trading colonies to the establishment of Quaker Pennsylvania and pietistic Moravian missions. My purpose is to investigate changes and continuity in women’s and men’s roles, identifications, and authority in Lenape culture. I focus on gender, how it is brought into play in metaphors and what these have to say about perceptions of gender; its concrete material realities; its links to power in daily life and politics; and how gender and kinship played out in the realm of the metaphysical, in religion and ritual. Thus, this book is a history both of the significance of gender in Lenape/Delaware encounters with Europeans, and of women in these encounters. Human beings create ideas about gender as one of the tools to make sense of their world, and gender is one of the most persistent means by which human beings are sorted and categorized. The ways these divisions are made reveal much about what roles and choices are available to individuals in a given society. I want to demonstrate how gender infi ltrated the material structure of society as an organizing principle for subsistence activities, division of labor and exchange, and dispersion of power. Gender is a material condition, in terms of both physical bodies and what people do. But gender is also a process of thought and belief, and as such it fi nds sanc-

“We Are But a Women Nation”

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tion in the spiritual realm. Neither a social history approach nor a history of ideas and discourses alone suffices to explain the role of gender in cultural encounters. I link material processes to spiritual and ideological expressions to discover the role gender played in Delaware encounters with Europeans and in the understanding of what it meant to become Delaware. The themes that have structured this study are (1) concrete relations of production and distribution, (2) religious and spiritual responsibilities and beliefs, and (3) metaphors and discourse. Taken alone, any one of these themes cannot reveal sufficiently how gender worked in colonial encounters. For example, a focus on material organization would miss the fundamental significance of gender in the spiritual realm, just as a focus on metaphorical language in diplomatic exchanges would fail to situate these metaphors in concrete historical and material contexts. Gender, I argue, is particularly apt for reflecting a space so shaped by cultural encounters as eastern North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many have tried to envision this bewildering landscape full of crisscrossing lines signifying encounters, confrontations, and adaptations. No rules seemed unchallenged, no meanings left unaltered, no practices unthreatened. Domination and authority became as much a matter of posture as of material advantages or force. This does not deny that there were inequalities and asymmetries that powerfully altered human conditions for Indian peoples, but the uncertainties of encounters set its mark on all and influenced cultural adjustments of both Indians and whites. Representations and practices of gender concern the most fundamental relationships in human societies and shape understandings of kinship, hierarchies, and nationhood, as well as relationships to property and power. It is not surprising that cultural understandings regarding gender clashed and aligned as peoples fought for place and identity in this unpredictable new world.2 The focus on Lenape/Delaware interactions with Europeans provides a specific example of relations with far-ranging impact, as it illuminates both general concerns relating to theories of gender and specific issues of Indian history in the colonial period. Research concerning women’s positions among indigenous peoples challenges theories about the universal subordination of women. Similarly, intercultural research on sexuality and gender demonstrates fascinating variations in perceptions of sexual and gender identities. Previous studies have amply clarified how historians need to treat with care the one-sided sources at our disposal, in particular when it comes to the patriarchal perspectives and limitations expressed in them. This often accounts for the invisibility of women in the sources (as well as

4

Introduction

the invisibility of a majority of men!). A body of research now exists that reveals the participation of women in such varied occupations as food production, manufacturing of clothing and tools, mining, healing, ceremonial obligations, and so on. This is just as would be expected of any human society where individuals worked together and sometimes in opposition to one another to ensure continued survival; nonetheless, it has taken the emergence of feminist scholarship to bring this kind of knowledge to the fore. These accounts comprise a significant foundation for another theoretical issue: what do the roles and responsibilities of different genders mean for an understanding of the whole of Native American communities and their social and individual experiences, and how did these understandings and practices change in encounters with white people? The study of gender as I use it here concerns what people thought about biology and social roles as well as what they actually did and how they employed gendered metaphors to explain their social interactions. Individuals of varying genders, biological sexes, ages, and experiences participated in all these areas, and in order to understand the significance of gender it is vital to pay as much attention to what is excluded and unseen, as to what is evident and clearly present.3 This is also a history of power and authority in Lenape society as men and women worked, fought, danced, and prayed to maintain their world as they knew it, or to change their practices and beliefs to fit new circumstances. Relationships of power influenced their reactions to, and interactions with other Native peoples in the region and with various European colonizing groups. However, there are other aspects of power relations that influence this study, such as power over the words recorded in the sources upon which the historian relies. Scribes, chroniclers, diary and letter writers, missionaries, and other writers have held enormous power over the content and extent of the information left for posterity. They chose what to include and what to leave out, and they were influenced by their own biases, limitations (in linguistic knowledge, for example), and expectations in their observations of the people and situations they encountered. Likewise, the audience for whom they wrote had an impact on the way they fashioned their accounts. The historian’s task is always to enter into a dialogue with the sources and ask questions of where, why, and to whom, to go beyond mere words on paper (or in the microphone) and to understand and uncover the structures of power and desire that shaped them. Historians in the performance of their craft also exercise power over the past. This is particularly apparent when one delves into issues of gender. Men—white European males in particular—have written almost all the

“We Are But a Women Nation”

5

sources I use in this study, and men have produced most of the histories from which I have learned and been inspired or reacted against. In this respect, Native American histories are no different from other fields of historic inquiry. Gender as an analytical device and a field of inquiry has also influenced this research to the extent that we now know considerably more than we used to about women’s roles and responsibilities in various Native American contexts. Yet much recent scholarship on the colonial period still paints images of landscapes primarily inhabited by men. This book seeks to counter that image, not by offering a new master narrative to superimpose on old ones, but by using gender analysis as the starting point, the beam of light with which to illuminate sources and previous scholarship in order to present competing images that may complicate the stories—and force new questions to be asked and answered.4 I am aware that to call a people “women,” as I do in the title of this book, can be misunderstood as derogatory. To refer to males as “women” has been a common way throughout human history to shame them into performance or action. For centuries, ideas about male contamination by female qualities have haunted perceptions of proper masculine behavior in American society. At the heart of feminist analysis of culture is the fact that keeping the male category pure of any female contamination involves placing all things feminine in a subordinate relationship to the masculine. My contention in this book is that among the various groups that made up the Delaware Nation, the understanding of categories of women and men differed from these hierarchical notions of gender, and that to act the role of a woman involved responsibilities and prerogatives that lent honor to an individual in equal measure to that of the role of a man. This gender analysis of Delaware history thus leads to challenging notions of what it meant to be male and female in a society. History teaches us that human societies are varied and that human possibilities of cultural organization and categorization are multiple.5 At the time of historic contact between Europe and America, a number of related bands of people who sometimes referred to themselves as Lenape (meaning “human beings”) lived on land they identified as Lenapehoking (land, or house, of the people), an area encompassing present-day New Jersey and northern Delaware, southeastern Pennsylvania between the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers, and southeastern New York west of the Hudson River. The first white settlers transcribed their name as Renappi or simply called them River Indians. The Lenapes who lived along the Delaware River south of the Raritan River spoke Unami and Unalachtigo—dialects of an

6

Introduction

eastern Algonkian language. Together with their linguistic and cultural relatives in the upper Delaware Valley, the Munsees, Lenapes in the early decades of the eighteenth century became known as Delawares. Both terms are still in use today; Lenape more often designates culture and language, while Delaware is used to refer to political entities. I have elected to use Lenape when I discuss these people’s initial contacts with Europeans, and when I refer to specific issues of culture and language, but employ Delaware as they are increasingly identified as members of a Delaware nation or polity over the course of the eighteenth century. When identified so in the sources, I also differentiate between Delawares and Munsees. My reason for this somewhat complicated usage is that nowhere in the Swedish and Dutch sources does the term “Delaware” appear. Swedes speak of “wild people of this River,” “our wild people,” or “Renappi.” The last term clearly derives from the Indians themselves and was how they chose to present themselves to the Swedes. To give preference to the name Delaware is, in my opinion, an anachronistic favoritism toward the English appellation, suggesting an English dominance in the region that did not become a reality until the early eighteenth century.6 Dutchmen, Swedes, Germans, Englishmen, and Scotsmen all came to different parts of the Delaware and Hudson Rivers and tributaries in the seventeenth century. Their attempts at describing and understanding the Lenapes derived both from necessity and curiosity, and similar needs and emotions must have enveloped the people who watched these men from the banks of the rivers. Colored as they were by their expectations of what the new land would hold, the male colonists’ words are often difficult to decipher and offer but halting glimpses concerning societal structures, behaviors, and beliefs of the people they encountered. Yet it is my purpose here to try to piece together a pattern of gendered perceptions and behaviors that offers an interpretational scheme for the conflict and coexistence that followed upon those fateful crossings of the Atlantic, and underlay the construction of the Delawares-as-women. Lenape people, identified as a number of autonomous political groups and divided linguistically into northern (Munsee and Unalachtigo) and southern (Unami) dialects, lived in villages along the Delaware and Hudson Rivers and their freshwater tributaries, moving seasonally between fields, forests, and shores for planting, hunting and gathering, and fishing. People preferred the inland locations, since they were less subject to harsh weather conditions, and fresh water and wetlands attracted an abundance of birds and animals, providing easy prey for human hunters. Fish entered the brooks

“We Are But a Women Nation”

7

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Map 1. Lenape homelands in the region of the Delaware River in the seventeenth century. The approximate location of Lenape towns follow Peter Lindeström’s 1654 map. After Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 B.C.A.D. 2000 (Stanhope, N.J.: Lenape Books, 2000), 2.

at spawning time, and the fertile soils served well for planting. Yet settlement distribution was not just a result of geographical and climatological considerations. Lenapes were repeatedly forced to relocate due to warfare and depredations in the region. One of the earliest European visitors to the Delaware River, English skipper Thomas Yong, reported meeting destitute Lenapes in 1632, fleeing from Susquehannock attacks on their villages and food storages. By that time a greater part of the population appears to have moved to the east bank of the river, away from war, but only a few years later

8

Introduction

the west bank was again settled and inhabited. Conflict with the Susquehannocks, an Iroquoian-speaking people living in fortified towns along the Susquehanna River, was most likely a consequence of strategies to achieve access to European trade farther south. This indicates that contact with Europeans had an impact on Lenape ways of life prior to any permanent white settlements in the region.7 Lenapes today keep in remembrance the knowledge that their ancestors were among the first to greet European settlers on their soil. Oral interviews with Lenape elders emphasize the long history of relationships and interactions with white people. They first met with Dutch and Swedish colonists along the shores of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware, they signed the first treaties of land transfers, and they forged the first chain of friendship with William Penn in what was to become the founding of Pennsylvania. All the other Algonkian-speaking nations in the Northeast called them “grandfathers,” and during the eighteenth century they referred to themselves and were hailed as “women” by Iroquois and English neighbors. Yet in spite of this, Lenape experiences have rarely been explored in depth in scholarly literature on colonial encounters or in studies of gender.8

Building a Story The empirical basis for this study derives from a variety of sources that range from Swedish colonial records, such as governors’ reports, travel accounts, pictures, and letters, to Pennsylvania colonial material and records and Moravian missionary letters, diaries, and accounts. These Moravian sources have proved particularly useful. I am grateful to have encountered them and hold them in great respect while I recognize how complicated the Moravians’ relationships to Delawares turned out to be. However, an ethnohistorical approach to intercultural studies involves the use of findings in fields other than history, in addition to a plethora of written and oral source materials. Although written colonial sources form the bulk of the material used here, they are combined with oral material from twentiethcentury Oklahoma Delawares, such as taped or transcribed interviews, and with studies of Lenape culture and language in anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics. Human collectives try to make sense of their conditions in the world— or find them senseless. However, these thoughts and practices are not al-

“We Are But a Women Nation”

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ways conscious, and that is where the significance of encounters between cultures plays an important part. Eric Wolf suggests that “an analytic history could not be developed out of the study of a single culture or nation” since “human populations construct their cultures in interaction with one another, and not in isolation.” Precisely during encounters cultures become most visible—to the people practicing them as well as to historians looking back and trying to construct meanings from records of past lives. In fact, during encounters (imagined or real), human societies coalesce and construct themselves as separate and identifiable cultural entities. This is the reason for electing to study the time period in question here—from the mid-seventeenth century when Lenape people first encountered Europeans of Dutch and Swedish origin, until the end of the eighteenth century when the mixture of immigrants formed an independent United States.9 I understand both culture and identity as malleable and evolving, and, though not exactly invented—the term suggests too much premeditation— both take on new shapes through human individual and collective action in encounters with others. Encounters occur on many levels and often aggravate or place in contrast the divided interpretations held by members of one and the same culture. Robert Grumet nicely elaborates this point when he writes that “all encounters between strangers move ideas, people, and things across cultural divides. The meanings of things and words change as they pass from one person or place to another.” This results in uncertainties that make contact “a volatile phenomenon whose causes and consequences are neither predictable nor controllable.” Sometimes societies alter completely, while at other junctures “contact seems merely to reaffirm people’s most cherished notions of themselves and their place in the world.” In North America, women were pivotal to bridging these divides, and gender served as a key for translating strange ideas and cherished notions.10 In these encounters anomalies serve as windows into the workings of a culture by illuminating contrasts, unexpected appearances, and marginal comments. In assembling the sources, I have not primarily set out to gather every detail about female Indians. Rather, I have begun with a set of anomalies I encountered in the European-produced sources and have sought to create a context and explanation for them. The anomalies then have guided the direction of my research. My conclusions thus take into account facts that previous studies have simply chosen to ignore as “noise in the data.” Instead of starting with general descriptions and then fi nding innumerable examples that put the general into question, I view anomalies in the source

10

Introduction

material as that which reveals underlying structures. My initial concern with gender emanated from observances of these anomalies—such as when a woman appeared at a totally unexpected place and time. The continued search for sources illuminating women’s as well as men’s participation in Delaware life led me to the archival material left by Moravian missionaries. Missionaries, by the very nature of their task, cannot limit their interest to contacts with male members of a society, and thus women are usually present in their sources. I found women actively participating in arguments about the acceptance or not of a new creed, and acting in various ways to ensure further contact or to break it off. Women were agents of both acceptance and rejection of the missionary efforts, as well as of development and renewal of traditional forms of spirituality. In short, if women are remarkably absent in a diplomatic context (or only present in the shape of nameless shadows: “sundry women and children”) they are very much a presence in all missionization contacts with Europeans.11 In spite of the seeming emphasis on culture and cultural interpretation, this study does not focus solely on issues of ideology and perceptions. I seek to combine an emphasis on production, material conditions, and the practices of women and men as they labor to produce the necessities of life with the perceptions they express and the discourse they use in describing their world. I hope that by contrasting these approaches I may present an interpretation of Delaware interactions with European and Indian neighbors that sheds light on the complex nature of gendered practices and understandings. The book opens with a chapter on material conditions and colonial encounters from the middle of the seventeenth century until the beginning decades of the eighteenth. It discusses the significance of food and land for power, authority, and hierarchy in Lenape society and the responsibilities and restrictions it placed on humans of different sexes. Lenapes were not necessarily different from their Indian neighbors, but their specific location on the shores of the Delaware River meant that they encountered relatively small European colonies. The colonists’ need, coupled with the Lenapes’ inability to profit from the fur trade that embroiled other Indian nations in struggles for dominance, prompted Lenapes to develop certain strategies for interactions with strangers. Their approach included a focus on preserving peaceful relations by making kin out of strangers, which had important gender implications. For people in the early modern period, whether Indians or Europeans, the connection between gender and power had a significant spiritual dimension. Spirit power and guidance were of utmost importance

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11

for a person’s position in Lenape society, and could be held by both men and women. This individual spiritual experience existed in relation to collective ritual responsibilities following specific lineages and families. In Chapter 2 we meet the population of the small Delaware town of Meniolagomekah, which lay along a riverbank nestled into the western slope of Blue Mountain. Most written sources present only unconnected fragments of Lenape experiences, and for the most part, daily life in a village remains elusive. Fortunately Moravians, as part of their missionary strategy, wrote diaries from which we may glean something of the daily activities, subsistence strategies, requests, and desires of Indians who inhabited the villages. For almost two years during the 1750s, missionaries who had been invited to share life in Meniolagomekah recorded conditions and interactions in the village. Meniolagomekah existed on the cusp of change, and soon the village would disperse as white Pennsylvanians expropriated their land. The people knew they lived under the threat of eviction, and their actions reflect both continuities in terms of subsistence practices, leadership functions, kin group alliances, and the need to grapple with the challenges of a new faith as violence, disease, and removal threatened their existence. The decisive role of women in all interactions involving Delawares caused considerable colonial anxiety. Chapter 3 discusses how Indian women were construed as disruptive in their authoritative behavior, particularly in matters of sexuality and marriage. Even Moravian missionaries, who themselves allowed women to hold important positions in their towns and in the work to convert heathens, found Delaware women’s power problematic and deemed the ways Delawares gendered their society a consequence of the influence of evil. This perception is studied through a focus on ideas and expressions concerning Satan’s manipulations in the human world. One consequence of the fear Moravians felt for the devil’s influence on women was that many girls and women were expelled from the Christian towns for disorderly or wanton behavior. However, it was precisely the power women wielded that underlay the success of the missions. Women’s influence on matters of ritual, marriage and sexuality, children’s welfare and health, visions, and rejuvenation made them primary agents in relationship to missions and in indigenous spiritual renewal. Chapter 4 shows how Delaware women over the course of the eighteenth century strengthened their role in the Indian community through their contacts with the missionaries, in spite of the fact that the Christians insisted on establishing patriarchal and hierarchical social relationships. Women as a category of persons became increasingly connected to a

12

Introduction

domestic sphere, but one defined by Delawares themselves. In relation to the supernatural, an almost exact gender complementarity was maintained and even strengthened. These religious and spiritual conditions can be seen as a key to the interpretation both of adjustment and conversion as a response to Christian missions and of the opposition to colonial pressures and missionization. Women’s actions and influence become apparent both in the Moravian Christian villages and through the appearance of visionaries calling for religious renewal based on traditional Lenape concepts. Lenape women participated in, interacted with, and rejected white missionary endeavors, and their choices and actions express various strategies to ensure the survival of their families and continuation of Lenape life. Chapter 5 turns to the metaphor of Delawares-as-women—now hopefully with the background to discuss in detail how Delawares themselves used this concept, how it changed over the course of the eighteenth century and developed into a national identity. This development led away from a physical presence of female-gendered persons in positions of political influence to an emphasis on metaphorical gender that focused on the performance of male-gendered persons. Women ceased to play a direct part in political life and diplomatic interactions while gender rhetoric became prominent. Indian as well as white men increasingly used both gendered and sexualized terms to talk about themselves and others, and to describe proper behaviors when they negotiated and debated conflicts and relationships in the contentious and wartorn decades around the middle of the century. Scholars have argued that Indians and Europeans shared an understanding of men as society’s natural leaders, which led to this gendering of political power. In this chapter I suggest that this was not an uncontested notion. While women and women’s responsibilities form the bulk of the investigation, this chapter focuses on men and masculinity. The final chapter considers changes and continuities in the meaning and practices of gender among Lenape/Delaware people from the middle of the seventeenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century. These developments are placed in a context of surrounding Indian nations as well as the concerns of the emerging American republic. The implication of this study is that gender is at the core of any understanding of colonial encounters and this becomes apparent both in treaties and diplomacy and through attention to households and family life. To capture this, gender must not be reduced to either a set of sexed bodies or to a disembodied discourse; rather, the approaches need to be combined. This book follows a number of different paths to arrive at conclusions

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regarding the experiences of Delaware women and men as they grappled with their new world. Thus, do not expect a straightforward narrative tale; instead, follow me as I examine the various ways in which gender played a part in the construction of Lenape culture and life ways and how colonial encounters revealed and challenged these patterns. The significance of these encounters go far beyond the Delaware villages and reveals the overarching importance of gender in the construction of the new American nation.

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Chapter One

The Power of Life: Gender and Organization in Lenape Society

In 1624, in perhaps the earliest European account of encounters with Lenapes, Nicolaes van Wassenaer related with awe that the people followed closely the movements of the celestial bodies. The fi rst full moon following the end of winter occasioned special celebration. After that, “the women, who in that land provide the food, as respects both planting and gathering, begin to make preparations, and carry their seed into the field.” A few years later another Dutchman, David de Vries, traveled up the Delaware River to trade. His arrival followed a disastrous Indian attack on the Dutch settlement of Swanendael, in which all settlers had been killed, and it coincided with a period of conflict between Lenapes and Susquehannocks. As the vessel neared a small tributary to the river a woman approached them and “cautioned us not to go entirely into the kill, as she knew that they intended to make an attack on us.” Some months later, when de Vries’s company became stuck in the ice, lacked food, and lived in fear of Indians, they saw a single canoe “in which sat an old Indian with a squaw, who brought with them some maize and beans, of which we bought a quantity.” From the start, Lenape women as well as men met with European colonists, traded with them, and came to their aid.1 First encounters were marked by physical necessities. Without Indian maize, beans, and meat early colonists would have perished. Establishing a foothold on the shores of the Delaware River, a requirement for successful trade, meant that Europeans had to negotiate with Lenapes for land. Lenape men and women grappled with the challenge of these new arrivals, and their basic need for land and nourishment contained gender dimensions that would have a lasting impact on Lenape societies and future encounters with colonists. Managing these challenges meant that practices as well as perceptions had to change, with profound consequences for Lenapes and their descendants. Upon what foundations were Lenape power, authority, and hierarchy based? How did Lenape material practices create different

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responsibilities and restrictions on each sex? How did these transform during contact with Europeans? This chapter follows the Lenapes in their contacts with white colonization up until the early eighteenth century when a majority of the people had left the Delaware riverside and moved farther west into Pennsylvania and Ohio, attempting to evade the ever-increasing onslaught of white settlement.

The Importance of Food Food and land formed two fundamental material conditions of first encounters between Indians and whites. Food provision and stewardship over land involved both men and women in Lenape society. Women held the overall responsibility for planting and caring for the maize, the cornerstone of the Lenape food economy. Corn as staple of the Lenape diet, along with other vegetables such as beans, squashes, melons, and peas, is described generously in colonial sources. “The food supplies are various. The principal one is maize, which is their corn. . . . They pound it in a hollow tree. . . . They make flat cakes of the meal mixed with water . . . and bake them in ashes, first wrapping a vine-leaf or maize-leaf around them. When they are sufficiently baked in ashes, they make good palatable bread. The Indians also make use of French beans of different colors, which they plant among their maize.”2 Women labored together in work teams, organized by the most influential women of the lineages, planting and caring for corn and other vegetables grown on village plots. They hailed the first full moon at the end of “the time when the frogs begin to croak” (late February) as the sign that planting should commence. They then prepared the seeds, broke up earth in fields that men had helped clear, and planted kernels of corn, 5–7 grains in each hill. Seeds were placed three or four feet apart to allow room for thorough weeding. In mid-May when plants had grown to two or three feet high, women planted beans in the hills to allow them to crawl up the corn stalks. In addition squash and melons were cultivated, as well as tobacco. Children and old men stayed around the fields much of the time to assist with weeding and to fend off rats and other marauders. Corn came in several varieties and colors. Peter Lindeström, a Swedish fortification engineer who spent two years in the New Sweden colony in 1654–55, mentioned seeing white, red, blue, pale white, brown, yellow, and spotted corn.3 Women’s responsibility for growing crops necessitated knowledge con-

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cerning the seasons and their changes, and they knew them through regular variations in the skies. “The women there are the most skilful star-gazers; there is scarcely one of them but can name all the stars; their rising, setting; the position of the Arctos, that is the Wain, is as well known to them as to us, and they name them by other names,” reported Wassenaer. That women possessed this expertise impressed white visitors who saw astronomy and astrology as linked skills belonging to a select few men often associated with the courts. Perhaps this is why Wassenaer qualified his statement by adding that the “science of foretelling or interpreting events is altogether undeveloped and unknown to them.” This, however, was a vast misrepresentation, as Lenapes paid great heed to signs and dreams that could offer insights into coming events and uncover hidden aspects of the present. In fact, the knowledge of the constellation of stars and their emergence on the sky imparted significant information concerning frost-free periods that were absolutely vital for the success of farming. This undertaking was embedded in myth, ceremonies, and games through which people affirmed their relationship to their environment, and taught and learned necessary skills. And it was a knowledge to which women in particular were privy.4 While women prepared the gardens for the new growing season men made ready for the fish to return up the rivers. Lenape people lived close to water and fashioned dugout canoes for transportation, which was far easier on rivers and streams than on land. Sometimes whales swam into the Delaware River and eager fishermen constructed catamarans from two canoes, furnished them with sails made of hemp, and sailed after the large mammals. Far more common and reliable, however, were the teeming multitudes of shad, salmon, and trout running up the rivers to spawn, as well as haddock, sturgeon, pike, and perch, which were caught in drag nets or weirs throughout the spring and summer.5 In the beginning of the summer women left their fields in the care of the old people and joined the men at the coast for a season of collecting sea foods such as clams, crabs, and oysters. Summer was also a time for gathering herbs and roots, and picking berries, wild fruit, and nuts of various kinds. Groundnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, wild grapes, blueberries, and wild turnips were important elements of the diet. Amid all this work, summer was a season for visiting, trading, and feasting, a time that gathered people from many villages. Toward its end came the time for harvest. Corn, beans, pumpkins, and squashes were dried, cooked, or pounded and saved in storage pits, lined with mats, to be used during the winter or for trade. Lindeström commented that the Indians had food in abundance and one

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Swede who grew up in Pennsylvania in the early years of the eighteenth century described Indian corn as superior in abundance; from one barrel of seed corn one could harvest as much as 400–600 barrels. Other calculations suggest that each woman may have obtained as much as forty to sixty bushels of corn, providing her family with 65 percent or more of their entire caloric intake. No wonder Indians showed no inclination to copy European agricultural practices, “which require too much labour and care to please them,” while yielding less.6 When crops had been tended to, both men and women busied themselves with the fall hunt. Hunting was primarily men’s responsibility and some of them, particularly younger men, spent a large part of the summer hunting as well. In October, women and children followed on deer hunts to return again to the village in midwinter, while men stayed out in small hunting parties throughout the winter. The white-tailed deer was a most useful game animal. From its hide Lenape women manufactured clothing, and antlers and bones were fashioned into tools, while sinews served as thread and guts boiled down to produce glue. Deer was far from the only meat available. Lenapes also hunted a number of other fur-bearing animals such as wolves, raccoons, fishers, weasels, skunks, otters, porcupines, and squirrels. Bears provided winter robes and cooking grease, while beavers yielded grease and their tails were considered delicacies. At least once yearly, entire villages cooperated in hunting. People spread out in a large circle and pulled up dry grass in the section assigned to each of them, thus creating a ring of bare earth. Then fire was set to the undergrowth within the circumference and burned toward the middle. Hunters followed the fire and killed animals caught in the flaming circle.7 Generally, but not exclusively, work was divided along gender lines. In this, as in their subsistence pattern on the whole, Lenapes did not differ markedly from their neighbors to the north and south. Chores considered as female consisted primarily of activities associated with vegetable foods, and with the house and child care. Apart from tending gardens women cooked, baked, gathered foodstuffs, prepared and sewed skins, spun threads from hemp, made mats, ropes, hats, and baskets. Agricultural implements consisted of shorthandled hoes, fashioned with blades of wood, stone, or bone. Hollowed out pieces of wood, gourds, shell, bark, and tortoiseshell were used for containers and other utensils, and women molded pottery vessels with a round or conical bottom to use in cooking and storage. When a family moved, women carried the baggage, causing European men to describe what they saw as outright exploitation. Men needed to be free to defend the

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village against attacks, but their primary work was to provide game through hunting, fishing, and fowling. When spending time in the villages men were in charge of making or obtaining axes, adzes, hoes, weapons, bowls, and boats, and to help clearing the fields. Men’s weapons consisted of bows and arrows, war clubs, spears, and shields, and time had to be put into their skillful use.8 While this division of labor was by no means unusual in the coastal Atlantic region, it is important to emphasize that even though responsibility chiefly lay with one gender, much subsistence labor was carried out communally in family or village groups. Children learned tasks by imitation, but when very young both boys and girls followed their mothers. In old age the distinction between gender-specific tasks blurred and old men could help in the fields or fashion wooden bowls and ladles. At times male and female work complemented each other in a very direct way, such as when women and old men spun thread from hemp, which other men knitted into fishnets, or men cleared the forest so that women could plant their corn. While gender complementarity best describes this division of work, the categories were not absolute and both men and women could perform tasks that were the responsibility of the other gender. For instance, women sometimes hunted (particularly small game) and fished, and men helped in the fields. Gathering clams and oysters, and building lodges were also communal labors in which both men and women participated. In fact, it is possible that strict gender differentiation regarding chores is more the result of European expectations and reporting than the rigid nature of actual practice. Nevertheless, gender-specific obligations, such as women’s labor in the fields and men’s hunting in winter, demanded much time and women and men thus spent considerable parts of the year in different locations in their toil to provide for the village.9 Who produces the foodstuff may be a poor indicator of the status or influence of women and men in a society. Yet when almost all individuals are involved in subsistence work it is not insignificant who does what. Scholars have suggested that control over distribution and over the ceremonial and spiritual obligations influencing the success of productive labor is significant in determining the influence of groups or individuals in a society. Represented by one or several individuals of leading rank sometimes referred to by Europeans as “matrons” or “queens,” women seem to have controlled, or been involved in, all food distribution, not only that concerning corn and vegetables, but also the meat and fish men provided. Indeed, when Peter Lindeström described the household of the sachem he used precisely that

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word: “their sackiman or colonel he must take himself a wife, not for the reason that he intends to sire children with her alone, but since his subordinate regiment and household exists like in a family. This his wife she must be in charge of his whole house like a matron.”10 Women were obliged to provide food for visitors and for hunting and war parties. Early sources frequently noted how women served food and taught colonists how to prepare it. English arrivals in Maryland, just south of Lenapehoking, brought corn with them that they had bought in Barbados, but apparently they did not know how to cook it. “The Indian women seeing their servants to bee unacquainted with the manner of dressing it, would make bread thereof for them, and teach them how to doe the like.” Women grew, prepared, and distributed food for their people as well as for visitors. Jasper Danckaerts described being guided to the house of a Lenape sachem where “they immediately offered us some boiled beans in a calabash. . . . It was the queen who did this, who was dressed more than the others. She gave us also a piece of their bread, that is, pounded maize kneaded into a cake and baked under the ashes. . . . We presented fish-hooks to several of them, but especially to the queen who had entertained us.”11 These tasks translated into influence over tribal organization. Feeding and feasting brought people together and “set the stage” for negotiations and arbitration. This role as food producer and distributor also had paramount spiritual connotations: performing the rituals required to ensure a bountiful harvest, and praying over the preparation of healing plants. Twentiethcentury informants have stated that both men and women had the power to heal with herbs, but that it was more common among women. This was likely the case during the seventeenth century. Colonists who mention the extensive Indian knowledge of healing plants and their applications usually offered a female healer as an example. A Swedish vicar, Andreas Hesselius, even learned the name of the woman, Chicalicka Nanni Kettelev, who saved the life of his son with her medicine.12 How should we understand this special link that connected women with cultivation, provisioning of food, and healing herbs—a relationship found in references to the mythological Corn Mother, to maize as the “wife of the Indian,” and “squaw corn” as ceremonial food? Several origin myths connect women with corn and with the beginning and preservation of life. In a seventeenth-century account, Adriaen van der Donck described how the earth was created through a woman or goddess who descended from heaven, suckled life into all animals and human beings and then returned to heaven. Thomas Campanius Holm wrote an account of early Pennsylvania

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based on notes left to him by his grandfather, Johan Campanius, who had been the first pastor to the Swedish colony along the Delaware River. He also recounted a creation story with a woman as a central character. A woman descended from heaven and landed on the back of a turtle. She then bore two sons who could not get along. One son returned to heaven and from there allowed his anger to be heard over the head of his brother as thunder. Later, the woman gave birth to another child, this time a daughter, from whom the people of this land descended. However, there is also a story told by Jasper, a Lenape man, to Jasper Danckaerts in the 1680s. In it the earth grew on the back of a turtle with a tree in the middle, and from this tree sprouted the first man and woman. The link between women and the origin and preservation of life is thus tenuous, but bears out in later accounts and seems to be the basis for the connection between women and peacemaking. As women grew the corn that sustained the people, they also held a responsibility for initiating the peaceful relations that made horticultural endeavors possible.13 Spiritual, diplomatic, and material concerns influenced the roles of individuals in Lenape society. Indian perceptions of a person’s place in the world emphasized that at the center of all concerns lay power to interact successfully with all other beings. Power suffused all activities connected to life—crop growing, animal hunting, lovemaking, healing, war, and contacts with spirit beings. Women’s and men’s roles and status in the community were thus ultimately dependent on Lenape understandings of the spiritual conditions for life. Whether they were planting corn, hunting, or fishing, Lenapes viewed themselves as participating in a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship with their physical and spiritual environment. All things contained souls and therefore the attitude to hunting and planting was profoundly sacred. Whether watching the skies for signs that it was time to put seeds in the ground or decorating a fishnet with a symbol for the spirit that held the marine world in its power, Lenapes believed that corn grew as a consequence of correct relationships with deities that controlled the growth, and that game animals came as a gift following labor done in the proper manner. These relationships must be cultivated and upheld in the appropriate way and this included ceremonies of preparation and thanksgiving.14 Nowhere is the connection between food and ritual more apparent than in the accounts colonists gave of Indian feasting. No ceremonies or negotiations between Indians and whites could be concluded without a meal, and at these occasions particular women, called “wives” of sachems, “matrons,” or “queens,” played prominent parts. Just as Jasper Danckaerts had noted,

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Andrew White, a Jesuit in Maryland, found that in his mission to convert the king of Patuxent, “the queen” was not “inferior to her husband in benevolence to their guest, for with her own hands she is accustomed to prepare meat for him and bake bread.” When visiting the Indians the Christians are always treated to abundant meals, wrote Peter Lindeström, and made clear that it was the wife of the sachem who was the matron of the whole village. She was in charge of organizing the cooking and serving of food to all visitors in the town. In 1654, upon Lindeström’s arrival in the country together with the new Swedish governor Johan Risingh, Lenapes gathered to renew their links with the colonists along the Delaware River. For some years relations between the two peoples had been rocky, and Lenapes particularly resented Swedish lack of trade goods and insistence on bypassing them to trade with Susquehannocks further inland. They were also concerned with the occurrence of deadly diseases connected with the new arrivals. Their spokesman, Naaman, stressed the Indians’ desire to establish a treaty of friendship that would require each side to watch out for the other. To emphasize the closeness of the relationship Naaman stroked his arms and clasped his hands together around his head, and said that “as a calabash is a round growth, without a fissure or cut, so should we hereafter also be like one head without fissure.” The meeting then ended in a feast as large kettles of corn mush and meat, sappan, were placed among the people.15 Were there Lenape women present at this solemn occasion? The Swedish sources are silent. But Lenapes have preserved in oral memory a story that bears resemblance to Lindeström’s and Risingh’s account. The story was collected from Delawares by Truman Michelson in Oklahoma in 1912 and recalls how Delawares and white people ceased fighting one another and made a lasting compact. The story tells of hostilities that increased until there was a general war and they “killed so many that the blood on both sides in the ditches ran like water.” But just as there were brave and mighty warriors on both sides, there were also “women who were brave on both sides.” They got together in a council and agreed “that it was too bad they were fighting one another the way they were.” Both groups of women called their men “their children” and decided that “we’ll just stop this war between our children.” The women then went around among their people and told them to stop fighting and the war ended. The following day the Delaware war leader invited the white people to have dinner with the Indians and sent out his young men to hunt for bear meat. The old women who had stopped the war prepared bread for the meal. Then all sat down and ate together. After the meal the men conferred about how to make the peace

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last. The Indian leader suggested a treaty that would last as long as the sun showed its face, the water ran, and the grass grew, and that the two peoples would be friends, “friends the same as brothers.” They promised to warn one another against enemies and to seal the agreement they clasped hands and the Indian knotted his fingers together in front of him to demonstrate the closeness of the bond. Since that day, the story ends, the Delawares have never violated the treaty.16 The story makes specific links between (mature or old) women and peacemaking, and between peaceful relations and meals. But it also makes a third connection—between the making of peace and people becoming as closely connected as siblings. Increasingly, as war and diseases ravaged Indian communities they saw the need to make strangers into relatives, both as a way to stop hostilities and as a means of strengthening the population. Adoption became an important way to replace dead members of the kin group and the need for developing rituals that accomplished that only grew with greater contact and friction over the eighteenth century. The task of ritually introducing strangers into the community fell on women, as a number of captured white people could testify to. John McCullough spent eight years as a captive among the Delawares in the 1750s. He arrived in one town in the company of his new female relative who informed the people there who he was and in whose stead he stood. Colonel John Smith recalled being forcefully stripped of his clothes and bathed by the women of the village who then adopted him.17 The links between female gender and life- and kinmaking rituals were strong among the Lenapes and the upheavals following European settlement and the loss of homeland along the Delaware led to an increase in the importance of undertakings assigned to women, while other changes threatened and altered women’s traditional subsistence practices. Hungry white colonists sought the Indians’ aid to get food and learn how to prepare it, and it has been suggested that during the middle of the seventeenth century Swedish and Finnish colonists’ constant need for foodstuffs influenced the Lenapes to put larger areas of land under cultivation than previously. Maize production for sale brought women into contact with the newcomers and it is likely that this augmented women’s influence both in terms of labor organization within villages and in interactions with white settlers. But the colonists were also responsible for developments that threatened Lenape subsistence patterns. During the summer months preceding the ripening of the corn, a type of turnip (called kätniss in Swedish sources) growing in marshes made up the staple of the Lenape diet, and women gathered

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these roots as part of their labor. As white settlements proliferated, the pigs that the colonists brought severely threatened this source of subsistence. Swine ran wild in the woods and displayed a particular preference for turnips, making them scarce. Lenapes compensated by killing and eating pigs, but in doing so a food that women gathered was replaced by one that men hunted. However, women sought alternative ways to complement the diet and began picking fruit in the colonists’ orchards, resulting in other kinds of conflicts.18 Subsistence work thus had already transformed by the mid-seventeenth century. Physical labor altered in an ongoing dialectical process with cultural meanings, which peoples in contact and conflict with one another brought to bear on that meeting. Gathering was a woman’s responsibility and the subject of plans and prayers. Altered conditions, such as those that resulted from swine grazing, were handled within the same framework and women continued their gathering, this time picking apples from Swedish orchards. Colonists on their part, while acknowledging the complications the pigs brought, considered apple picking theft and punished trespassers in a humiliating manner, as they undressed women they suspected of carrying fruit in their clothing. Rituals, feasts, and celebrations formed important recurring events in the Lenape year. These ceremonies and celebrations in a sense constituted the engine that propelled the cycle of human life. Without proper ceremonies crops would not grow, game would not appear in reach of the hunters’ bows and arrows, and the health of the community would not be maintained. Ceremonial responsibilities were handed down in different lineages or could come to individuals in dreams. If no one who knew how to carry out the ceremony remained or if people no longer were receptive to dream messages, then the ceremony would vanish. The gravity of such a loss should not be underestimated. Ceremonies and celebrations constituted a sort of remembering ahead, a memory that contained the future. In some ways Lenapes perceived history as circular, unfolding through continuing repetitions, requiring human ritual activity. Yearly recurring situations could and ought to be planned for with the aid of myths and rituals. People “remembered” some of the events that were going to occur and within the framework of this knowledge dealt with new or unique events. Maintaining traditions thus meant looking forward as much as defending the past, attempting to retain “maps” that made it possible to fi nd one’s way in a new environment. The cultural reservoir of memories, knowledge of rituals, and access to visions, was vital for the continuation of Lenape life and their abil-

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ity to remember ahead. This was stored in the knowledge of healing herbs, in stories told to the young, in recapitulations of treaties and accords that were sewn into belts of wampum. Destruction of these reservoirs, through death or loss of faith, meant that the future would become a journey into an uncharted morass.19

Rank, Political Influence, and Gender The subsistence pattern and gender division described here suggests that Lenape society was relatively egalitarian during the seventeenth century. There is little colonial evidence of any sort of permanent or inheritable social distinctions among the Lenapes and we find no class of people who were not directly involved in subsistence work or who could command the labor of others. This basic egalitarian structure also manifested itself in the Lenape mode of clothing. Appearances have much to say about who we are, as seventeenth-century Europeans and Indians both knew. In a drawing from 1654, Peter Lindeström depicted a Lenape family consisting of a man, a woman, and a small boy. While the child is practically naked, the woman and man are dressed in a similar manner. Attributes, such as the gourd for the woman and the bow and arrows for the man, rather than clothes distinguish gender. A particularly interesting feature of the drawing is that both the man and the woman are pictured carrying long-stemmed tobacco pipes. The observation was expanded in the text and Lindeström stated that the “habit of the women is the same as that of the men, the only difference being in the adornment of the hair.” While hairstyles may have been an obvious discriminator between men and women, it apparently did not signify vertical stratification, as Lindeström’s continued description also makes clear. To Lindeström, distinctions in rank were not immediately obvious through clothing and adornment. Similarly, burial practices witnessed by white visitors did not reveal rank in the manner common in Europe and excavated gravesites show no such differentiation. Both Powhatans to the south and New England Indians to the north observed rank in a manner more obvious than Lenapes did. This does not mean that Lenapes did not recognize any distinctions between individuals and groups, but those that existed were not readily apparent to European observers. Prominent lineages may have been more likely to supply sachems and influential matrons, but it is almost impossible to catch a glimpse of these processes through the sources that we have. What is clear is that influence and rank in Lenape

Figure 1. Pehr Lindheström, “Geographia Americae, eller, Indiae Occidentalis . . .” Manuscript from 1691. Peter Lindeström’s color drawing of a Lenape family has been frequently reproduced, mostly from the copy Thomas Campanius Holm included in his description of Pennsylvania. Lindeström’s text stresses that the main difference in appearance between women and men was the implements associated with gender, gourds for women and bows and arrows for men. Courtesy of De la Gardiegymnasiet, Lidköping, Sweden.

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society were much more connected to spiritual power, as evidenced in dreams and knowledge of songs and healing rituals, than to material goods or command over others.20 In its contacts with Europeans, each village was represented by a sachem who may have been chosen for his role by the women of his lineage. Such practices are known from the Iroquois with whom the Lenapes shared certain traits, such as matrilineal descent, which has caused some scholars to argue that it is possible to infer the role of women as “chief makers” by analogy. Other colonial documents suggest that sachems chose their successors, but always among their maternal kin. A son never replaced his father; succession always followed the maternal side, so that a man would be succeeded by his brother, sons of his sister, or sons of his sister’s daughters. This, explained William Penn, was so that “their Issue may not be spurious.” David Zeisberger, a Moravian missionary who knew the Delawares well, later clarified that the sons of a chief cannot inherit, “for the reason that they are not and cannot be, according to established usages, members of the tribe.” As children inherited their kinship through their mothers this meant that the maternal line determined where an individual belonged and where his or her primary obligations lay.21 Just as women dominated in the production and distribution of foodstuffs, men dominated diplomatic encounters with strangers. Several sources state unequivocally that only men could represent their villages as sachems and in councils. In general, early documents give rather detailed accounts (compared to the information concerning other aspects of indigenous practices) of internal decision-making procedures as well as of council proceedings. Early sources speak of decentralized leadership and autonomous villages, most likely reflecting recent epidemic conditions. Johan De Laet wrote that: “They have no form of political government, except that they have their chiefs, whom they call sackmos and sagamos, who are not much more than heads of families, for they rarely exceed the limits of one family connexion.” A rather bewildering array of names of villages and “kings” emerge from readings of Dutch and Swedish sources from the mid-seventeenth century. On a map of New Sweden, Peter Lindeström indicated six villages, all inhabited by a large number of people under a chief. He named ten sachems, some of whom later appeared in negotiations with Swedish leaders. In his description he stated that the “chiefs have their names after the name of the countries, which they rightfully own.” A general description of New Netherland informed that the Indians of the region “are divided into different tribes and languages, each tribe generally living by itself and having one of its number as a chief,

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Figure 2. Peter Lindeström’s map of New Sweden and the Delaware River, from Petter Andersson Lindström, “Nova Suecia i Virginia . . . uppmätt 1654–1655.” The map was measured in 1654–1655 and probably done as a sketch for a larger map, which was lost in a fire that destroyed the royal castle in Stockholm in 1697. This map contains a wealth of Lenape names and locates numerous villages and hunting and fishing places along both sides of the river. Courtesy of the photographer, Jens Östman, and the Royal Library, Stockholm.

though he has not much power or distinction except in their dances or in time of war.”22 Archival evidence, then, appears to agree on a separation of duties that eschewed women’s influence or presence in councils or as sachems. Yet, this may not have been as clearcut as it seems. Robert Grumet has found evidence of a few women functioning as sachems among the Lenapes, as they did among their Algonkian and Iroquoian neighbors. He discusses women leaders in different communities on the eastern coast of America and identifies practices that militate against recognition of women in leading positions. It has been common practice to “not identify native individuals as leaders unless so identified in the specific source” and he argues that often scholars have assumed that all individuals not specifically identified as female were male. As a consequence “a substantial number of Coastal Algonkian leaders of both sexes” have remained unidentified. Grumet’s own research demonstrates that women could hold key roles as sachems, shamans, and traders in many Coastal Algonkian societies.23

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However, most often sachems appear to have been male, but this did not mean that women were not present in village or tribal leadership. As we have seen, women—or matrons—received visitors and fed them and this translated into significant political roles as well. These responsibilities connected men as sachems to women as providers of food and as peacemakers. In the office of the sachem male and female responsibilities came together, it was not a political office in the narrow sense but represented rather an obligation that combined male border crossing with female sustenance. That is why the sachem represented the lineage, and was identified with the names of specific locations where the village had its land and where corn was grown. This could not have been done without the cooperation and support of “wives.”24 The sachem’s position did not give him (or her) authority over the villagers in the sense that he could command their allegiance and back his requests with force. The sachem was a peace leader and in affairs that involved the whole village he had no prerogatives on his own but could carry out only the wishes of a united council. Yet, he had considerable influence based not on accumulation of resources but rather on their distribution. The sachem held responsibilities in diplomatic affairs with other groups and nations, in which he represented the village. He also supervised communal hunts, and had certain ceremonial obligations. But the most important function was the role as distributor of food, goods, and justice, and as such he was able to influence the harmony and stability of the village as well as accrue personal status. A great person in this context was someone who had goods or skills to share, and did so lavishly.25 William Penn expounded on the distributive duty of the sachems in his account of the Delawares he had negotiated with for land: the Pay or Presents I made them, were not hoarded by the particular Owners, but the neighbouring Kings and their Clans being present when the Goods were brought out, the Parties chiefly concerned consulted, what and to whom they should give them? To every King then, by the hands of a Person for that work appointed, is a proportion sent, so sorted and folded, and with that Gravity, that is admirable. Then that King sub-divideth it in like manner among his Dependents, they hardly leaving themselves an Equal share with one of their Subjects: and be it on such occasions, at Festivals, or at their common Meals, the Kings distribute, and to themselves last.26

The sachem’s role was thus primarily to be a wise arbiter in the community and to provide for his people. He performed his duties as judge in internal

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conflicts, as negotiator for land agreements with strangers, and in dividing goods the Indians received in encounters with Europeans. Although Lenapes did not recognize European-style social distinctions, other distinctions, such as those based on age, gender, or access to spirit power, differentiated individuals. People and polities also contended over political power and influence in the region. There were also times at which hierarchies came into play in a more obvious way, as during times of unrest and conflict when war captains took over and exercised disciplinary powers over those who participated in campaigns. Colonists obviously had difficulties in translating their observations of Indian leadership into comprehensible categories. “There is little authority known among these nations. They live almost equally free,” wrote Wassenaer about the Indians of New Netherland (presumably including both Mohawks and Munsees, the Lenape’s northern relatives). Peter Lindeström’s account regarding the authority of the chief appears contradictory. On the one hand he wrote that “they show no reverence towards or honor those who are their superiors, neither does their sachem expect it from them,” while on the other he described a rigorous discipline where the chief might kill a person who opposed his power. Isaack de Rasieres saw the governing system as “democratic,” and indicated that the sachem was chosen because of his wealth in wampum “though of less consideration in other respects.” It is likely that de Rasieres reversed cause and effect in his observation—the sachem had much wampum because of his office—as he continued to say that “all travelers who stop over night come to the Sackima, if they have no acquaintances there, and are entertained by the expenditure of as much sewan as is allowed for that purpose; therefore the Sackimas generally have three or four wives, each of whom has to furnish her own seed-corn.”27 In identifying chiefs—an imperative for European colonists bent on negotiating for land—the newcomers often seized upon any (male) person who appeared to command some sort of following. This meant that at times men designated as sachems in the historical record may instead have been war captains and this resulted in contradictory statements concerning the reaches of their authority. Europeans were clearly aware that the person speaking for Indians in their meetings with foreigners was not a sachem, yet he always seems to have been a male person. However, the role of this speaker was to be the voice of those wanting to convey a message, not the origin of that message. A go-between, a messenger, a person balancing between two groups, using that most powerful tool—words—in the most

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careful manner. Even so, Europeans often dubbed these men sachems, or crowned sachems as kings, sometimes with disastrous results.28 Likewise, descriptions of Indian councils are not consistent. Frequently councils were presented as if they consisted of one body of councillors, with other adult males as auxiliaries, who deliberated until total agreement had been achieved. Thomas Campanius Holm wrote that the “king” had “his particular councillors approximately 200 in number, who are the oldest and wisest among the people.” At occasions when issues arose of great import for all people “such as War, Peace, the sale of some Land,” then the council must consult with the “common people.” Some accounts mention a certain dissonance between older men and younger men and it is quite probable that older men met in one council, while younger men (generally at the age of warriors) deliberated on their own. Women were not explicitly referred to as a group to be included in the negotiations but other evidence points in that direction, as will be shown later. Nothing of importance was undertaken without meetings and deliberations of these groups. The opinions of all must then be taken into account, and perhaps this is where the sachem fully needed to exercise his skills in mediation and negotiation.29

Notike and the Question of Land Family and kin, peace and war, trade and food—all these came together in the relationship to land, and land was what Europeans coveted more than anything else as the white population spread farther and farther west. No wonder negotiations over land took on such significance and brought such strife and division between whites and Indians, but also among Indians themselves. Here too gender played a part in how documents were worded and histories written and recounted. The role of Lenape women as matrons and owners of the home emerges quite clearly in colonial records, as does their importance in the establishment of alliances, but what did this mean in transactions involving land? To understand this we shall turn to a woman named Notike during the middle decades of the seventeenth century. Notike’s involvement in a confrontation concerning land along the Delaware river suggests that a succession of land-dealings with Europeans caused stress within Lenape communities. This is an unusual case as it is the only time in the records of New Sweden that a Lenape woman appears on the political stage. Swedes and Dutch

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negotiated with men concerning land, but as we have seen sachems could not make arrangements regarding land without conferring with all the families who had any right in it. What is intriguing is that Notike approached the colonists—a female anomaly in the source material.30 In 1651 Dutch and Swedish colonists found themselves embroiled in a contest concerning a valuable tract along Minquas Kill, a tributary flowing into the Delaware River. Dutch director Peter Stuyvesant met with Lenape sachems, among them Peminacka, Mattahorn, and his son Ackahorn, who testified that the Swedes, under Peter Minuit, had purchased only a small part of this area. The Indians charged the Swedes with not having paid for the purchase, and made a donation of land to the Dutch. In a surprise move the Swedish governor, Johan Printz, produced a document in which Notike, named as the widow of the former sachem Metatsimint, and her children stated that Peminacka, who claimed to be Metatsimint’s successor, had no right to the land and therefore no authority to donate it to the Dutch. The Dutch could not capitalize on the situation and for a while longer the Swedes retained trade supremacy in the region. More than a European trade conflict, this affair revealed disagreements among Lenapes, and their actions throw light on both the origin and development of the conflict and on concepts of gender and authority.31 The documents do not disclose how Printz became aware of Notike’s relationship to Metatsimint. Amandus Johnson in his monumental work on the Swedish settlement simply assumed that Printz sent for her. But how did Printz know where to look? He always negotiated with men as ambassadors for their people, had no experience of dealing with Indian women, and knew little about internal power structures in Lenape society. Either an Indian must have informed Printz of Notike’s position or she, herself, chose to come to the Swedish governor. Notike, seeking support from Governor Printz, arrived accompanied by “her son and her blood relation, named Quenieck.” We cannot know for certain but the matter must have been important since she returned for a second meeting and signed two documents to assert her understanding of the transactions.32 What role did Notike play in her village? As we have seen, Lindeström described the chief’s wife as the matron of the whole village. She was in charge of food distribution and organized communal work. Robert Grumet noted that in many Coastal Algonkian societies women could take over the office as sachem after the death of brothers or husbands. Furthermore, William Penn’s account of Lenape leadership clearly stated that a son did not inherit his father, but that the position of sachem would be passed on

Figure 3. “Köpebrev med indianerna 1651-1652,” Handel och Sjöfart, vol. 194: Nya Sverige I. Notike’s signature on one of the two letters on which she placed her mark. Her mark is flanked by those of her son Kiapes, and her “blood relative” Quenieck. Courtesy of the photographer, Emre Olgun, and the National Archives, Stockholm.

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along maternal lines, provided the putative heir demonstrated the needed qualities. In Europe widows could hold property and manage households in the absence of a husband, but Lenapes did not equate marriages and control over land and it is unlikely that Notike met with Governor Printz in a capacity as widow. Notike was very possibly a lineage elder and as such had a direct interest in issues of land management; that was the platform from which she spoke. She was there to claim that Peminacka was not Metatsimint’s successor. Metatsimint’s son accompanied her, but more important, so did her blood relative Quenieck, perhaps Metatsimint’s future heir.33 Why did Notike find it necessary to intervene in this affair? On July 9, Stuyvesant and the Lenape chiefs discussed whether or not the Swedes had actually bought the land they now occupied. The Lenapes were unwilling to sell land to the Dutch, even though they asserted that the Swedes had not bought it properly, and the Dutch secretary suggested that they feared Swedish retaliation. As their subsequent action seems to suggest, however, the Indians may have hedged in order to keep the doors open to both Dutch and Swedish trade goods. After some deliberation, Peminacka spoke for the assembled sachems and declared that the Swedes had built houses and planted on their land without buying it. Thus there was no reason why they should refuse to sell to the Dutch, but he had another suggestion: “We will rather present than sell the Great Sachem the land, so that, should the Swedes again pull down the Dutch houses and drive away the people, you may not think ill of us, and we may not draw down your displeasure.” Turning land over as a donation rather than as sale was an ingenious move. The Dutch, of course, desired to draw up a deed, and the text is revealing. Having received gifts in the form of duffels, kettles, axes, adzes, knives, lead, guns and powder, the sachems gave Stuyvesant and the West India Company “all actual and real possession, property, right and jurisdiction . . . without we, the granters, reserving any part, right or jurisdiction in the aforesaid lands, streams, kills, and superficies thereof, the hunting and fishing excepted.” Such an exception does occur in later deeds between Lenapes and William Penn, but are not common in deeds during this period. Why was it put in this time? Had Peminacka, who was apparently the architect behind this construction, caught wind of the meeting between Governor Printz and Notike on July 3, in which Notike claimed that Peminacka had the late Metatsimint’s permission to hunt on this land, but no right to divest it? Peminacka was certainly very careful. He is named in the written deed, apparently received gifts along with Mattahorn, Ackahorn, and Sinques, but he never signed it with his mark. By

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suggesting that the Lenape donate instead of sell land, and by excluding the hunting rights, the only rights he may have had, and fi nally, by not affi xing his mark to the parchment, this Lenape sachem managed to keep trade relations open with both Dutch and Swedes and received valuable goods from each.34 Peminacka’s prudent exclusion of hunting rights, and Notike’s assertion that those were the only rights he had to the land, are likely to be more than a coincidence. It also demonstrates the variety of possessive privileges that existed in Indian conceptions of land rights. The overlapping nature of these did not create problems as long as no exclusive demands were made, but when such entered into the equation they could make any transaction open to challenge. Had Peminacka, or any of the other men supporting his claim, done anything that would upset a lineage matron? With the sources at our disposal it is impossible to know. In the donation to the Dutch, Mattahorn and his son Ackahorn signed away land as sachems. Contrary to Lenape custom both men presented themselves, or were presented, as sachems. Peminacka, too, is named as a sachem with proprietary rights to the contested land. Notike, when informed of these plans, may have reacted to this assumption of title. This action, even if undertaken to wrest goods out of Europeans to be shared with everyone in their villages, represented a threat to women’s prerogatives concerning land use and its alienation, and to matrilineal descent as a foundation for political authority in their society. Such a breach with the established order concerning such a vitally important office as sachem may have persuaded Notike to break with tradition and emphatically deny Peminacka’s assertions. Speaking for this conclusion is the fact of the dates of the various documents. Notike had her first meeting with Johan Printz several days before Peminacka and the others donated land to the Dutch, indicating that this was indeed an internal conflict that took shape in the search for various European allegiances. That Notike had power in her own right is indisputable, proved not least by the acquiescence of the above named sachems in subsequent negotiations. In a meeting “between pemenacka and mitatsimint’s wife and heirs” and in the presence of several other sachems, it was ascertained that Peminacka only had rights to hunt and not to sell. The documents end with the assertion by Peminacka and the other sachems that they “had nothing to say against [this but] only sought to placate the wife with good words.”35 Only three Swedish documents remain from this confrontation between Peminacka’s group and Notike’s. What the Swedes wanted is obvious, but what actually occurred between the Lenapes is a matter of guesswork.

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I imagine that the issue of land sales was of minor importance to the two antagonists, neither of them accustomed to the alienation inherent in the European concept. Their issue concerned influence and authority, and with that settled, putting a mark on a Swedish deed was of no great significance to the Indians. Even so, European papers were not trivial. The fact that Peminacka neither donated anything within his powers to give, nor signed the donation document, suggests that he knew Notike to be right and was not going to contest her further. With this, an intratribal conflict concerning authority over land surfaced to make its imprint on European documents. Peminacka’s deference to Notike may have settled the dispute among the Indians, but their actions triggered a continuation of Dutch-Swedish conflict, which was settled only in 1655 when Dutch forces evicted the Swedes from the Delaware River colony. The story about Notike’s encounter with Swedish colonists and how it wound its way into historical documents illustrates both the influence of Lenape women on land holding and how this has been obscured in historical accounts.36

Continuities and Changes in Leadership While political organization moved toward greater concentration and groups began to identify as larger tribal complexes during the following century, the duties and needs of a chief seem remarkably persistent. Zeisberger elaborated on the functions of the primary chief in peacetime in ways that throw a light on earlier practices as well. Three clans—turkey, tortoise (or turtle), and wolf—have been identified, at least from the mid-eighteenth century, and Zeisberger stated that the chief always came from the turtle clan and expected to entertain often. It was the duty of his wife to provide corn for all these visitors and therefore she was “usually assisted by other women in her plantations, for much corn is required in such a house.” The position of wife to the tortoise chief meant more than a marital agreement. The new chief took up his office only upon the unanimous consent of the nation. The wife was present, ceremonially “attended by several women,” and she was then admonished to “be obedient to the chief. This is confirmed by means of a belt, and the woman, in the name of all the women, promises obedience.” Whether obedience as a term carries the same connotations as in European usage is debatable. Other descriptions make clear that women continued to control all the foodstuffs and their distribution and could use this control to influence vital decision making. Several sources mention that

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whatever the man procured for the household belonged to the woman to do with as she pleased. “He says nothing, if she even gives the greatest part of it to her friends, which is a very common custom. A woman generally remembers her friends when meat has been secured, or when her husband has brought flour from the whites.” Friends in this context referred to people to whom one was related and had obligations, but this charge to provide also extended to prisoners and entitled women to decide the fate of war captives. The rules of hospitality were, wrote John Heckewelder, “in the eyes of the warrior, of such consequence, that at the supplication of the women, prisoners have not only been protected against insults and blows, but have sometimes even been liberated, and again restored to their connexions.” After more than a century of contact between Delawares and Europeans, Zeisberger explained that the responsibilities of the sachem lay in the maintenance of peace, both within the tribe and externally, and therefore it was necessary that “a chief is beloved of his people.” The paramount responsibility of a chief was to “prevent all disorders in his town, have an eye to justice, and seek to do away with strife.” This must be accomplished, not by using force, but through quiet reasoning and encouragement. It followed that he must be prepared for much entertaining and therefore large quantities of corn were needed in the chief ’s household. The chief should also act as keeper of the council bag and the archives in the form of wampum belts.37 Zeisberger’s discussion must be placed in a context of change. He describes a cohesive tribal structure, a Delaware nation. This represented a development that had escalated in response to outside pressures and population decline. Heckewelder emphasized that by the time of his acquaintance with Delawares, in the late eighteenth century, social distinctions were commonly recognized and his discussion of leadership suggests a more hierarchical structure. While the sachem led by reasoning and exhortation, just as in earlier times a state of war changed the usual patterns of decisionmaking. During such periods war leaders took over and gathered warriors for expeditions who pledged to follow the lead of the captain. Heckewelder described how the Peace Chief gave way to War Chiefs when aggression against the “Nation, by another Nation, cannot be settled, or adjusted by him, in a fair and honorable way.” This happened in consequence of the principle that stated that “good and bad cannot be together in one heart,” and involvement in war and bloodshed would hinder the peace chief’s ability to negotiate a cessation of fighting. Conflating the two would lead to disastrous consequences, Heckewelder asserted, alluding to such an example from the

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1770s. If the peace chief went to war, or was forced to do so, “not only the reputation and power such Chiefs had been cloathed with, would be destroyed, but all confidence would be lost; and this gone everyone would be at liberty to do as he pleased.” Mixing these principles thus heralded anarchy. Heckewelder and Zeisberger with their much more intimate knowledge of Delaware practices knew to differentiate between peace chiefs and war captains, while earlier Dutch and Swedish colonists often confused the two. The increasing friction between Indians and colonists over the course of the eighteenth century also led to a strengthening of the hierarchical position of the war leader over the more consensus-oriented peace chiefs.38 What political roles did women play in these changes? Did women continue to lead, but were they made invisible in the historical record, as Grumet has argued? The opening decades of the eighteenth century saw immense challenges to Native autonomy and leadership in Pennsylvania. Pressures increased on Lenape land from an influx of colonists, particularly in the coastal region. Practices of leadership and interaction with strangers honed over the previous half century were placed in sharp focus as Lenapes and their Indian neighbors and allies struggled to maintain control over their own subsistence and land base. Women took part in the management of these frictions, and it is not surprising that periods of convolutions reveal what is otherwise obscured in the sources. Two examples from the early years of the century illustrate the complexities involved in identifying Native leaders. The transcripts of meetings between colonial officers and Indians usually mention the names of only a few individuals and rarely is a woman among them. It is therefore tempting to draw the conclusion that they either were not present, or that their presence held little meaning for the procedures under discussion. Andreas Hesselius, pastor to the Swedish Wicacoa congregation in Pennsylvania, was a particularly keen observer who also took an interest in the Native inhabitants of the region and his journal provides an illuminating example. In 1721 he was present at a council meeting in Philadelphia between Lenapes from the Brandywine area, Senecas, and Governor William Keith. Hesselius described the arrival of the Indian delegations and noted how Lenape men and women came in separate groups. In reference to the latter he wrote: “A while thereafter the Queen came walking with her Wild women one after the other, but she was distinguished from the others only by a black cloak, which she carried across one shoulder, was otherwise of a somewhat whiter facial complexion, maybe the black cloth set her off like that. Apart from that she was a

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small and well shaped person, but looked almost too artless to be a queen among so many audacious wild women with shrewd eyes.”39 This is an unusual observation and I have not found references to such a separate female entrance in any of the transcripts from the provincial councils in Philadelphia. Still, I believe Hesselius’s account is accurate and that his description gives a more complete picture of the gendered participation at these diplomatic encounters than other records do. The presence of the “queen” at this meeting was not a coincidence, nor were she and the accompanying women there as attachments to the men. Rather, they represented the female part of the Lenape community in these important contacts with English neighbors. Hesselius, like other European observers, interpreted what he saw within his frame of reference and thus called the first woman “queen,” although a more suitable English defi nition might be “lineage matron.” He also noted her lighter complexion, which may be what he had learned to expect from his readings about America. Rayna Green has argued that European perceptions of America as a “symbolic Indian woman, as Queen and Princess” influenced how European colonizers viewed Indian women and placed female Native Americans in an impossible bind as squaw and drudge on the one hand, and queen and mother on the other. Undoubtedly Europeans arrived with preconceived images and constructions of the inhabitants of the continent and these notions provided a context for observations and notes. Even so, anomalies in texts suggest that confrontations between image and reality produced observations that can lead to some knowledge concerning the actual lives of Native American women and men. The princess image featured a Caucasian apperance in contrast to darker-skinned natives. Hesselius may have shared this notion, yet his keen observational skills and personal knowledge of Lenapes caused him to question this, “maybe the black cloth set her off like that,” and thus revealed it as a fictional element in the description of Indians.40 While Hesselius’s description is unique there are other—later— references to women attending councils, even though this presence was rarely noted as significant. At a meeting in November 1756 the governor was informed of some forty Indian women who had come to Fort Allen concerned with the welfare of the Delaware leader Teedyuscung’s party. The governor and Teedyuscung joined in inviting the women to participate in the treaty. At Easton two years later there were in fact more women than men enumerated but their role at the meeting or what they represented remains unstated.41 The second example derives from the Lenapes’ nearest neighbors,

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the Susquehannocks, or as they later became known, Conestogas. In 1706 Thomas Chalkley, an English Quaker, made a visit to the Conestoga town on the Susquehanna River. Chalkley, in his own words, “went on chearfully, and with good Will, and much Love to the poor Indians,” but also, as he revealed in other parts of his book, with firm ideas concerning how a Christian ought to conduct his life. He and his company were treated kindly in Conestoga and a council was called in order to discuss religious matters. Chalkley then noted how the Indians spoke one after the other “without any Heat or Jarring; (and some of the most Esteemed of their Women do sometimes speak in their Councils.)” This observation prompted Chalkley to ask his interpreter “Why they suffered or permitted the Women to speak in their Councils? His Answer was, That some Women were wiser than some Men. Our Interpreter told me, That they had not done any Thing for many Years without the Counsel of an ancient grave Woman; who, I observed spoke much in their Council; for I was permitted to be present at it; and I asked, What it was the Woman said? He told me she was an Empress; and they gave much heed to what she said amongst them” (emphasis original). The “Empress” may have been Canatowa, sometimes mentioned in colonial records as “Queen of the Mingoes.” The identification of her through other sources is complicated.42 Europe had its share of powerful women rulers, and Europeans recognized that rank could sometimes obliterate or at least override the hierarchy or distinction between the sexes. This is one of the reasons for the common usage of terms such as “queen” or “empress” to designate Indian women noted in unexpected—at least by European conditions—circumstances and positions. Political theorists in early modern Europe held qualities such as wisdom and reason to be masculine and the assignation of gender to such capacities hindered women from playing a direct role in politics. Broadly speaking, in northern and northwestern Europe women’s responsibilities lay within the domestic sphere and were in most cases circumscribed by their obligatory deference to a male guardian. Yet, Chalkley’s Indian informer did not state rank as the reason for the Conestoga’s reverence for the old woman, but alluded to an individual’s competence as a prime reason for political influence: some women were wiser than some men. Later on in Chalkley’s account we also learn that this woman had powerful dreams. The Conestoga man’s answer that some women had more wisdom than some men indicates that women’s roles among several of the Northeastern Indian peoples did not preclude political or religious authority. In fact, as Chalkley’s and Hesselius’s observations indicate, women may have been

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present at councils and diplomatic meetings at a far greater extent than noted in the sources—or by historians. The role of women as protectors of life warranted such responsibility for decision making in situations when, as Chalkley’s informant said, women were wiser than men. Men’s roles as those who were primarily in charge of the activities that ended life (war and hunting) meant that they could cross the border between life and death, while women may be said to police those borders. Men ritually prepared for the hunt, as well as for war (women did on occasion join in martial ventures and underwent similar ritual preparation), and women’s procreative powers were then extremely dangerous to them, because women’s menstrual blood and life-giving ability represented the opposite of the power men needed to hunt and wage war. But this traversal of borders could also be translated into the crossing of cultural boundaries as occurred when meeting with Europeans or other Indians. Cultural encounters could mean either conflict and war, or coexistence and peace. In these sensitive matters both men and women needed to participate because of their different ritual responsibilities.43 There is no doubt that the Conestoga woman presented herself as the leader of her people. There are also other references to her appearance as a “queen,” or leader. Yet, I have not been able to determine her exact whereabouts or her connections to other contemporary Conestoga sachems or “kings.” Sources from Penn’s treaties with Susquehannocks or Conestogas mention a male chief, named variously Connodaghtah or Conadasto. Phonetically the names Conestoga, Canatowa, Conadasto, and Connodaghtah are sufficiently similar to arouse suspicion. In addition, George Alsop in 1665 transcribed the name of the Susquehannock’s palisaded town as Connadago. To determine the relationship between these names—or terms— appears impossible given the sources at our disposal. Perhaps, just as Lindeström described as the case with towns and sachems along the Delaware River, these names refer collectively to the people of Conestoga, and the person representing them at any particular time would be speaking in the name of the entire village? Canatowa or Connodaghtah would then not be personal names but appellations of individuals representing the town in various aspects of the encounter with strangers. In certain contexts, such as when the matter concerned violent conflicts or legal issues, the Conestogas would be represented by a man, called “king” by the Europeans. At others, such as matters of importance for young people or subsistence concerns, the representative would be a woman. Supporting this conclusion is the fact that the “queen of the Mingoes” appears in records at times when the issue

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is one of land use and agriculture. At one time she protested the depradation of pigs upon Conestoga fields. Such an interpretation would suggest a much more fluid understanding of influence and leadership among both Susquehannocks and Lenapes than the one inherent in designations such as “king” and “queen.” Different situations brought forth different kinds of leaders, basing their authority on various sources of influence; gender, dreams, and personal abilities being among them.44

Early Colonial Encounters of a Religious Kind For Lenapes their relationship to both food and land had profoundly spiritual connotations. Yet, early white visitors to eastern America found a lack of what they regarded as religion in the Indian societies they encountered—a deficiency determining their level of civilization. Adriaen van der Donck explained to his readers that Indians were deemed wild “First, on account of their religion, of which they have very little, and that is very strange; and secondly, on account of their marriages, wherein they differ from civilized societies; thirdly, on account of their laws, which are so singular as to deserve the name of wild regulations.” Strange or absent relationships thus defined Indians as less than civilized—relationships to gods, between the sexes, and between individuals or social classes. For Indians to leave their barbarous state they needed to alter the form and structure of these relationships, and encouraging this process became increasingly important for white colonists as interaction, dependence, and friction grew over time.45 Seventeenth-century Dutch and Swedish sources mention interactions and exchanges of religious convictions but these led to no (or very few) conversions on either side. Royal instructions to the New Sweden colony emphasized the connection between economic exchange, religious influence, and respect for legal institutions. The governor should treat the Indians with “humanity” in order to ensure peaceful relations, offer attractive prices for their trade goods, seek to spread Christian religion and “civility,” and make sure that land was acquired properly from Indian owners. Neither the Swedish nor the neighboring Dutch colony showed any sign of success in the work to convert Lenapes to “civilized” religion or laws. In fact, colonial records exude frustration at the hindrances emanating from the uncouth ways of the colonists themselves.46 Lenapes initially found little reason to take an interest in the religious practices of the newcomers, and even less in their tenets of faith.

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Curiosity marked the Lenapes’ and their neighbors’ approach to European religions, but there was no sense of urgency in understanding, nor a need to question one’s own gods. The first Swedish pastor to take his missionary responsibility seriously, Johan Campanius, left a legacy of fervent but unsuccessful endeavors to spread the Christian gospel to the heathens. He reported that Indians feared his sermons, thinking that his fiery orations meant a declaration of war. Once he had been able to calm them on this point, he found them indifferent to his teachings. His efforts seem to have been met with bemusement, and later sources speak of the amity that developed between him and his Lenape contacts. His own letters, however, reveal deep-seated anxieties and when he requested in 1647 to be replaced and allowed to return to Sweden, he cited his fear of an Indian attack upon him. Seventy years later, Andreas Hesselius found similar reactions to Christian teaching. His sincere friendships with Indians notwithstanding, only one man chose to receive the baptism and he had to be protected from his countrymen for fear of his life. Hesselius doubted that Lenape beliefs deserved the name of religion and found them to be curious about his religious services, which they “often admit . . . to be better than their own.” In spite of this, they “would rather remain with their own ignorance, so that they will not through any novelty or change be forced away from their freedom.”47 James Axtell has pointed out that Indians were far more successful than Europeans at converting strangers, and the fear of religious and cultural desertion resonates in accounts from Dutch and Swedish colonies. Pehr Kalm mused that “it seemed a strange thing” that Indian children brought up among whites returned to their Native villages as soon as they found out where they came from, while captive white children had no desire to return to their families of origin. In general, records convey a sense of wariness on both sides, and when reporting Native words these mostly consist of eloquent defenses for Indian practices and criticism of the un-Christian manner in which white people lived. Swedish pastor Erik Biörck noted that, when asked why they would not convert, Indians answered: “If the Christians lived better than we according to their religion, then we would become Christians. But we cannot find that they do, because we see and hear them drink, fight, whore, murder, steal, lie, cheat etc. Such things we have never known. Thus we are better off as we are.” Experiences of converted Indians living among white people also ensured that this was not an attractive option. Christian Indians suffered abuse both from their own people and denigration by whites, especially if the convert was a woman. Jasper Danc-

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kaerts in 1680 gave a vivid example of a converted Mohawk woman, born of an Indian mother and a white father. She rebuked Dutch colonists for their “drunkenness, and foul and godless language.” The white men then immediately retorted: “Well, how is this, there is a sow converted. Run, boys, to the brewer’s, and bring some swill for a converted sow.” The gendered and racial slur was obvious enough to cause Danckaerts to express deep shame.48 There are few sources from the seventeenth century that describe Lenape rituals in any detail. Only pieces and fragments, mostly related to Swedish or Dutch attempts at converting Indians, remain to suggest how Lenapes thought of religious responsibilities and relationships to the otherthan-human world. Andreas Hesselius found that when he sought to speak about religious matters people exhibited “an unbending nature to change.” But in all other respects they treated the Swede with familiarity, and he described his relationships with neighboring Lenapes as amicable. In 1716 the clergyman’s young son took ill with intestinal worms and Chicalicka Nanni Kettelev, a Delaware woman, saved his life with herbal treatments. Hesselius wrote a detailed description of how she made a concoction for the boy to drink and how she informed the worried parents what would happen. Yet she was adamant about not letting anyone from the vicarage see how she prepared her medicine.49 Healing clearly belonged to a realm that Swedes joined to religion in their descriptions of Lenapes. Peter Lindeström differentiated between shamans who sought to cure illness through rituals including singing, dancing, and conjuring, and individuals who had knowledge of how to heal with plants. The Lenapes recognized two types of medical practitioners or healers, the herbalist (medew) and the shaman (powow). The latter controlled certain supernatural forces while the former primarily employed their extensive knowledge of the healing properties of various plants. Both received their power through dream visions given to them by the Creator. The vision entailed rigorous observations of certain obligations and the young apprentice learned both from older herbalists and from the special healing knowledge passed on from her or his guardian spirit. The powow combined healing practices with spiritual invocations in dealing with illness. In a world replete with spirits that could be both supportive and disruptive to humans, men and women endowed with special powers to control or influence these forces were given particular consideration and respect.50 While most Europeans disregarded the second kind of healing as a tool of the devil, they desperately sought information concerning the first. This

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thread runs from earliest contact to anthropological studies and oral testimony from the twentieth century. Anthropologist Gladys Tantaquidgeon found that women were commonly responsible for the knowledge of plants, but these skills could also be passed on to a man. Mary Crow, interviewed in Oklahoma in 1984, remembered her childhood when she accompanied her grandmother Catherine Armstrong to gather plants for remedies. Her grandmother administered to the entire community—both red and white—where they lived in northeastern Oklahoma, and the local “doctor was always following her around trying to find out some of her things, her remedies.” Healing can clearly, but not exclusively, be connected to women’s activities as gatherers and growers, from first encounters along the Delaware river to the rolling hills of eastern Oklahoma. Acquiring the skills of an herbal healer was arduous and time consuming, demanding command of a large number of plants and their habitats, and no small amount of intuition. Persons with such knowledge and training would have been powerful indeed.51 Hesselius also imparted information regarding another activity commonly associated with women, mourning for the dead. In 1722 he witnessed the burial of Tillis, interred “with all the ceremonies that the Wild people practice.” He noted women crying and weeping, and they explicitly told him of their responsibility in the mourning process. Mourning was joined with ideas of female gender—not biological sex. This is emphasized by the presence of a “hermaphrodite” at another burial. A meeting was held in Conestoga in 1721 to discuss the violent demise of a Seneca man, Sawantaeny, beaten to death by two white traders. Indian representatives at the meeting were identified as Conestogas, Shawnees, Ganaweses, and Delawares, indicating the polyglot character of that town but also the close interaction between these peoples. Sawantaeny’s partner, a Shawnee woman named Weenepeeweytah, testified that after receiving a severe beating, the man lay on his bearskin all night before dying the following morning. She then left their cabin to find someone who could help her bury him. While she was gone a Cayuga man found the dead body and hired the wife of Conestoga leader Passalty and “the Hermaphrodite of the same place” to come and bury the slain man “lest Beasts and Fowls should eat him.” This they did and on their way back they met Weenepeeweytah and informed her that they had laid him to rest in the ground. The mediating position of individuals called “hermaphrodites” or “berdaches” found in white sources rendered them likely to be responsible for conveying persons from life to death in burials, while women were often hired to perform mourning rituals. These

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linkages between gender and healing skills are evidence of male, female, and apparently also third gender powers and prerogatives that were tied to fundamental experiences of life and death. They were significant in determining the nature of interactions with strangers, whether from other Indian nations or from across the sea.52 Meetings marked by mutual curiosity occurred between European visitors and Native American hosts during the first decades of encounters. Sometimes these illuminate areas where women’s responsibilities intersected with religious needs. The previously mentioned visit Thomas Chalkley made to the Conestoga town in 1706 had the specific goal of “having a religious meeting with them.” The old woman approved and told Chalkley that “she looked upon our coming to be more than natural, because we did not come to buy, or sell, or get gain, but came in love and respect to them.” She then related a dream she had had prior to Chalkley’s arrival. She had dreamt that “she was in London, and that London was the finest place she ever saw, it was like to Philadelphia, but much bigger; and she went across six streets, and in the seventh she saw William Penn preaching to the people, which was a great multitude, and she and William Penn rejoiced to see one another; and after the meeting she went to him, and he told her that in a little time he would come over and preach to them also, of which she was very glad.” A powerful dream, reiterating the connection between William Penn himself and the Conestoga people, thus set the stage for a religious encounter. Canatowa expected this to be “very beneficial to their young people,” maybe by offering them a chance to listen to the arguments that these strangers, now made relatives through William Penn, offered, or perhaps she expressed a belief in the power of Penn’s god. I do not think that it was a coincidence that in her dream she saw Penn preaching. This emphasis indicated the connection between religion and friendship in the Conestogas’ perception of the relationship between themselves and these whites. To preach, to speak of religious matters, occurs again and again in the sources as important activities, and the spoken words carried significant symbolic weight and implied links to actual conduct. This idea explains the criticism directed at Christians from Indians all along the east coast. Their charge that Christians did not live according to their word was not a mere ruse to avoid having to come to terms with challenges to their own conduct, but signaled a deep belief in the connection between spoken words and real deeds. Thus religion and politics operated in the same realm, albeit separated in different and often overlapping ritual contexts. Canatowa’s concern for “their young people” is almost ubiquitous in later missionary sources. We shall follow that line

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further on as we listen in on other debates about religion. It is evident that women among the Delawares and groups related to them carried a responsibility for healing, for children, and for the proper rituals relating to death; in all these aspects they interacted with white people, sought them out for help, or rejected their competition for influence. In some of these tasks missionaries and women could join forces, in others their interests diverged, and sometimes women would openly refuse the demands of the Christian spirits and their representatives.53 The establishment of European settlements in the Delaware River Valley toward the middle of the seventeenth century forced Indians to work out modes of engagement with these strangers. A small and dispersed Swedish population, balancing precariously between better-equipped Dutch and English competitors to the north and south, found themselves dependent on Lenapes for subsistence, land, and trade. This allowed Lenapes to develop and hone practices of relatively peaceful interactions that involved the responsibilities of women as peace- and kinmakers, and men as civil sachems rather than war captains. When in 1655 the Swedes lowered their flag on Fort Christina, at present-day Wilmington, in deference to a superior Dutch force under the command of Stuyvesant, the Lenapes’ primary interest in the matter concerned the continued supply of trade goods. Within two years of the conquest of New Sweden, the colony passed into the hands of city merchants in Amsterdam. They rechristened the area New Amstel and hoped to enter into profitable tobacco trade with Maryland. A decade later the colonial settlements changed hands again, falling under the English at New York until 1680, when the duke of York recognized Quaker claims on the east side of the Delaware River. In 1682, William Penn arrived to take possession of his fealty. Changes in colonial administrations did not appear to have immediate impact on the Lenapes. Relatively few colonists resided in the area until the close of the century, and the stranded Swedish and Finnish population for several decades served as a buffer and intermediary between Indians and other European colonists. In fact, relations with resident Swedes and Finns improved after the last years of Swedish colonization, which had been marked by increasing friction as Swedes favored trade with the Susquehannocks and sought to bypass the Lenapes with their trade goods. A continued Swedish need for foodstuffs ensured that Lenape leaders were able to hinder young hot-blooded warriors from attacking settlements. In other ways, life in the villages continued much as it had before. Lenapes continued to

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harvest their corn, stage large fall hunts, and travel to the coast to fish. As formerly, they gathered to perform ceremonies and affirm their ties to the land that still gave them sustenance, and they continued, as during the time of the Swedish colony, to hunt and trade locally with white neighbors. Swedish sources affirmed that until the turn of the century Lenapes followed their yearly migration routes to the river or seashore to fish, pick clams, and gather berries. Through these three decades from the end of official Swedish colonization to the establishment of Pennsylvania, Lenape life proceeded in important ways along familiar trails. Some movement of longhouse villages higher in the country was discernible, and occasional outbreaks of smallpox continued to take their heavy toll. Yet village structure, kin groups, and ceremonial and medicinal knowledge functioned and were passed on to the next generation.54 Still, this was not a period devoid of change. Quite the contrary, I suggest that it was during these decades, before the heavy influx of white settlers in the wake of Pennsylvania’s founding, that Lenapes forged from their initial experiences with Swedes and Dutchmen practices and rituals that protected the region from large-scale violence and interethnic conflict. Until the end of the century the Indians remained numerically dominant, and ensuring their support, or neutrality, became a necessity for subsequent Dutch and English colonists. While relations improved with Swedish settlers, tension grew and flared up in relation to the Dutch and the noticeably more aggressive English administrations. Trade conflicts in the area also affected the Lenapes. Wars concerning control of the beaver pelt supply as well as superiority in the trade network embroiled Susquehannocks (with whom the Lenapes were allied) and Iroquois (particularly Senecas) in several devastating battles. In 1661, the dreaded smallpox struck, not for the first time, but with more disastrous consequences than previously. Seneca war parties descended on Lenape villages as well, and at later times Lenapes sheltered Susquehannock refugees. In that way the same violent conflicts concerning the fur trade that instigated the Dutch attack on New Sweden involved Lenapes from another direction. In 1661–62 fighting disturbed them from their winter hunt and thus they had little to trade with in the following spring. Throughout the 1660s irritation brewed between individual Indians and white settlers and resulted in killings on both sides. Seeking to stem the violence and establish communication with colonial administrations, Lenapes (and Susquehannocks) increasingly used their contacts among Swedish colonists, who had some understanding of both their language and culture, as intermediaries.55

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Increasingly, Lenapes emerged as emissaries on peace missions in various conflict situations, demonstrating the intertwining of gender and politics. At a battle between Susquehannocks and Senecas in 1663, one hundred Lenape warriors were said to aid the Susquehannocks at their fort. Apparently they had chosen to side with their Susquehannock allies out of anger at the English (Maryland) support for the Senecas. But in the fall Lenape women were part of a delegation that visited the Mohawks to offer gifts and propose peace. The Mohawks rejected the proposition and killed five of the delegates, among them two women. Later that year, an Esopus war party attacked Manhattan and asked for support and assistance from their southern relatives, the Lenapes. Erwehong, a sachem, used his Swedish contact Peter Cock to relay a message to the Dutch that they would not participate in the war but instead do their best to arrange a peace agreement. Treaties and councils became arenas both for establishing distinctly Indian cultural practices regarding peacemaking and arbitration and for challenging these traditions. Lenapes and their Susquehannock allies began to fashion treaties of friendship and mutual support with New Sweden and continued to honor pacts with individual Swedes throughout the seventeenth century. These connections were used to establish channels to following administrations and were essential in negotiations with later Quaker arrivals. When the Lenapes framed their memories into wampum belts and oral accounts they emphasized their mission as facilitators for peaceful relations with white settlers.56 Memories, however, are frequently incomplete. Although neighborly cooperation and colonists’ dependence on Lenape support characterized some of the relations with surrounding colonial and Indian settlements, Lenape groups increasingly became embroiled in struggles for dominance in the region. Iroquois Six Nations claimed overlordship over the area, particularly after the weakening of the Susquehannock stronghold. Representatives of the Pennsylvania colony found the Lenape groups to be necessary as sources of land, but preferred to treat them as subsidiaries to the Iroquois. The infamous Walking Purchase of 1737 divested the Lenapes of their last remaining contiguous lands in eastern Pennsylvania and forced the majority of their number to resettle west of Blue (Kittatinny) Mountain. Life there would prove different in many ways. Increasingly, the diverse Lenapespeaking factions became identified as Delaware Indians, yet paradoxically, the Pennsylvania government no longer treated with them as an independent people, and for the first time Christian missionaries approached them in earnest and attracted large gatherings. Foremost among these were Mora-

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vians, who established themselves at Bethlehem on the Lehigh River in 1742. Despite such changes, connections between life, power, and gender remained in every way central to Lenape practices. To deepen our understanding of what gender meant in this new situation we turn to a particular village, at a specific time and place, the Delaware village of Meniolagomekah.

Chapter Two

Living Traditions in Times of Turmoil: Meniolagomekah

While contacts between Lenapes, now called Delawares, and colonists increased after the turn of the century, daily lives and experiences among Indians remain as elusive as ever. Colonial records are rife with minutes from councils held between various Indians and white diplomats. Few Indians are named and almost all of them seem to have been men. No wonder historians have concluded that diplomacy “which like hunting and war involved travel through the woods, was by defi nition a man’s realm,” while women stayed in the clearing, around the houses. Even though women were present—and sometimes quite active—at the seemingly endless, seemingly all-male conferences at meetinghouses in Philadelphia, Albany, Easton, or Lancaster, in order to catch more than a glimpse of them we need to turn our gaze to the Indian villages that dotted the landscape all across Pennsylvania. Reports on village life are scarce and apart from captivity narratives few others exist in English. However, Moravian missionaries left ample records of their lives among the Delawares and Mahicans and offer some information about everyday life in these villages. Baptismal records also reveal something of the relationships and realities that fashioned Delaware life in the eighteenth century. Such sources help our understanding of Delaware experiences and options, as well as concerns of both men and women during this period and are especially rich for the Delaware town of Meniolagomekah during the 1750s.1 Meniolagomekah was a village with a resident white missionary, but it was not a Christian town such as nearby Gnadenhütten. Gnadenhütten had been founded in 1746 on a piece of land 30 miles from the Moravian center at Bethlehem. Two years earlier the German pietists had been ousted from their first mission at Shekomeko in New York as they had refused to take oaths of loyalty to either French or British administrations. Many Mahican and some Delaware converts followed them to Pennsylvania to the new town of Gnadenhütten. By 1752, some Meniolagomekah villagers had been

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baptized, while others remained unconverted and they maintained extensive contacts with relatives, friends, and foes in other regions and villages. With Meniolagomekah as our focus, we discover that women were indeed present in the American woods every bit as much as men, and that to try to write a history of this period solely with a male cast of characters seriously distorts the picture of the life the Delawares faced and the choices they made in order to ensure survival. These are stories of real people who lived their lives in real time, but we know them only through the missionaries’ eyes and ears and interpretations of their hopes and fears. Most of the time we do not know what name or names they knew themselves by. Instead we might say that this is a story of pseudonyms. The names passed down to us through the centuries are mostly the names that missionaries used to designate baptized individuals. A Delaware woman, let us call her Naemi, and a Delaware man, let us call him Samuel, are two of the central actors of the following narrative. Shards of their life experiences and a tiny smattering of the words they spoke and listened to throughout their lives come to us through the pens of Bernhard Adam Grube, Johann Jacob Schmick, and others. Although the few sources that remain concerning their lives and words have been sifted through the minds of white men, Naemi and Samuel are very much capable of communicating something of themselves to us. The Moravian records offer a unique opportunity for grasping several aspects of the Delawares’ lives during this period. In this chapter we peruse these records to learn more about the yearly cycle of subsistence work and socializing, residence patterns and traveling, and leadership and internal conflicts, as well as the nature of the relationships with the missionaries and the limits to their diaries as sources. Augustus, Nathanael, Samuel, and Jonathan participated in negotiations and treaty talks with representatives of both the English provincial government and delegations from other Indian nations. But thanks to the Moravian archives they are not the only Delawares we know of, and these records show that treaty business is not the only condition determining the lives of the people in Meniolagomekah village. We also meet Josua and Anton, active in contacts with missionaries as well as in the lives of their families; Naemi as a hostess; Verona who sought to follow the Christian road; Jonas and Ruth, not really popular with the Moravian crowd but seemingly central to their clans; as well as various men and women seeking out the missionaries to argue, discuss, share, question, plead, and participate in other everyday encounters. In the late 1740s Meniolagomekah, tucked away in a protected valley

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on the northwestern side of Blue Mountain, was the easternmost Delaware settlement in Pennsylvania. Mostly consisting of related groups who had moved from New Jersey west across the Delaware River, they now sought to remain isolated from white people and to stay on ancestral homelands—a hope that would soon be quashed by the Pennsylvania government’s hunger for land. Richard Peters, secretary to the Pennsylvania assembly, had already surveyed the area for the proprietors and finally acquired it in 1749 in a purchase from the Six Nations. This meant doom for the small village, and in May 1754 all its inhabitants were forced to move to Gnadenhütten.2 The first reference to Meniolagomekah appeared in Gnadenhütten diaries in early January 1748, when a Mahican man, Josua, told about contacts with Mælilagamégak, which he said meant “a small Spot of good Land.” From then on references to visitors from the village are frequent, and individuals appear to have moved back and forth between relatives and connections in the two towns. The first person from neighboring Meniolagomekah to be baptized was a man who received the name Christian Renatus. This occurred in November 1748 and was followed in early 1749 by the baptism of Jonas and Ruth. Jonas was the brother of Mamanawad, also known as George Rex, who was a leader in the village, and his baptism drew his whole lineage into contact with the Moravians. Mamanawad was baptized and renamed Augustus in April 1749; his sisters Christiana, Lea, and Amalia with her child Israel, and his uncle Noah—all members of the same lineage, followed him in the same year. From then until 1752 when the Moravians accepted an invitation for a missionary to come and live in the village, Meniolagomekah residents—and Augustus in particular—frequently occur in the diaries from Gnadenhütten.3 One reason given for this interest in conversion was the hope that contacts with the Moravians would save the village from expropriation, a hope that would be cruelly eradicated with the eviction in 1754. Moving to Gnadenhütten only offered the Delawares a short respite, as Indians allied with the French attacked and destroyed that town in November 1755. The raid was clearly directed primarily at white people, attackers killing seven men, three women, and one child, but the Mahicans and Delawares living in the town were also forced to seek refuge in Bethlehem as Gnadenhütten was burned to the ground. The distrust and hostilities of the Seven Years War, between whites and Indians and between converted and unconverted Indians, thus entered the lives of the small congregations on the other side of Blue Mountain. The inhabitants of Meniolagomekah experienced the loss of lives, the destruction of homes, and the splitting of kin groups that

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Figure 4. “Reise Charte durch Pensylvanien und andere angränzende Provinzen mit Anmerckung.” Drawer 4, Folder 8, Item 7. Travel map of the region surrounding Bethlehem and early Moravian towns. Note Meniolagomekah and the roads passing from the town to Gnadenhütten and across Blue Mountain to Bethlehem. The distance to the latter equals ca. 30 miles, and villagers in Meniolagomekah frequently made return trips in two days. Courtesy of Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.

accompanied war. For the Delawares in Meniolagomekah the early years of the 1750s were in some ways the last period of relative peace before war and destruction colored their lives for a generation to come.4 Büninger, one of the missionaries, mapped the layout of the village in December 1753, showing the relative locations of houses and their inhabitants, allowing us to reconstruct some of the connections between individuals. At that point sixty people lived in the village, thirteen men, sixteen women, thirteen boys, ten girls, and eight children whose sex is unknown. Of the people mentioned on the map, thirty-one were baptized; eventually several more of the villagers received Christian baptism. All the households were linked to one another through matrilineages.

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In the middle of the town, on one side of the Moravian meetinghouse, stood the house in which Augustus and his Mahican wife Esther lived with Bedith and Achkonema, his two sons from an earlier marriage. Also in this house was Naemi, mother of Augustus’s deceased wife Anna Benigna and grandmother to his sons. On the other side of the meetinghouse lived Nathanael and Priscilla with their son Johannes and daughter Uchqueschis and Priscilla’s sister, later baptized as Anna Rosina. Just south of them lived Nathanael’s mother Thamar with a grown daughter, Machtschahochqve, her two children, and a son, Mamsochalend. Priscilla’s other sister Agnes lived in the northwestern-most house with her husband Josua, another of Agnes’s and Priscilla’s sisters, as well as Isaac’s son Matschkis and daughter Malsachqve. Josua tied this household to the one directly to the south as it consisted of his sister Verona, her husband Jonathan, and their four baptized children. Next to them lived Gideon’s (Teedyuscung) daughter’s husband with three children, and his mother-in-law with three children. The designation indicates that these people were not baptized and thus not known to the missionary. However, the mother-in-law would have been Erdmuth, Isaac’s sister, linking them to the same lineage. The remaining four houses were all linked through Telepuwechque, Augustus’s mother. She lived just northeast of him, with her husband, a young son, a daughter, Amalia, and her three children. Next to them lived her other daughter Cornelia, her husband Esaias, and their four children. On the south side of the village lay the house of Samuel, Augustus’s older brother, and his wife Maria who had been ill for quite a while, their daughter Maria, and son Andreas with his family. On the extreme southeastern corner another of Telepuwechque’s sons, Jonas, dwelled with his wife Ruth, and their small son Samuel. Telepuwechque, baptized as Rebecca in 1755, had six children with families in the town. Priscilla and Agnes and two more sisters lived there with their families. Thamar, another old woman, had three children (and later a fourth son) in the town, and the siblings Josua and Verona, and Isaac and Erdmuth connected the remaining houses. This completes the picture of the inhabitants of the village in December 1753, yet, as will be shown later, people both came and left, demonstrating the linkages this town had with other Indian settlements. The inhabitants of Meniolagomekah were fully aware that they lived on land that had been purchased by white people who threatened them with eviction. The Six Nations had claimed this area, north of the ridge, and then sold it to Pennsylvanians. This easternmost Delaware settlement had known of the existence of the Moravians for several years. Their town had even

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Figure 5. Sketch of the town of Meniolagomekah, made by Abraham Büninger in late December 1753. Box 122, Folder 4, 12/19/1753. Courtesy of Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.

received a visit from Count Zinzendorf, founder of the Moravian church, in 1742. In April 1750 some thirty people of all ages gathered in Augustus’s house to listen to the Moravian bishop Cammerhoff, and the question of a resident missionary was raised. But it was not until the winter 1752 that the inhabitants of the village extended an invitation for a missionary to join them. Bernhard Adam Grube was the first to live with them. Joseph Schebosch (born John Joseph Bull to Quaker parents, but generally known under his Indian name, meaning “Running Water”) and his Mahican wife Christiana followed in June 1752. A gunshot wound ended Schebosch’s residence, and in September of that year Abraham and Martha Büninger took over and stayed until the end, except for a few brief intervals when Johann Jacob and Johanna Schmick fi lled in for them.5 The Moravian church had its origins in dissenting groups of Protes-

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tants from Bohemia and Moravia who received refuge on Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf’s estate, where they established the town of Herrnhaag (later their center moved to Herrnhut). Persecuted in Europe, one group migrated to Pennsylvania in 1741 where the town of Bethlehem on the Lehigh River became their center of missionary activity. A crucial aspect of their faith was sharing the experience of the transformative power of the suffering Christ lamb with heathens, which motivated them to travel to North America and other distant parts of the world. Moravian missionary methods involved living with converts and their families in their towns, attempting to follow their way of life—as long as it did not come into conflict with Christian conceptions of sin. Missionaries made strenuous efforts to learn languages and adapt their message to the particular cultural circumstances of the people with whom they were living. Missionaries had to provide for their own sustenance and housing, so the daily routine often involved laboring together with the indigenous populations. The Moravian church had developed a rather unusual system of organization that divided members into choirs according to sex, age, and marital status. These choirs (single sisters, single brothers, widows, widowers, small girls, small boys, etc.) worshipped together, worked together, and became the most important social unit for the individual. Dividing the sexes also meant that when missionizing they made an effort to have women speak to women and men to men. Thus a missionary needed a wife, and the church clearly encouraged couples to go out as missionaries and, in the early years, offered women opportunities to serve as deacons and as teachers.6 Daily life in Moravian settlements was organized around religious meetings. The day began with a viertel stunde—a quarter of an hour during which a pre-chosen text of Daily Words (Losungen) from the Bible was read and discussed. Evening services ended the day’s activities, which were usually interspersed with singing hours and Bible study. In addition to these daily events there were feasts celebrating the Christian year and observances marking the various choirs. Once a month a Love Feast was held with the celebration of Communion. Only those who had been baptized and showed evidence of true conversion could attend the Communion service. To be allowed to participate was viewed as the greatest privilege. Shaped as a highly emotional event, Communion formed the center point of a belief that emphasized the emotive understanding of Christ’s sacrifice and a heartfelt union with him. Gatherings focusing Daily Words for the adults were complemented with education for the young. Missionaries held special meetings—Kinderstunde—for children and encouraged them to participate

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in schooling. In Meniolagomekah, as in other towns, missionaries regularly held special school hours for boys and girls separately. The education combined knowledge of reading and writing with emphasis on emotional responses to the Christian message. The language of the missions underscored a familial union of believers. Baptized individuals became “brothers” and “sisters,” thus supplanting other kinship ties while also evading rather more complicated sexual connotations in the tightly knit mission communities.7 While Moravians held that everyone stood under the direct guidance of Christ, and therefore were equal, the actual organization of congregations recognized an unmistakable hierarchy. Statutes gave great power to the missionaries, and acceptance of regulations was a prerequisite for permission to settle in a missionary town. The chain of decision went from the helpers conference, made up of trusted converts and resident missionaries, to the missionary conference and finally to the elders conference in Bethlehem. The final decision on many issues was left directly to the will of Christ, revealed to the Moravians by drawing lots. Questions posed were answered by drawing one of three pieces of paper representing Christ’s responses, one had “yes” written on it, the second had “no,” and the third was left blank. This indicates the ultimate trust Moravians placed in Christ’s and the Spirit’s direct intervention in the world of humans.8 Apart from teaching the gospel of Christ, a central task for the resident male missionary was to record the daily progress of the spiritual work as well as significant events in the life of the village. These diaries were then sent to Bethlehem (and Herrnhut), copied, and spread to other settlements near and far, tying together the vast network of Moravian missions across the world. In addition to the many contacts Meniolagomekah residents had with other Indian towns in the area, the exchanges of Moravian diaries exposed Delawares to contacts with converts in faraway places such as Greenland, St. Croix, and St. Thomas. These diaries form the basis for this chapter. It must be remembered, however, that although the diarists recorded everyday activities and frequent conversations with people in the village they were not early anthropologists. The missionaries ultimately desired to gather information and record such interactions that advanced the knowledge of Christ’s sacrifice and an experience of being immersed in his wounds. To this end the missionaries sought contacts, visited houses, taught school, and held devotional gatherings. Moreover, powerful injunctions hindered male missionaries from delving too deeply into the lives and minds of women, and whenever possible a female counterpart was brought in for the explicit purpose of handling contacts with Indian women. The men who wrote the

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diaries were predisposed not to record women’s activities, and had little access to the thoughts and feelings in their hearts. In spite of this, Delaware women intrude into these sources, and this intrusion, I argue, is a powerful testament to their agency in Delaware society.9

Seasons’ Cycle For nearly two years resident Moravian missionaries described in some detail the daily life of this village. These records provide an opportunity to examine assumptions concerning Delaware social organization. What makes Meniolagomekah interesting is that it was a Delaware town, not one constructed by the Moravians as a Christian Indian settlement. It is one of the earliest to come into contact with the missionaries, and even though the majority of its inhabitants eventually chose to undergo baptism, direct and sustained contacts with missionaries was a relatively new experience in their lives. None of the adult inhabitants were baptized as children, and the town continued to sustain a rather large proportion of unbaptized individuals—a fact easily obscured by the lists various missionaries made that focused almost exclusively on those who were baptized.10 While apparently fully aware of the impending risk of eviction, survival in the most basic form was at the heart of Meniolagomekah’s yearly cycle. Work connected to the fields, to hunting, fishing, gathering, and commerce fi lled the year with varying intensity in a struggle to obtain enough food, clothing, and adequate housing. In late winter and early spring men went out alone or in small groups on daylong hunting trips. Augustus was apparently a most accomplished hunter, and while other men might return empty-handed, a typical entry from February 25, 1753, stated “Augustus went out hunting and brought a deer.” In May almost everyone worked in the cornfields planting, and in June it was time for hoeing. In the springtime people also worked to repair houses and fences. A brush fire, apparently started by a neighbor, burned down houses and fences in May 1752, and for a full week the entire population of the village was busy rebuilding. The sources offer no indication of possible causes for the fire, but perhaps white land speculators resented the villagers’ toil. Grube described their efforts that spring and added that all had planted a new piece of land in addition to the old fields so that this year the village would have a good crop. Late spring was also the leanest time of the year when hunger plagued the inhabitants of the small village and forced them to seek any possible means of provisions.

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“The lack of supplies is now tearing at the poor Indian siblings,” Büninger wrote in April 1753 and he reported several expeditions of mostly women who left the village to try to sell baskets and mats for food.11 Comments about these bartering expeditions are often rote, just naming individuals leaving together and stating their purpose, but sometimes we get a glimpse of the exigencies involved in finding food during this lean part of the year. In June 1752 Jonathan, Verona, and their son Levi left to try to buy corn in neighboring white towns. When they returned they reported that no one would sell to them, but when they reached Christiansbrunn Levi managed to kill a young deer, and with it as barter the Moravian brothers there gave them flour and bread. Meat from the hunt was absolutely vital for survival as the last flour and corn had been boiled and used and no plants or berries were ripe and available. Individuals and couples made frequent trips to seek to buy flour or corn from nearby Christian villages, and women in particular brought with them baskets, brooms, bowls, spoons, or sleeping mats, which they sold for provisions.12 The missionary diaries meticulously recorded the comings and goings of villagers as well as visits from other towns. By far, most traveling appeared to occur during April and May and during the second half of July and August. In summer, the corn began to ripen and there were berries to pick and fish to catch. The activities of the village were divided along gender lines as in August 1753 when the “sisters” went out together to pick raspberries, while the “brothers” pursued hunting. Fall (October/November) provided the best time for hunting, and this involved most of the inhabitants of the village. Larger groups of men went into the woods for several days or weeks to hunt for the winter, and sometimes women would come along as well. Although the leanest time of the year forced adaptations to and inclusion in a wider Atlantic network of trade and labor, in the bounty of summer and fall practices continued that are consistent with seventeenth-century sources that describe those seasons as a time of gathering, harvesting, hunting, and socializing.13 Were there differences between the subsistence labor that men and women performed? When the information in the diaries is broken down into various activities it reveals that whereas hunting groups almost always consisted of men, and men worked together to repair houses and fences, women predominated in selling and buying items such as baskets, flour, and berries. Women also more frequently sought seasonal employment among white people. Yet, the primary conclusion from the Meniolagomekah material is an overwhelming impression of joint efforts, in which some work was

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generally performed by men, some by women, but with no strict and unambiguous sexual division of labor. This indicates continuity with the past, not a radical change. It is clear through comments from the later part of the eighteenth century that gendered work responsibilities began to alter among the Delawares, partly as a consequence of Moravian influence; however, Meniolagomekah was still a largely autonomous village in the early stages of contacts with Christian missionaries. While external changes tied subsistence activities to a larger world economy, they were still set in a pattern rooted in earlier times. Men and women on a formal—or ideological—level took responsibility for different tasks arranged in a strictly complementary scheme, but exigencies of the day, common needs, and individual proclivities influenced who did what at any given time. The most common comment in the diaries concerning work in the fields describes such communal efforts. “I visited the siblings at their plantations and found them diligent in their planting.” Similarly, John McCullough remembered from his captivity among the Delawares from 1756 to 1764 that in the early spring “all the Indians of the town excepting one man and a woman, were out at their corn fields, leaving the young ones to take care of their houses.”14 The Delawares differed from some Algonkian neighbors in the Northeast in that they were matrilineal, that is, children always belonged to the lineage of their mothers, and a child’s father would always belong to the lineage not of his children, but of his own mother. Members of the same matriclan lived together, and often a man would make his home with his wife’s clan, while female relatives stayed with their mother and sisters. The houses and their contents belonged to the women. Marriage within one’s own clan was unthinkable, and any village would have included representatives of at least two of the three clans, turkey, tortoise, and wolf. This aspect of social organization is one that the Delawares shared with the Iroquois, and anthropologist A. F. C. Wallace has suggested that lack of information on Delaware life patterns may by analogy be fi lled in with references from the Iroquois. Thus, he concluded that the “basic unit of Delaware social organization . . . was the maternal lineage. Descent was matrilineal, residence basically matrilocal, the lineage exogamic.” It is uncertain, however, how the clan system evolved, and recent work indicates that the eighteenth century witnessed a growing perception of common ethnic nationhood among the different linguistic groups that coalesced as Delawares.15 The baptized inhabitants of the village are found in several records and may be cross-referenced for a clearer picture of their relationships, while the image of the unbaptized members is hazier. As mentioned before, three

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elder women—Naemi, Telepuwechque (later baptized as Rebecca), and Thamar—linked most of the people in the village. A fourth woman, Erdmuth, frequently visited and formed a link between the remaining houses. Telepuwechque acted as a connection between five of the houses on the 1753 map, and Thamar and Erdmuth each connected two. As a general rule, also in this town, women lived with their mothers, sisters lived together, but adult brothers did not. Three men (Augustus, Johan Thomas, “Gideon’s daughter’s husband”) lived with their mother-in-law, and five more lived with their wife and her sister or with their wife and her children from previous relationships. In two cases men—or older boys—lived with their fathers. Andreas, son of Samuel and Maria, and his wife Anna stayed in the house of his parents. It is quite possible that the reason was that they were not yet permanent residents in the village, as the diary recorded in April 1753 that the young couple received a welcome as new members. The other example refers to boys whose mother was dead. The natural thing then would have been for the boys to move in with their mother’s family rather than stay with their father. It is worth looking closer at this situation because it is one of central importance to the village. The two boys were Augustus’s sons, Bedith (or Pettiti) and Achkonema, in his fi rst marriage to Anna Benigna. Augustus is the central character of the Meniolagomekah story as the missionaries told it. He was the “captain” of the village, the most successful hunter, and the man the Moravians called on to mediate contacts between themselves and the other inhabitants of the town. Information concerning him is rich, yet omits many aspects of his life, which we may only uncover through the use of other sources and knowledge of Delaware lifeways. Augustus was one of the three men who lived with his mother-inlaw, even though his own mother was a resident of the village. He shared a house with Naemi, Anna Benigna’s mother. This means that the two boys, Bedith and Achkonema, lived with their maternal grandmother, as would have been common in a matrilineal society when the mother died. Augustus remained with Naemi even though he later remarried, not only once but twice. His second marriage was to Esther, a Mahican woman, and she lived with him and Naemi in Meniolagomekah until her death in childbirth. Later Augustus again married, this time Augustina, a daughter of Erdmuth, and Naemi was involved in choosing his new bride. Even though after the eviction a large portion of Meniolagomekah’s inhabitants, headed by Augustus’s oldest brother Samuel, traveled across the Allegheny Mountains to find a new home, Augustus did not follow them. Instead he went with Augustina to her home in Wyoming on the Susquehanna River. He thus behaved as a

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responsible leader, throughout his adult life following a traditional matrilocal residence pattern.16 Traveling and visiting were a conspicuous component of life in Meniolagomekah, indicating not only the constant flow of information and interaction in the so-called backwoods, but perhaps also something about Delaware understanding of place. Relatives came from other locations to help with the agricultural work, as when Benjamin and his wife arrived at the beginning of May 1752 to help Samuel labor in the fields, or when Jonathan, Verona, and her son Levi went to Gnadenhütten to aid Joel in his planting. Frequently people in Meniolagomekah visited or received visits from relatives for varying periods of time. Sometimes these were connected with illness, but at other times they appear to be just social visits. The December 1753 map depicting village inhabitants was not a static description of the constitution of Meniolagomekah but should be viewed more as a status report. In fact, a comparison between four lists of inhabitants in the village reveals a core of some 40–50 individuals and 10–20 who seem to come and go. One discrepancy between the lists concerns the number of unbaptized Indians in the village. While Büninger’s map appears to faithfully reproduce the constellation of inhabitants that winter, other lists focus almost exclusively on baptized members. It is possible, however, to establish relational ties between all the persons connected to the village. Kinship provided the connective tissue, and the small village was in constant contact with other Moravian towns in the vicinity and also with other Native towns along the Susquehanna River as well as in the Jerseys.17 In the almost two years during which missionaries recorded events in the village, they reported more than one hundred visitors. It is difficult to chart this network in detail, but it suggests a fluidity of information and connections that would have made Meniolagomekah and other Delaware settlements far from isolated. Other historians have of course noticed the movements and mixing occurring in this region at this time. James Merrell describes the criss-crossing roads of the Pennsylvania forests and the cultural practices that differentiated Indian from white travelers. Heavily laden and well supplied, white expeditions contrasted starkly with Indians who traveled light and procured provisions en route, or did without. Perceptions of distance and estimated times of arrival also differed. Many a colonial representative lamented the Indian penchant for stopping “‘to Settle their affairs with’ locals and visit kinfolk” on their way to councils. In addition to noting recurring visits from missionaries and trips to Gnadenhütten and Bethlehem for religious festivities, the diaries illustrate how the necessity of

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working for wages formed a reason for seasonal movements. Meniolagomekah did not differ; it rather confirmed a pattern that partly reflected the expansions, contractions, and movements of earlier Lenape villages where the requirements of subsistence practices, socializing, and politics and confl icts made seasonal migration necessary.18 But travels and living arrangements in Meniolagomekah also mirrored the forced movements and destruction of the land base that had become part and parcel of Native life, through which familiar structures were threatened by war, removal, disease, and death. At a discussion held in Gnadenhütten in 1750, Augustus and others attempted to explain to the missionaries how the Delawares viewed their relationship to land. A rumor had reached Gnadenhütten that some Indians from the Jerseys would arrive later that spring to take up residence on a large tract along the Lehigh River, and they wanted white people to leave that area. The inhabitants in Meniolagomekah would have a part in this land, as they were related to the people from the Jerseys. Representatives from Meniolagomekah declared that all the land “really belonged to all Delawares, and told us a long history of it, through which the Indians presume to have the right to the land.” History thus supported the argument that land belonged in common to all Delawares, but missionaries would not accept this contention, and the converts in Meniolagomekah were encouraged not to enter into any negotiations regarding land, advice that was bound to cause a rift between Christian Delawares and their unconverted relatives. Delawares time and again reiterated their connection to the land in specific terms, but home became more and more difficult to connect with fi xed locations. Rather, ties to kin and lineage provided home and gave meaning to territory.19 Sedentary populations were essential in the ideological construction of the Moravian missionary town. Regular attendance at morning and evening prayers and schooling provided cornerstones of the Christian life. Missionaries sought to curtail Delaware travels, whatever the reason, with the exception of trips to Bethlehem and Gnadenhütten for Communion services and visits to Christian brothers and sisters. In July 1755, Schmick wrote to his superior Spangenberg that there were fewer than ten sisters and five brothers in the village at that time. The other brothers were out hunting, “the sisters fetch themselves things to make mats with, and will be back in 10 days. We have not been able to keep them at home, as they cannot earn enough for clothes here, and are in great need of these for themselves and for their children.” The missionaries seem to have felt themselves at quite a loss during the times when Indians scattered across the landscape for various activities.

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Figure 6. Ansicht von Gnadenhütten in Pennsylvania, artist unknown. Illustration of the mission town of Gnadenhütten, done in 1754. Note the neatly laid out rows of houses, which differs from the layout of Meniolagomekah. Courtesy of Unitätsarchiv, Herrnhut, Germany.

It was especially difficult when the men were away. Büninger lamented his loneliness in July 1753 when he “did not find anyone at home, all were out hunting. . . . In the evening I held a viertel stunde, my heart felt heavy, I wished very much that the siblings would return home.”20 Being alone in the village may have been trying, but there was another reason for the missionaries to view these constant comings and goings with mixed feelings. Many of these visits signaled prevailing ties between families and lineages, one of the greatest threats to the ideal Christian life Moravians envisioned. The injunction in the Gospel of Matthew that whosoever does not love Christ more than his father, mother, son, or daughter is not worthy of him seemed a very necessary one in a Delaware or Mahican context where the kin group was of such central importance. “Father here, and father there, if he is an enemy of the Savior, then he is also my enemy, one is required to love him, but as an enemy,” stated a message from a helper’s conference in Bethlehem. The missionaries thus sought to curtail these movements by

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emphasizing the allegiance owed to the Christian community. Stefan Hertrampf discusses at length how Moravians encountered the threat of lineage ties and the contacts with unconverted relations in other towns and highlights the anxiety over visiting. Concern over the contaminating influence of relatives was such that bishop Spangenberg emphasized that persons who were not willing to declare that the relationship to the Spirit’s family was stronger than that to their heathen families were not suitable candidates for participation in Communion.21 It is precisely these familial ties that we catch sight of through these travels and through the visits. Most of the visitors came to spend time with relatives or friends among the Delawares in the village, and the missionaries did not have much contact with the guests, particularly if they were not baptized. We cannot know what went on or what people discussed, but there are a few glimpses of these interactions in the diaries. On October 25, 1752, the diary noted that Jonas returned from a visit to the Jerseys and with him came his sisters Amalia and Cornelia, Amalia’s husband Johan Thomas, and several “strangers,” probably other relatives. This was Jonas’s second trip to the Jerseys that year and after the first one he brought two boys back with him. The day after his and his sisters’ arrival, he was on the road again, this time “over the Mountain to fetch his Father and Mother.” Jonas was the first of his family to be baptized; yet he seemed to be a constant thorn in the side of the missionaries until his untimely demise in 1754. But while the missionaries expressed disapproval at his behavior and distrusted the depth of his conversion, he was loved by his brother and apparently developed a close bond with his wife. An example of their loyalty to one another is that they frequently traveled together on visits to nearby towns. Of twelve couples associated with Meniolagomekah, only three traveled more than twice in each other’s company; Jonas and Ruth, Anton and Johanna, and Jonathan and Verona. During his last two years Jonas spent quite a bit of time in the Jerseys and apparently contacts between relatives there and Meniolagomekah had not ceased. Perhaps Telepuwechque and her daughters and sons who had once lived in the Jerseys still used lands there in various ways. The diaries are silent on the purpose of these trips, with the exception of mentioning how Jonas brought relatives to the village and that Naemi and Amalia went there once to find seasonal work. The longest trips recorded in the diaries concern visits to the Jerseys and to Susquehanna. Through these we can see that the town contained at least two lineages of separate origins. Telepuwechque and her children had ties to the Jerseys, while Thamar and her children came from the Susquehanna Valley.22

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Could one of the reasons for the missionaries’ lack of trust in Jonas have been that he adhered to family obligations and took a Delaware responsibility for his mother and her husband, his sisters and their families? Is the affection he showed them and his spouse an example of the tender ties that fasten a man to earthly cares rather than to devotion to the suffering Lamb of Christ? We cannot know. Yet on the horrible occasion in 1754 when news reached the village that Jonas had fallen to his death while on a trip to the Jerseys—the wording of the diary suggests he committed suicide—the missionary primarily expressed sorrow over Jonas’s bad way of living. He tried to comfort the grieving Augustus by suggesting that his brother died as a consequence of too much contact with white society. “To spend a long time among white people will ruin many Indians to body and soul, and that through the drinking that is so common among them many Indians will be brought to the end of their lives before their time. But it is not necessary with our Indian siblings, they can be healthy, satisfied and live at peace and remain so until the Holy Spirit takes them to himself with a peaceful heart.”23 Missionary concern with the movements of the converts is perhaps the main reason so many of these travels are recorded in some detail. It is frequently stated in the literature that women were far more sedentary than men, and that the clearing was women’s domain while men belonged to the forest. Was there a difference in the composition of the groups in which men and women traveled? Table 1. Traveling Companions According to Gender, as Recorded in the Diaries from Meniolagomekah, 1752–1754 Composition of traveling groupa

N

%

N

%

Same sex groups N %

Men

51

42

28

22

19

Women

18

20

28

32

16

Alone

With spouses

Mixed groups N

%

16

26

20

18

26

30

aHunting groups are not included, as they are discussed separately below. Source: B122, “Meniolagomekah Diaries, 1752-1754”; B177, “Gnadenhütten, Pa, Diaries 1750-1753,” F.4, MAB.

Of 166 reported comings and goings from the town, two-fifths were single travelers, and most of these were men. Women more often than men traveled in groups or pairs. It is quite difficult to determine whether people

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traveling together were related, but it appears that it was just as likely that two or more people not related as siblings or parents/children chose each other as traveling companions. This does not mean that they were not related, just that the nature of their ties cannot be determined through the Moravian records. In 16 percent of the cases mentioned, women traveled together with one or more children of both sexes. Men, however, only traveled with a child 6 percent of the time, and that child was always a grown son. There is no mention of a father traveling alone with a daughter. These numbers must be used with caution. There are so many uncertainties connected with the source material that the figures can, at best, only indicate possible relationships between categories. In general the most reliable conclusion is that there is little discernible pattern to the movements of men and women to and from the village of Meniolagomekah, other than that they were extensive. Both men and women traveled, and some more than others. While it is tempting to draw conclusions based on individual frequencies, this must also be questioned. Did the missionaries in fact record all movements? Since the vast majority of people traveling were named as Christian converts, it is quite likely that a number of movements involving unbaptized individuals went unrecorded. One somewhat surprising finding is that there is no mention of sisters and brothers traveling together, except when large family groups changed locations. Captivity narratives, such as Mary Jemison’s, record a number of mixed-gender excursions consisting of brothers and sisters. Why this is not so in Meniolagomekah could be a consequence of the recording, or a matter of choice. Maybe the need for such groupings did not exist in this village. Instead, preferred travel companions could just as well be siblings of the same sex or friends whose connections elude us today.24 Another question is whether the missionaries paid more attention to certain individuals, thus resulting in more accurate records of their movements. Jonathan, Nathanael, Samuel, and Augustus were recorded as the most frequent travelers. If these four, who are the most repeatedly mentioned individuals in the missionary records as a whole, are removed from the count, no significant differences can be discerned between the frequency and numbers of men’s and women’s traveling. For instance, without these four, males traveling alone comprise 25 percent of the total, bringing that figure closer to the 20 percent for women. I suspect that interest in the souls of these four men made the missionaries concentrate on them, and thus we see them occurring more regularly in the records. As to the movements of other individuals, male or female, the difference seems marginal.

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What is significant in this historical context is that this fi nding suggests that women were hardly more stationary than men. They were not inhibited from traveling because of responsibilities for children and family, and no more strangers to the forests surrounding the village than the men, at least not to the paths crisscrossing the forests. Nor did they in most cases travel with a spouse. Their movements appear to be just as varied as men’s were, and the only really noticeable difference is that women were more likely to travel in the company of their children. We have already looked at kinship in the village, but what do the diaries tell us about other relationships among the dwellers in this small town? While relations between Christians and Indians are at the forefront and sometimes appear to be fi lled with apprehension and lack of trust, interactions between Indians more rarely make their way into the diaries. It is therefore tempting to paint a picture of Meniolagomekah as a place of peaceful and harmonious existence. For instance, there is not a single example of interpersonal violence. At no time do the missionaries report physical aggression between spouses or toward children, and siblings and strangers do not appear to be involved in any altercations either. There are plenty of accounts concerning violence in Indian towns in the region—not least in Shamokin in the Wyoming Valley—and we must therefore seek an explanation for the nonviolent nature of Meniolagomekah relations. One such may be found in descriptions of Lenape conflict patterns. Zeisberger emphasized how conflicts within the towns were to be resolved “only by calm reasoning and friendly exhortation.” Delaware men, in particular, were admonished not to behave in an aggressive or violent manner. No doubt this could at times be accurate, but it was unlikely to have been the constant state, and there are plenty of examples of inter-Indian conflicts that arose out of their troubled experiences of constant removal.25 This said, there were signs of stress in the village. The encounter with Christianity added another dimension to intravillage conflicts as tensions grew between baptized and unbaptized kin. This is the most obvious cause of distress as we meet the village through the diaries. While some of the inhabitants accepted and even desired the missionaries to hold regular meeting hours, others—for undisclosed reasons—expressed hostility toward them. Isaac, Andreas, and Johan Jacob returned in the evening of July 15, 1753, after a period away, and behaved so disruptively that Büninger had to cancel the viertel stunde. Nathanael voiced his concern that not all the people in the village loved the Savior. Augustus on different occasions strove for a solution to these tensions by emphasizing the unity of all Christian

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Indians, whether Delaware or other tribes. In 1749 he tried to establish separate burial grounds for baptized and unbaptized Meniolagomekahns, and a year later he sought to gather the baptized members of the village in one place. Perhaps his marriage to Mahican Esther constituted part of this attempt to arrange a pan-Indian Christian unity, but she apparently found it difficult to adjust to his people. She expressed deep concern before the marriage that she would not be accepted in the village, as she had heard that Delawares were a heathen people. Augustus’s attempts to form a union between Mahican and Delaware Christians were not received kindly by all his tribesmen. Gideon, or Teedyuscung, accused him of having a bad heart. In fact, Augustus’s and Gideon’s separate designs clashed on more than one occasion, but they were bound by kin obligations to come to each other’s aid. Augustus followed his wife’s family to Shamokin, but this choice alienated him from the Christians and he lost the trust they had vested in him as a leader. Toward the end of his life the Moravian diary stated that he regretted leaving the Christian fold and recorded a message to his fellow Delawares not to follow his bad example.26 One way of finding evidence of interactions between individuals in the village is to consult the lebensläufe, or life histories, written by missionaries on the death of a person. These were descriptions of the lives of deceased persons with a focus on their conversion and experience as Christians. Special emphasis was placed on their demeanor and last words during their final moments. White Moravians often prepared histories of their own lives that could be quite extensive, but for Indians they were shorter and penned by the missionaries. Such life histories exist for eight of the people closely connected to the village, six women and two men. The women were Agnes, Amalia, Thamar, Erdmuth, Verona, and Ruth, and the men Nathanael and Anton. The gender discrepancy is noticeable, and there is no evident reason for this. Perhaps it indicates the importance of women’s responsibilities in religious affairs, a topic to which we shall turn in the following chapter, or perhaps it is a consequence of where and when these people happened to die. For instance Thamar, Erdmuth, Verona, and Nathanael all died in the terrible smallpox epidemic that ravaged the camp of Delawares confined in barracks in Philadelphia during 1764. The conflict between Christian and “heathen” beliefs is present in six of these life histories, and this tension waxed and waned throughout these converts’ lives. It is likely that this was a common pattern for converts, whether they eventually died in the fold of the church or not, but only those who died in a mission settlement were remembered in a lebenslauf. Agnes, who was Priscilla’s sister (who died a

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troublemaker without offering the Moravian chronicler any consolation of a change of heart), survived the barracks in Philadelphia and lived a rather long life before dying in the new Gnadenhütten in 1783. Movements, destruction, and hunger marred her life, and for a while she chose to live among the Shawnees, but she eventually returned to the Moravians because “she would rather die in the congregation than among the wild people.” Amalia was troubled for many years by her husband Johann Thomas, who made her life among the Christians difficult and tried several times to persuade her and her child to leave the congregation. Likewise, Erdmuth made it clear to her children and son-in-law that no efforts would tear her away from the congregation.27 Verona is the woman most frequently mentioned in the diaries. She was often on the road, seeking employment or selling wares of her own production. She also took initiatives to contacts with the missionaries. One such episode is indicative of the stress within the community. When Martin and Anna Mack arrived in Meniolagomekah at the beginning of December 1753, Verona greeted them with apparent relief. She related that the father of Anton had been in the town for two days, and he insisted on telling “all sorts of old stories, and also sang Indian songs.” She hoped that now he would be silent, as the missionaries had arrived. Her anger at the competing preaching and singing is evidence of the conflict between converts and unbaptized, but could also indicate tensions between the various kin groups in the town. Anton’s father is not the only one to be mentioned as a singer: so was Anton’s brother Nathanael. In addition, Anton later appeared as a preacher, and their mother Thamar was a woman of visions. So undoubtedly they constituted a spiritually powerful family, even though their exact relations to other Delaware groups are impossible to determine. While the largest portion of the inhabitants were linked to kin groups who had come from the Jerseys and were probably Unami Delawares, Thamar’s lineage appears to have come from the Susquehanna region, connected to both Unamis and Munsees. Although these differences did not necessarily lead to open conflicts, they added to the tension between groups in the village. Verona also experienced confusion and felt torn on account of her family. After they were forced to leave Meniolagomekah, she left the congregation but returned after a few years and asked for a renewed chance to live among the Christians. Her family “often embarrassed her.” Her husband Jonathan was one of them, and they eventually went separate ways. She and Jonathan refused to go to Easton in 1758 at the request of Teedyuscung, to whom she may have been related. Perhaps they were embarrassed by Teedyuscung’s outrageous drunken behavior, as

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were many other Delawares. She and Jonathan left the Moravian settlements to live among the unbaptized until 1761, when Verona explained her sins and misery and they asked for absolution. Only a few months later Jonathan was denounced as a liar who behaved badly at another conference held at Easton. The overarching stress in Verona’s life came from the frequent removals the Delawares were forced to live through. She eventually followed the other Delawares from Wechquetank to Philadelphia and died there in the 1764 smallpox epidemic. Her last words expressed exhaustion, “I am so tired of being here,” and she wished to die before they would be forced to move again. The conflict that looms the largest between inhabitants of the town is the matrimonial discord between Samuel and Maria. Soon after Grube’s arrival in Meniolagomekah, Samuel came to him and complained of the sorry state of his heart, “he was not well and had quarreled with his wife.” Grube asked Maria to come to him as well, and through Augustus as interpreter he told them that “I would hold both of them as sinners, and they would not have the right kind of love for one another, until they both would fall to the spirit’s feet and ask for mercy and forgiveness.” The day after, Maria left for Gnadenhütten with Benjamin and his wife. Two weeks later she returned to Grube and again Augustus interpreted. This time she told the missionary that she had found in her heart that she was to blame for the dispute and she felt “very ashamed and miserable.” Troubles continued, however, and later in the year Schebosch reported “a Sorrow Cause with Samuel and his wife.” This time it was Samuel who approached the missionary with a contrite heart. He told Schebosch “that his heart wahs verry havey So that he Could not Live except the Brethren did forgive him,” but just as they were beginning to talk about the problems Augustus’s gun accidentally went off and injured both men. Whether the bodily wound put an end to domestic strife, we cannot find in the diaries, but at least one reference some months later speaks of a more peaceful atmosphere between the couple. This may also have been a consequence of Maria’s illness, which began in the early months of 1753 and eventually led to her death a year later.28 There is nothing in the sources to suggest the nature of the strain between Maria and Samuel. Indian marital unions were a problematic area in Moravian towns and teachings. Missionaries often sought to arrange matches between converted brothers and sisters, but these marriages did not always fare well. In particular it appears that it was difficult to create marital unions across ethnic divides. Wampanoag Maria and Delaware Samuel may have found their respective customs incompatible. But that is only guesswork. What comes across in the diaries is the overwhelming sadness of a

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woman struggling with protracted disease, and an older man whose injury proved debilitating. They both wept over their differences and hardships, and it is with compassion we read the words of Schebosch after an interview with the couple: “my heart wass so heavy that Could not tell what to do.”29 Ill health was a concern for the people at Meniolagomekah, as elsewhere, and it is readily apparent from the records of their comings and goings. Yet, based on the diaries we would have to conclude that this was a reasonably healthy population. There are only a few instances per year of infectious diseases, such as colds, and the only accidents reported were the two injuries resulting from Augustus’s gun going off as he was cleaning it, and the fall that led to Jonas’s death. But six deaths are reported, three adults and three children. Maria died after more than a year of health problems, Jonas was killed when he was away in the Jerseys, and Anna Maria (who was not a resident of the village) died from undisclosed causes. The three children were Augustus’s daughter Hannah (later her mother Esther would die as well, possibly from complications after childbirth), a young boy named Christian, and a newborn child to an unconverted woman who lay ill for awhile after giving birth. Childhood and childbirth thus emerge, not surprisingly, as dangerous phases of life, but otherwise the people in Meniolagomekah were not reported to suffer greatly from disease or injuries. The diaries, however, only span a period of two years and therefore a look at some additional sources will help set this in perspective. Peter Lindeström reported in the 1650s that the Indians he met were in remarkably good health. Their main health problems were injuries of various kinds, snake and insect bites, ulcers, and syphilis. But the onslaught of diseases unwittingly brought over by Europeans wrought havoc also among the Delawares. Late seventeenth-century Swedish sources agree with general findings from other areas that an appalling 75 to 90 percent of the aboriginal population suffered death through contagious diseases, such as smallpox, measles, and dysentery and their side effects. Three Swedish pastors wrote in a letter to the consistory at Uppsala Archdiocese in 1697 that “the heathens are now very few . . . where before have been many 1000 are now none; God has caused them to die through infectious diseases and civil war, etc.” Based on his long experience, Heckewelder suggested deterioration in health, which he dated to the second half of the eighteenth century. In general, the Indians were “a strong race of men,” but as a consequence of the introduction of liquor “they have been led into vices which have brought on disorders which they say were unknown before.” He then listed “pulmonary consumptions, fluxes, fevers and severe rheumatisms” as well

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as “intermitting and bilious fevers,” a disease known as “yellow vomit,” and worms. Heckewelder also remarked on the old age many Indians expected to reach. In his history of North American Indians, David Zeisberger also listed diseases common to the Indian peoples he had known: “They are subject to festering sores. Cured in one place, they break out in another. Chills and fever, dysentery, hemorrhage, and bloody flux in women are very common among them.” He mentioned that Indians were successful in treating injuries and wounds, especially snake bites. Like authors before him, he particularly commented on sexually transmitted disease and suggested that venereal diseases “have during the last years spread more and more, due, doubtless, to their disorderly life.” The diaries, however, are surprisingly uninformative on particular health problems. In Zeisberger’s extensive diaries between 1772 and 1780, published by Hermann Wellenreuther and Carola Wessel, there are a mere ten cases of Indians directly seeking out the missionaries on account of illness, and only a few dozen references to disease. The majority of these refer to young children or were included in the lebenslauf that described the lives of deceased members. This is not to say that disease was not a concern, only that it in no way seems to have taken on catastrophic proportions, in marked contrast to the terrible years of 1746 and 1764 when smallpox epidemics cut swaths through the Delaware population. Indeed, in Delaware recollection, smallpox occurred once in every generation. A Lenape spokesman told English Quakers in the 1680s: “as to the Small-Pox, it was once in my Grand-fathers time, . . . and it was once in my Fathers time, . . . and now it is in my time.”30 Not necessarily devastated by disease, the Delawares nonetheless sought alternative solutions to health problems, and in this context the Moravian faith became one important source. David Zeisberger commented in his diary that it was precisely in the hour of need that Indians approached the Christian communities for both physical and spiritual aid, but when the danger was over they forgot all their promises. This concern was gendered, as worry for the welfare of children clearly was the most common cause for women to make contacts with the missionaries. There are several cases of young girls asking for baptism in the face of imminent death, as well as of parents (almost exclusively mothers) asking for the baptism of a dying child or help with burials.31 A case in point is the events surrounding the death of Anna Maria. In October 1753, Martin Mack wrote to Meniolagomekah that it would be good if Jonathan, Verona, and Caritas could visit Anna Maria, wife of Tobias, as

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she lay ill on the Miskanika Mountain in New Jersey. Anna Maria had asked particularly for Caritas to come. A group set off from the village, including the missionary Büninger, to “seek out the lost sheep.” They found the sick woman, who thanked them profusely for coming and told them that she had a great longing to go to Bethlehem. Her husband Tobias and his brother Joel suggested that two horses could pull her, since it was rather a long trek. But horses were not to be found, and the ensuing confusion allowed the missionary an opportunity to speak with Anna Maria. She acknowledged that she had completely lost her track and left the road of the Spirit, but now she thought about important matters of the soul. However, she confessed that she could not feel anything, meaning that she had no emotional connection to Christ. In the evening some strangers (to the missionary) arrived and they agreed to help carry the sick woman to the Lehigh River, from where they could take her in a canoe. A long day’s hike took them to the river, but they found the water in such condition that they dared not trust it and the strangers were asked if they would continue helping the company with their burden. They expressed less willingness than the previous day, as they were very tired, but took mercy upon the poor woman. Another long day’s march through heavy rain brought them to Bethlehem. Two days later Anna Maria went to the Lamb, to kiss his wounds, which in the language of the pietists meant that she died a proper death fully accepting the mercy of Christ. She was buried in the cemetery in Bethlehem.32 Indian medical practices appear in general to have been more successful than those known to Europeans in America. For daily aches and pains there may not have been much that the missionaries could offer the villagers. There is one instance recorded in the diaries when the missionary gave medicine to an Indian—not surprisingly, it was to Augustus. His wife lay ill in Gnadenhütten and as he prepared to go to visit her he came down with a terrible headache accompanied by a high temperature and had to lie down. In the afternoon Schmick wrote that he gave Augustus some medicine, after which the fever soon went down, so that he could sleep. The next day he felt better, but was still too weak to be on his way. In June 1753 some people from the village went to Bethlehem to cure themselves of colds, perhaps expecting to get medicine there. However, some of the methods used to treat health problems were decidedly Indian. In May 1753 Nathanael treated a young woman who had just given birth. She was very weak and Nathanael went into the woods to dig for roots to make medicine for her. An early twentiethcentury description of healing practices among the Delawares mentions a number of remedies especially efficient in the treatment of “female prob-

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Figure 7. The grave stone of Anna Maria of the Delaware Nation at the old cemetary (Gottes Acker) in Bethlehem. The number 181 identifies her in the baptismal record. In this cemetary Indian and white Moravians were buried next to one another according to their choirs, women on one side and men on the other. The headstone is not the original but has been replaced, probably in the nineteenth century. Photograph by Gunlög Fur.

lems.” The special gift of being a doctor was understood as a consequence of a dream vision, often appearing in youth. Women were more often endowed with the power to prepare and use herbal medicines, but on occasion this vision would also be given to a man. It appears as though Nathanael may have been one of these men.33 It is evident from the diaries that the missionaries considered Augustus’s house to be the hub of the village’s social and political life. Resident

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Moravians sought out Augustus’s company and faithfully recorded the thoughts and experiences he chose to share with them. His actions and whereabouts were cause for comment and sometimes worry. No doubt Augustus was a leader, and perhaps he was revered particularly for his success in hunting. No one could rival him in the procurement of meat. The village contained a large number of people to whom he was related on his mother’s side, and he lived surrounded by three of his brothers and two, sometimes three, sisters. It seems clear that the conversion of Augustus was something of a coup for the Moravians and concern for his soul proved an overarching interest in the years to come, but does it accurately reflect the structure of the relationships in the Meniolagomekah village? Hindsight offers us an opportunity to reveal some of the bias in the gaze and perceptions of the missionaries and their diaries—biases of the kind that the viewer may not be aware of at the time, or predispositions springing from the particular concern of the author of the sources. Let us look at four examples when the sources fail to offer a balanced picture, but where revealing this lack may assist us in the further use of them. These four examples regard feeding guests, hunting versus planting, leadership, and taking initiatives in contacting the missionaries.

Naemi and the Feeding of Guests Augustus’s actions when he returned from the hunt were those of a sachem; he partitioned meat and shared it with everyone in the village. He also received guests, assigned them a place to stay, and fed them. The particular wording of the text is significant. Grube wrote, “Augustus fed my guests with meat and corn.” Apart from being the staples of the Delaware diet, corn and meat exemplified the balance of the universe and the balance of female and male in upholding human life. Corn and deer meat were ceremonial food and were served with great attention to detail at ritual offerings. Again and again in early colonial sources, Europeans describe being served food prepared from corn and deer meat. This combination symbolized women’s and men’s mutual need for and dependence on one another. As we have seen, colonial sources also agree that it was women, sometimes referred to as “queens,” who served the food, thus inviting strangers into the home. John Heckewelder wrote that whatever the man brought home from the hunt, including the hides, he gave to his wife to do with whatever she desired, and likewise whatever grew in the fields she shared with her husband.34

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We see this also at Meniolagomekah. Schmick’s diary is especially revealing. Soon after the couple’s arrival in the town, Josua returned from hunting bringing with him the carcasses of two deer. When he heard that the missionaries were there, he sent them some meat. He did not bring it himself, however: “he immediately sent us through his wife a fine piece from it, which was unexpected for us but came at a good time, we thanked the Holy Spirit for it and took it as a sign of Love from our Siblings.” The wife, whose name was Agnes, often intruded into the sources on behalf of others, and this time she fed the newcomers. As Heckewelder made clear, the meat a man brought home belonged to his wife to do with according to her wishes or obligations, and even though Josua was named and his wife nameless in the diary, they collaborated. Can the same be said for the most prominent provider, Augustus? At one time when Augustus was away in his hunting hut, departing and arriving missionaries were treated in a similar manner, but by Naemi. “Naemi asked us to her and placed Sequata with deer meat before us to eat,” and “Naemi brought us soon a bit of Corn, bread and deer meat.” Who is this Naemi?35 Precious little is known about Naemi. She was baptized in 1749 in Gnadenhütten, and the Bethlehem Catalog of Baptized Indians describes her as Anna Benigna’s mother and Martha’s stepsister. Martha was said to be Wampanoag, but Naemi was designated as Delaware as her mother belonged to that nation. The circumstances of her baptism are summarily described in the Gnadenhütten Diary for May 8, 1749, when she spoke to missionaries Mack and Cammerhoff about her “sincere longing . . . to be washed with the blood of the side wounds.” Her Delaware name is not mentioned, she is described as “Captain Augustus’ wife’s mother,” and it is only through the Christian baptism that she received an identity of her own in the Moravian writings. Was it a coincidence that she was named after the widow in the biblical book of Ruth who returned to her native country with a loyal daughter-in-law who bore her a son who became a direct link to King David? Through her daughter’s marriage to Augustus, Delaware Naemi certainly achieved an advantageous position in the eyes of the missionaries. But what seems more important in this context is that she lived in the house centrally located on Büninger’s map; right next to the missionaries’, a household that also included Augustus, his new wife Esther, and two of Augustus’s and Anna Benigna’s children.36 On Büninger’s drawing, all the houses are the same size, but in reality this may not have been the case. Schebosch wrote in his diary from August 1752 that an evening meeting had to be moved from his house to Augus-

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tus’s “because ours wass two Little.” As mentioned in the previous chapter, a wealth of ethnographic information supports the fact that women owned the house and the food within it and were responsible for feeding visitors. Indeed, the most likely conclusion is that Naemi was the head of this particular household, and perhaps enjoyed a position as a matron of the village, and that it was ultimately she who served and provided for guests. What seems odd in this context is that Augustus’s wife does not appear to have had any influence or role to play. Was it because she was ill? Because she was not Delaware, but Mahican? Why did Augustus remain in the house of his mother-in-law when his first wife died, and why did he bring his new wife into this household, unless it was actually Naemi who was the head of the house, and a matron? Naemi is something of an enigma; one wishes that more were said of her part in the drama.37 The brief glimpses that remain from her life mention a woman already middle-aged and widowed when she came in contact with the Moravians. The earliest record tells of her visiting her sick daughter Anna Benigna in Gnadenhütten. She had other daughters, nameless as they were not baptized; one of them visited her in Meniolagomekah, while another lay ill in a different village. She was frequently on the road, visiting relatives or seeking employment among white people or selling things to them to earn provisions. In fact, she seemed to travel more widely than most other individuals in the village, as she went both east to the Jerseys and west to Nescopeck. And she was present in her village when guests arrived to treat them to welcoming words and food. But what ultimately suggests that Naemi is a key person in the development and cohesion of the village is her part in Augustus’s marriage plans.38 Matchmaking for Augustus turned into a tug-of-war between German missionaries and Delaware clan mothers. When Augustus’s second marriage (according to the German annals) ended with the death of Esther, the Indian leader’s connubial happiness became a matter of great concern to the resident Moravians. As the most trusted representative of Meniolagomekah, with connections to various other Delaware leaders, it was important to all that Augustus’s married life was proper. As always, what remains of these events are mere fragments told from the perspective of Schmick in letters to his superior, Bishop Spangenberg. We have no indications of who initiated the search for a new wife for Augustus, but the correspondence between Schmick and Spangenberg in mid-1755 describes a rather bewildering turn of events. It began with problems in connection with brother Joachim’s marriage to Anna Rosina. It appears that this was an ill-fated Moravian

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suggestion, as Augustus stated that if it were he, he would not marry anyone so closely related for anything in the world. “According to the Indian custom such a marriage is forbidden.” Schmick reported that he had to refrain from pushing the issue, and instead they suggested Erdmuth’s daughter Augustina as a suitable spouse for Joachim. At the same time Augustus informed Schmick that he was interested in marrying a person, but his English was not good enough for him to explain the situation. He said he would speak to the woman through another Indian. Schmick closed by saying that “the spirit gave his blessing to this,” suggesting that the missionaries had resorted to drawing the lot to find out whether to endorse this course of action.39 In July the woman Augustus had in mind arrived in Gnadenhütten. She came with her brother Toto from the Susquehanna (in Moravian terms often the designation for unconverted Indian settlements in the Wyoming Valley) and Schmick wrote that she “is related to the old Naemi but of a different nation.” Augustus wished to know from the brothers in Bethlehem if he could marry her or not, so that he could give the people who had suggested her an answer. He “desired to marry this person, . . . but not without the consent of the spirit and of the brothers.” From this point on Naemi appeared to be conducting the contact between the different parties. She accompanied the young woman to a visit with the missionaries, brought their message to Augustus, and then returned with his response. Augustus seemed worried, and his answer to the missionaries suggests that he was torn between allegiances. Naemi told the Schmicks that Augustus had said that “I thought that now I can no longer go to Gnadenhütten, and would never go there again as long as I live, I will go far far into the bush and build a cabin there to live in. Now I rejoice that my brother still has love for me (and when he said this he wept, and so did Naemi) and sister Johanna as well, and that they will receive your relative and tell her words about the holy spirit, I have tried to do so myself.” This was followed by the young woman’s visit to the meetinghouse, in Naemi’s company, with several missionaries present. The presumptive wife was very attentive and friendly.40 Only four days later Schmick reported, “now our beloved Augustus is freed from the person in question, God be praised.” Undoubtedly, significant pieces are missing for a complete understanding of what had happened, but apparently the young woman had not been sufficiently impressed with the wonders of the Christian spirit to accept conversion and had chosen to remain “a heathen.” Possibly, whether Augustus should marry this woman had been put to Christ in the form of a lot and the answer had been no. If that were the case, she would not have been thought a suitable wife for

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Augustus. According to Schmick, she had realized this and therefore left to go back to her home, without informing her relative Naemi. Augustus was told that by leaving she proved that she was not the right person for him. He responded with sorrow over his spiritual state, and gratitude that the spirit had not ceased to love him: “Now I will give myself over to the spirit, so that he may help me and care for me. If I should have that Person, He will make it so that she has a heartfelt desire for Him and asks for the baptism. If she does not, then I will also be at peace with that.”41 One way to interpret Augustus’s statement is to view it in terms of a struggle between Christian and Native marriage traditions. This was highly contested ground, as we shall see in the following chapter. While Naemi had acted as behooved an Indian mother regarding unions between children of her lineage, the failure of her young relative to comply with Christian expectations may have led Augustus to conclude that the Moravians were safer matchmakers. In September another letter went from Schmick to Spangenberg with a question regarding a marriage partner for Augustus. Could it be the will of the spirit and the brothers in Bethlehem that he marry Erdmuth’s daughter Augustina, or did they have any other suggestions? Apparently Augustina was approved and the two lived together until their deaths in 1762. However, their contacts with the missionary settlements decreased, and at the time of their demise they both lived on the Susquehanna, in the town of Wyoming.42 Marriage arrangements and control held priority in the Moravian management of the missionary settlements and explain the great concern for Augustus. Matchmaking and marriages were issues in which authority had specific gender and age connotations. Male missionaries in Bethlehem and their interpretation of the spirit’s edicts now clashed with female elders in the Delaware towns. Naemi may have been a matron, she certainly was an influential woman, and the link to her may have been one reason Augustus had authority as a village leader or sachem. She now tried to arrange a marriage for him to another of her relatives, perhaps a union that would tie him more closely to traditional ways of life. This failed, and Naemi dropped out of the story. Another Delaware elder entered, as Erdmuth’s daughter Augustina was suggested as an alternative. Erdmuth had one daughter who was married to Gideon (Teedyuscung), a notable (if controversial) Delaware leader, another daughter to Augustus’s brother Aquila, and now a third daughter became the wife of Augustus. She thus formed a connection to powerful men, and it is at least conceivable that missionary concern for proper unions also offered Delaware women opportunities for influence.

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Yet it is vital to keep in mind that the clan affi liations among the different groups of Delawares is too insufficiently known to be able to clarify if and how people were connected and how power and influence played a part in these interactions. Erdmuth may well have been a woman who gained influence through her connection to the white missionaries. When she died in 1764 her biographer wrote that her daughter’s husband Teedyuscung and her own children had not spared any effort to pull her away from the spirit and the congregation. She, however, remained true to the faith and “often told her children: do what you want, but I stay with the spirit and his People.” The short remembrance ends with the words: “She was one of our best Sisters.” There is no remembrance left over Naemi’s life. The last mention of her in the Moravian records is from 1765, when the Schmicks and David Zeisberger share a house with her in the village of Wyalusing. She then lived among the group of Delawares following the Munsee leader Johannes Papunehank, but there the trail ends.43

Hunting Versus Planting Another problem that emerges in the sources is how to interpret what is written concerning subsistence practices. Hunting expeditions are an aspect of traveling that occupies a special place in Moravian concerns and strategies. While hunting was no doubt a necessary food procuring activity, and W. C. Reichel wrote in 1876 that in the Moravian congregations Indians were allowed to live in the manner of their fathers and thus men remained hunters rather than agriculturalists, it nonetheless caused the missionaries anxiety. They worried about hunting more than any other Indian subsistence activity. It was the aspect of spirituality and its particular connection to masculine pursuits that brought on this concern, not the labor itself. Hunting was a sacred occupation, surrounded by rituals and prescribed spiritual practices that the Christians saw as competition to the role of the Savior in the lives of men. On the one hand hunting was a profoundly manly endeavor, creating in the hunting lodges a masculine space that could serve well for the intimate discussions between men that missionaries viewed as a necessary tool for the development of a holy relationship to the Spirit and His congregation. On the other hand, indigenous spiritual traditions challenged the Holy Spirit’s centrality to Delaware men’s lives. The missionaries attempted to infuse hunting with Christian significance and replace the spirit guides that hunters sought to follow with Christian imagery, while

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at the same time allowing the activity to continue. That they saw the souls of men as threatened and tempted by hunting practices and beliefs is clear throughout the period of missionary activity, and attempts were made to shorten the length of expeditions and strengthen men’s ties to their wives and soil rather than to their hunting parties.44 Indians, too, perceived the rituals and practices surrounding hunting as obstacles to a Christian life. In 1775 a family from the town of Mechedachpisink came to visit the Christian settlement of Schönbrunn on the Muskingum River. The man said that he was not an unbeliever and thought that Moravians taught the truth, but he had one question: what did he have to give up to become a believer? The answer apparently caused him difficulty, because he concluded that there were two obstacles, “hunting and drinking, and if it was not for that he would be a believer.” Clearly a Christian life meant a concrete change of tasks and responsibilities, as one Delaware man explained. After becoming a Christian he no longer had a desire to hunt and preferred to work at home. He had not been told, he said, that Christ while here on Earth spent several days in the forest hunting, but rather that he worked with his hands. This man may have been an exception, and rather than suggesting that a convert should give up hunting altogether, the missionaries sought ways to supplant native traditions with Christian expressions. In Schönbrunn and Gnadenhütten on the Muskingum River, Indians going hunting thus were encouraged to sing verses translated into “Indian,” verses that said “Just as a forestman wishes to change, to be able to hunt until this day, I change myself in the heart of the Spirit etc, and go off hunting.”45 Augustus was an extremely accomplished and successful hunter. His fortune was impressive by any standard. In the less than two years that the missionaries reported from Meniolagomekah, he is specifically mentioned to have brought home at least twenty-eight deer as well as other prey, and on one occasion he alone shot seven deer. In late fall, Augustus and other men in the village repaired to their hunting lodges, where they stayed for extended periods, sometimes accompanied or visited by wives and sons. The missionaries did not miss the point; Augustus’s ability defined him as a leader and it became important to find ways to link his hunting to godly thoughts, so they visited him in his hunting lodge and took the opportunity to discourse with him about God’s love and purpose for men’s lives. For some men the extended periods of hunting in the woods afforded an opportunity to contemplate the Christian message. Ludwig expressed relief when he was hunting from the constant badgering of his relatives concerning his change of faith. Then he felt that the crucified Savior was close to him, “he

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saw all his wounds and the Side hole . . . and then he was well and blessed, so that he could not find words to express it.”46 Augustus described similar feelings, and his hunting activities were never censored in the diaries. With other men, hunting absences brought forth admonishment. This was the case with Nathanael, in spite of the fact that he was clearly enamored with the Moravian contacts. On one occasion the resident missionary reproached Nathanael. He, his wife Priscilla, their son, and Nathanael’s unbaptized brother were preparing for a longer hunting trip which was to last for four to five weeks. Büninger visited him and “had a long talk with brother Nathanael, since he wants to go to the Jerseys for hunting. And that would mean neglecting the Communion meal. He ensured me that it was not in his heart to leave the Holy Spirit and the brothers. He said further, that he was very poor, and must therefore take care to use the best possible time for hunting.” There may be other reasons for the missionary’s concern than the hunting in itself. Nathanael wanted to go to the Jerseys to hunt. His mother, his brothers, and he himself came from the Susquehanna, not from the Jerseys, but his wife Priscilla and her sisters apparently hailed from there. This meant that she had hunting rights to lands in the Jerseys that Nathanael had access to through her. In exploring land tenure among Munsees, Robert Grumet found that land rights and resources belonged to matrilines, and men attained certain possessive privileges in lands of other matrilines “through marriage, friendship, diplomatic alliance, and other relationships.” The transmission and preservation of such privileges between generations and across distances played an important part in maintenance of kinship networks. But networks outside the fold of the Christian community were viewed with suspicion, and in addition Priscilla time and again appears as a troublemaker and her ties to heathen communities may have contributed to Büninger’s unease about their trip.47 Meniolagomekah inhabitants regularly went out on hunts and did not seem to allow Moravian worries concerning Indians’ absences from the Christian routines of village life to interfere with this. Missionaries took to visiting men in their hunting huts located at a distance from the village, and if possible admonished them on the eve of their departures to keep close to the Holy Spirit. The seasonal cycle described in the diaries shows that hunting was primarily performed in April-July and October, main planting activities in May-June and October, traveling abroad to sell and find work among whites in April and June, and visiting generally in February, April/ May, July/August, September/October (April, July, and August have by far the largest number of visits). This corresponds rather well with seventeenth-

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century sources that suggest a similar pattern of hunting and planting that apparently existed also in the time this village was inhabited. The composition of hunting parties varied over the year. In April and May hunters primarily went out alone or in smaller groups for one to two days, but in the fall large groups of all or almost all the men and sometimes women left for longer periods in the woods. The great concern Moravians evinced for Delaware hunting activities is manifested through the diary entries. No fewer than sixty-five hunting parties are recorded. The work of planting did not interest the Moravians to the same extent, and there are only thirty-six references to planting and other communal activities. While men going out hunting were almost always named, the reverse is true regarding planting. Typical notations read: “visited the siblings in their plantations and found them very busy planting,” or “the siblings were working in their corn fields.” When an individual was identified it was almost exclusively a man. “Yesterday I went with Augustus to the field,” Grube wrote in May 1752, and in early June he noted, “Augustus hacked his corn.” In early May 1753 Büninger noted, “most of the siblings helped Augustus planting.” It was certainly the desire of the missionaries to seek to influence Indian men to stay around the towns. The predominance of women in agricultural work astounded white colonists in diverse settings in eastern North America, and they often concluded that Indian women’s lives were full of drudgery while men did not share the labor to the extent that decency demanded. Seeking to substitute responsible husbands for women in the cornfields thus became an integral part of any civilization plan directed at Indians. It may not have been concern for women that primarily motivated these efforts, but rather worry for the power structures that these labor divisions indicated. Baptist minister David Jones noted in his diary that the “women are the only drudges, but in return possess the riches; for what in summer the men make, is chiefly given to the women for their winter’s lodging.”48 One way of influencing the division of labor was the manner in which Moravians divided land for planting in the Christian villages. A list from Gnadenhütten in 1749 shows that eleven men, as heads of households, received two plots of land apiece, while five widowed women and two single men were assigned one plot each. Similarly, houses were routinely described as the property of male heads of households. The language in the diaries leads to several questions of source criticism. Missionaries differed in their knowledge of Lenape cultural practices. Büninger may have assumed that men were heads of households, while Schmick, for example, knew better. A

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particularly flagrant example was when the former reported that “the brothers built a hut for Augustus’ step father, and his family.” He then added that Amalia and her children also wished to live there. Augustus’s stepfather, Wiwunikamek, is listed as the spouse of Telepuwechque, who was Augustus’s mother. She lived in Meniolagomekah with several of her children, and in all likelihood she headed the domestic arrangement. That her daughter and her children desired to live with her was not surprising. Schmick, on the other hand, described a visit to Johan Thomas “in his wife Amalia’s house,” and later mentioned that Amalia’s house had burned down and the brothers helped rebuild it.49 Regardless of their knowledge, the missionaries clearly desired to influence men to take charge of farming labors as well. Did the Delawares accept such novel concepts? It is difficult to know, but some authors have concluded that subsistence practices altered in the Christian towns under Moravian influence, leading to increased participation by men in field labor. Certainly, missionaries liked to think that they encouraged wholesome practices, as Mortimer wrote as late as 1800: “Among the heathen, the women must do all the plantation work alone; but among us, the men are always encouraged to take an equal share therein.” In fact, the division of labor seems to have been extremely difficult to alter. Mortimer’s statement attests to its endurance around the turn of the century. The corollary to making men into farmers was to encourage women to stay put in the village. Mortimer continued, “when a wild Indian goes on the chace, his wife & children generally accompany him. Our sisters are more domestic, & generally prefer staying at home.”50 However, there are explanations other than Moravian influence on Delaware practices that should be considered when we look at descriptions of the division of labor. In fact, the diaries suggest that men did most of the work of all kinds, and that Augustus participated in and led all subsistence activities. Is this possible? Checking the dates of various tasks makes it clear that the diaries are biased. On several occasions when the “siblings” were working in their fields, it is likely that the work parties mostly consisted of women, as several—or most—of the men were away hunting. For instance, in May and June 1752 at the same time that the diaries mention that “all of the siblings went out to continue planting corn,” and “all the siblings went out again to hoe around the corn,” Anton, Jonathan, and Josua were out in the woods hunting. In October 1753 the diary tells us that “the siblings were diligent in collecting their corn,” but during the same days “most were out hunting.” It is reasonable to presume that the “siblings” in this case were

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women, while “most” hunters were men. Thus single-sex groups of women worked together in all facets of the growing cycle, from planting to harvesting. That men, or at least some men, participated in this work, just as some women took part in hunting, does not mean that any one man was in charge of it. Both efforts were necessary to provide for the entire village, and everyone participated to his or her ability. A closer look at the bias of the sources reveals the complementary nature of these responsibilities. These become even more apparent when one includes the task of going out to search for temporary work or to sell commodities in exchange for foodstuffs. Here women predominated, and more than twice as many women as men left the village at different times to trade or seek work among white people.51

Leadership in the Village There are still more questions to be asked concerning leadership in Meniolagomekah. To the missionaries, Augustus was the man who brought home the meat in more ways than one. He was an outstanding hunter, he dwelled in the house that was located at the central spot of the village, he occurs close to one hundred times in the diaries from Meniolagomekah alone, and he is a frequent character in diaries from Gnadenhütten, as well as in letters between missionaries. He acts like a sachem by sharing food with the other inhabitants and with guests. He contacts the Moravians to speak about his spiritual state, although it is more common that the missionaries seek him out. His actions during the years preceding the eviction from Meniolagomekah show him as a responsible sachem seeking to protect his village as well as looking for solutions to internal confl icts. There is no doubt that he was a significant contact for the Moravians and that he enjoyed the respect of his fellow Delawares, but is it correct to view him as the supreme leader of this village? In the 1750s, leadership among the Delawares was a shared effort, as it had been thirty years earlier when Andreas Hesselius witnessed a meeting in Philadelphia. Different aspects and needs of societal and individual lives necessitated different skills. As we have seen, Naemi acted her part as an elder of note, but there were others who also at different times made an impact on the sources through their exercise of leadership. One of them is Augustus’s older brother Samuel. In 1755, fourteen men of different tribes who lived in Bethlehem wrote to Governor Morris to ask his protection. On receiving Morris’s response, Augustus for the Delawares and Josua for the Mohicans replied: “We

Figure 8. “Receipt by Indians—for work done at Bethlehem + Nazareth etc. Dec. 31, 1756.” Drawer documents, flat fi les in the drawing and print collection. Signatures of Delaware men from Meniolagomekah on a receipt of payments for labor performed for the Moravians. Augustus’s mark is a turtle, identifying him as a representative and leader of that clan. Josua’s mark is that of a turkey, while Jonathan’s possibly represents the wolf clan. Courtesy of Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.

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received thy letter, and thy words being interpreted to us, we have heard with our ears and well understood. Our women and our children have also heard them. . . . We assure and promise thee herewith that we will be obedient to thy order, and with our wives and children behave ourselves still and orderly among our brethren.” This emphasis on ensuring that all categories—men, women, and children—have heard and participated was apparently still a factor in Delaware decision-making. This was clearly the case among the Christian Indians connected to Meniolagomekah as it was these who two years later—at the height of the Seven Years War—sent a delegation consisting of both “chiefs” and “some of the women” to a Lancaster conference. Later events showed Anton, Nathanael’s brother, as a leader and a preacher in the predominantly Munsee Delaware town of Wyalusing. While in Meniolagomekah he did not appear to be a visionary, but later the heritage from his mother Thamar, and perhaps also from his (then) dead brother Nathanael, may have led him to take up the part as preacher of the Word. Likewise Jonathan later received mention as a prophet, but one who left the congregation and thus his preaching was given the epithet of “lies.”52 The network of kin contacts in Meniolagomekah was, as noted earlier, extensive. Telepuwechque lived in the village surrounded by six of her children: the daughters Cornelia and Amalia, and her sons Samuel, Augustus, Jonas, and Aquila. During at least one period her daughter Christiana also lived there. Samuel was the oldest brother and he occurs frequently in the Moravian sources, although not nearly as often as Augustus, and in situations resonating with a considerable degree of ambivalence. The first mention of Samuel is in 1752, after which he occurs in the Moravian notes on and off until 1768. He often appears to be a source of worry. Problems began with concern for his marital discord with Maria. They continued with comments on his need for help planting corn. In May 1752 he received help from Benjamin to hoe his land and in the same month the brothers built him a new hut. Both Samuel and Maria struggled with disease, and Maria died in 1754.53 Samuel differed from the other men in Meniolagomekah in one very significant way. He is never mentioned in connection with hunting. He never accompanied any of his brothers or sons on a hunt, and the records offer no explanation. One possibility is that he was already too old or for other physical reasons unable to participate in such arduous activities. In 1758, he was described as “the old Samuel” indicating that he may have been quite a bit older than Augustus. Also, the injury he sustained in October 1752 when Augustus accidentally fired his rifle may have proved permanent. Instead of bringing home meat, Samuel worked in other ways to procure for his household. He

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traveled with items for sale and barter, he and his son went into the woods to dig up roots, and he worked for white people. Several times, however, missionaries noted that he took the lead in caring for his immediate relations as well as for the kin group. In early April 1753 he left for Bethlehem to visit a female relative who was ill. The purpose of the trip was to bring the woman and her children back to Meniolagomekah. It is not clear who the woman was, but it is possible that it was one of his sisters, and that as the oldest brother he had the responsibility for her children. Ten years later, he and Magdalena (perhaps his wife although the reference is unclear) led a large party of relatives across the Allegheny Mountains away from white settlement. Among the more than forty people were Samuel’s and Augustus’s brother Aquila and their mother Rebecca (Telepuwechque).54 Another way in which Samuel’s responsibilities become apparent is through his participation at treaties. He took part in a delegation from Meniolagomekah that went to Bethlehem in March 1753 to meet with Nanticokes and Shawnees, and he maintained contacts with Delawares in Jersey and along the Susquehanna River. In 1761 he attended a treaty held at Easton, and the events surrounding this filled the missionaries with dread. Grube reported that Samuel had said, so that all could hear, that he did not want to stay in the Christian town of Wechquetank and he went around to all the houses telling people that they were all slaves and could not do what they wanted with their own things. Considering his experience of being evicted from Meniolagomekah, and then ousted from Gnadenhütten, this does not seem like such an exaggerated statement, but it did not suit the Moravians, who took great pains to maintain neutrality in political conflicts in Pennsylvania. In late July, Mariana, who was related to Teedyuscung, arrived from the Susquehanna, and her husband brought a message to Samuel that he ought to go to Easton. The next morning Samuel informed Grube that he was going to Bethlehem in order to speak directly to Teedyuscung to give him his advice as an old man. He dressed in his best clothes and left with Zacharias and his family. Three weeks later Samuel returned and told the missionary that he regretted going to Easton, since he had behaved badly there. The wording in the diary does not reveal what Samuel meant by his bad behavior, whether he regretted not carrying himself as a Christian, or meant that he had not been able to prevail with his advice. However, in October of the same year he told Grube that his heart was void of feeling and he could no longer think of the holy spirit: “my mind is full of other things and I do not like to be here.” Two days later he left the village without saying goodbye and moved to live near Wyoming.55

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An uncertainty with the Moravians is apparent throughout these sixteen years of documentation. Schebosch wrote in 1752 of Samuel’s heavy heart and his desire for forgiveness. The friction in his relationship with Maria may have caused his distress. Yet, even though the brothers seemed inclined to lay most of the blame on Maria, Samuel vacillated in his connection to the Moravian faith. He did not always attend the love feast, or communion in Bethlehem together with the other sisters and brothers, and he described to his sister Sarah the struggles of true conversion. “My sister,” he said to her, “I know well how one is in such circumstances. . . . It is not enough to weep once, but when this goes to the bottom of the heart, you will weep frequently, and your heart will not be at peace, until he has shown you mercy. I am now a poor Man, and I have caused both the spirit and the brothers much sorrow, and I wish and pray that they will accept me again.” Yet three years later he would again leave the Christian fold and move with his kin across the mountains. The final note in the Moravian archives concerning the old man suggests that he had chosen to side with the Christians. In 1768 he was mentioned in Gekelemukpechünk and followers of a nativist leader there chased him out of the town “since he had for a while spoken to them about the Savior.”56 A complex picture thus emerges of these two brothers. While Augustus undoubtedly acted as a leader in several contexts, and his hunting skills made him a superb provider, Samuel assumed equal responsibility in treaty situations and in the end led his relatives to a new residence, while Augustus followed his wife to Wyoming. Why did Samuel not follow his wife’s people, the Mahicans? Is it because his wives were dead that he led his mother’s people in 1763? To these questions there seem to be no answers, and therefore conclusions about Samuel and Augustus and their relationship must remain tentative. The glimpses we get from their lives may indicate the varying responsibilities according to ability in Delaware society, and they suggest that the constitution of groups and belonging could fluctuate over the lifetime of an individual. In a matrilineal society men would follow their wives’ families, yet retain responsibilities toward the children of their sisters. And upon the death of a mate the natural place of belonging was one’s own maternal kin. Families and lineages were related in a complicated web and sometimes one’s responsibilities brought one to a certain location while at a later date this could change. Leadership thus alternated and was tied to responsibilities to kin and connected to ritual obligations. Samuel’s actions, as well as Naemi’s, indicate that this was so, and influence in a Delaware context remained much more multifaceted than suggested by the designation of

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sachems and captains in many colonial records. The diaries indicate that the structure of influence was one of shared and differentiated responsibilities, in which both men and women participated.

Discoursing with the Missionaries A great part of the diaries are devoted to reporting meetings and discussions with and visits to the houses of the Indians inhabiting or visiting the village. Often such interaction was prefaced by the rather rote comment “visited the houses of our brown brothers and sisters,” and it is likely that most of these contacts were initiated by missionaries. But sources also report occasions when Indian brothers and sisters sought out the missionaries on their own initiative, and a look at these events is revealing. Table 2. Indians’ Reasons for Seeking Conversations with the Missionaries Reasons for seeking out missionaries

Men

Women

Welcoming and feeding visitors

3

5

Ask for meeting, singing verses

6

1

Marital strife

1

1

Requesting baptism

1

6

Religious conversations

8

9

General conversations

5

1

Summary of numbers

24

23

Sources: B177, F.4, 11/20/1753, 11/21/1753, 11/27/1753, 12/1/1753, 12/6/1753; B177, F.4, 11/2021/1753; B122, F.3, 3/13/1753, 6/23/1753, 1/22/1754, 2/3/1754, 2/16/1753, 4/5/1753, 4/29/1753, 5/5/1753, 5/10/1753, MAB.

Men and women sought contact with the missionaries in equal numbers, but there is a marked difference when looking at who asked for baptism. Women led this category six to one, while men dominated in general conversations and in gatherings involving singing. Let us look a little closer at each category. Augustus twice fed visitors and Samuel once came to welcome the newly arrived missionaries. Likewise, Naemi twice offered food to new arrivals; Maria arrived to welcome them together with her husband;

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Agnes and Verona came alone on two different occasions to do the same. The one woman to ask the missionaries to hold a meeting was Maria, followed the next day by Josua. Five times Nathanael is mentioned as seeking out the missionaries to sing or read verses in German and Delaware. The marital strife between Maria and Samuel is a case of concern for both themselves and the missionaries. Requests for baptism came primarily from women. Only Josua accompanied his wife Agnes to ask for the baptism of their child. The other five were single women: Agnes alone, an unbaptized woman wanting her dying child baptized, another unbaptized woman, Priscilla’s sister, and Anton’s sister. In all, nine different men at one time or more approached the missionaries for various reasons, while ten women did the same. The missionaries, however, were clearly more discriminatory in their contacts. They approached fourteen men but only five women in order to converse with them about their spiritual state. Although Moravians baptized as many women as men, held morning and evening gatherings for both sexes, and emphasized the importance of married missionary couples so that the wife could speak with the women, there was an apparent imbalance during these years in Meniolagomekah. The missionaries showed more interest in proselytizing among men, even when they missionized the village as a married couple. One example derives from the arrival of a new missionary couple, the Schmicks, to the village in late November 1753. After having been greeted joyously by the women (who were in their houses, while most men were at their hunting lodges) Maria asked the missionary to gather the sisters for a meeting. He replied, “yes, but I do not know, how to let everyone know about it, since I cannot blow the horn, I tried but no note came out of it, on top of that it is very dark and rains hard, I think it will not be today, but tomorrow we will make another try. With this Maria, who had asked for it, was satisfied.” But perhaps she was not. The following morning Josua came to visit brother Schmick. He spoke of several things and “finally he said brother should we not have a gathering today? I have heard that you cannot blow in the horn, my son is here, and he can do it, I will send him to you.” Thus Josua returned from his hunting lodge to speak to the missionary and someone had told him about the problem with the horn. Was it thought of as an excuse to get out of having a meeting? It is impossible to know, but the gathering was important enough to the villagers that one of the men approached Schmick to make sure it would not be canceled again.57 This was not the first time a meeting had been postponed. In July the same year an evening gathering had been canceled since there were only

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women and children in the village. “There were,” wrote the missionary, “no brothers at home which made me postpone the quarter hour until some of them came.” Yet as the diaries themselves make clear, women were just as interested in religious exchanges as men were. This is one of these times when women enter a source where they are not explicitly invited or solicited. The injunctions against male missionaries working among women influenced the interactions between Moravians and Indians in Meniolagomekah, and that may be why the sisters expressed such pleasure at the arrival of Martha Büninger in January 1754.58 What, then, were the religious conversations about? To some extent the missionaries’ teaching set the agenda for conversations. On the November evening when Schmick gathered people for an evening quarter hour just after his arrival, he told them “that we have such a good and loving savior, to whom each one, whether he is big or small, young or old, may go, and tell Him his heart, how it feels, no matter how miserable or sinful it is, the more childlike one is in associating with Him, the more loving is He, He listens willingly, takes all suffering to heart and gives to each one what he desires and needs from His heart so full of love.” This emphasis on what is in the heart is present in many of the reported conversations with Delawares. Thus Maria declared to Johanna Schmick that “my heart is still well, the savior has forgiven me for the old things, I have the love of Jesus, my husband too and we now live contentedly together.” And Josua told the missionary, “I am a poor heart. I still lack much, I feel that the savior is close if I only could stay by his wounds.” The phrases are so common, in fact, that they resemble a formula, and perhaps need to be viewed with some caution. The fact that these expressions are formulaic does not mean that the individuals who used them were not sincere in their beliefs. But neither does it prove that they were. Many of the accounts of what Indians said and wanted to discuss seem real enough, but is it likely that the Delawares actually used these terms when describing their needs and desires to the Moravians?59 Several times men initiated discussions about religious matters with the missionaries. These show that the Indians earnestly grappled with the challenge from a new faith and questioned whether it could be useful to the Delawares. Anton’s father was one of these. On one of his visits to Meniolagomekah he wished to question the resident missionary on some points of theological differences among Christians. He said that he had spent most of his seventy-two years living among white people in Jersey and he knew “there were Presbyterians, there were those from the high church, there were

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Quakers, there were Baptists, and several others, and we had yet another Religion; which of these was the best?” Brother Martin Mack answered him that whosoever believes in Jesus Christ will have eternal life no matter what religion or nation that person belonged to. The old man pondered this and finally said, “for some time now our way of dealing with the Indians had appealed to him. A few years ago he had been very much against us, as he had heard several things about us. About ten years ago, he had left the Jersey for the Susquehanna with his family group, and had lived in Tenishanies. He is the same man who for three years so harshly opposed the blessed Cammerhoff on his trip to Onondago, and sought an opportunity to hit him, and who that same summer opposed, when br. Martin went there, that Anton’s mother was baptized even though it was her heart’s desire, so that it did not happen. He admitted this freely, without being asked about it.” The old man expressed a common theme of candid interest coupled with deep suspicion that colored many of the interactions between Indians and Christian missionaries. Rumors about the Moravians added to these insecurities and were echoed in another question, when Mack reported speaking to a man who had heard things from “bad Indians” concerning Gnadenhütten. The old man’s opposition to his wife’s baptism reveals another prevailing topic. More than just peaceful conversations, these interactions presaged and revealed rifts between family members. As we have seen earlier, this happened within the circle of relations containing Anton’s father, Jonathan, and his wife Verona.60 Augustus, who at least one of the missionaries spoke of with open affection, seems to have turned to them in times of real need, as well as with theological questions. He often served as translator at gatherings and after one such occasion stayed on to ask about the meaning of the word “mediator”: “which he declared he had not understood from the translation . . . Augustus was happy at this and said over and over Kehelle, Kehelle, this I had not thought before, that the savior has experienced everything human.” The death of his brother Jonas may have tested Augustus’s faith, and Büninger’s attempt at soothing his sorrow was to suggest that too much contact with white people had ruined Jonas’s life. Augustus eventually chose to live the remainder of his life surrounded by his own people, in Wyoming, presumably as far away as he could from the bad influence of white people. Whether the missionary’s words at this difficult juncture of his life had anything to do with his later decision is impossible to say. It does, however, demonstrate the balancing act missionaries saw themselves forced to perform between

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adverse influences of both white and brown worlds. If Indians sometimes found it difficult to discern the difference between white and white, this is as understandable as the confusion arising from the use of the term Indian.61 Nathanael offers a unique example of the encounter between missionaries and Indians in this era. He is one of the people mentioned most frequently in the diaries from Meniolagomekah. Over fifty times the missionaries speak specifically of Nathanael and his chores and interests. Nathanael did not belong to Augustus’s matrilineage. On Büninger’s map we find him in one of the three central houses of the village, directly east of the meetinghouse. There he lived with his wife Priscilla, whose two sisters also lived in Meniolagomekah. Nathanael’s mother Thamar came from the Susquehanna, and she was the link between three of the houses through her daughters and sons, as well as a fi rmly established member of the congregation. Nathanael was often on the road, out to hunt or collect roots, but a unique relationship appears to have developed between him and the missionaries. Nathanael wanted to sing and learn hymns in German, and he strove to learn how to write. He was the only one of the inhabitants in the village to exhibit this interest. This interest in singing and writing brought Nathanael close to the missionaries. In June 1753 Büninger described how Nathanael sang his own German and Indian verses in such a beautiful and clear voice that it elicited feelings, the most profound spiritual reaction the Moravians recognized. Later in the same week Nathanael composed a letter to Jesus. He wrote: “My name is Nathanael. I want to tell you what is in my heart, I write it here in my letter, I am very poor, I have not given my entire heart to you yet, and you have died for me Jesus Christ, Yes I wish it were so, Kehella, you would rejoice over it dear spirit. I must live so that it pleases you.” The words are touching in their uncertainty and sincerity. Yet even more impressive is the fact that Nathanael sought to put them into writing. Did he think their power would increase if placed on a parchment? Or did he think that it was proper to address the white man’s savior in writing, rather than in oration that was the Indian way? Nathanael’s persistent concern with getting the words right, whether singing or writing, suggests that he perceived the power inherent in them and was prepared to acquire a new model for communication with divine forces. That Nathanael was concerned with getting the words right is evident in another meeting with Schmick in February 1754 when he showed the missionary his verses in German. The latter helped him clarify some words, and then they both enjoyed a time of singing together. The Moravians often used verses for teaching reading and writing. However,

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Nathaniel’s persistent desire to get it right suggests that his words were not rote lessons. The words were so important to him that, according to the lebenslauf penned after his death, he never went out hunting without bringing a book, and often forgot to hunt because he was so engrossed in learning.62 The significance of words, and of singing, was not lost on the Delawares. Colonial sources describe the shaman—or powwow—as someone in command of songs and of healing rituals. The Presbyterian minister David Brainerd described his meeting with a Delaware man who sought to renew ancient traditions. He appeared to Brainerd dressed in a coat made of bear skin, a mask before his face, and an instrument in his hand “which he used for music in his idolatrous worship.” Brainerd entered his house and “discoursed with him about Christianity.” This interested the man who agreed with some of what Brainerd said, while disputing other matters. Gregory Dowd found that some Indians “sought to decipher the secrets of AngloAmerican strength, and made efforts to incorporate those secrets into their own way of living.” A desire to keep or find access to more power lay at the heart of Indian concerns during this period of upheaval and loss of land and lives. Nathanael seems to have come from a family with impressive access to traditional sources of power. His mother Thamar desired to hear the word of the Christian God and since she was physically broken she made her sons carry her to Gnadenhütten. She was blind but told Johanna Schmick that she had “seen the Holy Spirit stand in front of her and give her the hand, and been very friendly with her.” Dreams and visions were extremely important in Delaware understandings of power. As Thamar lay on her deathbed in the barracks in Philadelphia, where Christian Indians had been quartered for their own protection during the Seven Years War, she again told of seeing the Spirit: “Now I no longer feel pain, the Savior has waved to me, he wants to take me to him.” Anton’s father, who may also have been his brother Nathanael’s father, sang and kept stories and entered into debates with the missionaries about religious matters. That Nathanael put so much effort into the contacts with the missionaries could thus have been part of his family obligation, as well as a result of his own desire to speak to the Christian God.63 In contrast to these philosophical and seemingly friendly exchanges between men, women’s contacts with male missionaries appear—perhaps not surprisingly—more instrumental in character. By far the most common reason for approaching them was a desire for baptism, one’s own or that of one’s child. A typical example is that of the unbaptized mother of a young boy who lay on his deathbed. She wished that he would be baptized before he

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died, and the Moravians hurriedly complied. He received the washing in the blood of the savior and the new name Christian shortly before he left this life. Another instance in which the contact had a character of instrumentality was the incidence when Verona welcomed the new missionary couple, the Schmicks, to the village in late November 1753. She told the couple that she was happy that they had arrived because of her irritation at Anton’s father’s singing and storytelling. “Now she thought, he would be silent, as long as we were there.” Verona employed her connections and her privileged standing with the missionaries to enter into a conflict over religious influence with another family in the village. Perhaps women did seek out the female missionaries to speak of their religious quandaries—other sources reveal that this was so—but records of these conversations do not remain from this town. Instead, it is the overarching concern for children that primarily motivated women to make direct contact with the missionaries.64 They shared this concern with the Moravians. In fact, a major reason for Delaware interest in this new creed was its possibility of providing an advantageous environment for children. This will be discussed more in the following chapter, but here we should note that this common interest could also be divisive. Sources commenting on Delaware society from four centuries are in accordance in at least one respect: children belonged to their mothers, or to whomever the mother chose to give the child. So, too, in the Moravian towns. Women might give away a child to a female missionary to ensure it a safe environment, or because the child adamantly asked to be allowed to live in the congregation. Dying women would give their children to female friends or relatives. Verona gave her ten-year-old daughter to Rebecca in Gnadenhütten “since the girl had asked for it so much . . . as the sister could tell her the truth about the Spirit,” and upon her deathbed Erdmuth gave her young grandson Augustus to Lucia with explicit directions to bring him up in the congregation. That women took charge of their children and had the primary responsibility for them can also be seen in the many references to women traveling with their children and the tendency of young children to follow their mothers if parents split up. Ruth, Agnes, and Amalia all offer evidence of this. Often in cases when the mother had died, the maternal grandmother would take charge of the children. Naemi and Erdmuth lived with their grandchildren in Meniolagomekah, and Erdmuth later took care of Augustina’s child when she and Augustus died.65 The catalog of inhabitants in Meniolagomekah from early 1754 lists twenty-three children. All but seven of them are described as the fathers’ children. Thus Levi, Abraham, Juliana, and Sara are all noted as Jonathan’s

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children, and Samuel is listed as Jonas’s child, in spite of the fact that the father had recently died. Only in the case of Amalia’s and Nathanael’s unbaptized sister’s children is there no mention of a father. While both Zeisberger and Heckewelder would later write that Delawares inherited their tribal affi liation from their mothers, their colleagues were busy providing them with a patrilineage for posterity. Delaware fathers were certainly not uninterested in the welfare of their offspring; however, it was women who dominated in the interactions with missionaries that concerned children. Delaware women may not have been aware of this, as it is unlikely that they read the lists the Moravians made up of inhabitants in the Christian villages, but it nonetheless speaks of a different framework in which to conceive of families and lineages. The missionaries were attempting to create patrilines and nuclear families, by influencing marriage practices and by chronicling heredity on the male side, while Delaware practices speak of matrilines and women taking charge in issues concerning their households and children. The Moravian records give a wealth of information and from it we may draw conclusions about forms and structures of leadership; we glimpse the tremendous importance of kinship and family connections for individuals’ influence and for their choices concerning allegiances. The diaries describe some of the realities and seasonal variation of subsistence work and address the constant traveling, thus revealing the networks within which people lived and moved. They reveal something about women’s primary responsibility for children and for the spiritual growth of kinship members, and this appears in some contrast to patriarchal practices of missionaries. Conflicts between demands of the Christian congregation and those of kin stand out, as do conflicts within marriages. However, there are also limitations to these sources and sometimes conspicuous oversights. They do not offer us an understanding of internal differences or conflicts that were not directly related to the interactions with Christians. Far too many of the visitors to the town are merely described as “strangers,” thus making it impossible to determine what their relationship to the townspeople was. It is also not possible to learn about the manner in which productive work was performed or how reproduction of values occurred outside the realm of the meetinghouse. Indigenous Delaware religious concerns are largely absent, and one might wonder if there were no all-Indian gatherings in the town. We see no direct signs of differences between women and men of different categories, such as age. Completely absent are any references to menstrual lodges, initiation ceremonies for

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children, and sweat baths (after all, they lived by the side of a creek so it would have been easy for them to build these structures). While providing information on several areas where gender was a significant aspect, the diaries do not offer an immediate understanding of how differences between women and men of different categories influenced their lives and interactions with the white community. To understand that better we must scrutinize those aspects of encounters that contained a religious or spiritual aspect, as they are discussed in Moravian as well as other sources, and look at the way in which they served or strove to restructure gender relations and collective identification. As often is the case, it is through confl icts that cultural practices become visible, and such conflicts surfaced around concepts of disorder, particularly in relation to marriages and sexuality.

Chapter Three

Powerful Women: Disruptive and Disorderly

The women in Meniolagomekah made it abundantly clear that they were deeply involved in the well-being of their families and that this concern formed a powerful foundation for their relationships with the missionaries. Yet for Delaware women, just as for other Native women, the missionary contact was entangled in a troublesome paradox concerning the connection between women and power. The missionaries recognized Delaware women’s power only in its allegedly disruptive and evil manifestations, a view colored by the European view of the relationship between women, female sexuality, and Satan. Such a perception distorted and minimized women’s actual spiritual authority—an authority they expressed through prophecy and resistance to missionary efforts, as well as by encouraging the conversion of children. This chapter investigates conflicts emanating from these different understandings of women’s influence in areas of social relations, marriages in particular, and how these conflicts can be illuminated through the religious discourse of evil. Native perceptions and practices surrounding women’s roles and relationships between the sexes troubled colonists from the beginning. Profound misgivings stirred in many colonial visitors, clergymen, and political officers as they contemplated Native women’s roles and influence in their societies. Women, like Notike and the female leader Mamanuchqua, known as the Esopus queen, acting from externally visible positions of tribal leadership became increasingly rare among the Delawares throughout the colonial period. Yet it was precisely the women’s authoritative behavior that caused European men to react, and in their writings women frequently occurred as instigators of opposition to various attempts at influencing Indian society. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Europeans condemned Lenape women, from Francis Pastorius who complained that “the women are frivolous, backbiting, and arrogant,” to David Zeisberger who charged that “the women are often ill-tempered.” What brought forth these protestations? In seventeenth-century Europe, order and an organic concept of human society meant that ideally everyone had a divinely ordained

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place according to gender and rank, and it was one’s duty to accept this situation and the obligations that followed. No matter what informal power a woman might wield she almost always stood under the formal authority of a man—a father, husband, or son. With the Protestant reformation, the institution of marriage had become central to the good ordering of society. Men and women were recognized as one another’s mates and companions, but women usurping the prerogatives of men, whether in terms of authoritative or sexual behaviors, were not tolerated. Queens and empresses were known from Europe and operated within a hierarchical society where rank could outweigh gender. But the influence of women in general over the distribution of goods, decision-making, and alliances was more difficult to accept. Over the course of the eighteenth century these notions of rank began to be seriously challenged, but the strengthened position of male individuals as public citizens did nothing to bridge the gender gap. On the contrary, gender came to be viewed as the category of difference, and a separation of spheres of influence meant that Native women’s agency in seemingly public situations became increasingly troublesome.1 Europeans considered Indian women’s influence to be contrary to the hierarchical gendering desirable for a civilized society. Behind the discomfort in European sources lay a concern with establishing and maintaining order. In various ways Europeans, whether travelers, colonial officials, or missionaries, were prone to consider women more disorderly than men. The problematic rum traffic offered many examples. In 1718, the Pennsylvania government and Indian (male) leaders together sought to stave off the problem with alcohol. Indians were told that “they of their parts must Endeavour to prevent their women & young people from Coming to Philadelphia to Purchase & Carry up rum from hence, which too many were ready to Deliver them privately for their skins.” In 1766, Delaware leaders complained that “thre are some that do at times hire some of our Squaws to goe to Bed with them + give them Rum fr it this thing is very Bad, + the squaws again selling the Rum to our People make them Drunk.”2 Alcohol use had troubling connotations for both Indians and whites. While on the one hand it was incorporated into fundamental communal practices, such as burials, it was also connected to abuse and suffering. In both these areas Indian women were implicated as perpetrators and as victims. Native women appear to have controlled some of its distribution, probably as a consequence of their responsibility for rituals and for the division of food and other necessities. As women, however, they also became victims of male aggression and sexual abuse as uncontrolled alcohol use

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unleashed such behaviors. Both Indian and white men lamented the suffering of Indian women, suggesting to modern readers that women have always been at the mercy of men’s inability to control themselves and their insatiable sexual appetites. Yet, it was not women as victims but women as independent agents that worried colonial authors—as well as some Native men—the most. In addition to women’s influence within distributive networks, there were special associations between women and alcohol that had communal significance. Although both men and women drank, there were certain occasions when alcohol had become linked to ritual, and through this to women, especially mourning rituals for the dead. Andreas Hesselius described a traditional Lenape funeral. “The lamentation of the wild women is rather strange and a continuous singing. . . . During this lament they shake their heads and fold their fingers hard into their hands, and again they take to their Bottles, and drink around with Rum and Cider, until they are completely drunk, all the time shouting their vae Nishana. When one of our Swedes asked them, how they could drink when they had such great sorrow; then the Wild woman answered in her language: How could we cry, if we did not get anything to drink?” This drinking at burials should clearly not be mistaken as general drunkenness. It followed its own rules, and as such, would even trump other important regulations in Indian society. At one time Zeisberger’s company visited a Seneca town and their hostess and other women inconvenienced them the whole night with their drunken wailing. In the morning the women offered apologies “asking us not to remember it against them, because they were obliged to drink for the dead. For this reason, they were not able to offer us any of their liquor.” By disturbing visitors and by not sharing with them, these women broke two important rules because the obligation to mourn took precedence. Neither Hesselius nor Zeisberger expressly opposed women’s drinking in connection with funerals. Indeed the custom may have seemed recognizable to Hesselius at least, who must have officiated at many funerals and been acquainted with the Swedish custom of funeral beer. Yet when Zeisberger later compiled his notes into a history of the Northern American Indians he stated that the “Indians trade much among themselves, especially the women, who deal in rum, which they sell at exhorbitant prices, which occasions much disorder.” Statements about alcohol in both its secular and sacred uses, demonstrate the complexities of perceptions of women’s roles and influence. Frequently a fear of disorder pervades these perceptions.3 Nowhere is this concern with disorder more apparent than in reactions

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to practices regarding heterosexual unions. Here a veritable struggle ensued, a struggle over marriages and sexuality. As Adriaen van der Donck pointed out in his description of New Netherlands in the 1650s, marriages were one of the most significant aspects of civilized life. Concerns for order and hierarchy pivoted around issues of marriage unions and the regulation of sexuality. In the ideology of the European elite, perceptions of sexuality, marriages, and child rearing were inevitably linked to issues of power. Not only did marriage involve recreating a divine hierarchy on a smaller scale on Earth, but it was directly linked to the transfer of property to legitimate heirs. Control over sexuality and marriage as a way to influence alliances and hierarchies became an important part of European attempts to alter Lenape culture. It is in these areas that Delaware women’s influence becomes visible in a wide range of colonial sources. When Europeans condemned Delaware sexual and gender practices, it seems that as well as recognizing a spiritual challenge, they feared an alien construction of power.4 Early visitors to the Delaware Valley described an uncontrolled sexuality among the “wild people.” Peter Lindeström wrote about the Lenapes that they “have their mixing together with father and mother, brother and sister like soulless beasts, no one quite knowing, who is the father of the child.” In Lindeström’s version the Indians hardly differed from animals, and the proof was their lack of social barriers to define and maintain a civilized society, such as the institution of marriage and a hierarchical order in which everyone knew his or her place. The lack of proper marriage institutions, then, marked the Delawares as inferior, as belonging to a disorderly or chaotic realm, far from civilized life. Almost universal was the assertion (hope, perhaps?) that Indian women were “unchaste” before marriage but once they were married they remained faithful to their husbands. The judgmental tone in these descriptions did not preclude an openly sexual gaze. Lust and fear often combined in depictions of uncontrollable female sexuality. In much of Europe, women were considered unlimited in their sexual appetites and therefore threatening to male order and societal stability. Quite predictably what was regarded as wanton behavior by Indian women is often censored in the texts, at the same time as it is mentioned that their husbands were allowed to seek pleasures elsewhere. Pehr Kalm, who visited eastern North America between 1748 and 1751, wrote in his journal that although Indian women were generally modest and chaste there were also whores among them: “When a man comes to a place or their village, he will make an agreement with one of the women there, who will be his wife as long as he is there.” Kalm also added an insight into how Lenapes may have viewed

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European marriages. “An Indian often divorces his wife and takes another; they smile much at the practice of the Europeans to have and to hold until death the spouse they have begun living with, and think that this tradition is quite harsh, and completely in opposition to the freedom, that they love so much.”5 These accounts of Lenape sexual and marital customs can hardly be taken as reliable descriptions of Indian conventions, but they do reflect European expectations and fears concerning Native behaviors. They also reveal European assessments of the contrast between their own social order and that of Indians. Delaware sexuality was certainly not something amply discussed in the sources, and when it received mention it was rarely an Indian expressing him- or herself on the subject. How men and women personally experienced sexuality in their daily lives remains obscure, as we have no descriptions or specific examples of how Delawares conceived of various aspects of eroticism. But such information is not necessary to analyze the intersections between sexuality and power in Delaware society or the change over time in relationships that altered with other upheavals in Delaware conditions. Social manifestations of sexuality, rather than its personal and intimate expressions, are easier to track in the documents. For this we have circumstantial evidence and linguistic clues: indications in the vocabularies of what missionaries considered important topics to talk about and how Indian languages accommodated these discourses—or not. We also have evidence of separation, of particular periods in which there were prescribed taboos against sexual intercourse, or of reactions against incestual relations. Family organization, too, can say something about various conceptions of sexuality, though this is by no means the only context in which human sexual relations occur. Sexual taunts, incidence of sexual violence and rape, and how these are treated may also be indicators of connections between sexuality and power in any given society. Fundamentally, Lenape marriage customs were not designed to create liasons between male-headed families and were not concerned with transfer of property. Instead, kinship and ceremonial responsibilities were transferred through the lineage and inherited matrilineally. Children always belonged to their mother’s lineage and most often stayed with the mother and in her lineage’s house if or when the father moved out. Delaware children often had closer relationships to their mother’s brother than to their own father, and siblings (brothers and sisters with the same mother as well as maternal cousins) viewed each other’s children as their own. This would have differed sharply from patrilineal European practices where children almost always

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belonged to the father in cases of divorce or remarriage. Marriage appears primarily to have served to regulate and balance everyday subsistence labor, where men and women contributed reciprocally. Responsibilities of work, defense, or ceremony influenced Delaware decisions concerning proper sexual behavior. Young girls were ritually separated from the rest of the village during their first menstruation and from then on they would spend their monthly periods at a separate hut where they were in the company of other women and did not participate in their regular chores. In particular, they avoided having anything to do with the preparation of food. Hunters and warriors would abstain from sexual relations with women during certain periods as well, and some individuals also refrained from heterosexual cohabitation for spiritual reasons. Temporary sexual unions could occur between Native women and visiting men.6 There are some major problems associated with a cross-cultural discussion of marriage. The word in itself carries cultural connotations that make it problematic. As we have seen, European chroniclers invoke it, whether they are writing in Swedish, Dutch, German, or English, when describing Lenape culture (or any culture alien to them), and judge the lack of recognizable institutions as both a moral and legal deficiency. Likewise the terms husband, wife, and widow are used in the records to designate relationships that were not conceived of in a like manner among Indians. Jarring interpretations become visible in comments such as when David Zeisberger discussed marital relations: “The Indians, therefore, regard their wives as strangers. It is a common saying among them, ‘My wife is not my friend,’ that is, she is not related to me and I am not concerned about her, she is only my wife.” The fact that men and women who formed sexual and emotional bonds continued to have a primary obligation to their lineages seemed threatening to a Protestant Christian, to whom the ideal marriage was modeled on the exclusive relationship between Christ and his congregation. John Heckewelder took exception to the inherent criticism of Indian practices, such as Zeisberger’s, and wanted to correct an error, into which some (White) People had fallen, who having heard Married Men among them (the Indians) make use of the expression: “My Wife is not related to me!” or “my Wife is not my friend” &. have from this drawn the conclusion, that the Indians look upon their Wives as Strangers, and therefore treat them with indifference . . . but . . . by paying propper attention, to the time, occasion, and circumstances, which drew forth the like expressions from them: I became satisfied, that by what they had said, they meant no more, than what we in or language, would

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express by the words: “I have not transgressed against Gods ordnance by taking this woman for a Wife.”

While Zeisberger’s statement may have been more ideological in nature, Heckewelder reminds the historian of the necessity of closely noting time and place, and paying attention to the meaning of language. His observation also demonstrates that family and marriage relations ought not automatically to be conflated when speaking of Indian societies. But his comment also points out problems with translations. A companionate marriage ideal began forming in Europe in the wake of the Reformation, emphasizing that husband and wife ought to be friends and form a bond that transcended (some) family obligations. But the word “freundschaft” in the Moravian Indian context referred not to unrelated individuals, but to kinship. Delaware men who stated that their wives were not their friends were in fact making clear that they had not committed incest.7 Vocabularies offer clues to cultural perceptions, although we must keep in mind that we only have partial lists and compilations that have more to say about the persons making them than they do about Indian speakers. There are two dictionaries that offer information on Lenape language. David Zeisberger prepared one manuscript in the late eighteenth century that was printed in 1887; the second came out the following year and was based on a manuscript found in the Moravian archives in Bethlehem and edited by Daniel Brinton with the aid of Albert Seqaqkind Anthony, a native speaker of Munsee Delaware. The lists do not offer an abundance of words relating to marriage and sexuality; in fact, Zeisberger’s dictionary, which specifically introduces a variety of words in English and German regarding improper sexual behavior, often does not report an equivalent in Lenape. There seem to have been no words for adultery, bastard, bawd (identified in German in the feminine form eine Kuplerin), immodest, prostitute, molest, seduce, or “the Wives shall be Subject to their Husbands.” Zeisberger does offer a word for whore, paalóchqueu, but the same word is reported in the other dictionary to mean “coquettish girl.” Fornication and debauchery are rendered as kimiwipengeen in Zeisberger’s list, but Anthony adds that it literally meant “to sleep secretly together.” The Brinton-Anthony dictionary adds words for desire, lust, and sexual jealousy. Words indicating married relationships are few—and interesting. The word translated as wife is rendered as wikimak, and Anthony elaborated on this by stating that this word was no longer in use and literally meant “he or she who lives with me in the home, my house mate.” The word for “to marry” meant “he (or she) copulates.” The Lenape

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language thus seemed to lack a legal vocabulary for marriage relations as well as a language of chastisement for sexual misbehavior—at least in the English or German variety. This would not indicate that sexual relations and unions formed around them were of little significance, only that they were organized and thought of in a manner that sharply diverged from Protestant European (even pietistic) practices.8 One aspect of Lenape—and Algonkian in general—marriage customs, which stood out as a representation of their wild character, was that women often appeared to initiate sexual contacts that could lead to cohabitation. Strict observances regulated sexual relations between related individuals; for instance, in contrast to European customs, marriages were not allowed between cousins. Descriptions of Lenape marriage customs do not support the conclusion of a “lawless” society, but rather one that differed in fundamental ways from the ideology of northwestern Europe. Heckewelder observed that marriages were not expected to be lifelong and that they were not established with vows or promises of any kind. Nonetheless he said that when a union began “the duties and labours incumbent on each party are well known to both.” Men were expected to build houses, provide canoes, tools and vessels, and provide the family with furs and meat from his hunting. Women labored in the fields, and prepared food for their husbands.9 Evidence scattered over the period point to the influence of women, particularly older women, on unions between young men and women. Thus Isaack de Rasieres described in 1628 a form of council called together to decide in marital strife and about divorces, where women dominated. Some older women knew how to prepare love-medicine that could be used to induce love in an uninterested party, thus serving as a powerful tool in creating unions. Zeisberger found this particularly disconcerting, and he wrote about the Beson, or charm, that Indians believed would keep men and women faithful to one another. “Usually,” Zeisberger ended, “this is done by old women, who thus support themselves and promote superstition among the young.” The power to influence relations and bring about unions between men and women would have “enormous ramifications in the ongoing structure of native society.” This power was primarily in the hands of women, as love-doctors and as mothers. A Lenape story, “The Woman with the Two Plants,” describes the origins of love medicine and its connection to women. A spirit gave two plants to a woman and revealed to her a ritual that would cause attraction. In this way the woman gained power over men and her secret was then passed on to her daughters.10

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The Struggle over Satan Proper relations between women and men were from the start at the heart of the organization of missionary towns and suffused the interaction between Indians and whites. Indeed, marriage and sexual relations constituted the pivot around which different interests aligned. Varying views among Native people as well as among Europeans concerning women’s proper behavior challenged and influenced Delaware perceptions of themselves and their society throughout the colonial period. One way to glimpse the structure of these differences is to look at conceptions of evil and of what comprised a threat to the good society. The point is not that Indians favored unregulated sexual relations or that conflicts that had become apparent between Moravian and Indian concepts of proper behavior meant that Indian women defended a right to free sex. Rather, this was a controversy over foundational relationships where women’s influence (in, for example, the formation of unions), women’s responsibilities (to determine where and with whom it served their children and themselves best to live), and relative individual freedom (to choose sexual partners, or religious paths) were challenged by hierarchical practices that placed men over women and missionaries over Indians. Sex and disorder were thus not matters of private morality—at least not as they become evident in these sources—and changing behaviors not a matter of minor adjustments to Native customs. Let us visit one of the first Moravian Indian settlements in Pennsylvania: Gnadenhütten on the Mahony River. It is early in the year 1748, and the Mahican coworkers at the mission, Josua and Bathseba, Nicodemus and Esther, are gathered in the meetinghouse in the middle of the town for a conference led by missionary Christian Rauch. Rauch opens the meeting by announcing that a Delaware stranger, a woman named Tschanxehs, says that she will not allow the Holy Spirit to help her, but persists in serving the devil. The reason for this, explains Rauch, is that she is trapped in whoring with other strangers in the village. He then asks the Indian brothers and sisters what they think should be done with her. Everyone expresses great distress at her presence and behavior. The conference agrees to send her away, as they are adamant that there can be no place in Gnadenhütten for people like her. Yet it is apparent that the decision is not an easy one to reach. Nicodemus, in whose house Tschanxehs has been staying, renounces his right to participate in the decision by saying that he is poor and leaves it to the brothers to determine what to do. Brother Christian believes the Spirit has told him and the others that the woman ought to be sent away before she

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Figure 9. The meeting house in Gnadenhütten, drawn by Andreas Hoeger. Drawer 2, Folder 2, Item 2. Courtesy of Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.

can go further with her seductions. It is especially merciful, he says, that she has not yet managed to tempt one of the Christian brothers. The decision is made and Bathseba fetches Tschanxehs to let her know of her expulsion and so that the council can hear what she has to say for herself. When Tschanxehs enters the meetinghouse she must have been filled with anxiety. Here she is among strangers who do not speak her language. Who translated for her? Why had she come to the town in the first place? Christian Rauch asks her just that question. She answers that she came “to hear Words” from the Indians living there, but now Evil has taken over in her life and she is saddened by this. Gently the missionary informs her that Gnadenhütten’s inhabitants are happy to have people stay in the town who want to hear the Words of the Spirit, and they have been willing to forgive her, but now they see “that she wants to live in the lust of the flesh, and keeps loving the sin,” and this causes them sorrow. They have allowed her to stay in the hope “that she may be liberated through the Blood of Jesus, and

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saved,” but now that “we see that she would rather be a Whore than belong to the Spirit, we must tell her that Gnaden Hütten is really no Place for such People.” She should not be afraid of them, and they still have love for her and would like to help her, but she must leave Gnadenhütten in the morning. Rauch asks if she has understood what they have said, and she answers “Yes.” Again, she is told that if she ever wants to belong to the Spirit she is welcome back, and she will be received with affection. Following further profuse professions of love, Rauch asks if she has anything to say and she responds: “Yes, I will go away tomorrow. . . . It hurts me much, that I have done such bad things. I have also cried a lot. My wicked Heart has seduced me. I believe, I am very unhappy.” She begs and receives permission to stay a few days as her child is suffering from fever and she cannot cross the Lehigh River, but then Tschanxehs walks out of recorded history to a fate unknown to posterity.11 Tschanxehs’s story is not unique in the annals of the Moravian missions, but it is one of the most elaborate, and therefore illustrates themes that lay at the heart of confl icts between Christian and Native customs. This story sets up three fundamental assertions that are essential to the Moravian missionary project, just as it was to many other Christian missions: the struggle between Jesus Christ and the devil, Satan’s use of fleshly lust to lure humans into sin, and the location of these sinful lusts in the bodies and behaviors of women. Perhaps underscoring the confl ict in this particular case are ethnic divisions between Mahicans and Delawares. Rauch recounts an unpleasant decision—two and a half pages of the diary are devoted to elaborate protestations of Christ’s and the congregation’s love for the woman—while simultaneously defending the necessity of her leaving. Christ and the devil cannot reside in the same place: “Gnaden Hütten is no place for whores.” Tschanxehs herself expresses sorrow and shame at behaving in a manner that displeased the congregation, but it is the missionary who makes the explicit connection between Satan and the lusts of the flesh. Jesus Christ loves her, but they can see that she “has love for the Sins of the flesh, and does not want to belong to the Spirit.” Directly following her admission that her heart has seduced her and that she is very unhappy, written in the first person, the text changes pronouns and continues: “The Devil has taken her by the hand. She wanted to ask the Siblings for forgiveness, but Satan hindered her.” This encounter indicates that in the understanding of the Moravians, particular sins of the flesh are connected to female seductions. The commentary surrounding these sexual acts all but forget to mention that there were men involved as well. Tschanxehs is

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charged with whoring while her sexual partners do not need to appear before the council. These men are sent on their way with the comment that there will be no more food for them in the village and they will have to take care of themselves. It is unclear what the Indians present at the meeting think about the issue. Nicodemus, in whose house Tschanxehs stayed, describes her as a bad person who desires what is of the body, and he is afraid that she will seduce the men. He concludes that the buildings of the village, including the barn where the illicit acts occurred, are consecrated to the Spirit and therefore should not be a place for whoring. Yet he refuses to pass judgment on her. From the context it is impossible to determine whether he meant that the place was inappropriate for sexual activities on account of its religious sacrality or whether he condemned Tschanxehs’s acts in general. Josua is primarily concerned with the reputation that Gnadenhütten will have among other Indians if such actions are allowed.12 Situations such as the one with Tschanxehs concerned much more than rules and order in one Christian Indian town. It reflected fundamental beliefs about good and evil and about the possibilities for coexistence between Indian and Christian values and social organization. For the Moravians, marriage between a man and a woman represented the template for the relationship between Christ and the congregation, and sex between spouses mirrored the mystical union between the soul and the Holy Spirit. Strengthening Indian marital bonds between husband and wife thus had a direct bearing on their acceptance of a union with Christ. As noted above, only circumstantial evidence suggests what Delawares may have thought about the matter. However, it appears likely that they did not directly link sexuality to spiritual unions the way Moravians did. Some of the more powerful healers never had intimate relations with women. Wassenaer described in the 1620s that “The ministry of their spiritual affairs is attended to by one they call Kitzinacka. . . . This priest has no house-keeping of his own. He lodges where he pleases, or where he last officiated; must not eat any food prepared by a married woman. It must be cooked by a maiden or old woman. He never cohabits with them, living like a capuchin.” Ritual obligations and responsibilities for the lineage influenced the life of each Delaware person and tied him or her more closely to members of their own lineages than to sexual partners. Men also abstained from women’s company and from sexual relations with them when preparing for war or hunting. Male friendships were common among the Delawares. “Two comrades who have been reared together or have become attached to one another will be very close and constant companions. . . . It seems almost impossible for

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either of them to live without the other.” The Moravian towns proved fertile ground for such friendships. The convert Michael lived for many years in the house of unmarried brothers in Bethlehem, and took every opportunity to express his great pleasure in this arrangement. He developed a particularly strong bond of friendship with one of the Moravian assistants, Andreas.13 To Europeans, same-sex loyalties, though not unknown, contained a threatening possibility of what were regarded as some of mankind’s darker secrets. Same-sex sexual acts ought not to be discussed openly, but vague allusions were recognizable to all educated readers. Thus, when Zeisberger lamented that men did not love their wives as friends and deplored the close connection between male friends, his readers would have understood his concern. Zeisberger also ascertained that his intimate knowledge of Delaware culture and individuals had taught him that among them were those who practiced the most unnatural sins.14 Indian sexual relations and marriage did not require the same domestic arrangements as among the whites. Women and men spent large parts of the year in separate activities, and same-sex workgroups were often the norm. But while missionaries may have fretted over men’s tendency to cleave to one another instead of to their wives, the major concern with Native domestic relationships focused on the influence and independence of women. While disorderly, dangerous, and sexually licentious women are found in the sources on countless occasions, there are only one or two such connections between men and carnal lust. The diaries note at least twenty references to women behaving in an unacceptable and licentious manner, while I have been able to find only one such reference to an Indian man. In contrast to the admonitions directed at women, which explicitly or implicitly mentioned sexual behavior and thwarting of authority, men were forbidden to participate in wars and practice Native customs. When men could not concentrate on the words of the Spirit it was because women tempted them, as the convert Joachim preached to an unmarried man from Pachgatgoch. Uncertainty and concern over contamination from unconverted Indians characterize the mission work from the early years and lay down a pattern for interactions between the inhabitants of mission towns and their unconverted relatives. There is concern with rules, with strangers bringing evil into the town, with young people’s behavior, and with marriage plans. The expulsion of Tschanxehs from Gnadenhütten was but one example.15 For some male Indian converts the independent sexuality of women apparently came to be viewed as a problem as well. The convert Johannes reported in 1745 that Abraham had told him that in Wyoming the unconverted

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women were so bad that they took the men they wanted and such behavior threatened the young people. Moreover, Nathanael Seidel described how among the Christian Indians in Shekomeko men took the initiative in forming marital unions by approaching the parents of the girl they had in mind, while in Wyoming the women took a man and went away with him. There was much dancing and jumping, which encouraged lustful behavior, again creating a destructive scene for young people. That was why, Seidel concluded, people in Wyoming did not want to have anything to do with the Word. Moravians could not conceive of proper marriage relations without the subjugation of wives to their husbands. Women’s individual and independent initiatives in sexual matters were construed as uncontrollable sins. This behavior clearly came to be seen as an obstacle to conversion itself. Hanna, a Mahican woman, expressed that she had found in her heart that the reason she had not yet been converted was that she belonged to more than one man, and she believed that to be the work of the Enemy.16 The discourse about good and evil also pointed to one of the most powerful shapes the devil seemed to take in the Moravian imagination—that of a fornicating woman, a shape both gendered and connected to the powerful force of sexuality. The Moravian material is fi lled with references to the workings of the devil in the world and in interactions between converted and unconverted Indians. Thus it forms a useful focus for study as it reveals rifts of tension and as such may shed light on reasons for conflicts and misunderstandings. Some of these were rooted in cultural concepts and many of them display gendered dimensions that need to be explored. Satan, in pietist theology, represented the forces of dominion that did not allow or recognize God as ruler over the world. Satan was the antithesis of God and stood in direct opposition to the Almighty. To Zinzendorf, who professed to an entirely historical understanding of the Gospel and the continuous unfolding of God’s work in the world through the participation of the church, history was a catalog of the struggle between the “forces of evil and the kingdom of God.” This theology was expressed by Zeisberger in an answer to an Indian who had traveled a long way to ask about the faith: “Briefly our doctrine is this: that we through the faith in Jesus Christ are blessed, who with his blood has bought and delivered us from eternal death and from the dominion of Satan under which all humans stand as a consequence of their nature.” Satan in this way appeared as a personified and supremely evil force that held people captive until they were bought by the blood and delivered by the grace of Christ. This force took concrete shape in specific human situations, and then it became a figure with gendered dimensions. If nature

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placed us all under the influence of Satan, there was nonetheless a difference between individuals. “There are two kinds of people on this earth,” Zeisberger continued, “there are good and bad, children of God and children of Satan and destruction.” Satan thus became humanized and personalized and at loose in the world, wreaking havoc on all godly human endeavors. Satan was a presence in the language of faith as well as a necessary element for understanding faith’s conditions in the world.17 How were concepts such as “Satan” or “evil” understood among the Delawares? Tschanxehs and Hanna referred to these terms when describing their failure to follow Christian standards. We do not know what words or abstractions Delawares used to capture the image of Satan. Using the Moravian sources to throw light on this is a treacherous exercise, since we only have, at best, Moravian renderings of Delaware words. The missionaries may have translated concepts into terms they believed portrayed the actual battle between good and evil in the world, regardless of what Indians themselves said. Nonetheless I choose to elaborate on this usage because there are indications of differences that suggest that Delawares attempted to communicate their beliefs to Christians, as well as used the vocabulary in debates with other Indians. Studies of early Lenape religious concepts tell us that they recognized both an Almighty Being as a creator and as a troublesome counterpart, “the Devious One.” According to seventeenth-century sources Lenapes knew of a Creator God who stayed in the heavens and did not further meddle in the lives of humans, while they prayed and made offerings to lesser spirits who had the power to influence their earthly activities. Europeans deemed these gods evil and thought Indians sacrificed to them in order to be spared from misery. Peter Lindeström wrote that they “believe and know well, that the evil one exists, who can cause them that which is evil, but they do not want to believe or understand, that there is an almighty and good God, who can show them all that is good.” Yet equating these with God and the devil missed the point, as the Creator and the Devious One represented paradox rather than oppositionary forces. According to Herbert Kraft the Delawares viewed the Creator “as being predictable, constructive and obviously good” while his brother the Devious One “was perverse, individual and unpredictable, accomplishing one end by appearing to do precisely the opposite.” The world could not exist without both of them, “the rivalry and competition between them made the universe possible.”18 In the 1670s, Danckaerts described an exchange with an old Indian, named Jasper, concerning his beliefs. Jasper was known among colonists because he had shown them much kindness, giving them food when they

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starved and aiding them in other ways. When asked why he had done this he responded: “I have always been inclined from my youth up to do good, especially to good people known to me. I took the fish to them because Maneto said to me, you must take fish to these people, whispering ever in my ear ‘You must take fish to them.’ I had to do it, or Maneto would have killed me.” The manitou, or Jasper’s guardian spirit, which he had apparently encountered in a vision or dream in his youth, guided him throughout his life and to follow that guidance was a matter of life and death. Despite the insistence of the interviewers, however, Jasper did not agree that the manitou was in itself evil. To do good or evil was human and the spirit awarded or punished them according to their actions. The manitou, Jasper said “punishes and torments those men who do evil and drink themselves drunk.”19 While evil certainly existed, it was not connected to a particular, powerful, genuinely evil spirit that strove to take command over the world. Evil seems to have been related to behaviors connected to witchcraft, which was a power that came to certain individuals through dreams. In order to avoid the uncontrolled impact of evil power to be unleashed upon one’s own family, a witch must pass on the medicine to another person. In a description from the 1690s Eric Biörck mentions witchcraft as the only behavior that warranted a death penalty among the Lenapes. Sacred medicine bundles were thought to pass along matrilines from mother to daughter and these could also transmit powers intent on destruction. Yet, neither in Biörck’s time nor later was witchcraft exclusively connected to either male or female Indians. In the Moravian material there are more frequent mentions of male than female witches, but in the best recorded instance of witchcraft purges among the Delawares at the beginning of the nineteenth century both men and women were indicted. One early Swedish description indicates an Indian concept of evil as a spirit power to which the community must sacrifice in order to minimize the dangers, and it also describes beliefs in an afterlife that separated those who had lived “good” lives from those who had lived “bad” ones. But this source relies heavily on second-hand information from other European colonists, and Indian informants adamantly denied the existence of a personified evil spirit power akin to the Christian devil. In the mid-1700s David Jones commented that “they believe there is a good Monneeto and a bad Monneeto; but they in no manner worship either one or the other. ’Tis doing them injustice to say they worship the Devil, for they give themselves no concern about GOD or the Devil.”20 This background is fundamental when we turn to Indian usages of terms that were translated into German as “Satan” or “Teufel.” An anal-

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ysis of these Indian uses reveals a certain consistent pattern. “Satan” was sometimes referred to in terms of a specific power that in a warlike manner kept people prisoners and sought to extend his realm of control. One Indian convert explained: “I have given thought to the Indians and looked at their condition, how they are bound and prisoners of Satan, of whom a few, who have already before heard of the Holy Spirit, can hope for delivery.” Others described the manner in which this powerful enemy force worked on the imprisoned. Their expressions—and it must be remembered that there are only a handful of them—seem to suggest that this power primarily influenced humans through causing spiritual states of worry and unrest. Old Sarah, a baptized woman, complained to the Moravians of “the distress and unrest of her heart, adding that she was very much plagued by Satan who had twice appeared to her, so that she had been unable to remain in the town among the Indians where her home was, but had retired into the forest alone with her daughter.” Another old woman, who preached vigorously against the Christian message, convinced her listeners (in Zeisberger’s words) that “whoever will go to our meetings will be tempted of the devil and greatly troubled.” This suggests an understanding of the devil as a spirit being that brings worry and discomfort. Less clear, but in the same vein, is the mockery delivered by one woman against another old woman who lived near the Moravians: “‘No doubt, you will soon be baptized, then a special spirit will come upon you.’” The mockery referred to what some unconverted Indians saw as an attempt by people not blessed with visions in the Indian way to obtain such through the Christian connection. To these Delawares the devil appeared in the shape of a spirit that could enter their hearts and dreams, and who brought them anxiety and unrest. Delawares believed that everything surrounding them contained spirits, manitous. Some clearly were described with genders, such as Mother Corn and the male Mësingw, while others were not clearly identified as female or male. A somewhat more personalized reference to the devil can be found in other comments. They are, however, not very easy to decipher. David, a Delaware living in Shamokin, seemed to suggest that the devil played tricks and fooled people with drink and illness to the destruction of their bodies. In this guise the devil could perhaps be said to resemble the Devious One.21 The dualistic language of God and the devil infiltrated debates between converts and missionaries, and between converted and unconverted Indians. Where the devil dwelled may have been a matter of contention, but that there were two sides identified with one or the other seemed clear to many. One convert, who turned his back on the new faith, expressed his frustration in

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1786: “On the Muskingum the white people have at last attained their purpose, murdering so many of our friends; therefore I will keep far enough from them; . . . nevermore will I come to you and live with you; I will hear nothing about the Saviour. . . . My forefathers have all gone to the Devil; there will I go also; where they are there will I also be.” To this man the devil represented not evil, but the ways of his forefathers in contrast to the Christian life. In this context the story of the Mahican Tschop’s conversion is illuminating. When he became a Christian he rejected entirely his former life, saying that before he had been “the most willing slave of the Devil.” He explained that “my nearest relations, my wife and children, were my enemies, and my greatest enemy was my wife’s mother.” He denounced the religious family symbol that had been passed into the possession of his wife’s mother from her grandmother as “she being the oldest person in the house, made us worship it, which we did until our teacher came and told us of the lamb of God.” Tschop’s break with the traditional worship was violent. His mother-in-law called him worse than a dog. At the end of his testimony he refers to the devil’s work: “The enemy has frequently tried to make me unfaithful, but what I loved before, I consider more and more as dung.”22 Tschop’s words are interesting because they are cited as his own. Usually these expressions of enmity to the word of conversion and their attribution to the influence of Satan come from missionaries, not from Indians themselves. Tschop expresses a complete rejection of his origins and to do so he finds tools in the Christian vocabulary of struggle between opposite, binary forces of good and evil. This must have been a novelty. A look at the early dictionaries of Lenape language supports the conclusion that there was no equivalent of a personalized devil. The term used to designate “devil” in the dictionary was “machtándo.” Evil, however, is rendered as mamachtáchenîm, meaning “to speak evil of one.” The only context in which terms like evil occur in the dictionaries is in connection with abusive language. To do evil thus seems to have been to speak bad things, an action rather than a state. The devil could be an enemy power that imprisoned people and caused them disquiet and worry. It could be a force, or a spirit that drove people to acts of drunkenness and witchery. This force could be connected to sacrifices that Christian Indians understood as evil, while unconverted Indians saw them as part of their own belief system.23 Hardening lines between whites and Indians came increasingly to be expressed in binary and exclusionary terms. But never, in any case, did Indians speak of or connect evil and the devil to a particular class of people, to a particular gender, or to sexuality. Delaware perceptions of the devil

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was founded on the belief that malevolent spirits cause distress and lack of harmony. The cure was sought in collective ritual acts and a return to life without contact with whites. Sexuality was neither connected to evil nor good spirits and spirits were not in themselves gendered. Thus there was no special ontological space for connecting a certain gender with evil. Moravians emphatically believed that the devil took human shape in this world and used individuals as instruments. Satan came to stand for disorder, opposition, and competition for the souls of Indians—Indian men in particular. The primary agents for Satan emerge as women—as sexually wanton younger women, as dominating older women, as problematic single women, as quarrelsome and undisciplined married women. Perhaps the clearest and most powerful Moravian statement of this fact comes from David Zeisberger, who proclaimed concerning the Delawares that “I have not seen elsewhere among the Indians that the old women are such true instruments of Satan and have so much influence among the young.” Surely there is no coincidence that this sentence combines Satan’s connection to women—old women in particular—with communal authority, and in the light of this the Moravian rules of conduct as well as their concern for the education of children became essential tools of the missionizing project. At the heart of this charge lay the anxiety for women’s unregulated sexuality and their power over sex, marriages, children, and their own bodies. To Zeisberger and other Moravians it seemed clear that satanic influences caused Indians to fornicate and weakened the tie between husband and wife, thus ruining sound marriages. Strong bonds between men at the expense of closer ties between married partners could also be seen as signs of devilish depravity with sexual undertones. Thus, when Zeisberger deplored the manner in which Indian men spoke about their wives as “strangers” he concluded that “This satanic notion it is very difficult to uproot.”24 Such fears underlay the zeal to create the proper kind of marriage relations between Indian couples. While it is possible to read the account of the expulsion of Tschanxehs from Gnadenhütten as an example of discord between Mahicans and Delawares, later troubles between Bathseba and Josua demonstrate that this matter concerned both peoples. Marriage problems often brought forth exasperated comments on the devil’s influence. Josua was one of the converts the Moravians placed great strategic hope in, but his marriage to Bathseba was rocky. Perhaps that is why both Josua and Bathseba expressed such anger and frustration at Tschanxehs’s overt sexual behavior in Gnadenhütten? While Zeisberger first believed Bathseba’s claim that Josua was a philanderer, he soon changed his mind and placed all the

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blame on the woman: “She is a thoroughly evil piece of flesh, with which nothing can be done . . . until she becomes tender.” In discussing Samuel and Maria in Meniolagomekah, Schebosch was less inclined to place the blame on only one of the partners, but thought nonetheless that the Enemy was an active party in marital strife: “I layed every thing Before our Dear Savour that he Should not let Satan have the over hand of one Soul.”25 Sometimes Satan’s influence caused evil acts that missionaries deemed ungodly. This is how all evidence of opposition was interpreted. Such resistance came from a Shawnee village and Zeisberger barked that they were “the worst people of all Nations, who are controlled by the power of evil.” When referring to Shawnee resistance to the gospel he added, that “Satan spared no effort to hinder the cause of the Spirit and to ruin it wherever possible.” Similarly, in 1782 it was Satan who “set on the ill-minded Indian people to say to our people” that they would perish if they stayed among the English for their own protection. At other times Indians were described as helpless victims of the devil’s forces: “As often as Satan rages, as often do they damage to themselves and must lose.” Christian Frederick Post complained that “it is a hard Yoke to have any Thing to do with these People, & what will be the End of them the Lord only knows, for Satan drives them to all Manner of Wickedness to their own Destruction.” And Zeisberger again expressed his sympathy and frustration when he wrote in his diary from New Salem that “Satan plays with the poor folk, so that outwardly too they have a much plagued, pitiable life, thereby are in constant fear, and as it were, always in flight, of which we have to feel our share in one way or another.” Yet, individuals were not deemed to be entirely passive and breaking away from Satan’s bondage involved an active decision. Abraham’s son, who was “a true servant and slave of Satan,” was told that “Satan could not hold him against his will; he must free himself altogether from his devices and the works of darkness.”26 Evil clearly had distinctly gendered features for the Moravians. Tschanxehs’s expulsion from Gnadenhütten was characteristic rather than anomalous, indicative of a pattern that can be discerned throughout eighteenth-century contacts between Moravians and Delawares (and other Indians). Lack of respect for order and unregulated sexuality led to a number of expulsions from Christian towns. From the description of wild and evil women in the heathen town of Wyoming, who took men wherever and whenever they wanted them, through minutes of the helpers’ conference in Schönbrunn in 1773, to diaries from New Fairfield in the 1790s, women’s sexuality was portrayed as more uncontrollable and deplorable than men’s and

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women were charged with initiating illicit contacts. The Schönbrunn minutes expressed concern that wives left their husbands “to go into the world, which happens generally in order to commit whoring.” Anna Johanna exemplified this as she “ran from her husband and has now taken a Wild man.” Anna Johanna was not alone, the accusation against her resonates through the diaries, directed at women like Peggy, “who from perversity went away from us several weeks ago,” Lea, who was sent away “for she is wanton and causes mischief among our girls,” Anna Regina, who also led Deborah away from the church, and Samuel’s two daughters “who caused much trouble, raged like devils against God and the church, and so blasphemed that one’s hair stood on end,” and Salome and her mother who had “already caused much evil.”27 It was not just young and unmarried women who appeared problematic. In 1760, Johanna Schmick, who together with her husband Johann Jacob formed an influential Moravian missionary couple, severely admonished two Delaware women, Sarah and Magdalena, for behaving in a heathen manner regarding their children. Thus, they could no longer be accepted as sisters in the Moravian congregation. Their misdeed consisted in contracting a marriage between Sarah’s grandson and Magdalena’s daughter that had been concluded “in a heathenish fashion.” The passage in the diary, written by Johann Schmick, ended with his assertion that he “at every opportunity” expressed himself “clearly and immediately concerning such heathen” practices. In fact, such clear and immediate expressions regarding proper relations in marriage were frequent in the Moravian sermons and did not diminish during the century.28 Whether single or inordinately influential in their marriages, Indian women presented a threat to the orderly Christian community. As decades wore on, Moravians expressed ever greater concern, partly exacerbated by rifts of distrust in their relationship with Delawares following the Seven Years War. Women, as we shall see later, took center stage in the debate for and against the links with the missionaries and this could not fail to influence the latter in their evaluation of the role of women in Delaware society. We catch sight of this in 1770 as David Zeisberger paddled up a tributary of the Beaver River in search of a new location for a Moravian Indian village. He described in his diary how they one morning in July “came to a Women’s Town (Weibe-Town) of 5 to 6 huts, where none but unmarried womenfolk live, who do not want to take any husbands. Here we stopped and saw a beautiful piece of land, but since this Town is so close we continued on.” It may seem strange that unmarried womenfolk caused Moravians

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discomfort. At the start of their missionary endeavor in North America Moravians separated unmarried as well as married men and women in work groups and living quarters, and one of the reasons given for their success in converting Delawares was that the gender separation and relative complementarity between the sexes appealed to Indians as familiar. But by the 1770s the organization of gender separation had broken down—partly as a consequence of massive opposition from other Christian denominations—and Weibe-Town apparently represented a forbidden neighborhood for Zeisberger and his company. Very little more is said about the village, but it was apparently not peopled only with women, nor were the inhabitants all hostile to Zeisberger’s message as he later noted a visit from a man, the father of one of the women.29 The key to understanding how Zeisberger regarded the town lies in his assertion that the women did not want to take husbands. It was not unusual for women to separate themselves, particularly for ritual purposes or during menstruation, but neither ritual nor bleeding required a woman to be unmarried. Neighboring Indians informed Zeisberger of the name of the town, but did not provide him with an explanation. Maybe to them it was not so strange. Women and men spent large parts of the year in separate activities, and same-sex workgroups were often the norm. Unconverted Indians told about mythical villages in the sky “in one of which there were only women, of extraordinary size.” Such separation of the sexes may, however, have caused anxiety also among Delawares as other mythological stories cautioned against refusing marriage. The story relates that a woman rejecting the advances of, in turn, a beaver, a skunk, and an owl by calling them ugly eventually finds herself in trouble and dies because none of these animals will help her. There seems to be no way of knowing for certain how the Delawares perceived a village of women who did not want to take husbands. But they acknowledged relationships between men and women that appeared completely alien and ungodly to German missionaries, who increasingly disapproved of the influence and independence of women.30 In 1783, a group of Delawares passed through the settlement on the Clinton River and a woman asked to be allowed to stay and live there, but she was told that this would not be suitable, “for it is something very venturesome with women without husbands.” Married couples were also the source of concern, especially if they were not settled in the same place, as the separation of man and wife led to disorder. The helper’s conference at Schönbrunn stated that they would not receive pregnant or nursing women who had husbands outside, even if they had relatives in the town. They

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would only “leave their children here when they go away again and if they do not leave soon, then they begin to cause trouble.” This may have lain behind the stern response Zeisberger offered Maria Elisabeth in 1789. She had been baptized but then she had left the congregation and gone to marry a heathen. She now returned to ask permission to live in New Salem again. This was denied her and the reason was that she had left the church on her own volition when she was unmarried, but now that she had a husband she was not her own master: “He must come and tell if he also is of that mind. We heed not what the wife says, but what the husband says.”31 The Moravians constantly preached about the nature of proper married relations, but they also increasingly condemned women as a category for their opposition to this message. Festivals for married couples were arranged regularly, accompanied by exhortations such as in 1772 when Brother Ettwein expounded on the duties of husbands and wives toward one another. He “especially gave the Women a much needed reminder concerning their treatment of their Men, in their clothing, cleanliness in cooking and in the entire household.” In other sermons the brothers and sisters were shown how “discontent and discord” between couples led to “old, heathenish, sinful customs” once again creeping into their lives. The distrust of women was apparent not only in the stern admonitions leveled at wives but sometimes it was tied to a fear for the entire missionary project. In New Salem in 1789, during a period of great upheaval and peril for both Christian and unbaptized communities, Moravians reported rumors from Indian country, “strange, disagreeable things about Satan’s witchcraft.” The devil’s influence had a particular effect on young women and the diary expressed worry: “We have then to do with a bad kind of heathen, with whom we have to use foresight, and whom we have to watch well, that our youth be not seduced and the like come among them. For the savages, especially the women, gladly seek to strew abroad the wicked seed, which easily takes root with young people, for the tinder of nature still lies in them, and destruction is thereby brought about, and the Indians cannot well bear temptation.”32 Thus, for Moravians, and Zeisberger in particular, evil acts were connected to human agents and as such possessed gendered bodies. And the evil spirit—Satan—commonly expressed itself in sexual acts, particularly where women were concerned. These acts would lead to a lack of order and opposition to God’s universal order. The cure was individual conversion in an environment of strictly authoritarian rules. God was gendered as was Satan, and this allowed room for gender coding of evil and good acts. Sexuality was seen as an act that often appeared to be evil, or at least

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disorderly. This act was performed by human agents, and in the concrete cases of Moravian towns these agents were overwhelmingly female and Delaware. The Moravian emphasis on universality—salvation for everyone regardless of skin color or sex—appears to be irrevocably tied to white culture and societal structure. It was in those trappings that salvation was clothed: order, hierarchy, control. The cosmic battle between good and evil was a fundamental theme in much Christian theology and not unique to the Moravians. That it contains gendered aspects has been demonstrated in a variety of contexts. In other parts of North America both Jesuits and Puritans equated women with evil influences. Jesuit missionaries in New France deemed women “weak and therefore more easily duped and seduced by Satan.” Thus they easily became the devil’s foremost allies and through their sexuality threatened the stability of the social community. This threat could best be disarmed “through women’s rightful subjugation to men’s authority.” In Puritan New England “gender issues were religious issues” and the trials of predominantly female witches symbolized the cosmic battle for human souls between God and the devil. Witches were accused of “discontent, anger, envy, malice, seduction, lying, and pride” and these sins could be directed against God and his people, against fellow members of the community, or represent sexual behaviors deemed to be against the order of nature.33 Pietist Moravians, with their emphasis on blood mystique and the mother spirit, however, appear to be a far cry from seventeenth-century Jesuits and Puritans. Indeed, it was precisely the relative gender egalitarianism, the insistence on the feminine nature of the divine, and an explicitly affirmative view of sex within marriage that brought them into violent conflict with their contemporaries from Germany and Sweden in the early years of the Pennsylvania mission. No timeless fear of women or sexuality obscured all differences between Europeans and Indians. But the pietist language, which so much focused on the emotional response of the convert to Christ’s love and suffering, became supplanted as time went on in the missionary work with a language that drew the lines of battle between God and the devil for the souls of Indian peoples, and in this rhetoric women and female influence became identified with the forces of Satan. These pietists, who so adamantly emphasized the equality of souls before the image of the suffering Son and who sought so diligently to reach both men and women with their message of salvation, stumbled on concepts of worldly order and hierarchy that need not have any connection to the essence of their creed. When it came to Native Americans, in spite of a theology that empha-

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sized the mystical and emotional union with the sacrificed Christ, “weeping in the side hole of the Lamb” was not enough for true conversion. For this to happen one set of gendered notions had to be replaced by another. How else should David Zeisberger’s final comment on Delaware women be read? Apart from many critical comments throughout his history of North American Indians he summarized his views as follows: The women are much given to lying and gossiping. They carry evil report from house to house. As long as they are observed they appear modest and without guile. All the wrongs of which they are guilty are done in secret. That adultery, theft, lying, cheating are terrible vices they know, having learned it from their ancestors as well as from the whites. Fear of disgrace keeps them from open wrongdoing for they have no wish to have a bad name. Secretly, however, they are given to all manner of vice. Some are no longer sensitive to shame. There are traces of unnatural sins among them, hardly known to any except to those such as missionaries who have learned to understand the people well.34

Zeisberger’s disappointment toward the end of his life as a missionary is obvious, but it does not explain why Delaware women and men entertained the Moravian connection with such enthusiasm for such a long time. Satan was never far from Moravian, and other Christian, vocabulary as missionaries and Indians sought to negotiate their relationships in the tumultuous years of the eighteenth century. Yet, this was not the only aspect of this complex and paradoxical relationship. Ironically, perhaps, Indians heard and appropriated a Christian message that, understood in their cultural terms, became almost the opposite of what the Moravians had intended. In the first decade of missionary contact the language used to convey the images of the proper relationship between man and wife incorporated and called on the feminine aspects of the Godhead. The Mother—the Holy Spirit— was beseeched to “instruct these Brothers in their Marriage Plan,” and Love Feasts recalled and reemphasized the relationship between the Saviour and the Congregation as a conjugal one. While other missionaries may have emphasized meetings with men, or simply came in contact only with males, the Moravians sought equally and actively to reach women. Not only did their experiences among Delawares, Mahicans, and Senecas challenge one kind of colonial prejudice regarding Indian women—namely that they were exploited drudges—they were also challenged themselves at the core of their own beliefs about Christian community. Many Indians, and Indian women in particular, embraced the Moravian message with its

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insistence on the importance of blood, on God as Mother and Lover, and on women’s active and authoritative participation in the leadership in the missionary community. Moravians of course rejoiced in this success, but they increasingly worried about the role of both white and red women after the death of Count Zinzendorf in 1760. Thus it was precisely the Moravians’ fortune in encountering peoples like the Lenapes and Mahicans, who did not recognize patriarchal households and among whom women were expected to take active leadership in issues of family and communal interest, that presaged conflict. Perhaps this struggle for control between missionaries and Indian women, as much as the conflict with contemporary German Lutheran and Reformed neighbors, drove the Moravians toward “more confessional, male-oriented denominational establishments.”35 However, the missionaries were not alone in their concern with women’s influence over matters of sexuality and family relationships. Male Indian converts, and prophets teaching revitalization of Native practices, also sought ways to develop brotherhood, based on abstinence and rituals emphasizing masculine pursuits, as a road toward cultural persistence. Yet, just as persistent were the presence and actions of Delaware women as they strove to secure the survival of their kin and way of life.

Chapter Four

Mapping the Future: Women and Visions

Delaware interaction with Moravian missions was at its most intense in the period between the late 1740s and the massacre of some ninety unarmed Christian Delawares in the town of Gnadenhütten, Ohio, in 1782. These relations, which tied into the spiritual responsibilities that women shouldered, had important ramifications for how Delawares and Moravians came to view one another, and for how Delawares perceived their place in the colonial world. This chapter focuses on women’s religious and spiritual roles among the Delawares. Let us not be deceived by the paucity of records for an earlier period. Women as well as men struggled with the consequences of encounters as they went about their lives, even though colonists found little reason to record them. Scant as these records may be, they nonetheless offer us a possibility of glimpsing some of the responsibilities Delaware women bore for important relationships with human as well as other-than-human beings. Some Native women found in the Moravian communities a haven for themselves and their families from the devastation and turmoil around them. For them, Moravian order and hierarchy spelled safety, and perhaps also a road to a personal encounter with the Christian god. Zeisberger, who so railed against Delaware women, also found some of them to be “sensible people and considerate” with “an eye to right and justice.” Verona, who died in 1790, was one of these, and the account of her life described her as “a choice woman for the church, and a prize for Jesus.” Verona’s crowning experience came through belonging to the church, “and she rejoiced thereover, with tears in her eyes, as often as she thought of it.” But this joy did not come without a struggle. She had followed the biblical injunction to leave her parents for her faith and also suffered the loss of her husband who did not want to convert, but she “herself did what she could, for she held him dear.” Gertrude, another righteous woman according to the Moravians’ account, was “amiable and meek in manner, cheerful and thankful, and recognized all the grace and mercy the Savior showed her.”1 Unruly or meek, the Delaware women who emerge from the missionary

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sources present us with a multifaceted picture. Their individual life choices influenced how they came to be represented in the Moravian diaries and life histories, but by placing them alongside one another we may discern patterns that illuminate women as agents of Delaware history. Women’s presence in these records is a consequence of Delaware women’s responsibilities and their initiatives in the actions surrounding conversion to Christianity. This female presence was the corollary to male activities in diplomatic negotiations and women’s participation in debates, among converts and among opponents to Christianity was a general phenomenon that indicates aspects of Native gendered responsibilities, rather than individual women’s religious choices. In many cases religious conversion, or opposition to it, indicated personal faith and emotive responses, but through this interaction we may also identify forms of women’s agency. Women throughout native North America responded emphatically to Christian efforts to convert and influence such aspects of their daily lives as family and sexual relations, social structures, and labor divisions. Several authors have identified a reluctance and outright opposition from women against the demands of a new creed. Carol Devens identified three forms of Indian responses to missions in the Great Lakes region. The first was a unified rejection; the second was a unified acceptance; the third response split communities along gender lines, with men accepting the new message and women rejecting it. Likewise, Karen Anderson found women to be generally negative to new influences from missionaries. In her study of Huron and Montagnais women and Jesuit missionaries she demonstrated that the Christian influence in many ways involved a limitation on women’s prerogatives and authority, forcing on them a reconstructed understanding of self based on docility and obedience to men, thus explaining their unwillingness to succumb to a new god. More recent studies focus on split responses also among women and find that religion could be used for different purposes. Some saw it, in Jane T. Merritt’s words, “as a political tool [and] they also used it to rally support for social reforms in their communities. Beyond such functions, Indians saw Christianity as a way to make sense of the immaterial world. This new way could become an alternative means to express their faith in supernatural beings or even to rejuvenate traditional practices.”2 While encounters of a religious nature had occurred since the fi rst interactions between Lenapes and white people, it was not until several decades into the eighteenth century that Delawares began to seek out and evaluate the message of Christian missionaries in earnest. By that time most of the people in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania had left their homes

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near the Delaware River and moved into the Lehigh Valley. Farther south, Indians congregated at the town of Okehocking before moving westward to the Susquehanna Valley. The Walking Purchase in 1737 eliminated all Delaware land in the east and further aggravated the pressure on those remaining in the region. Removals, loss of cornfields, disease, and overhunting led to deprivation and for the first time records note that the Delawares suffered from hunger. In this climate religious interaction took on another color. While earlier philosophical discussions regarding the origin of creation, good, and evil had been held between men, women were deeply involved in grappling with Christianity in this new way. Delaware women engaged missionaries as a consequence of women’s involvement in two areas of responsibility—they acted as mothers and as visionaries. The first made them central to the kinship chain linking the people together, and the second grew out of the spiritual obligations of all Delawares and ensured that women, alongside men, played indispensable parts in religious ceremonies. However, in emphasizing women’s agency we must not lose sight of the very real hardships, as well as restrictions, suffered by individual women. The stories of two one-time sisters-in-law from Meniolagomekah, Ruth and Amalia, are reminders of that as well as demonstrating the vital concerns that influenced relationships with the Moravian community. As summer approached in 1804 in Fairfield, Ruth’s body was found on the bed in her house. She had apparently died peacefully during the night, perhaps of a heart attack, as she had been as usual the day before and had even visited with brother Schnall in his house. Her exact age was unknown, but the chronicler guessed at around seventy-five. Ruth had been one of the inhabitants of Meniolagomekah, living with her husband Jonas in the house on the southeastern corner of the town on the 1753 winter map. Her long life and serene death contrast starkly with the troubled comments on her life and her own anguished words collected over half a century. Missionaries first met Ruth through her baptism in Bethlehem on March 11, 1749. Her name prior to this event is not known. At the time Daniel, who belonged to Salomo’s family, was her mate. He died shortly after his baptism in the same month, and in April Ruth came to Gnadenhütten and was offered a place in Eva’s house. By that time she had at least two children—Caritas, a girl some five years old, and Justina, a baby baptized at the same time as her mother and dead within a month of her arrival in Gnadenhütten. Martin Mack had an interview with her in late May and described that she “has admitted to being very bad for a while.” She had lost

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Figure 10a. Johann Valentin Haidt, The First Fruits, ca 1755. Oil on canvas. Haidt painted several versions of this depiction of the first convert from each nation that Moravian missionaries encountered. Some of the individuals Haidt had met, others he painted from imagination. Courtesy of Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.

her husband a month before and now her baby daughter. Life must indeed have looked bleak.3 She was assigned farmland in Gnadenhütten and was thus expected to provide for herself and her child. In October she still seemed depressed when she came to speak with brother Martin one evening. She told him she was in pain over her misery and sad because she had so often caused disappointment to the congregation. This last part of the sentence is the first indication that the missionaries experienced some difficulty in dealing with Ruth’s behavior and spiritual state. Ruth’s feelings of misery and of causing disappointment could have been a result of upheavals in her personal life and difficulty in organizing her present circumstances. She soon left Eva’s

Figure 10b. Ruth, the first Native American woman baptized in North America, in 1745. Detail from The First Fruits, ca 1755. Ruth belonged to the Mahican Nation and died in the same year. This is how Haidt imagined her likeness after he had himself encountered Indians in America. Courtesy of Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.

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house and instead was instructed to lodge with Nathanael, and the diaries mention meetings to discuss her future. We do not have any way of knowing what Ruth thought about this, but she did not stay put in Gnadenhütten. She was soon on the road, traveling to Esopus for an extended stay with a sister. A year later Ruth, her sister, and the sister’s child returned to Gnadenhütten for a visit. Maybe she met Jonas, Augustus’s brother, when away, because when she appeared in the records again she had a son named Samuel of whom he is listed as the father. She was now mentioned as his wife and lived in Meniolagomekah, but she and Jonas made frequent trips of various durations to a wide area, including the Christian towns of Christiansbrunn, Gnadenhütten, and Nazareth.4 Again, the diary mentions Ruth’s misery and tersely states that she shed tears for herself. The missionary found occasion to speak separately with her, and in a description of the siblings in the Meniolagomekah congregation the author concluded that when it came to Ruth he could not say much, “just hope for the best.” As so many times, details are lacking, but Ruth had by this time lost another child, as Caritas died in 1752, and she was soon to lose another husband. In February 1754 news reached Meniolagomekah of Jonas’s fall to his death in the Jerseys. Ruth is not mentioned there; perhaps she was with him, but in April of that year she was called before Martin Mack and admonished in no uncertain terms that if she did not intend to obey the rules in Gnadenhütten she could not live there anymore. This had the desired effect, and Ruth “pleaded with many tears, that the brethren would have mercy upon her as a widow, and her small child, and let her live here, she would be happy to live quietly and orderly, and place her heart before the Holy spirit, and live for him together with her child.” She was given permission to stay and placed in the stranger’s house under the watchful eye of sister Esther, for which Ruth expressed gratitude.5 From then on the pattern was set. Again and again Ruth asked forgiveness for her bad behavior, promised to behave, and pleaded to be allowed to stay in or be readmitted to the missionary towns. It happened in Wechquetank, Wyalusing, Nain, Gnadenhütten on the Ohio, and finally in Fairfield. We do not know where Ruth came from or to which kingroup she belonged, but it is apparent that she followed Delaware settlements all her life and on and off lived in Christian Delaware towns. It can be assumed that she had kin in these towns, and after Jonas’s death she married a baptized man, Sam Evans, with whom she had at least one child—a son who was christened Lucas after his birth in the Philadelphia barracks. But before that, she had given birth to one more daughter and to a son who died shortly

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after in a fever. In 1769 she bore another son, baptized Tobias, who lived with her until his death, and in 1775 her girl asked for baptism, perhaps the girl mentioned as born in 1761. The sources do not reveal who the father of these children was. Judging by lapses in the Moravian records, Ruth lived for long periods with unconverted Indians, presumably her kin.6 Something drew Ruth to the Christians—most likely it was concern for her surviving children. At a couple of occasions she specifically mentioned her child when asking for a renewed chance to live with the congregation, and she had seen enough death among those close to her to know despair. By the end of her life she had survived all her children, and when her grandson died she was inconsolable. He was a deaf and mute boy of twenty who had been her only support in life, and just before his death he asked for baptism and died as Cornelius. Just as Ruth’s daughter had done, he asked for baptism for a long time before being granted it, and the diarist suggested that there was some concern for his understanding, as he could not hear. He spoke through signs, however, and could lipread, and when asked about the faith he showed that his perception of the gospel was good. It is tempting to suspect that Ruth’s vascillations cast a shadow on the children, and that it therefore took a long time for them to convince the missionaries of their sincerity in asking for baptism.7 Ruth’s long life thus gave evidence of seesawing between Indian and Christian communities, which she had in common with many other Pennsylvania and Ohio Indians. Their reasons may never fully be discerned, but for the missionaries this constituted a problem for which they had a ready answer. In the short biography found in Schnall’s diary from Fairfield in Canada we read that her “walk in the congregation was very inconsistent, and therefore she had once been removed.” The Spirit gave her no peace, however, until she asked to be readmitted. In her own way, the missionary wrote, she had something remorseful about her, even into her old age. When one spoke to her about the Spirit she was contrite and showed regret.8 In some ways Jonas’s sister Amalia was Ruth’s opposite. She lived her adult life more quietly in the fold of the congregation, a life that ended abruptly in an illness in 1760 when she was only around thirty. She was baptized in 1749 in Gnadenhütten, alongside Israel, her baby boy. She was then married to Johan Thomas, a son of Salomon, one of the first influential Delaware leaders to be baptized. With him she had at least three more children, Esra, Esther, and Qvitschall, later baptized as Solomon. In the same year that she died she had her sixth child, Anton, by her second husband, Gottlieb, who was considerably younger than she. Two of her children died

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before her, Israel in 1750 and Salomon a few months before his mother in 1760, and four survived her. Since she was of Augustus’s kingroup she hailed from the Jerseys and apparently also returned there now and then, maintaining contacts with unconverted relatives.9 Her lebenslauf states that she went to Gnadenhütten with her husband Johan Thomas in 1750 and lived there until 1755. However, for at least two of those years she was firmly located in Meniolagomekah, where Johan Thomas was a less than frequent visitor. There she made her home with her mother, and eventually the brothers built her a house of her own. She left Meniolagomekah on trips to sell baskets, together with her mother, and with Naemi she went to the Jerseys to work so that they could buy winter clothing. She is more frequently mentioned in the company of relatives than in that of her husband, and the biographical sketch makes it clear that their relationship was fraught with tension. The diarist was certain that this stemmed from Johan Thomas’s unwillingness to fully accept the message of the Spirit and his efforts to tear her away from the congregation. He “caused her many difficult moments, and various times he sought to get her and the child away from the congregation. She, however, proved herself every time and declared to him, that she would remain true to the Spirit and the congregation, which she also did faithfully.” But the scribe may have exaggerated her loyalty to the mission. Once she visited Schmick and he asked her if she was content. She answered, “not all the time.” To Schmick that was obvious, and “thereafter I told her a bit about the love of the Holy spirit, which he has also shown her abundantly, and will prove daily. She heard this, standing up, and went away to her hut with a worried heart.” In 1754, Johan Thomas finally left with his father to the Susquehanna, where he died in 1756. His leaving, states the diary, left her in great difficulty in caring for her children, but she did so by working diligently and creatively with her hands. A year after Thomas’s demise she married the young Gottlieb, Anton’s and Johanna’s son, and lived with him in Nain in peace and love until a sudden illness took her life.10 Amalia’s rather brief life was equally fi lled with tragedy. She saw two of her children die, she experienced the trauma of removal and violence, first from her youth in the Jerseys, then from Meniolagomekah, and fi nally in the flight from Gnadenhütten. In the Moravian records her suffering was brought on by the conflicts between spousal allegiance and Christian demands, yet there are other ways to interpret her choices. In Meniolagomekah she lived surrounded by her closest kin, her mother, four of her brothers, and a sister. While Johan Thomas left Meniolagomekah and Gnadenhütten

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to go to his family in the Susquehanna, Amalia chose to stay with her kin in Gnadenhütten and Nain. In 1757, we find her mother Rebecca and her brothers Augustus and Aquila in Nain, all requesting to stay with the missionaries rather than go to the barracks in Philadelphia because, as Amalia said, “I will not go from here to the white people, because when I am with you I am well in my heart.” Rebecca added that “before this she had not minded living with the white people, but now I can’t go to them any longer.” Also in this group was Naemi, with whom Amalia had traveled on several occasions. For this group of earlier Meniolagomekah residents, living near white people caused nothing but injury to their hearts and bodies, and they therefore desired to stay in the protection of the Moravian fold, with people they obviously did not regard as “white.” Finding a good and healthy environment for themselves and their children was Amalia’s primary objective and her family and the missionaries seemed to provide this, while the connection to her husband was of a secondary nature.11 The sheer need for protection and survival, the care for their children and their needs, unite the experiences and choices of Ruth and Amalia. These necessities drove them to different approaches to the Moravian congregations and mission towns, choices that placed them in conflict with other Indians and missionaries. Attempting to carve out a life in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania involved constant stress and challenges to the customs and practices with which these two women had grown up. Like so many other Delawares they attempted to deal with separate and irreconcilable demands, which often led to the seesawing evident in Ruth’s life, and sometimes to the choices to stay with family in one setting as Amalia did. At one time Ruth tried to express to Johann Jacob Schmick how she viewed life in the congregation. She said to him that when she held the Savior dear, “I lived in the Congregation as in a beautiful house in which nothing but good existed, and enjoyed with the Spirit’s people his Compassion and Love and had an agreeable life. I have been away from this beautiful house for a long time and had nothing good before my heart and soul to enjoy. It is my own fault. But now I desire to come back again, to enjoy the Compassion and love of the Spirit in my heart and be reconciled with him and his people. May the Spirit have mercy on me and help me to do this.” House, people, reunification, love, and mercy, all these bore significance for Delawares whose life experiences were fi lled with losses of the very things that create calm and connectedness for most humans. Their houses were torn down, burned, and abandoned time and again, people to whom they were connected through kin as well as inclination died from painful and devastating diseases or from the violence of

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war, with the remainder scattered and constantly on the move. No wonder Ruth dreamed of a beautiful house fi lled with goodness.12

Women Engaging the Missions As we have seen in Meniolagomekah, women frequently approached missionaries with requests for baptism as well as for conversations regarding religious matters. While previous scholarship has emphasized the changes occurring during the middle of the eighteenth century, and rightly so, they may have missed the equally significant aspect of continuity. By identifying debates over Christianity and Native religion as new in the 1750s, and finding that Delawares employed elements of Christianity to fashion their arguments, scholars underestimate the extent to which Indians returned to concepts already devised in previous encounters. Moreover, by emphasizing male participation in conferences, most scholary discussion has missed the importance of women’s roles for religious responsibilities among the Delawares. Women’s preeminence in initiatives toward conversion, as well as in attempts to revitalize Delaware traditions, suggests that one reason for the weak influence of Christianity on Lenape communities and individuals during the previous century was the unwillingness or inability of Christians to engage women in the encounters. When the ability to make reasonably independent life choices was severely threatened—jeopardizing life and limb of children and other family members—women stepped into a more public role as mediators of religious exchange. First to confront this was David Brainerd, the Presbyterian Scotsman, when in 1744 he tried to gather Indians for a sermon. He initially had difficulties convincing women to attend. They “supposing the affair we were upon was of a public nature belonging only to the men . . . could not readily be persuaded to come and hear.” This comment seems to suggest that women did not participate in diplomatic gatherings, but as I have shown earlier there is evidence to the contrary. We must therefore question Brainerd’s use of “public.” What we have here is Brainerd’s words for why Indian women chose not to attend his sermon. It is likely that they reflect the clergyman’s understanding of religious conversion as a private matter while politics as expressed in diplomacy concerned public issues. But Delaware religion permeated all facets of life and informed the approach to politics, education, war, peace, health, love, and all other aspects that concern human beings. A split between private—or individual—religion and public

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society did not make much sense to Delawares and would, in fact, generate conflict in the years to come as responsibilities toward kin and community were pitted against individual decisions to follow Christ. The gender split assumed by Brainerd as between a male public sphere and a female private one was not relevant, yet the Delawares did recognize a gender difference in responsibilities, and this meant that the concerns of which the missionary spoke—the afterlife, children’s needs, health concerns—were considered female, while male responsibilities for war and hunting could preclude any interest in religious discussions. Delaware men declared that they did not have time, nor the proper preparation, for religious concerns when they were busy with diplomatic responsibilities. Baptist missionary David Jones wrote in his diary that the Delaware leader White Eyes had expressed a desire to become a Christian and have his children educated. But, he said, “he could not attend to matters of religion now, for he intended to make a great hunt down Ohio.” Samuel from Meniolagomekah told Bernhard Grube that he no longer had time for religious discussions, as his mind was full of other things. Just a few months later he led his kin group across the Allegheny Mountains away from white encroachment. We have no way of knowing how Delaware women understood Brainerd’s visit, but we can assume that they were heavily involved in the maintenance of their communities on all levels, as healers, as mothers, as creators of wampum belts, as dreamers, and so on. Brainerd himself would soon learn that the road to the Delawares’ faith went through women.13 Shortly after the initial failure to gather people to his sermon, Brainerd managed to convey that the meetings proposed were of a different nature, and from then on the account of his missionary efforts among the Delawares include several references to women’s struggles with conversion. Brainerd’s success was hard-won and eventually proved a disappointment, yet he did experience a brief period of glory, and “the desired event is brought to pass at last; but at a time, in a place, and upon subjects, that scarce ever entered his heart.” The “subjects” were “none but a few women and children,” but these women spread the word of his works to their relations at a great distance. “These women, like the women of Samaria, seemed desirous that others should see the man who had told them what they had done in their past lives, and the misery that attended their idolatrous ways.” Delaware women thus became Brainerd’s messengers, and when he had to leave them one of them told him, “with many tears, ‘She wished God would change her heart;’ another, that ‘she wanted to find Christ.’” From this moment on women were a significant presence in Brainerd’s account of his successes as well as his dis-

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appointments. A substantial number of Delawares who Brainerd reported approaching him concerning their spiritual states were women—more in fact than men. This is surprising since Brainerd—and his chronicler— so evidently sought conversions among men and considered this the emphasis of the mission.14 White men in general had limited access to the lives of Native women, and therefore it is a consequence of active initiatives on the part of Delaware women that they appear with such freqency in Brainerd’s diary. Many of these exchanges were infused with concern not just for the individual’s own well-being but for that of her family, even when she was seeking forgiveness and acceptance for her own personal sake. A woman making a public profession of her faith after some struggle told Brainerd “that God had made her feel that it was right for him to do what he pleased with all things; and that it would be right if he should cast her husband and son both into hell; and she saw it was so right for God to do what he pleased with them, that she could not but rejoice in God even if he should send them to hell; though it was apparent she loved them dearly.” Indians frequently associated hell not with a bad place in itself but with the place where they believed that Indians went after death. The woman’s concern then was that she would be separated from her son and husband in the afterlife, not that they were condemned to eternal suffering.15 Another woman, lauded by Brainerd for her ecstasy and humble heart, had a sick husband, and the missionary asked her how she would endure it if he died. “She replied, ‘He belongs to God, and not to me; he may do with him just as he pleases.’” When Brainerd persisted and asked her “‘How she would be willing to die and leave her little infant,’ she answered, ‘God will take care of it. It belongs to him. He will take care of it.’” For these women the new faith offered an opportunity to leave, or share, the awesome responsibility for the health and well-being of their families that weighed so heavily upon them. Maybe that is why Charles Beatty found that women paid special attention to what he had to say when he held a sermon in the town of Keghalampegha one September morning in 1766. “I preached on the Parable of the prodigal son there was a close attention paid by most of the audience + some more especialy the women seemed to lay things to heart.”16 Brainerd soon saw his missionary project among the Delawares fail, as did so many other Protestant missions, especially in relation to women. Carol Devens claims that among the Ojibway, Cree, and MontagnaiNaskapi women were in general more reluctant to convert than men. But the Moravians, who entered the missionary field at roughly the same time

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as Brainerd, apparently had a greater appeal. Historian Amy Schutt calculated that, between 1767 and 1781, 12–14 percent of all Delawares were baptized, while Jane Merritt’s numbers for a slightly earlier period suggest an even higher percentage. The extensive contacts with unbaptized relatives in towns like Meniolagomekah would indicate that at least twice the number of baptized Delawares had direct and immediate contacts with this group of white people. Merritt further found that more women than men converted to the Moravian faith among the Mahicans and Delawares in Pennsylvania and Ohio. My own figures confirm that there was at least a balance in the numbers of baptized men/boys and women/girls. These are remarkable figures that make this the most successful Protestant effort to convert Native women.17 Many reasons have been given for this extraordinary success. These include the early alienation of the Delawares from their East Coast homelands, the emphasis on peace-brokering in Lenape culture, which regularly brought them into contact with white colonists, as well as the pacifistic ideals and apostolic behavior of the Moravians themselves, the unusually egalitarian community practices in Moravian communities, their willingness and ability to learn the Lenape language, and the Moravian emphasis on emotional responses to the message of conversion. Schutt states that the “pervasive spirituality of mission life, the reliance on orality and Indian languages, the important role of kin, and the re-creation of some aspects of the vision-quest—all combined to make Christianity understandable to the Indians and showed the powerful influence of the native context on Christianization.”18 It has been suggested that the Moravian approach to gender relations and how their creed was received among the Delawares differed substantially from other missionizing and civilizing projects. The attempts to restructure gender relations and roles evident in, for example, Benjamin Hawkin’s “plan of civilization” among the Creeks or the operations of Quakers on missions to the Senecas seem far from the Moravian Indian world. Merritt suggests that specific aspects of the Moravian teaching actually advantaged women: “the language of blood reinforced native women’s authority—that they associated their reproductive power with the power of Christ’s blood.” The practice among the Moravians to separate men and women, young and old, into separate choirs, probably appeared familiar to many Indians. In light of the gender complementarity in the ceremonies described later in this chapter, it may well have appealed to the Delawares that in Moravian gatherings men and women divided to sit in their own group. Schutt argues that in

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spite of an emphasis on monogamy and nuclear families, the Moravians did not attempt to restructure gender roles or implement patriarchy. In consequence, the missions did not create a “gender battleground,” but “operated on a cultural middle ground.”19 This understanding was certainly shared by Moravians themselves. A fundamental tenet of their missionary theology was to establish indigenous congregations, “completely in the hands of the local people,” and W. C. Reichel declared in 1876 that “it appears conclusively that the Indian women of Friedenshütten remained in the undisturbed enjoyment of Indian women’s rights!” Records from the Moravian missions report a steady interest from Delaware women. David Zeisberger’s published diaries from the period 1772–81 report thirty-one instances of individual women seeking to connect with the Christian towns in one way or another, and only fifteen instances of individual men. Twenty-seven couples sought permission to stay in the towns during the same period. Individual women thus made up the largest group to take their own initiative in establishing links with the Moravian Delaware community. This is particularly remarkable as Zeisberger himself—just like his colleagues in Meniolagomekah—primarily devoted space in his diaries, and presumable missionary efforts, to encounters and exchanges with leading men and (male) members of prominent families. Thus, in spite of heavy missionary emphasis on men and male converts, an interest that increased with growing patriarchalization of the pietist theology during the century, women again forced their way into the sources, thereby demonstrating the significance of women’s roles in the religious life of Delaware society.20 Although the extraordinary initial success of the Moravians may be understood in these terms, they also experienced massive opposition, and Zeisberger died a disappointed man. Pietistic religion attracted women, but it also contained contradictions that were bound to pit women and men, Delawares and Europeans, against one another. What is striking throughout are the pervasive presence and agency of Delaware women. As we have seen from Meniolagomekah, women sought out the missionaries, especially in situations when they feared for the health and survival of their children. These concerns caused inhabitants to journey long distances to seek out Christian missionaries. In 1750 Augustus traveled to Gnadenhütten on an errand concerning a sick child. He told Martin Mack “that he had come here, since his Sister’s child was very ill, and she thought, that he would soon die, and he was still not baptized. He and his Sister were deeply saddened by this.” Breaking down the number of Delaware baptisms

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into age categories and comparing those to information concerning health status, we find that children were baptized to a much higher degree than adults when they were ill or dying. Close to a third of all baptized children fall into this category, compared to only 10 percent of the adults.21 Since young children were the charges of women, it is not surprising to find women approaching the missionaries with concerns regarding their families and offspring. It was precisely the Moravians’ arrangements for children that attracted Delawares to their worship and towns. Christian towns offered a healthier environment for children, since alcohol was banned and food shortages less frequent. The experiences of Ruth and Amalia illustrate the power of this concern and how it made the Christian environment attractive. Ruth’s desire to stay with the community always seemed to hinge on the needs of her children. But the challenges of the Christian community to kin group cohesion repelled others. Amalia’s steadfastness was, throughout her life, tested by links to her disapproving kin. Zeisberger met one woman who struggled with the two belief systems, with her affi liation turning on the needs of children. She related a vision of the place where the Indian spirits dwelled, “where the strawberries and raspberries grew as large as apples in great abundance,” that she had always thought that she wanted to go there and that the Christians preached lies. But one day she came to the children’s hour in the mission town and witnessed a baptism of a child; “she took part and then she could not stop weeping.” Afterward she informed Zeisberger that “from now on she would never say again that what we preach is untrue, she was now convinced otherwise and also wanted to be a believer.” Similarly, one of the unbaptized women in Meniolagomekah actively asked for baptism, after being present when Agnes and Josua’s child Anna received the sacrament.22 The words of the woman who visited the children’s hour indicate that this was far from an individual decision. She was a woman blessed with a vision, she had visited the place where the Indians would go after death, and this placed a special responsibility on her shoulders. Her estimation after the gathering was that the Moravians did not just preach and then squander their words by acting contrary to their message, but preached what was true. Likewise, healing from disease indicated that the message the Moravians spoke contained words of power and truth. In a frightening world where security and continuity seemed elusive, such words should be listened to, even to the extent of alienating relatives and other tribal connections. Both Brainerd and the Moravians emphasized that baptism was a matter of individual decisions to follow Christ—not a family matter. This

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Figure 11a. Baptism of Indians in the Saal (hall) in Bethlehem. Herrnhuter Ceremonian Buchlein. Kurze, zuverläßige Nachricht Von der, unter dem Namen der Böhmisch-Märischen Bruder bekanten, Kirche Unitas Fratrum . . . 1762. Courtesy of Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.

naturally colors sources because authors wanted to instill in each potential convert this sense of personal acceptance. Perhaps this was also understood by each Delaware woman and man who chose to embrace Christ, but there are also other discernible themes in their responses. Several women who expressed the anguish of their souls to the missionaries also worried profoundly about their families, while men more rarely expressed this concern. Moravian sources resonate with this female responsibility for kin and children, sometimes expressed through male messengers, as when Nathanael went from Meniolagomekah to Gnadenhütten to ask for someone to come and baptize his sister’s child. The child, an eight-year-old boy, was very ill. The mother was not baptized, but “she had asked that her Son might be baptized, she said My Son will perhaps die, and He is not yet Baptized.”23

Figure 11b. Indian woman with child. Detail from illustration of baptismal candidates in Bethlehem. Herrnhuter Ceremonian Buchlein. Kurze, zuverläßige Nachricht Von der, unter dem Namen der Böhmisch-Märischen Bruder bekanten, Kirche Unitas Fratrum . . . 1762. Courtesy of Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.

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The voices of the women who approached both Brainerd’s and the Moravians’ missions took force from the authority women wielded within the realm of Native ceremonies, both in their regular recurrences and their rejuvenation. The nature and extent of this authority was not immediately apparent to contemporary white observers and thus a description of how gender functioned to structure vital ceremonial obligations relies on sketchy evidence and a combination of sources, mostly from the mid-eighteenth century and later, as earlier sources offer mere fragments. At the beginning of April 1763, Indian trader James Kenny reported in his journal that he had received information that the Delawares held a “General Feast,” and for this they had procured twenty-four each of bears, deer, turkeys, and squirrels. This feast, Kenny had been told, was held yearly, but the previous year they had been unable to celebrate it and therefore this year’s quantity was doubled from the usual twelve of every sort. Kenny described the manner in which the ceremony was performed. He wrote that twelve men were chosen, six from among the head councilors and six younger men, who each brought a cooking stone. On these twelve stones the meat was cooked. Twelve poles formed a sweat lodge where the twelve men sat and exclaimed to the rest of the people: “Hear all of you & take Good Notice that in this manner Your Grandfather’s perform’d their Worship.” The celebration ended with singing and dancing.24 Three years earlier Christian Frederick Post and John Hays traveled on a diplomatic mission to Indians in the Ohio country and witnessed what Post called “their grand Festival.” Post described how “their Priests or Conjurers, with about 10 Women, went first into the Woods to paint themselves according to their different Characters.” These characters primarily represented animals, as Post mentioned seeing rattlesnakes, squirrels, and birds. They walked in fi le singing a verse that was repeated four times, while circling the meetinghouse four times. The singing continued until sunrise and then all the people were invited into the meetinghouse, where ceremonial singing and “walking” went on until early next morning “when a Certain Spirit came over them & many Wept Bitterly.” John Hays’s account of the same occasion differs somewhat from Post’s. He noted that “3 men and Two Wemen and 2 men & 2 Wemen and Two Men” went into the woods and returned with their heads adorned with flowers and their bodies painted with stripes and figures of snakes and birds “& wonder full things,” and some carried green rods in their hands. He added that one man was painted red and one woman black. In Hays’s version the ceremony ended the next day with a meal that consisted of both meat and bread, which was divided

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among them along with some wampum. The skins from the deer consumed at the meal were given to “the old Squas and they Had them A Bout thire Sholders and holoed Stoutly.”25 Can we trust these accounts? Is there any way we might clarify the significance of the structure of this ceremony and what it meant in terms of cultural encounters? Considering the colossal changes during midcentury it is reasonable to ask if these descriptions represented traditional or reinvented practices. Some continuous features occur in sources from the seventeenth century, and remain constant up until the present, such as the emphasis on the number twelve and the images of painted faces divided in the colors black and red. Springtime ceremonies involving the whole community are described (although not in detail) already in the 1650s. It is thus likely that the different descriptions above refer to a recurring springtime ceremony with long traditions among various groups of Delawares. In other ways the three descriptions are so different that it is reasonable to question whether they actually are accounts of the same ceremony. But Post and Hays were present at the same time, and the variations in their accounts must be explained as a consequence of different perceptions. Kenny only reported hearsay and may thus have missed significant details. All three of them were relatively familiar with Delaware Indians, but their knowledge of ceremonies seems sketchy. They agreed on the number of participants with special offices—although one might wonder if Hays missed one—and on the mixture of old and young, but there is no consensus on gender.26 A fourth description of a similar Delaware ceremony fleshes out the details and adds valuable information. It is undated and probably a written version of an oral account from the early nineteenth century. Apparently originating from an informant with intimate knowledge of the ceremony, it is rich in detail, but also similar enough to the above accounts to suggest that it refers to a similar festival. A feast usually taking place in May or June involved a sacred hunt under the aegis of the chief, while women of the village prepared food for the hunters and made the longhouse ready for the ceremony under the leadership of the chief’s wife. Elderly men participated in the hunt and offered up prayers morning and evening “for the fruits of the Earth the Trees the Springs + Streams of water; for the growing vegitation, for Corn our Mother, + for the Thunder or Grandfather by which our plants + vegitation are watered, all of which are ordained by our Creator for our benefit.” When the hunters returned, heralded by volleys from four guns or by an advance crier, the women again came together “with refreshments for the returning, wearied hunters.” The recitation and dancing in the big

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house now began, guided by a number of officers among whom both men and women were represented. At the center of the house stood an upright supporting beam “on one side of it is carved the image of a Man, which they call their Grand Father, and on the reverse side the image of a Woman, this they call their Grand Mother.”27 The balance between genders and age groups is apparent in this account, and is reinforced by two eyewitness recollections regarding a yearly ceremony taking place in the fall. John McCullough, who began his life as a captive among the Delawares in 1756, described ceremonies connected to both hunting and planting in a manner that placed deer meat and corn in a reciprocal relationship. At harvest time “when their corn is in the roasting ear,” and before the people ate any of it they hunt for a buck; if they happen to get a large one, they count it a good omen. They boil the whole in their kettles, and take as much of the green corn, as they judge to be sufficient for their purpose, scraping it off the cob, and thickening the broth with it; then invites twelve of the oldest persons in town, to wit: six men and six women . . . Having previously divided the meat into twelve shares, they give each an equal portion, and also divide the broth, or rather mush, in the same manner . . . After the ceremony is over, they take the skin of the buck, and give it to one of the twelve, whom they think is most in need of it; at the same time giving one of the other sex as much wampum as they value the skin to be worth.

Moravian Martin Mack happened to be present at a Delaware feast in October 1745. He likewise described how a large buck had been cooked with two kettles of (presumably) corn and served with twelve pieces of bread to six men and six women. They all sat down and ate until they were satisfied and then they took with them what was left over. Mack pointed out that the twelve ceremonial guests were mostly old people, and that the head man, a younger man, and his wife did not partake in the meal.28 What happens to rituals if some category of persons is denied or suffers extreme losses? These accounts point to women and men of different ages and in different roles playing significant, and not interchangeable, parts in Delaware religious life. The various celebrations described above very likely refer to different kinds of ceremonies, held throughout the year, yet the combined evidence from sources over a long period of time emphasize balance and reciprocity. The complementarity between responsibilities, illustrated by reciprocity between corn and meat, ensured the presence of men and women, old and young, in ceremonies as well as decision-making. Old men,

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or grandfathers, and young men apparently had different roles to play, and older women were also singled out as a separate group. Disease, death, and removal challenged that balance. Mack’s observation that the twelve people who partook of the ceremonial meal were primarily older members of the village indicates that at times younger people had to fi ll in, suggesting that as long as it was at all possible the gendered balance of the ritual guests was more significant than their age. Delaware women, both older and younger, thus shouldered significant responsibilities in ceremonial and ritual contexts and consequently took an active interest in the message and efforts of Christian missions as well as figuring prominently in the preservation and dissemination of ancestral beliefs.

Prophetesses and Dreams of the Land of the Ancestors Powerful forces thus drew women to make contact with Moravians and ensured that, for many, the Christian towns became, if not havens, at least temporary refuges. Yet by the middle of the century an increasing number of female voices began calling for reevaluations of Delaware and other Indian relationships with the missions. While women were noticeable among converts in the Moravian towns and in interactions with white missionaries—a role consistent with their participation in Native religious life—it is in their actions in opposing Christian influence that we clearly see their authority among their own people. They act, dream, and speak for an audience of other Delawares, for the purpose of delivering their families and their people from imminent disaster. In all encounters women were there, visibly and vocally, yet when the record was written down and histories penned they had been excluded. Such is clearly the case with the history of Delaware spiritual reactions to the tremendous upheavals and changes of the eighteenth century. A long line of research has emphasized a geneaology of Delaware prophecy that is almost entirely male. From a lonely reformer speaking with Brainerd, to Wangomen and Neolin, “the Delaware prophet,” Delaware religious initiatives appear to be both influential in the region and pivotal to other events—such as the emergence of the Shawnee visionary union of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa—and these initiatives appear to be almost totally male. Yet given Delaware women’s central roles in the religious life of their communities and the fact that none of the paths to becoming a prophet—such as public speaking, dreams, or visions—were closed to women, it could be expected that women were central also in attempts to

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rejuvenate traditions and build new Native responses to the challenges these people met. That is also the case. Alongside, and in fact interlinked with the succession of male prophets, is an equally significant line of female prophets who powerfully challenged both their own communities and their white contemporaries.29 In late 1745 Brainerd encountered one old Delaware woman in “great spiritual distress.” She made a great impact on the missionary, and he described their meeting as “the most remarkable instance of this kind” that he had ever experienced. The woman was old and Brainerd deemed her feebleminded, perhaps senile, to the extent that he believed that she was incapable of receiving any kind of “doctrinal instruction.” She was brought to his house in great anguish and told him that “her heart was distressed, and she feared she should never find Christ.” The old woman continued to explain that she had heard Brainerd speak many times and one evening she felt as though “a needle had been thrust into her heart; since which time she had no rest day nor night.” On Christmas Eve several Indians had been gathered in “the house where she was” to talk about Christ and “their talk pricked her heart so that she could not set up, but fell down in her bed; at which time she went away . . . and felt as if she dreamed, and yet is confident she did not dream.” While in this state the old woman experienced a vision in which she was clearly faced with a choice of two roads to take to salvation. She saw two paths, one broad and crooked that turned to the left, the other straight and narrow going up a hill on her right. She continued traveling “up the narrow right hand path, till at length something seemed to obstruct her journey. [She] sometimes called it darkness; and then described it otherwise, and seemed to compare it to a block or bar.” The old woman told Brainerd that this reminded her of what she had heard him say “about striving to enter in at the strait gate,” and decided to try to climb over the obstacle. Just as she was about to do this, however, “‘she came back again,’ as she termed it” and understood that she had now made her choice and turned back from the Christian road. Brainerd was quite taken aback by this account and quizzed her intently on “man’s primitive, and more especially, his present state,” and her answers were so clear and rational that he concluded that only divine enlightenment could explain how this senile heathen could know so much. He offered her the promise of salvation of sinners and the desire of Christ to save all that would come to him, but she replied: “Ay, but I cannot come; my wicked heart will not come to Christ; I do not know how to come.” Her heart, she said, was in such anguish that she prayed day and night.30 Brainerd interpreted her anguish as a desire to embrace Christ as her

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savior. There is no reason to doubt her heartfelt concern, but individualizing her story as Brainerd did meant losing an important element of her account. She was an old woman carrying the traditional responsibility of Delaware women for the continuity of her family and lineage and for their relationship to the spirits through proper worship. Brainerd’s message, coming at a time of great distress from removals and loss of land, offered perhaps an alternative route to spiritual protection, one that needed to be considered in earnest. But the woman’s vision told her otherwise. This was not her way. Rather than a single and simple old woman, pitiful in her conviction of sinfulness, the account indicates that she was an integral part of her community. She experienced her vision while people were gathered at her house to discuss this new religious challenge; her vision may have been the answer they had been praying for, and so other Indians helped her go to Brainerd to relay her message that the road to Christ was blocked, that she and her people did not know how to approach him. Brainerd’s account ends there, with his fervent hope that she would eventually come to a change of heart, and we do not know what transpired after this meeting. Some elements of this story occur in other accounts as well and suggest that this old woman was one in a line of visionaries facing choices of how to adapt to a new world of spiritual challenges. The symbol of the anguished heart consistently emerges as an expression of Delaware spiritual concern, an indication of an unclear spiritual state. Her reference to her “wicked heart”—if that is indeed what she said—resonates with the Native understanding of the separation of Christians and Indians in the afterlife, in which hell came to designate the place of Indian ancestors. The metaphor of a road returns in Neolin’s visions some twenty years later. He reported seeing three roads, and when he tried the first two his progress was blocked by fire. Only on the third and narrowest trail could he proceed. Neolin’s vision likewise emphasized the left side as the properly Indian side, just as in the old woman’s vision the left road was the Indian road. Interestingly, in ceremonies the left side was the one occupied by women, while men sat on the right.31 Six years later David Brainerd’s brother John reported hearing of another Delaware woman visionary. This time it was a young woman and her message had a political edge that indicated a breach among Delaware factions. She lived in Wyoming—the Susquehanna town that fi lled missionaries with such dread with its mix of Indians from various nations and its militant opposition to Christian influences—and she was told in a vision that “they should destroy the poison from among them.” She blamed

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rampant sickness and death on a poison that her vision alleged was connected to “their old and principal men.” The poison may have been a witch bundle and the allocation of it to the leadership in Wyoming indicates a challenge to the political alliance and subservience to the Six Nations and the British colonies. Her vision, John Brainerd was told, “was a confirmation of some revelations they had had before,” demonstrating that she was not the first, but rather one among several prophets seeking redress to Delaware concerns.32 Not surprisingly the years around the Seven Years War, erupting as it did in western Pennsylvania in 1754 to embroil British and French rivals and their Indian allies in brutal warfare that caused a breakdown in interethnic relationships all along the frontier, saw great efforts to seek spiritual change. Not only did the increased strain lead to internal confl icts regarding spiritual and political leadership, but ideological opposition hardened against Moravian religious claims as well. Again we find women, as well as men, reporting visions and preaching renewed traditions. Wangomen and Neolin emerged as influential reformists and were well known also outside the circle of Delaware influence, but they were not alone. The town of Goschgoschünk on the Allegheny River in western Pennsylvania housed many Delawares who during the years 1768 and 1769 declared that they “have seen God and know him.” For those who opposed the Christians, the god of the missionaries was nothing other than a slaveholder: “They say that whoever believes in our God must become the slave of the whites.” Zeisberger in his diary from the mission station nearby bemoaned the persistent opposition from Wangomen, who had been known to the Christians as a prophet since the 1750s. But his description also notes that Wangomen was closely tied to his sister, an old woman who preached vigorously against the Christians. Wangomen’s sister, nameless in all sources, told her people that if they went to the Christian meetings they would be “tempted of the devil and greatly troubled.” Women in Goschgoschünk clearly rejected both the message and the contact with whites and some of them stated: “Why have these people come to us; let them return to their own home, we do not want to hear about their God.”33 In July 1768 Wangomen’s sister lay ill. She forbade her brother to visit the Moravians, because if he did it would cause her death. Zeisberger describes her as “one of those who is very hostile to our work.” Hearing anything about the Christian god or his messengers would kill her, she had said, “because the devil dwells in our house.” Her words suggested that she understood this to be a cosmic battle over where evil resided and turned the tables on Zeisberger’s assertion that “Satan is indeed angry that we have en-

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tered his preserve.” By mid-August the woman was dead, but she remained hostile until the very end.34 Her mantle was quickly shouldered by another old woman who shared her vision. Believing the Christian words, she preached, would bar Indians against coming to the “good place of the spirits” after this life. This place was thought to be located far to the south, and there all good things such as deer, bears, chestnuts, elderberries, strawberries, and so on were found in plenty. The old woman advocated a return to tradition, to customs tried out in Lenape longhouses and villages before the arrival of white people, and exhorted Indians “to their old manners and customs, to arrange for frequent festivals and dances and to purchase nothing more from the whites. In stead they should use their bows and arrows for the chase, return to their stone bowls and hatchets and go back to their former manner of dress, viz. blankets made of feathers and skins.” If people followed these exhortations they would be ensured health and “the corn will thrive and not be injured by worms nor by frost.” Numerous Delawares listened to her as they had to Wangomen’s sister, and they arranged frequent dances to oblige the spirits. Old women were particularly active in encouraging this revival of traditional dances.35 One of the most powerful and influential Native revivalists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a Munsee Delaware woman baptized by Moravian missionaries as Beata. This name reveals that she had once been a convert, but she had since rejected both the Christian message and her life in the mission town. In 1805 and 1806 Moravians reported that she recited visions to her fellow Delawares that contained a message to renew ancient Indian traditions, particularly the annual Gamwing (or Big House) ceremony. Beata had been baptized in Friedenshütten in Pennsylvania in 1769, and as a child there she survived a serious illness. She would have been some thirty-five years of age when she received her first vision, described as a meeting with spirit people who told her how the Indians must live in order to survive. Kluge, one of the Moravian missionaries in the settlement on the White River in Indiana, reported her visions and teaching, which soon spread to many Delaware towns and strengthened the annual thanksgiving celebration that had been practiced since they lived along the Delaware River. Beata had a vision one evening as she stood alone outside her house. Two men she did not recognize appeared before her and said to her, “stand still, we have something to say to you. . . . We have come to the Indians to say, that God is not pleased with you, since you do strange things with Wampum and all sorts of dancing during your sacrifice, and do not use a special

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spoon to stir and ladle out the sacrificial food.” They then showed her seven such ladles made of wood, and told her “Indians must continue to live as before, and have the right kind of love for each other. If you do not do all this right, a storm-wind will come and tear up all the trees in the forest, and all Indians will die, and as a sign of the truth of our words, a child will be born that will speak immediately and say everything about how you should live.” Then Beata said the two spirits began to argue with one another, one of them maintaining that the child should tell them everything, the other saying that the Indians would not believe a child but it would be better if someone from the old days rose from the dead. After some discussion they agreed that a deceased leader named Schapongue would come back to life with instructions. In another version of the vision, or perhaps a second vision, “God [him]self, and an Angel” asked her if she was pure, and when she responded that she was, the spirit gave her a small white thing in her hands and told her to swallow it. After some difficulty she managed to do so and the spirit told her that now the good spirit lived in her and therefore she should speak God’s words aloud.36 The missionary dismissed Beata’s vision and teachings by calling her a liar and her vision a ridiculous fable, and attributed all of it to women’s tendency to gossip. But Indians apparently thought differently. In September 1805 some Wyandots sent a message to the Delaware chief Pachgantschihilas (Buckongahelas) to ask Beata to come to them to help them fi nd out why a poison had killed “all good men and children.” They had heard that she knew everything, and that if they all gathered she would be able to tell who was evil and they could kill that person. The chief, however, replied that the Delawares could not spare her at the moment as they were preparing for their sacrifice and had not yet learned all that she had told them to do and needed her to be there to direct them in their worship. What was it then that she taught the Indians? One person described that she had banned everything that was bad, such as drinking, whoring, stealing, and killing. She had also told him all about himself and what his thoughts were when he visited her. He meant that she knew everything that the Indians thought and did, even if she had not seen it.37 The influence of Beata’s teachings on the restructuring and reformation of central religious Delaware practices was indeed significant. The Big House ceremony took on a shape that lasted until the 1920s when the last celebration was held in Oklahoma. This yearly ceremony, echoing traditions noted as early as in the 1650s by Peter Lindeström, invoked the reciprocity between women’s and men’s work and responsibilities in Delaware society,

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but on Beata’s instructions the role of women in the ceremony increased, by allowing women to recite visions at the beginning as well as at the end. The significance of prophetic visions is emphasized in a late twentieth-century interview with a Delaware elder, Edward Thompson. He stated that the reason for the discontinuation of the Big House ceremony was “because they had no more prophets, no more visionaries, too much going to school you know. When they begin to do that they lost that power.”38 Beata’s visions and work to rejuvenate and adapt traditional Delaware practices is the best-documented example of a Delaware woman taking up the role of prophetess in response to a changing world. In a cultural context in which dreams and visions were of paramount importance for defining spiritual authority and influence, her accounts of the visits of spirit helpers would have given weight to her words. She could latch onto a tradition of women whose visions and decisions had challenged and influenced Indian communities. She also had links to the political leadership of the Delawares because she was closely connected to Munsee war leader Pachgantschihilas. Finally, her baptism and upbringing among Moravian Christians had given her experience and perhaps understanding of the white people’s source of spirit power. She was thus uniquely gifted by experience and background to take up a role on the crossroads of cultures in which she could suggest a direction for an uncertain and shattered Indian population. Beata forged from an Indian upbringing and white Christian experience a profoundly Indian religious expression. Her vision included elements that resonate with her Christian education. Meeting God was not a part of Lenape religion before the encounter with missions. Rather, the creator of all things was considered aloof and withdrawn from the world. The active participation of a male creator god in the visions of Indian preachers, as well as in the concerns of ordinary Delawares, signals the need to grapple with this Christian concept. The promise of a child to come and reveal the truth has a biblical ring to it, but then this is reversed as the two spirits argue and finally agree that people are more likely to listen to a returning elder of note. Beata’s visions as well as her call for a change in the way Indian people lived were born out of the same compassion for her people and the powerful threats to their integrity and lifeways that guided other nativists and Indian culture brokers, and placed her in the same vortex of tension. Eventually it seems that the burden of being called on to see into souls, suggest remedies, or mete out punishments became too much, and Beata withdrew as a judge “because it was too hard for her, being after all a woman.” Despite a long tradition of women prophets among the Delawares and Munsees, it

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had apparently become too onerous a task by the early nineteenth century. She continued, however, to instruct the people on how to perform proper rites and remained a powerful teacher, emphasizing the role of women in the ceremonies.39 Christianity’s influence on families and lineage ties emerge as the paramount issue separating those who sought redress through a return to ancient and indigenous practices and those who chose to follow the new god. Many lamented that contact with the missions led to the breakup of families. They did so by enticing family members into a new fold, one that separated them from their kin in this life as well as in the afterlife. Conversions also threatened the indigenous balance of influence, and in particular the influence of women on the spiritual and ritual life of their lineage. Conflicts over proper treatments of ailments, especially those associated with childbirth, separated traditional Delawares and Christian missionaries. These confl icts concern areas that fell under women’s responsibilities in Lenape society.40 Fault lines opened between Delawares of all genders and ages. The sad demise of young Henry, the son of Ignatius and Christina, revealed one such conflict and will serve as an example of how incompatible Christian and Native belief systems could be. According to Benjamin Mortimer, who lived with Delaware converts in the village of Goshen in Ohio, Ignatius and his wife Christina had spent thirty-two years as Zeisberger’s loyal and trusted associates. They had moved with him to ten different locations, and they seemed to be the epitome of converted Indians. According to one author they represented “everything Zeisberger preached, everything he envisioned for the converted native.” Ignatius learned to be a highly skilled builder and carpenter, eventually overseeing the construction of houses for missionaries, while Christina “was a loving and caring mother.” On March 30, 1805, disaster struck the couple. In the evening of that day, their fi rstborn son Henry killed himself by taking poison. Henry had been a concern for both parents and missionaries throughout his twenty-one years. In Mortimer’s opinion Henry committed suicide “in a fit of refractory disobedience,” adding that nothing “like this has ever before occurred in an Indian congregation, though among the heathens such deaths are common.” To Zeisberger and Mortimer suicide was an unforgivable sin that forever barred the culprit from receiving forgiveness and entering heaven. Thus, Zeisberger could not permit the young man to be buried in the Christian community cemetery. For the heartbroken parents this refusal triggered a rejection of the entire missionary program. The day after Henry’s death Ignatius and Christina

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buried their son beyond the reaches of the town, in a ceremony without the presence of any white Christians. Two days later, on Good Friday, as the missionaries were getting ready for the most significant celebration of the Christian year, a disturbance shook the town. Ignatius and Christina, along with half the inhabitants of Goshen, got drunk on whiskey, and the drinking continued over the Easter holiday. According to the diary, the influence of Ignatius’s and Christina’s family was such that all but a few communicants participated in the drinking. As it ended, Zeisberger had a long talk with Ignatius and he “freely admitted his culpability and attributed his actions to the death of his son, but he felt no sense of remorse.” A couple of weeks later Ignatius and his family left Goshen. Mortimer wrote that “he appeared much cast down, & took to himself all the blame of the late disturbances here. We believe, however, that they are principally to be attributed to his wife and one of his daughters.” When Ignatius died a year and a half later Mortimer described him as a devout Christian man who suffered troubles from the female part of his family “whose counsel to and controul over him, was not always of wisdom & goodness.”41 Henry’s suicide was a turning point for Ignatius and Christina in their relationship with the missionaries. They had lost children as well as several grandchildren before without losing faith in the Christian community, but this time they did. There must have been something more to Henry’s death and burial than plain sorrow, something that opened a chasm between Christian and Lenape ways of understanding life and death. Mortimer pointed out that suicides did occur among non-Christian Indian populations, and Heckewelder included an account of such a desperate action in his history. He explained that jilted lovers sometimes took their own lives in revenge by eating the poisonous root of the May apple. Part of the trouble with Henry was his inability to find a proper spouse. Twice he had left town and returned with a woman to whom he had been married, but the relationships did not last. In November 1803 Henry had come back to Goshen after a long period away and brought with him yet another wife. Mortimer fumed that “this young man has caused us much trouble.” Again, however, he went away, returning alone a few months before he decided to end his life. Whatever the reason for his suicide, it did not cause his parents or relatives to reject him. They could not comprehend the missionaries’ denunciation, and instead Henry’s burial became a manifestation of Lenape traditional beliefs and practices. Herbert Kraft notes how the loss of a family member not only was emotionally heart-wrenching but also meant social and economic

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difficulties. “Grief over the loss of a child at any age was difficult to assuage, and the death of an adolescent in particular deprived the band of a useful hunter, gatherer, or gardener.”42 Responsibility for the proper mourning rituals in connection with burials lay with certain women, and this was likely to be the reason Christina and her daughter took charge in this situation. Drinking alcohol, so clearly connected to burial rites, had ceased as a practice in the Moravian towns, perhaps supplanted by Christian rituals. In this situation, however, when the Christians refused their services, Christina and Ignatius found consolation in this custom. Perhaps they also expressed their indignation and sense of having been betrayed? Apparently their relatives joined them, suggesting that responsibilities to lineage and kin were more important than allegiance to the missionaries. Did the upcoming Easter celebrations aggravate the division between the Delawares and the Christians? It does seem ironic that one son was rejected while another was celebrated. Why else would such a large portion of the community choose to disturb the commemoration of the Son who died and came back to life with the traditional, even mandated, behavior of Indian mourners? This episode was the beginning of the demise of the Indian mission and a deep disappointment to Zeisberger, who died in Goshen in 1808. An indication of how pivotal this event was to the Delawares came during the years of Tecumseh’s influence. In 1810 the Indians erected a fence around Henry’s grave and commemorated his death in a way “said to be customary among the Monsies on such occasions, which consists chiefly . . . in their fi lling their mouths with whiskey & then blowing it out with violence all over the grave.”43 Part of the appeal of the Moravian message to the Delawares was its insistence on a substantial role for women. It was interpreted within a Delaware framework of strong female influence in all aspects of community life, and some women may even have seen in it an opportunity to strengthen their power. Yet this exact reason for Delaware women’s preference for the Christian god was also a cause of tension and misunderstanding between Indians and whites, and between Indians themselves, exposing a paradox in the Moravian approach to the mission project as well as an otherwise unseen power conflict within the Delaware communities. Female visionaries preached a message that both opposed the Christian influence among the Indians and encouraged consolidation and renewal of practices that were said to have worked for previous generations of Delawares. Other women explored novel practices, not least in the gendering of work responsibilities,

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through their contacts with Christians. In the wake of the devastating massacre of ninety-six Christian Delawares at Gnadenhütten in 1782, confrontations between converts and those who opposed accommodation hardened and erupted in 1806 in a vicious witch hunt that left four people dead. The first person to die was Anna Charity, an elder Christian Delaware identified as “a leader of the women.” Her adoption of white notions of domesticity and cleanliness apparently enraged those who feared the Christian influence and was reflected in her execution, as in all probability she was washed in lye and then burned. Her judges were both men and women who charged her with spreading a poison among them from sacred bundles that she had once held as the elder of her lineage. When she became a Christian she gave up her medicine bundles, but it was thought that the power contained in them still adhered to her.44 These tragic events brought to a close a long century of devastation for a dwindling population pushed ever westward. An understanding of gender as a central balancing principle in society ensured women’s agency in all matters of religion and spiritual responsibility. Anna Charity, along with innumerable other women, sought some form of accommodation with certain Christians. Eventually the two approaches collided, illuminating that these were more than individual choices but involved previous generations of Delawares and brought consequences for the years that followed. Relationships with the Moravians also crumbled under the stress. Half a century of close connections with Moravian Christians and their missions had forged deep relationships, probably even close friendships, but these were nonetheless torn asunder in the wrenching of war, disease, and the inability to accommodate cultural differences. Perhaps the most powerful was the influence of women in religious responsibilities. This first attracted women to the missions, and the unusual degree to which women took part in the life of the congregations greatly added to the pull toward the mission towns for Delaware women and their families. But in the final analysis the Christian understanding of women as subordinated to men in religious as well as family matters clashed with Delaware concepts of female authority. Two themes recur in the refusal of Christian practices, the insistence that indigenous practices are good enough and best suited for the Delawares, and the danger of Christian Words. Sulamith told the missionaries that “the Word of God makes my body not well,” and she asked them to leave her alone, as “I know myself what does me good.” Similar sentiments can be found in the declarations of Wangomen’s sister. Again and again concern with the power of words surfaces in Delaware arguments with white people.

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Words can bring evil, as is clear from the translations of vocabularies as well as in the dialogues reported in Moravian diaries. Beata envisioned herself swallowing the good words with great difficulty, and speaking them was apparently onerous to the extent that she eventually chose to refrain from her official role on the council. Neolin developed novel ways for recording sacred messages in the form of a map that charted the road to an Indian heaven. Both reactions reveal the necessity of dealing with the increasingly numerous white population and their demands. While in the latter part of the seventeenth century actual separation between white and red peoples could be an option, the late eighteenth century did not offer such opportunities.45 As an answer to their plight many Delawares embraced a return to festivals and dances, a ritual separation of white and red peoples, a break with the use of European goods and clothes, and reliance on such materials as could be procured from the land and the forest. While at first glance these may seem like remedies predicated on preservation of a world already past, the proposed re-creation of dances and feasts suggests that these were creative rejuvenations. Instead of a return to something that no longer existed, they sought to retain a map of the spiritual and physical territory that made possible relatively independent decisions about the future. The religious separation of white and red was an innovation, though based on the idea that God had created separate paths to heaven for separate peoples. To the old woman whose vision Brainerd related, the road leading to the Christian god was closed. Other adaptations sought to meet a world of changing relations between generations. Upholding age hierarchies and distinctions appeared to be more and more difficult as the teachings of old people appeared insufficient in the face of new challenges, while young men found novel ways to reach and exert influence through war, diplomacy, and missionary contacts. Sharing first offerings with a ritual number of elders of both sexes, as Martin Mack described, perhaps served to remedy a lack of respect for the knowledge of elders. Old men and women headed feasts and continued to play a significant part in the religious life of the people, even as their experience and knowledge may have lost the power to provide guidance into the future.46 There is significant overlap in the teachings of the different prophets, but it is also apparent that male prophets expressed a greater concern over issues of individual self-restraint. While the fragments of messages from female visionaries focused on proper relationships to the natural environment

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in keeping with practices that previously had sustained the people, male prophets to a larger extent emphasized abstinence and self-control in areas of alcohol use and sexual relations. Neolin’s message has been interpreted as offering a powerful alternative to Christianity and a strong incentive for unity through the development of the idea of hellfire as a punishment for erring Indians. However, by emphasizing such a duality, and tying hell to the consumption of alcohol, polygamy, and traditional dances, Neolin created a masculine response that contradicted the emphasis on reciprocity and on the prominence of the left side. He taught his followers to address one another as “brother.” Abstaining from sex and from alcohol formed part of a warrior’s preparation for the masculine pursuit of war. Neolin’s message can be interpreted as presaging war, and a world where warriors dominated society. This is quite a contrast to the visions related by Wangomen’s sister and the other old women. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that these exhortations emerge as part of a new masculine identity that became apparent during the eighteenth century and took shape in the debates over the Delawaresas-women. Undoubtedly the extended contact with white people in general and missionaries in particular had influenced gender relations among the Indians.47

Chapter 5

Metaphors and National Identity: Delawares-as-Women

Flickering firelight illuminated the walls of the longhouse and the solemn faces of the men lining each side of the building. The images of our grandmother and our grandfather, carved into the central post, seemed to come alive in the dancing glow from the fire, the vivid black and red patterns undulating in the light to produce the impression of moving eyes and mouths. Under their watching gaze one man seated on the [east] side stood up, held forth a long strip of wampum in his hands, and turned to the elderly man seated directly opposite the post. Carefully he lifted the string and broke the silence: —Sister! Here is help, support, and peace; we come to you to speak to you Words from God, brought by people who God undoubtedly has sent to us. Many of your relatives, here as well as in Friedenshütten have already accepted the Words of God, and are living among the believers. To show you that we will aid you and support you in all works that are good we offer you this string of wampum! Sister! Here is a man who will tell you that we are coming in peace and will not do that which is hurtful or bad, but that which is good and will not hurt the peace. I beg you that if there is a war you should not look at these people as other white people and kill them, but you should look at them as your adopted kin. The man bent down, placed the string of beads at the feet of the sachem, and returned to his seat by the wall. From his place next to the sachem, a man who had already lived past the prime of his life but still possessed an imposing presence rose to respond. He turned to the visitors on the other side of the room and his voice rang out, strong and commanding: —My Sisters and relatives! It gives me great joy that these people have come among us, it is as if a door had been opened, and I look out onto a prospect of people who are happy together. Before this, our People did not go to War, against white people or against other Indians. It is not for us to do, we should not go to war, but we have strayed from the right road. We see that the believers, both Indians and whites, will have nothing to do with war, and you can help us find the right road again, and this is the only way ahead towards a lasting and continuous peace.

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The visitors now conferred with one another and there seemed to be some disagreement as to the procedure. Suddenly a man of slight build, the only white person in the company, stood up and let his fiery eyes sweep the room before turning to the sachem: —Brother! I have more things to tell you. I think you are unfamiliar with us white brethren, so I must tell you some things about what kind of people we are. We preach the Gospel to the entire World, to Christians and Heathens, to white, black and brown people and make no distinction between them, all people are called to salvation, and God does not want anyone to be lost . . . Murmurs and shouts greeted this speech; some in agreement while some voices seemed to express consternation. The Speaker rose again and told the visitors that they would discuss this thoroughly in their Council and send a messenger to all the neighboring villages and gather the nation together to talk about how they could forward this message of peace. Turning directly to the white man, he said: —We are Women who stand by our pestles, plant corn, and tend our plantations, and our hunting and fishing. Our maternal Uncles have told us not to take an axe into our hands, and not to cause injury through wars. Instead it is our task to concern ourselves with that, which is good. But recently we have not been able to restrain our young people. They live scattered in so many places, but now we hope that we will be able to bring them onto the right road again.1

This abridged and imaginative account of a meeting between different Delaware contingents in the presence of Zeisberger held in one of the Ohio Delaware towns in the year 1770 introduces us to an astonishing and challenging world of gender metaphors. This chapter seeks to tease apart the meanings conveyed in the metaphor that proclaimed Delawares to be women to see how it related to Delaware perceptions of themselves and of their society. It will demonstrate how some men found it appropriate and even advantageous to label themselves and others as “sisters,” “female cousins,” or other feminine designations, while other men chose to emphasize that proper men related to one another as “brothers.” Briefly, the events agreed upon are that in the 1690s notations began to occur in the diplomatic records of early Pennsylvania that refer to Delaware Indians as “women” or “queens.” By mid-century this appears to have been common practice, and Iroquois spokesmen invoked the designation in a manner that established themselves as men who had authority over women and thus they proceeded to officially order Delawares off their land. Delawares used the metaphor to argue for nonintervention and a role as peaceful mediators, but volatile frontier confl icts led to

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outbreaks of violence that in stages led to new designations of Delawares as warriors.2 Ensuing debates among scholars have hinged upon whether the Delawares had indeed been conquered by the Iroquois and whether the position as designated women was one of honor or disgrace. One line of argument suggests that it was a sign of defeat, and that the abusive language used by Iroquois speakers clearly indicates that the purpose was to put the Delawares in their place. Another side of the debate argues that Delawares and Iroquois shared a culture in which women were highly revered and wielded considerable power and that the position as women was meant to indicate a particular relationship to the Iroquois League with peacemaking responsibilities and concludes that the derogatory language concerning the status entered as a consequence of European misogyny. From a perspective of gender analysis two things become readily apparent. First, during two and a half centuries contemporary authors as well as historians have expressed ambivalence toward conflating the categories of men and women. Second, the manifest need to salvage the reputation of Delaware males hinges on denunciation of women.3 A pivotal moment in the practice of designating the Delaware people as women took place at the statehouse in Philadelphia in July 1742. This event illustrates the stakes involved in the usage of this description and consequently it has also been central to scholarly interpretations. In the presence of Pennsylvania governor George Thomas and colonial secretary James Logan, with Conrad Weiser as interpreter, the Onondaga speaker, Canasatego, proceeded to deal with disagreements concerning land transfers in the Wyoming Valley in eastern Pennsylvania. Turning to Governor Thomas, he said: “The other Day you informed Us of the Misbehaviour of our Cousins the Delawares with respect to their continuing to Claim and refusing to remove from some Land on the River Delaware.” After perusing several letters and deeds the Six Nations had come to the conclusion that “We see with our own Eyes that they have been a very unruly People, and are altogether in the wrong in their Dealings with You.” After this introduction Canasatego turned to the assembled Delawares and said while holding out a string of wampum: “Cousins: Let this Belt of Wampum serve to Chastize You; You ought to be taken by the Hair of the head and shak’d severely till you recover your Senses and become Sober.” He told them that the Pennsylvanians’ case for rights to the land the Delawares disputed was fair and charged the latter with being “maliciously

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bent to break the Chain of ffriendship.” Canasatego then delivered the following scathing order: “how come you to take upon you to Sell Land at all? We conquer’d You, we made Women of you, you know you are Women, and can no more sell Land than Women. . . . Your Ears are ever Open to slanderous Reports about our Brethren. You receive them with as much greediness as Lewd Woman receive the Embraces of Bad Men. And for all these reasons we charge You to remove instantly. We don’t give you the liberty to think about it. You are Women; take the Advice of a Wise Man and remove immediately.” He finally deposed the Delawares present, warning them that the ceremonial string of wampum would “forbid You, Your Children and Grand Children, to the latest Posterity, for ever medling in Land Affairs, neither you nor any who shall descend from You, are ever hereafter to presume to sell any Land.” Canasatego’s speech was followed by the governor’s response. He congratulated the Six Nations on their sense of justice and laudable character, and joined in disparaging the Delawares by suggesting that they had been fooled: “we believe some of our own People were bad enough to impose on their Credulity, and engage them into these wrong Measures.” The Delawares were not given an opportunity to respond.4 This was one in a long row of diplomatic conferences between Pennsylvania’s government and diverse Indian nations stretching across the entire colonial period and meticulously reported by various official scribes. Participants all brought their own practices to these meetings and Indian-white diplomacy developed its own elaborate hybrid structure that incorporated English, Iroquois, Delaware, and other Indian elements. Canasatego’s speech of domination thus did not occur in isolation but built on and responded to previous interactions and frictions. To understand these particular proceedings we must go back six years in time, to what is known as the Walking Purchase deed in 1737. Delawares living in the Lehigh valley were pressured into signing an agreement that stipulated that they must relinquish the amount of land measured by how far a man could walk in a day and a half. Provincial agents hired relay runners who on the morning of September 18, 1737, set course into the heart of the Valley; by noon the next day these runners had reached fifty-five miles from the starting point in Wrightstown. Furious Delawares protested the fraud that took away all that remained of Delaware land and large parts of Munsee homeland between the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers. Refusing to remove, they became a thorn in the side of Pennsylvania land agents who turned to the Six Nations for support in clearing this section of the territory for white settlement. The Walking Purchase was

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indicative both of the land policies pursued by William Penn’s sons and of their reliance on Iroquois cooperation, which they received only after promising to pay a high price. It is apparent from the extract above that Canasatego and the Pennsylvania officials achieved the purpose of establishing themselves as the legitimate partners in further negotiations on the Pennsylvania frontier, while excluding the Delawares from any formal positions within this network.5 Metaphors of male conquest and landless and lewd women worked well in this particular interaction between the Six Nations and the representatives of the Pennsylvania proprietors. Through Canasatego’s outburst and authoritative order and the governor’s seemingly placating suggestion that vile white men had simply fooled the Delawares, Iroquois and English diplomats construed the rhetorical category of woman as subordinate, incompetent, lacking in influence, and passive. The ultimate purpose of Canasatego’s speech was to convince English officials of Iroquois power and influence in the region and in this context the Delawares-as-women metaphor served to emphasize their weakness and dependency, an idea that suited both Iroquois and Pennsylvania diplomats. Jane Merritt argues that making the Delawares into metaphorical women “not only confi rmed Pennsylvania’s purchase of Delaware land from the Iroquois but helped assert a patriarchal authority on people whom they thought lacked the gender hierarchies common in Euramerican homes.” In order to do so the Iroquois borrowed a European concept of gender “to delineate Delawares’ subordinate position in terms that Euramericans would clearly understand.” It was no coincidence that one of the men present at this meeting was James Logan; in fact, according to historian Francis Jennings, it was Logan who authored the exclusion of the Delawares. It was also no coincidence that Logan, who had berated the Delawares for a long time, personally benefited from the fraudulent land deeds, and Canasatego went out of his way to express his high regard for this frontier official. Logan knew that the Six Nations really could not sell Delaware land, but it served him and his government to identify Iroquois allies as “our Brethren, honest, wise, discreet” with whom they could negotiate with “pleasure.” The Delawares, on the other hand, he described as “weak + too often knavish.” The Six Nations for their part did not fi nd it easy to pretend to dominate Delaware land, and Canasatego’s bluster may well have covered intense concern for the effects of this alienation on the Delawares. Conrad Weiser confided in a letter to Logan at the time of the Walking Purchase that he had found it difficult to ensure Iroquois signatures on a deed to Delaware land. “It went very hard

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about signing over their Right upon Delaware because they said they had nothing to do there about the Land + they were afraid they should do anything amiss to their Cousins the Delawares.”6 Gendered language such as Canasatego’s abounds in mid-eighteenthcentury sources, in interactions between Delawares and Iroquois and with other participants. Iroquois warriors could also level this accusation at whites. In 1754 Hendrick, a powerful speaker for the Mohawks, told the

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English to act forcefully against the French, and that by not arming themselves they were “all like women, bare and open and without any Fortification.” The most cited example of such sexual taunts, however, was against the Iroquois themselves. During bitter controversies between Iroquois and Catawbas in the 1740s, an attempt to negotiate a peace was thwarted when the latter sent a message suggesting that the Iroquois “were but women, that they were men and double men for they had two P–s: that they would make Women of Us, and would always be at War with us.”7 The language of these taunts then seems to indicate that Indian men denigrated others through sexual conquest and domination. Canasatego’s eruption in Philadelphia construed the Delawares not just as women, but also specifically as sexually active women belonging to Iroquois men. Their sexual activity led to infidelity as they turned to other men “with as much greediness as Lewd Woman receive the Embraces of Bad Men.” C. A. Weslager stated unequivocally, “this subjugation and lowering of the enemy were linked with sexual connotations.” According to Richard Trexler, for Indians, “waging war involved at least symbolically castrating the loser” in accordance with an “inveterate male habit of gendering enemies female or effeminate.” He argues that the Delawares had been vanquished by the Iroquois and become dependents and this language indicates that as such their “disabilities . . . infringed on their sovereignty.” After being conquered in war the Delawares became “institutionally genderized.” Trexler concludes that this was a matter of men with an actual male biology who were designated as women “because they lacked the sovereign force of other men.” They were “‘effeminates,’ even ‘half-men,’ because of their war-induced dependency.” There is much evidence from diplomatic exchanges to support Trexler’s fi ndings. Famous is the instant when, at one of the peak moments of Indian and white confrontation in the Northeast, Tecumseh reversed the charges of cowardice usually leveled at perfidious Indian battle practices when he shamed General Procter in front of a crowd, charging that he acted like a woman: “Begone! You are unfit to command. Go and put on petticoats!” Nancy Shoemaker concludes a thorough examination of gendered terms of abuse and alliances on Northeastern intercultural negotiations with a question: why is it that English and Indian men are so united in their use of gendered terms as metaphors for hierarchy and domination? Her conclusion, like Trexler’s, points to the one great similarity between the two sides, “that men went to war and that women did not.”8

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To use gender metaphors as insults between warring nations was common in eastern North America. The model used to express domination was taken from sexual experience. Military victory was likened to sexual conquest and thus “concrete social relations of everyday life . . . became the means to explain abstract relations between nations.” Both Trexler and Shoemaker focus on sexuality as the preferred model when expressing asymmetric gendered relations between Indian nations. For Shoemaker it is heterosexual sex that forms the template, while for Trexler it is male homosexual rape. However, Shoemaker makes a significant distinction. In her analysis, the term “woman” to describe the Delaware Nation is not made the equivalent of metaphoric sexual conquest. Instead she points out that men like Canasatego used concepts of gender and sexuality in novel ways, to some extent creating new categories and differentiations. Women, in both Iroquois and Delaware societies, had long been closely associated with land and deeply involved in its uses. Shoemaker therefore suggests that we should not assume that women of Canasatego’s own nation appreciated his words. Jane Merritt suggests that a limiting construction of the role of women could be “based on the restricted public role of Indian women,” in spite of their significant influence over longhouses and other material resources. Like Shoemaker, she argues that “during the 1750s Iroquois, white, and Delaware men turned the concept of native women’s authority on its head as a means of shaming and excluding men from places of power within the diplomatic arena.” Regardless of what Canasatego’s female kin might have thought about his creative wording, the speech can be taken as proof that men could dominate other men and insult them by calling them women, and that in this matter whites and reds spoke in one voice. Read this way it was an insult, meant to emasculate the Delawares.9 From Canasatego’s first insulting remarks to recent writings it is clear that the problem of the Delawares-as-women is that they, that is, Delaware men, were designated women. The task then became how to restore men to their manhood. In 1756, when Sir William Johnson sought to enlist the aid of the Delawares, he reported that he ended a treaty with them “by taking off the Petticoat, or that invidious name of Women from the Delaware Nation.” Echoing this, John Heckewelder stated that the Delawares had “had to submit to the degrading Station of being made women of.” He made clear the extremity of this situation in another account where he reported that the Iroquois argued that they had forced the Delawares “to submit to the greatest humiliation to which a warlike spirited people can ever be reduced . . . a

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permanent disgrace, which was to last as long as their national existence.” Edmund de Schweinitz refused in 1871 to believe that the Delawares could willingly “have submitted to such a degradation,” and concluded that they must have “been reduced to this state by force of arms.” C. A. Weslager, writing in the 1940s and the 1970s, described the metaphor as an ignominious position and concluded that “their entire political organization by this act of humiliation was deprived of masculine prerogatives,” and the independence of the Delawares was lost. Charles Hanna expressed his disgust over this designation of male persons as women, when he wrote with scathing criticism of the white leadership of Pennsylvania. The Delawares had finally regained their manhood when they discovered that Pennsylvania was now “more base, abject, and womanly” than they were and entirely willing to don the humiliating petticoat, which they themselves had “become manly enough to cast aside.”10 Encounters between Indians and English in colonial North America were frequently framed in a language of gender, and forced all involved to reevaluate relationships between gender, identity, and political power. Ann M. Little suggests that an understanding of men as “natural leaders of society” united Algonkians, Iroquois, and English, and shaped the struggle for mastery over America from the earliest violent clashes of the seventeenth century and on. Jane Merritt argues convincingly that the use of gendered representations during the decades of the mid-1700s led to changes in “the meaning of the political category of ‘women.’” But it also meant a change in the category of “men.” Studies of masculinity in early modern England have demonstrated that the worst form of shaming levied against a man was to question his manhood, and that this was connected to challenging his place at the head of a patriarchal household. It is therefore not surprising that eighteenth-century white men in America found the designation of men as women an insufferable insult.11 Examples like these suggest that to be a man is to be the opposite of what it is to be a woman, and that for a man to be compared to a woman is to be stripped of manhood. The two appear to be mutually exclusive, and, at least in situations implying war and politics, the one is infinitely superior to the other. To redeem the Delawares from this invidious name necessitated a reestablishment of neat and separate categories of masculinity and femininity. This, however, makes the Delaware acceptance of their national role as women difficult to understand. Were they, in fact, slightly dense— or cowardly—not to pick up on the insulting nature of the taunts hurled at them? What was their version of events?

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The Delaware Version The persistence of the Delawares-as-women is intriguing. Why did Delaware men actively perform in this part and hold onto this designation as women for over a century if, in fact, it was meant to shame and denigrate them? Strangely enough, contrary to evidence suggested in the quotes above, the Delawares in general persisted in arguing that theirs was a position of honor. They were adamant about the honor involved in being elected to be the woman in a partnership between nations, and viewed the attitude of the Six Nations spokesmen as acts of treachery. In the version many of them consistently argued throughout the eighteenth century, the Delawares claimed that the female role was one that involved responsibilities as peacekeeper or broker of peace in the complicated relations between different Native and European peoples in the Pennsylvania colony. Delaware chief Sassoonan described these responsibilities to the English in 1728, and the scribe noted that as a consequence the Delawares had “ever had good & peaceable Thoughts toward us . . . & that the Earth about is made so smooth & Even that their Children may afterwards say; This is the Place where Our Fathers & our Brethren Ended & composed all their Differences, so that now there remain no ffootsteps of them.” When this honorable mission was turned against them and they were ordered off the council and barred from dealings concerning land, the Delawares concluded that the Iroquois had chosen to side with the whites.12 Heckewelder left an account based both on notations by fellow Moravians Zeisberger and Loskiel and on his own conversations with Indians (“the relation of the most intelligent and creditable old Indians, both Delawares and Mohicans”) that emphasized that there was no conquest involved, but that the Delawares willingly consented to being made into women in order to broker peace in an increasingly unstable world. They maintained that among them women held the prerogative of ending war. “The men, however tired of fighting, are afraid of being considered as cowards if they should intimate a desire for peace. It is not becoming, they say, for a warrior, with the bloody weapon in his hand, to hold pacific language to his enemy.” A critical situation of almost constant warfare made both Iroquois and Delawares fear for the ultimate destruction of all, and they concluded that one nation must take up the role of woman to help end the fighting. The Delawares, known for their prowess and courage, were in a position to do so and would be respected peace brokers in consequence of their standing as “grandfathers” in relation to other Algonkian nations. A solemn ceremony in the presence

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of Iroquois, Delawares, and Dutch colonists affirmed this change. But the Delawares soon became aware that they had been tricked into laying down their weapons. Now they were bound to a promise of peace and their land lay open to the depredations of their enemies.13 Zeisberger, who spent over fifty years among the Delawares, Iroquois, and Mahicans, likewise wrote that Delawares had told him that they had previously carried on many long wars with the Iroquois but that the Delawares had always been capable of holding their own in these conflicts. Such a rendering of history is consonant with information in Swedish, Dutch, and French sources from the seventeenth century according to which confrontations between Iroquois (Senecas) and Susquehannocks led to the involvement of Delawares, who were able to defend themselves well and even offer protection to the Susquehannocks. In fact, the ceremonial appellations between Iroquois and Delawares do not suggest enmity and domination. According to Zeisberger’s account of the history of the North American Indians, the Six Nations called the Delawares cousins, more particularly sister’s children. This, in both Delaware and Iroquois terminology, would designate a man’s own children since men were in some ways closer to their sisters’ children than to their own, who belonged to their mothers’ lineages. Sister’s children thus specified one of the closest kinds of kin bonds in both Delaware and Iroquois society, one rife with responsibility, respect, and affection, but not fear and domination. Supporting the assertion that this is the kind of family relationship intended is the use of the term sister’s son on a much later occasion, when some Iroquois pleaded with the Delawares to give them food.14 As it turned out, the Six Nations did not treat the Delawares with the respect indicated in this familial terminology, and the latter felt cheated. In 1803, when rumors of war and violence yet again swept the Christian Indian settlements, this time along the White River in Indiana, the Delawares and Munsees rejected overtures for war and expressed their anger at the Six Nations “as they have for a long time dressed us as a Woman, and made beautiful with Silver, and said, you Delawares and Munsees, we take you for our Sister’s Daughter, you shall be a great woman, and always sit still, and when there is a War between the Indians, and the great woman stands up, then all will look at her, and go away from each other. But as the Wars continue they have taken off the women’s clothes . . . and in its place . . . placed an axe in the hand. That we have not yet forgotten.” Here the reference to a relationship based on the closest kind of matrilineal bond is explicit, and it is significant to note that this relationship contains no sexual overtones. It

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is not entirely clear what caused the anger. Zeisberger does not report any trickery on the part of the Six Nations, while this is a prominent feature of Heckewelder’s various versions. The anger seems to result from the fact that the Iroquois first placed the Delawares in an honorable position as peacemaking matrons, and then turned around and demanded that they pick up their weapons and behave like warriors. As we shall see, this uneasy tension between sisters and warriors is a persistent feature of the relationship between Delaware and Iroquois men throughout the eighteenth century.15

Female Peacemakers The metaphor of the Delaware Nation as women occurs in sources that can only be understood in historical context. What can we learn from these usually fragmentary sources? Can translations be trusted to adequately convey what was actually being said at negotiations? Did the expressions used in diplomatic parlance refer to existing conditions or represent expedient manners of conveying certain contents? Can we say anything about gendered perceptions among Iroquois and Delawares from these sources? The answer is both no and yes. No, in that individual sources cannot be trusted to portray accurately what occurred and what was said, as they were observed through a lens of gender evaluation that favored male pursuits over female and that abhorred gender variation. But yes, when all sources are taken together and interpreted in their various contexts a trend becomes discernible that suggests not one hegemonic Indian understanding, but rather contested and problematic ideas that were formed and altered within the upheavals and adaptations that were such prevalent parts of eighteenth-century Delaware experience. Women’s authority in political contexts, perceptions regarding peacemaking and peacekeeping, as well as the council minutes where participants express themselves concerning the role of Delawares as women provide the keys to the meaning of this particular metaphor. As we have seen, in Delaware society women had authority to speak and act in relation to land. Notike asserted that as she signed documents on behalf of Swedish claims to land along the Delaware River in 1651. In the wording of these documents Notike clearly pointed out the specific limitations to the rights that other Lenape chiefs presumed to have and intended to donate to the Dutch. Importantly, the documents state that the male chiefs did not dispute her assertions. About the same time as Notike made her appearance before the Swedish governor, some 200 miles farther north

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an alliance of Esopus women and young men succeeded in ending a war between Indians and Dutch. The conflict, lasting from 1659 to 1664, caused heavy losses for the Esopus and their allies. It was a coalition of women and young men who prevailed upon the warriors and in the end forced the war captains to accept negotiations for peace. Later in the century a woman named Mamanuchqua appeared as one of five sachems for the Esopus confederacy, and she participated in and signed land sales in the region of the Catskills in 1682. Women among Delawares and Mohicans in the New YorkNew Jersey region also took part in land sales on a number of occasions in the late seventeenth century.16 The earliest specific mention of the Delawares as women occurs in the minutes from a provincial council meeting at Philadelphia in July 1694. The council convened at the request of the Delawares, who had asked the Swedish interpreter Lasse Cock to inform Penn’s cousin and deputy William Markham that they “were come down to discourse him.” The leader of the Delaware delegation, Hithquoquean, presented a wampum belt which he said had been sent to them from the Onondagas and Senecas with the following message: “you delaware Indians doe nothing but stay att home and boill yor potts, and are like women, while wee Onondages and Senekaes goe abroad and fight against the enemie.” The continuation of the message asked for Delaware support in fighting against the French. Hithquoquean, however, said that the Delawares had resolved to return the belt, “we having allwayes been a peaceable people, and resolving to live so, and being but weak and verie few in number, cannot assist them.” Another man, Mohocksey, representing Lenapes from the Jersey side of the river, asserted that the request had also been sent to them, and the different groups of Delawares had discussed the matter, since “though wee live on the other side of the river, yet we reckon ourselves all one, because wee drink one water.” He ended his message with a fervent expectation of peace: “Wee have had a continoued friendship with all the Christians and old Inhabitants of this river, since I was a young man, and are desirous to Continou the same soe long as wee live.” A third speaker, Tamanee, concurred. This encounter provides a link to earlier peaceful connections between European settlers and Lenape groups. Their use of the Swedish interpreter is an indication, as is Mohocksey’s reference to his youth.17 Conferences at the beginning of the eighteenth century offer several examples of various constitutive groups in Conestoga and Lenape polities, who by that time often lived together, and of the roles women played in the diplomatic world, both in name and in person. In June 1710 the provin-

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cial council in Philadelphia received a message from the town of Conestoga consisting of eight belts of wampum, sent by, in order, old women, children, young men, men of age, the whole nation, and finally from “Kings & Chiefs.” In May 1712 Delaware Indians made ready to visit the Five Nations and as part of their preparations they requested a meeting with the colonial council. The sachem Sassoonan and thirteen others (whose sex the source does not reveal) attended and the speaker, Scollitchy, explained that “many years ago” they had been made tributaries of the Five Nations and now they brought a “Calamet” and thirty-two belts of wampum as a tribute. The pipe was said to signify that they were “friends & subjects” of the Five Nations. Among the belts were twenty-four sent by women, “the Indians reckoning the paying of Tribute becomes none but women & children.” The requests contained in the wampum belts were overwhelmingly for peace in order that they would be able to “eat & Drink,” “make & keep fires,” “plant & reap,” and live “in Quiet.”18 This action of paying tribute has been interpreted by scholars as indicating the dependent and subservient nature of the relationship between the Delawares and the Iroquois. However, I do not believe it should be understood as such. First of all, the terms tribute and tributary must be used with some caution. In English they suggest a hierarchical relationship between parties possessing unequal strength. What has been described as a tributary status of certain tribes in relation to the Iroquois in the Covenant Chain, which at its core held together the Six Nations and the English colonial governments of New York and Pennsylvania, was more properly a loose alliance involving certain mutual obligations where decision making was arrived at through intertribal consultation. The actual balance between the nations altered, waxed and waned, over the course of the century that the chain remained in place, and therefore one cannot infer a fi xed hierarchy of Iroquois dominance, even though at times that was the case. Conrad Weiser, the German frontier interpreter and go-between, suggested that the Delawares were tributaries to the Iroquois merely “in an Indian sense,” not to be confused with the European use of the concept. Francis Jennings concluded that the relationship between the Iroquois and Delawares primarily meant that the former held superiority in political relations with the colonial administration in New York, but did not presume to claim Delaware territory in Pennsylvania, nor act as intermediaries in Delaware negotiations with that colony. In analyzing this particular document, Jennings demonstrated that the terms Subjects and tributary were added to the council minutes by James Logan, who had such personal interest in establishing the Iroquois

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as legal owners and single authorities on Indian land in Pennsylvania. The original draft of the text reads that the Delawares went as “friends of the 5 Nations” bringing “presents” along, wording that indicates an exchange between equal partners. Logan made an addition to the minutes declaring that the Delawares described themselves as “friends and Subjects of the 5 Nations” bearing “tribute” to offer their overlords.19 Finally, the messages brought to the Five Nations in these thirty-two belts were not indicative of a subservient relationship or of tribute paying in the sense of obligations resulting from a defeat. These belts proclaimed that “long ago they made a peace and Desired that it may always be kept strong and Firm,” that the women sent “Racoon and other Blanketts to cloathe them, and sett Down in them in peace,” and that “their children will have it in Everlasting Remembrance.” The thirteenth belt, sent by a woman, proclaimed that “formerly the five Nations lived amongst us, that tho’ now they are at a Distance they may live Quiet,” while the fourteenth desired that “their Houses may be the same.” The twenty-sixth belt expressed sorrow that the Iroquois were under attack from the French, “for that they take the Loss of any of them to be the Loss of themselves.” The presentation of the wampum belts affirmed that it was women who established the connections that made peace possible and conceivable. Delaware women in this sequence built on their prerogative and obligation to remember the content of treaties and pass that knowledge on to children. “Everlasting Remembrance” invoked the terms of mutual obligations to clothe, house, and make presents and peace with the Five Nations. These messages express affinity rather than tribute paying. It seems that it is these kinds of relations that Zeisberger had in mind when he wrote that the Delawares and Iroquois refer to one another with female kinship terms, and it makes sense that “sisters” and “daughters” deliver messages regarding such things as planting, the maintenance of houses, and condolence for deaths.20 Toward the end of the council, the Delawares arrived at their reason for asking for a meeting with the Pennsylvania leaders. They produced two belts William Penn had given them and the Conestogas at the treaty in 1701 to take to the Five Nations. For eleven years these belts had been kept undelivered, and now the Delawares asked for a clarification of the purpose of the belts. The Pennsylvanians informed them that they were meant for the Five Nations as an expression of friendship between the English and those nations, and the Delawares had been asked to deliver these belts since they could bear witness to “what a peaceable manner, and with how much true friendship We had always lived with them, our nearest neighboring Indi-

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ans, ever since William Penn first came into this Land.” It remains unclear why the belts had not been delivered earlier, and when asked the Delawares responded, “the person who was to carry them (Hithquoquean) died very soon after, and that they had not Concluded until this year who should carry them.” The meeting ended with the solemn smoking of a pipe “as the token of the greatest friendship that could be shewn.” The context of this meeting was one of affirmation of affinities and peaceful connections rather than of tribute paying. In these circumstances women’s messages, conveyed through the sacred medium of wampum, was appropriate to express the concerns of planting, growing, and maintenance of orderly life.21 However, this does not necessarily mean that women actually took part in these proceedings. English diplomatic records rarely document the actual presence of female members of either Indian or European nations at these council meetings. But this is placed in question in the light of Andreas Hesselius’s report on a Lenape female delegation at the meeting in 1721. Similarly, in 1757, a messenger arriving in Bethlehem to ask the Delawares there to come and attend a council in Lancaster received a reply from the assembled Indians that they would send “a number of chiefs and some of their women.” The formal language of Delaware councils frequently enumerated men and women as separate categories involved in the decision-making process. Women as physical persons thus participated in councils and sold land well into the eighteenth century. However, it appears that whereas women from different tribes were often present (while infrequently noted), male members of these nations increasingly delivered their messages. Canasatego’s disposal of women from influence at the council table thus constituted a break from Delaware custom, but one that reflected a reality of gatherings in which men took over more and more of the roles previously held by females.22

Three Approaches to the Women Metaphor Women continued to take part in meetings at least up until the middle of the eighteenth century, but by the 1740s a new note had seeped into the gendered council language between Delawares and Iroquois, a tone of abuse and domination. Something happened with the concepts of women and men in relation to politics and war in the thirty-year period between the late 1720s and the 1760s, and the term woman was increasingly used in DelawareIroquois-English confrontations as an insult, or as a way of goading men

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into certain actions. From this period we have many sources that mention the Delawares—and others—in the role of women in one form or another. However, it is also possible to discern distinct differences in the interpretation and use of the metaphor.23 I have found that these differences form three separate strands, or ways of looking at men designated as females, distinguished by how they adapted the concept of women. The first strand in this intricate web of gender metaphors is the one offered by some Iroquois diplomats and their English allies, exemplified in Canasatego’s outburst against the Delawares in 1742. In a similar vein Canyase, a Mohawk, informed a council that while his people were men, “made so from above,” the Delawares were “Women, and under our protection, and of too low a kind to be Men.” The language in these taunts is hardly possible to explain in terms other than as insults and humiliations. There are also clear similarities with the language of shaming historians have identified in early modern England and New England. Laura Gowing found that language used to describe sexual relations and gendered order in the household emphasized the God-given supremacy of the male head and his proprietary right to his woman. Iroquois speakers and English colonial officers thus seemed to have a common ground in their understanding of what it meant for a man to be clothed in the frocks of women. When Sir William Johnson proposed that he had liberated the Delawares from “that invidious name of Women . . . which hath been imposed on them by the 6 Nations from the time they conquered them,” he clearly implied that for men to be like women was a form of forced denigration that came about as a consequence of defeat at the hands of a more powerful, manly opponent. To reverse the shame another powerful male had to intervene. He firmly believed this elevation of status would ensure that Delaware warriors would no longer flirt with French interests.24 As Shoemaker has pointed out, Iroquois and English men spoke in one tongue regarding this issue. Did Delawares share this language and the understanding behind it? It appears that some of them did, or so Little Abraham, a Mohawk, said at Lancaster in 1757 (the meeting to which Delawares sent both men and women). He reported that some Delawares had responded to an Iroquois inquiry into their conflicts with the English by saying that the Delawares were men, “and are determined not to be ruled any longer by you as Women; and we are determined to cut off all the English, except those that make their Escape from us in Ships, so say no more to us on that Head, lest we cut off your private Parts, and make Women of you, as you have done of us.” The Delawares may have said this, but the statement must

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be questioned just the same. It is one of only two recorded instances—to my knowledge—of Delawares using femaleness to shame other men, and demasculinization as a way to subjugate a foe, but it is not a direct quote. Instead a representative of the Mohawks reports it. In fact, various Iroquois speakers at different councils in eastern North America uttered a vast majority of the statements of this nature. Almost every statement of emasculation threats in connection to war and conflict, levied against the Iroquois or others, come from Iroquois men.25 By the mid-eighteenth century the Covenant Chain, or the metaphor and concrete medium by which the Iroquois Confederacy and colonial leaders in first New York and then Pennsylvania established mutually beneficial interactions, showed severe signs of breaking. Originating in military and diplomatic needs and modeled on the ceremonies holding the Five Nations League together, the Chain heralded a period of Iroquois intercultural dominance in the Northeast, but in no way did it entail an empire, and other nations polished their own linkages with the colonists. The Delawares maintained that their relationship to Pennsylvania was a Chain of Friendship forged with William Penn, and for generations they reminded the colonists of just that. But Pennsylvanians let go of their end of the chain at least as early as the time of the Walking Purchase and sought the support of the League instead, enabling them to operate as brokers between the colonists and other Indian nations, and although this did not mean that the Iroquois League could control other nations politically, it profited both politically and economically from the relationship. By mid-century the Covenant Chain had developed in two directions with the Onondagas leading one faction establishing relations to the south and west and the Mohawks directing the other that primarily maintained ties to Albany. When Canasatego ordered the Delawares to leave the council ground, he was compelled to do so as he had already laid claim to Pennsylvania Indian land as part of the newly established connection between Iroquois and Pennsylvania officials. Both English and Iroquois representatives maintained a fiction of control in diplomatic negotiations, fictions that sometimes seemed closely connected to actual power relations while at other times other nations forcibly challenged the notion. Nowhere was this truer than in the “country in between,” the Ohio Indian world inhabited by, among others, Shawnee, Delaware, and Iroquois peoples. By the late 1750s the western (Ohio) Delawares had actually established themselves as independent political and military actors while the Mohawks experienced increasing pressures and difficulties in their relationship with the New York English. William Johnson used his Mohawk

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connection to advance English policies while Mohawks no longer had enough influence and backing to control events. Tensions between Delawares and Iroquois increased as did internal divisions within the League.26 Most of the references to effeminate enemies and sexual conquest emanate from this period during the middle decades of the eighteenth century. The language used and reported by the Iroquois in their dealings with the English may well be a reaction to a sense of control slipping out of their hands and a concomitant fear of dropping into the subjugated role they themselves had labeled feminine. It is certainly true that a long tradition documented from different parts of the world describes conquest in terms of feminizing the foe, and this form of language was well known in European as well as in Native American interactions. What is apparent from this specific context, however, is that nearly all the utterances came from Iroquois spokesmen and they had clearly become useful metaphors in the climate of IroquoisEnglish interactions. Perhaps the two sides found common ground in this matter even though it demanded some redefinition of terminology regard-

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ing women, domination, and hierarchy. However, whether the Delawares shared this perception cannot be determined from these records. The second strand in this web of metaphoric language is one of uneasy subservience and acceptance of the gendered language used by the Iroquois and English. This is most obviously personified in Teedyuscung, the controversial and contested Delaware leader. His role in frontier politics was complex and although he was named and maintained as a negotiating partner by both English colonial officers and Iroquois diplomats, he achieved only an uneasy balance between interests within his own community. He eventually met a violent death, purportedly at the instigation of some land-hungry members of the Susquehanna Company, perhaps with the aid of dissatisfied Munsee or Six Nations warriors. Opinions of Teedyuscung varied wildly, and A. F. C. Wallace, who wrote his biography, describes him as “mercilessly ridden by the specter of his own inferiority,” while understanding that the process of Indian adjustment to white encroachment must be carried out “peacefully, in security, on Indian land, in Indian communities, at the Indian’s pace.” In consequence, Teedyuscung tirelessly sought to bridge white and Indian worlds, sometimes using his contacts in the Moravian community, sometimes being used in turn by the colonial government, making him enemies on all sides. He was frequently presented as spokesman—and king—of the Delawares at councils and treaties during the mid-eighteenth century, although his influence never stretched to the western reaches of Pennsylvania. Throughout his life one of Teedyuscung’s main concerns was to protect the Delaware land base. In pursuing this he employed whatever tactics he deemed useful and often swung between aggressive bullying and ingratiating subservience.27 While Teedyuscung accepted a position for the Delawares as props to the Iroquois League, and with that a subsidiary role, he by no means allowed Pennsylvanians to treat him as subservient. He reacted with anger when Pennsylvania’s governor excluded him from a private discussion. “What is the Reason the Governor holds Councils so close in his Hands, and by Candle Light? The Five Nations used to make him sit out of Doors like a Woman.—If the Five Nations still make him a Woman, they must; but what is the Reason the Governor makes him a Woman, meaning, Why does he confer with Indians without sending for him, to be present and hear what was said?” Yet, his relationship to the Six Nations appears to have been ambivalent. “Now you may remember I was stiled, by my Uncles . . . a Woman . . . and had no Hatchet, but now, . . . they gave me a Tomahawk,” he

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announced at a conference in Easton in 1757, and claimed that its edge would be turned against the French. He seems to have resented bitterly being “stiled as a Woman,” and felt it as a humiliation. At another meeting in Easton in 1758 he hurled a metaphorical petticoat at the Seneca leader Tagashata and announced, “I am a man!” and then demanded that the Pennsylvania authorities should bow to him as their king and offered them the petticoat that he was discarding.28 Teedyuscung experienced opposition not just from distant relatives and unrelated Delawares, but also from within his own family. His weakness for alcohol embarrassed his closest connections and several times impaired his judgment as a leader. At a meeting in Albany in 1737 he behaved in a “noisy & tumultuous manner” completely unbecoming an Indian representative. His wife Elisabeth interrupted him and spoke to him quietly in Lenape in a modest manner, looking down at the ground. There was nothing modest about her message, however, because when asked to translate what she had said Teedyuscung admitted, “she tells me that I do wrong to drink so much Rum, and that it is beneath the dignity of a Great King to get drunk.” But he was not about to accept her correction of his behavior because he added irritably that “I dont mind what she says for she is but a poor weak woman.” The criticism would have smarted for a man so concerned with his vanity and position as Teedyuscung, yet the abuse contained in gendered insults hurled at contentious councils may well have aggravated his reaction. For it was indeed she who had behaved with proper Delaware decorum, and he who in his loud and drunken manner had shamed his people, and his disparaging words about Elisabeth reverberated on him. An understanding of womanhood as separate and inferior to manhood leak into these protestations. However, at other times Teedyuscung used the metaphors of family and kin to describe the relationships between the Iroquois and Delawares, far from the language of conquest: “Tho’ our Uncles have made Women of Us, yet in time to come We may have children, who when born may look up and see. . . . We and our Uncles the Six Nations are now become as one, are one Heart, one Eye, one Ear, and one Tongue, and that tho’ as a woman may have Two Sons and one Daughter, yet they are all but one Family.”29 Teedyuscung’s speech above is a direct link to the third strand in the web, a tenacious Delaware understanding of how gender complementarity informed internal and external relations with friends and strangers, and how one category—strangers—could be transformed into the other— friends. Margaret Caffrey points out how Delaware society was organized along strictly complementary gender lines—at least in theory. Men dealt

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with strangers at first contact, and Heckewelder wrote that the term for man fundamentally meant, “Be always ready for war” (Heckwelder’s emphasis), but it was through women, and women only, that individuals could receive membership and belonging in a lineage. As Theda Perdue points out in her discussion of Cherokee matrilineal culture, there were only two ways one could become a member of a clan—birth and adoption—and both went through women. This meant that women had the power to decide the fate of prisoners taken in wars, and they introduced to the village those who had been chosen to live. The English term friendship, so frequently used in diplomatic language on the Indian-white frontier, meant not only an alliance between strangers, but also the making of strangers into kin, in a manner similar to the adoption of prisoners into the tribe. The Moravian records are explicit about the meaning of friendship or freundschaft as a translation for kin and family. This meant family as a lineage, all members counting their connection through related mothers. It did not refer to a sexual union through marriage.30 This approach to the roles of men and women in managing relations with friends and foes can be found throughout the period. Thus when Teedyuscung in 1757 said that “in remembering the old ancient Rules of making Friendship, I remember I was formerly represented as a Woman by my Uncles the Six or Five Nations,” he was in all probability referring to women’s responsibilities for weaving connections into families. In a complementary gender universe this required the roles of both men and women to be fi lled, metaphorically as well as physically, for kinship and peace to be established. Again Teedyuscung offered a vivid description, in a conversation with Christian Frederick Post on their joint mission to bring a peace message to the western Indian nations in 1760. The Delaware leader expressed his pleasure at the “good Work of Peace” begun at Allegheny, and used an agricultural metaphor to explain how this work must be tended: “when we have begun a good Work, or have Planted any Thing we must be carefull & see how it grows, else it will come to nothing at all. It is good also that we do our best that it may not remain under Ground.” The metaphor brings to mind the pestle and hoe used to represent the role of women as planters and gardeners. The two men then spoke about first encounters between their two peoples, and Teedyuscung reminded Post how William Penn “was Adopted & received into their Family as a Child.” He emphasized, “it had been formerly agreed to by all ye Nations that the Delaware Country shod. never be incommoded with War, but always enjoy an undisturb’d Peace & Tranquility.” By adopting William Penn into a Delaware matrilineage they

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had in fact created the foundation for peaceful familial relations that were the antithesis to war between strangers.31 This message was distinctly invoked among Delawares who had moved away from Iroquois influence, to the western reaches of Pennsylvania and Ohio, through leaders such as Tamaqua, Packanke, and Netewarwhelemen (Netawatwees). At the same time as sexually abusive language was hurled between Iroquois, Delaware, English, and other participants at highly charged meetings in the east, other leaders sought to forge as much of an undisturbed niche as possible for their people. To do so they turned to a tradition that had served their nation since they lived along the Delaware River in the seventeenth century, the same one that Teedyuscung related to Post. Tamaqua was one of four influential brothers who in various ways rose to prominence in the Ohio country. They were nephews on their mother’s side of the Unami Delaware chief Sassoonan (Allemuwi), and the oldest brother, Pisquetomen, was Sassoonan’s choice as successor. But Pennsylvania Indian agents and authorities refused to accept this arrangement, and not until several years later did his younger brothers, Tamaqua and Shingas, emerge as leaders. In 1752 Shingas was presented as “king” of the western Delawares, but by mid-decade he had left his duties as peace leader to his brother Tamaqua (known to the British as King Beaver) and led Delaware and other Indian warriors in furious attacks on the Pennsylvania frontier. While Shingas took to the warpath and earned a reputation as a frontier terrorist, Tamaqua chose another strategy to ensure his people’s security and endurance. He stepped forward as the primary Delaware peace broker in the western part of Pennsylvania and the Ohio country during the mid-1750s. This was after a raid led by frontiersman John Armstrong had laid to waste the town of Kittanning, and the Delawares had moved their main population to the towns of the Kuskuskies. Throughout Tamaqua’s official career he advocated a role for the Delawares that combined their identities as aged grandfathers and female peacekeepers.32 Tamaqua’s understanding of the agreement between Iroquois and Delawares underscored a division of labor along gendered terms, but one that did not strip either group of influence. He told the Iroquois during council proceedings in 1754: “Uncle, I still remember the Time when You first conquered us and made Woman of Us . . . and that We must not meddle with Wars, but stay in the House and mind Council Affairs.” He then turned to the Pennsylvania governor and developed a theme similar to Teedyuscung’s a few years later, reiterating what was probably a seminal part of Delaware accounts of their history. “I must now go into the Depth, and put You in

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Mind of old Histories and our first acquaintance with You, when William Penn first appeared in his Ship on our Lands. We looked in his Face and judged him to be our Brother . . . and that he . . . and his People shall be welcome to be one of Us . . . and we then erected an everlasting Friendship with William Penn and his People, which We on our side so well as You have observed as much as possible to this Day. We always looked upon You to be one Flesh and Blood with Us.” Four years later at Ft. Duquesne he rejected French overtures and again positioned himself as a peace mediator in addressing in turn, the French general, the Iroquois, the English general, and the governor of Pennsylvania. To the French he explained that “my uncles have made me like a queen, that I always should mind what is good + right, + whatever I agree with, they will assist me.” These were not subservient messages; instead he was clearly acting out a part in concordance with the understanding of the “queen’s” role in council affairs. He gently but firmly told the English general to leave his country: “be pleased to hear me, and I would tell you, in a most soft, loving and friendly manner, to go back over the mountain, and to stay there.” If he complied, Tamaqua would use his influence with other Indian nations to avoid further bloodshed. He encouraged Pennsylvania’s governor to continue the good work for peace and promised to use his influence with “my uncles, the Six Nations, and the Shawanese, my grandchildren, and all other nations, settled to the westward” and send messages to them and relay the answers back to the colonists. He consistently served the cause of peacemaking in his role as “queen,” and in 1762 informed Teedyuscung and others that “I want to say nothing about Land Affairs; what I have at Heart, and what I came down about, is to confirm our Friendship, and make a lasting Peace, so as our Children and Grandchildren may live together in everlasting Peace, after we are dead.”33 Three different approaches to the ritual, political, and military roles a woman nation might fill in the midst of international contests emerge from this perusal of the sources. One is the unequivocally derogatory usage to shame other men into some manner of desired action or acquiescence. This is the language of Canasatego and other Iroquois speakers, but it cannot be demonstrated with certainty that Delawares ever used the parlance in such a manner. Instead Delaware speakers and leaders chose one of two approaches—either uneasy acceptance of the imperious language of the Iroquois, or espousal of an understanding based on earlier participation of women in central aspects of land transactions and peacemaking. By the middle of the eighteenth century Tamaqua used the ritual role as queen,or matron to advocate peace through ancient traditions of remaking strang-

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ers into kin. At the same time, his brother fought fierce battles against settlers, denying any general peacefulness on the part of Delawares. His and his brother’s reaction may be interpreted as two different approaches to the crises of the 1750s. Tamaqua’s message to the English to leave sounded similar in content but very different in tone from the one reported by Little Abraham at about the same time. The language of “Delawares as women” could apparently work to convey both messages of war and peace.

The Language of Councils A deeper understanding for the line of reasoning that Delawares such as Tamaqua employed requires a closer look at the language used in council minutes. Frequently there is mention in the records of the careful attention that went into translations. Many interpreters were highly skilled, and there is often no reason to question their efforts to translate truthfully and to the letter according to their abilities. However, there are some discordant notes that demand explanation. During the peace mission to western tribes in 1760 that Moravian Christian Frederick Post undertook in the company of Teedyuscung and several Delawares, they came to the town of Assinisink, the Munsee main town. Teedyuscung asked for a decision from the council whether they would heed the war cries of the Mingoes or join in the peace Pennsylvania offered. He received the following answer from the council: “My Sister! listen to what I say! I am but poor and do not know how to speak right; If I speak any Thing that is not right you will be so good & help me to rights & not take it amiss, for I want to say that which is realy good. My Sister, I see you are Sorry for the bad News you have heard. I likewise am sorry, my Sister: I by this String take all the badness out of your Heart & Mind & throw it away, & I would have you take no Notice of all of it, But to press forward in that good Work of Peace without any delay & be Strong & see that it be well establish’d all over, for I heartily wish for the same.” The humble language of the response seems to be a rote component of ceremonial interactions, as the atmosphere was far from relaxed and friendly. The Ohio Delawares wished to take no orders from Teedyuscung and questioned his audacity to bring white men into forbidden country without permission. But Delaware men in particular were careful not to say anything in public that might offend another. Brinton’s Lenape dictionary listed several words pertaining to insulting talk, such as to speak uncivil, to speak bad, to

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scold, and to abuse each other by words. Addressing Teedyuscung as a female relative was more unusual—and interesting. By far the most common reference in diplomatic language was to call another brother, but here we have a male individual calling another man sister. In spite of the predominance of matrilines and the existence of special Speakers for the Women, the Iroquois never used the term sister in official parlance. The Delawares, however, apparently used this appellation when making speeches to one another. David Zeisberger and fellow Moravian missionary Johann Jacob Schmick reveal its usage in descriptions from inter-Delaware discussions. In 1766, in a diary from the mission town of Wyalusing (Friedenshütten), a message arrived to the Delaware converts from their western tribespeople seeking to establish “a complete peace between them.” Included was a communication from Delaware Chief Netewarwhelemen (Netawatwees) at Goschgosching on the Ohio River, which began: “My Sister!” Likewise, in 1776, Netawatwees spoke to his relatives the Minisinks and prefaced it by saying that he rejoiced in receiving the message from “my sisters the Minisinks,” and Schmick, who penned the account, added, “so they call one another.”34 Zeisberger offers the best explanation of how Delawares utilized this term. In 1770, during a search for a proper location for a Christian settlement after they had been evicted from a previous town, the Christian Delawares from Langundo-Ütenunk stopped in the Munsee town of Kaskaskunk on the Beaver River to visit the aged, but still active, chief Packanke (Custaloga). The Christian Indians asked the chief if they “might have words with him,” and he called a council together in his house. He and his council sat on one side, the Moravian delegation on the other, and the house was full of people. At this point Zeisberger inserted an account of deliberations that had preceded this visit. When yesterday we discussed together, what we should say, the question arose; if our Indians should call Packanke brother or sister, since some considered naming him brother and this was the reason: 1) the Indians are accustomed to calling one another brothers and wage war against one another, 2) it could occur to him to demand that our Indians go with him to war if they call him brother, but they held up the sister Name as the most appropriate for the Delawares, as they all knew well and were not ashamed of this, that they were Women and therefore should not go to war; Thus it was unanimously decided to call him sister, this is also not unusual among the Delawares, but some of them particularly Warriors are ashamed and do not much like to be Women, for this reason they call one another dear brothers.

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Accordingly, in the council the chosen speaker, Abraham, delivered their message prefaced by the appellation “Sister!” and accompanied it by strings of wampum. The Christian Indians thanked Packanke for inviting them to settle in the area, and wished to inform him what kind of people they considered themselves to be, describing how they did not partake in any heathen rituals, did not go out into war, nor accepted any lying or stealing.35 This form of address predominated in several exchanges that concerned the tricky relationship between the community of Christian Indians and their unconverted kinfolk. Both sides used the appellation deliberately to convey their stance. A few months after the initial contact with Packanke, leaders from the town of Goschgosching returned to the Christian settlement with a peace message and again addressing a man as “sister” prefaced this communication. Emissaries from the council at Goschgosching now worked together with representatives of the Indians connected to the Moravians to propose a scheme that would advance peace in the entire region. A central theme for discussion dealt with the obligation of all Delawares to contribute wampum to the belts prepared for various messages. Unconverted Indians looked on Christian tribespeople with suspicion, as a common rumor stated that they did not contribute and such negligence would undermine the authority of appointed leaders. Zeisberger again explained in an aside that in all-important affairs the chief had to prepare his own council bag with sufficient belts of wampum stitched with the appropriate messages. Women accomplished the actual preparation of the belts, but the beads derived from general contributions where each individual added what he or she could. If contributions were not forthcoming it was a sign that the chief had no support, and that led to a loss of authority and general breakdown of the government. Indians in the newly established Christian town of Friedenshütten did not want to appear as traitors, and prepared a message to Packanke that they were willing to contribute to all peaceful endeavors, but not to war. This message was introduced with the term “sister.” The Indian council received this promise with relief, and the old chief Allemuwi declared: “Sisters and friends! I rejoice greatly that the brethren have come to us . . . and I see . . . a Prospect that we could be a happy People. Before this our People did not go into War . . . against the white people only against the Indians, and it is not our Matter, we should not go to War, but we have strayed from the right Road . . . when we accept them [the Christian Indians] as our brothers and friends, then this is the only Road towards a firm and lasting peace.” The council decision was to act in much the same manner as Tamaqua had done some years before, and seek this opportunity to

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promote peace and unity in the entire Ohio region. They did so by receiving the Christian Indians and their white teachers as “flesh and blood” relatives, and extending a promise of mutual aid in order to preserve the peace. This was not enough, however. To extend the circle included in this promise, the council decided to send a message to their “uncles” the Six Nations. “For several years you have said to us: You are Women, stay nicely by your pestle, plant Corn, feed yourselves from plantations, hunting and fishing; you should not take an axe in your hands, it will only cause you harm, we alone will use the axe and go to war, but you should stay in your house and concern yourselves with that which is good. From this we have strayed, however, since we were not capable of bridling our young people, as they live in such scattered locations; Now we hope, however, that we can get back on the right Road.” The next step in acting in the capacity of female peacekeepers in the ring of Indian nations was to send a message to neighboring nations, such as the Shawnees and the Delamattenoos (Wyandots), demanding of them that they adhere to the right Road as well.36 Association with feminine qualities did not contaminate male persons; masculinity contained peacemaking as well as warmaking aspects. Professions of peaceful intent and strategies to advance cessation of hostilities all couched in a language of metaphorical femininity received sanction in the highest circles of Delaware leadership. The triumvirate of the three influential chiefs, Tamaqua for the Turkey clan, Netawatwees for the Turtle clan, and Packanke for the Wolf clan, supported the contention that this was indeed a strongly manifested ideal of Delaware identity. Influential Delaware leaders thus turned to a discourse on feminine and masculine prerogatives that did not tie these to physical bodies, but understood them as roles and responsibilities that could be employed by anyone to advance desired policies. Whether the choice resulted from political calculations or spiritual guidance is not clear from the records, but either way it necessitated a view of gendered representations as unconnected (or only loosely connected) to physical sex, and a nonhierarchical perception of the complementarity between the genders. In sharp contrast with the militarized and sexualized usage resorted to by the Iroquois and English, the Delaware based their discourse on the social organization of kinship, matrilines, and family. Age and kin obligations shaped the metaphors; sexual relations did not. This language of sisterhood is completely absent in English sources. The exchanges reported by Zeisberger and other Moravians cast doubts on the translations of the ubiquitous greeting “brother” in English council minutes. Did the Delawares in fact use brother every time they addressed

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one another? This appears particularly questionable when referring to speeches delivered by Tamaqua or Netawatwees. Were the Delawares and Iroquois speakers involved in these negotiations aware of how their words were translated and committed to paper, or did they adapt their language to the situation in the knowledge that calling a white man sister would hinder the message? In contrast to the Delaware leaders, it appears that Iroquois speakers in the aftermath of the Walking Purchase established a council language that exaggerated contrasting responsibilities and characteristics of men and women to create hierarchies in which the association between male persons with manly pursuits dominated male or female persons with feminine characteristics. In this linguistic construction social relations were predicated on an understanding of sexual relations that cast women as subservient and promiscuous. This, significantly, was also a language familiar to the European counterparts in these interactions. The vocabulary used not only in council records but also by men who spoke Delaware, like David Zeisberger, is worth considering. His choice of words reveals his worldview, and, taken with his other writings on Native Americans, his concern for moral purity, gender separation, and male hierarchy are apparent. A significant number of words and terms deal with what in English and German refers to immoral behaviors or sins. For most of these expressions, Zeisberger also offered an Onondaga word or sentence. Thus the language of debauchery and emasculation, conferred in treaty minutes and taunts, is present in his dictionary, but as we saw in the previous chapter he frequently failed to record Lenape equivalents for words and concepts such as abstinence, lewd (for this he uses a word that in his own translation means unruly, lightminded), to prostitute, ravish, seduce, unmanly, unnatural, virile, or wanton woman. The silence on the part of the Lenape language at least leaves the question open as to whether it was indeed possible to express the concepts that so tainted the language recorded in council minutes. There are of course lapses that suggest that Zeisberger’s knowledge of Lenape was far from complete, yet it is worth noting that none of the terms that in English or German attached moral condemnation to women’s situation or behavior in particular are present in Lenape dictionaries.37 Not all Delaware men agreed on how to address one another, as the Moravian record makes clear. Grave conflicts within and between Delaware villages and factions surfaced in negotiations over appellations. Netawatwees, Wangomen and Packanke, who all used the language of peacemaking matrons, eventually chose to oppose the Christian mission-

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aries and support nativist resurgence, while Allemuwi allowed himself to be baptized and sided with the Moravians. Other contradictory voices were heard most clearly in worries concerning the actions of young men. The difficulty Delaware leaders found in controlling young people may have been connected to the discontent some warriors felt at being called women. That some men chose to call one another “dear brother” instead was possibly a breach in the perceptions of the Delaware Nation as peacemakers in intercultural contacts, or it could mean that some men no longer wanted to be associated with what had become a designation tainted with derogatory notions. It may just as well, however, signal the tensions in any culture between differing claims to meaning—the same tensions that produced Tamaqua’s gentle, but firm, request that the English leave America and go back across the waters, and the Delaware warriors’ reported threat that they would cut off the private parts of those English who refused to leave. Whatever the reason, these conflicting notions offered Zeisberger an opportunity to use an alternative approach to Packanke. Although he specifically mentioned the peaceful intentions of the Moravians, he prefaced his speech by addressing the chief as “Brother!” He may have deemed it impossible in his cultural framework to greet a male individual with a female designation. The fact that he found the manner in which the Delawares hailed one another in need of a lengthy explanation suggests that to him and his readers this was indeed difficult to fathom. He reports no reactions to his own use of kinship terminology, but to the Delawares listening to his message the meaning—intentional or not—must have been clear. Zeisberger did not seek alliances with the factions who argued for peace in its traditional connection to femaleness, but sought the war captains the whites always preferred to deal with, perhaps because these men represented the only unquestioned hierarchy that could be identified in Delaware society. In this aspect Zeisberger and other Moravians aligned themselves with the English manner of communication, much as he liked to distance himself from it. To speak of the “Mother Spirit” was possible for the pietist missionary; using such language in reference to actual human males was not.38

Petticoats and Ceremonial Gender Delaware men could refer to one another as sisters or female cousins in diplomatic or ceremonial settings, but there are no sources to indicate that men called each other sister in everyday situations. All the representations of the

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special gendered relationship between the Delawares and the Iroquois described it as the outcome of a council decision with solemn participation of both sides. The Delaware account of this event emphasizes that while in a volatile state of almost incessant fighting the Five Nations approached the Delawares with the suggestion that one people, like a woman, should be placed in the middle and stand unmolested by warring men. “The woman should not go to war but endeavor to keep the peace with all. Therefore, if the men that surround her should beat each other and the war be carried on with violence, the woman should have the right of addressing them, ‘Ye men, what are ye about; why do ye beat each other? We are almost afraid. Consider that your wives and children must perish unless you desist. Do you mean to destroy yourselves from the face of the earth?’ The men should then hear and obey the woman.”39 The creation of a special ceremonial role for a female peacekeeper has a parallel in the account of Shawnee customs by C. C. Trowbridge in the early nineteenth century. The Shawnees established female peace chiefs whose main responsibility was to “prevent the unnecessary effusion of blood.” If the war chief sought to embark upon a venture not sanctioned by the nation, it was the duty of the female peace chief to approach the war captain and by setting before him “the care and anxiety & pain which the women experience in their birth & education she appeals to his better feelings and implores him to spare the innocent & unoffending.” She was usually successful and therefore the female peace chief served as a last resort in situations of impending conflict.40 No such institutionalized female peace chiefs are known from the Delawares or Iroquois, but descriptions of the ceremonial function of the woman as peacemaker is clearly similar. Indeed, the Delawares can be said to have served collectively as female peace chiefs among the eastern nations. It certainly seems as though Tamaqua understood it and acted as such. Some authors have suggested that there are no indications that other tribes viewed the Delawares as intermediaries for peace. However, Moravian records make it apparent that this was the case. One example that is particularly revealing concerns the Shawnees. In August 1774, at the height of the war between warriors following the Mingo chief Logan and Virginia militia (Dunmore’s War), a messenger came to the Christian town of Schönbrunn from the Delaware chief at Gekelemukpechünk announcing that the Shawnees had urgently asked the Delawares to act as mediators in their conflict. They gave themselves over to their Grandfather, the chief in Gekelemukpechünk, to carry out negotiations and decide on a peace agreement with

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the Virginians. The messenger continued to report that the Shawnees had sought the assistance of the Miamis and the Hurons in this war, but received the reply that they considered the Shawnees alone in the war as they had acted against the decision for peace in the Great Council of Nations. The Miami and Huron message continued: “thus you show yourselves brave and prove yourselves as Men, and you certainly need to have that since you are few in number, and what you have sought and earned, that is what you will receive as Wages, but we will sit quietly and look at you, but we will not meddle in your affairs or help you.” The Miami and Huron response supports the Shawnee assertion that they were men, but cast their actions in a questionable light. They would need all their bravery to handle the consequences of their male actions. The Shawnee request is consistent with the appeal to the female peace chief to take steps to end a conflict, steps that men at war could not take.41 Zeisberger’s account of how the Delawares were established as women is telling in its detail concerning the ceremonial context of the institution. At some meeting, not witnessed by a European, the Iroquois ceremonially declared that the Delawares should now be women and “dressed them in a woman’s long habit, reaching down to the feet.” Here Zeisberger added one of his characteristic asides, that this was done “though Indian women wear only short garments that reach but little below the knee,” indicating that this was not a matter of common women’s clothing, but something containing symbolic meaning. The long habit was “fastened . . . about their bodies with a great, large belt of wampum,” further emphasizing the ceremonial and spiritual significance of this alteration. Then “they hung a calabash fi lled with oil and beson [medicine] on their arms, therewith to anoint themselves and other nations. They also gave them a corn-pestle and a hoe. Each of these points was confirmed by delivering a belt of wampum and the whole ceremony observed with the greatest solemnity.” Zeisberger continued with an explanation for the symbolic actions of the ceremony and cautioned against understanding it literally. Instead he compared it to the metaphorical language of clearing trails for safe and comfortable passage through the forests, “but when one goes the way that has thus been cleared it is found to be full of wood and rocks and stones and all overgrown with thorns and thicket.” So with the female clothing, it as well as the other paraphernalia represented symbolic statements. The Delawares “were great and brave warriors, feared by the other nations,” but the woman’s garment “signified that they should not engage in war . . . corn-pestle and hoe that they should engage in agriculture.” Other items illustrated the solemnity of the undertaking of

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becoming peacemakers. “The calabash with oil was used to cleanse the ears of the other nations, that they might attend to good and not to evil counsel. With the medicine or beson they were to heal those who were walking in foolish ways that they might come to their senses and incline their hearts to peace.” Again, this is not indicative of acts of subjugation.42 There are good reasons to give this version credence, not only because aspects of it occur in other European sources, but because of a parallel to another Delaware ceremonial encounter with a people with whom they wished to create a special bond. In 1654, at the arrival of a new Swedish governor to the Delaware River colony, a delegation of Lenapes expressed their desire and understanding of the relationship between the two peoples as one of a particular friendship. The imagery invoked was a feminine one—a calabash—and the meeting ended with a meal consisting of corn. Ceremonial food made from corn, the gourd as a symbol for friendship, and its content of good medicine to anoint themselves and others suggest that this was a ceremony known to the Delawares long before the English became aware of their role as women in the early 1700s.43 In many descriptions of this ceremony it is emphasized that the Delawares were clad in petticoats. According to one version given in 1820 in response to General Lewis Cass’s inquiries, a whole “petticoat of wampum” was given to the Delawares to wear. A dress made of wampum is strangely reminiscent of the one Governor Printz of New Sweden claimed he had bought from the Delawares in the 1640s to enhance his own status as emissary of Christina, Queen of Sweden—a suit made out of wampum for the representative of a nation whose female leader insisted that they came in peace. It would have been hard to view this as anything but an honor!44 What did it mean that the Iroquois put a petticoat on the Delawares? The whole idea seemed incongruous when one considers Peter Lindeström’s engraving of a Lenape family from the 1650s. In his image the woman does not wear anything that could be described as a petticoat, and the text corroborates the visual evidence. Lindeström described a wide wampum belt from which hung a piece of cloth or hide decorated lavishly with wampum beads and hemmed with a fringe of wampum. Nowhere in the early sources are there any indications that Lenape or other Indian women wore clothing that could be described as petticoats. And yet it is a frequent feature of midcentury accounts of how the Delawares came to be held as women and the struggles to remake them into men again.45 The long garment is puzzling, not only because it has been given the distinctly English appellation petticoat, which does not have a direct Indian

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corollary, but also because it has been connected to certain notions attached to the word in eighteenth-century vernacular, such as petticoat regiment. The word petticoat had in itself multiple meanings over the century. Hyphenated it could refer to a man’s small jacket, but the more common usage was as a garment worn by women, girls, and young children. By association the term came to symbolize “female sex or character.” As such, and when joined to the political term government, it had a decidedly negative ring. Why would the Iroquois require the Delawares to wear not only women’s clothing, but European women’s clothing at that? If that were the case, then conquest—in the European sense—and humiliation suggest themselves as possible motives. To be petticoated was, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, entirely undesirable, and, in fact, a quote from eastern America is used to illustrate its meaning: “The Shawnees . . . were restless in being what was termed ‘petticoated’ by the Iroquois.” However, Zeisberger’s account makes it clear that the garment in this case was not a petticoat, nor was it the common female habit. I was a special vestment, perhaps created for the occasion, or perhaps signifying another special position, known to both Iroquois and Delaware society, namely that of man-woman or berdache. The connection between dressing a man in a petticoat and the various traditions reported from around North America of more than two genders, or two-spirit people, seems quite obvious, and it is somewhat startling that it is often absent from discussions of the Delawares-as-women. Most commentators do not dwell on it. But according to Daniel Brinton, writing in the 1880s, some young Delaware males “apparently vigorous and of normal development, were deprived of the accoutrements of the male sex, clothed like women, and assigned women’s work to do.” This differed distinctly from the otherwise highly honored work and comportment of women, said Brinton, who claimed that these men “were treated as inferiors by their male associates. Whether this degradation arose from suspicious rites or sodomitic practices, it certainly carried to its victim the contempt of both sexes.” Of more recent writers only C. A. Weslager touches on Brinton’s suggestion and concludes that the Delawares being made women was “the outstanding recorded instance of its kind in the East. It is probably the only time that the rite was so institutionalized as to affect the status of an entire tribal group.” Neither do writers who deal with the concept of two-spirit status among Native Americans make a connection to the instance in which an entire tribe (of men) was constituted as women.46 Brinton’s text makes obvious that it was gender crossing (or gender mixing) that he thought Indians abhorred, not women fulfilling proper

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feminine occupations. He made an explicit connection between effeminate behavior in men and unmanly and immoral subordination, demonstrated through inverted sexual acts. Significantly such a connection emerged in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Randolph Trumbach identifies a marked shift in the perception of the effeminate fop in which the word effeminate underwent an alteration and became exclusively associated with adult sodomites. By the first decades of the century English observers described men who desired other men sexually as “a new society” of “men worse than goats, who dressed themselves in petticoats.” Many men judged the purported sexual passivity of the sodomite as a deplorable sign of femininity, and dress and mannerisms seemed to emphasize this connection. The later part of the century saw a simplification of men’s clothes and a restriction on physical familiarity between men. Trumbach argues that a new masculinity now required of all males “to be active at every stage of life” in order to avoid any contamination of feminine or sodomitical passivity.47 Again I am intrigued by divergent discourses on gender, one deployed by some Iroquois and English participants, which seems to fit neatly with Trumbach’s conclusions, while the other fell back on a tradition of gender roles that were not ontologically connected to either biological sex or sexual desire. As noted previously, the gendered language in question (particularly that used by and between Delawares) is not a language of oppositionary relations between sexes, not a language describing unrelated males and females, and not a language of copulation. Instead it is primarily a language of family and kinship. But the ceremonial language of the institution of the Delaware role resembles the definitions given of the role of berdache, or two-spirit gender. Anthropologist Will Roscoe found that minimum conditions for the emergence of a third (or fourth) gender role consisted of a gendered division of labor and productive responsibilities that offered women a possibility to specialize in the production and exchange of goods and food, a system of belief that did not view gender as determined by physical sex, and specific historical occurrences that opened the opportunity for the construction of multiple gender roles. Such conditions existed for both Delawares and Iroquois, and it is likely that both recognized berdaches among the possible gender roles open to individuals. However, it is doubtful that the Delawares were perceived as berdaches en masse. The third gender role was—among the peoples who recognized it—a distinct and separate category, not perceived as males doing female things or becoming women. The metaphorical language of the councils emphasizes that the Delawares were women, not

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berdaches or hermaphrodites. In this case the Delaware Nation as a whole fi lled a role that was deemed feminine and could be connected to actual female matrons. However, the occurrence of gender roles other than male and female, and an understanding that gender followed not only biology but also dreams and visions, facilitated the adoption of a female role by those with other-than-female bodies.48 Delawares-as-women reveals that gender and sex could have many different meanings. It suggests a subtlety of gender movements not easily comprehended in a binary universe. One understanding was that the combination of genders—such as when a male individual adopted female habit—gave powers that transcended either of the two genders’. Yet, it is also clear that this notion was not uncontested. The status of ritual women was deeply entwined with ideas concerning lineage, kin, belonging, friendship, and connection, while a corollary (or opposite) status as men incorporated notions surrounding war, individual courage, killing, and death. The Delawares contrived to maintain the balance by gendering their universe to the extreme. By mid-century, accounts of ceremonial division of meat and bread followed a strict complementarity—six men and six women were required to partake. Yet this was a losing battle in the face of a world where war, death, and disease fi lled Delaware as well as English and Iroquois everyday experiences, and the scale easily tipped in favor of patriarchal notions of maleness, connected to prowess and war. The surface similarity between third gender roles and the emerging English discourse on sodomites in petticoats also lent itself to a ready condemnation of the berdache role, even though in Native understanding it carried a far different meaning. The Iroquois and English provoked changes in this highly charged atmosphere—war became the dominant discourse in opposition to femininity and peace. This development was aggravated as both the Iroquois League and English colonials saw their control over the frontier situation diminish. Categories of berdaches and women became fi lled with a novel content of subordinate and immoral sexual activity, wrenched away from the discourse of kin and spiritual connection. The contentious years of the mid-eighteenth century saw the confluence of a number of varying discourses on gender, sexuality, and power. The Iroquois had a sophisticated understanding of the symbolic significance of material culture. In spite of their allegiance with the English they did not always perceive their European allies as manly. The image of the petticoat carried layers of meaning that invoked the inferior femininity of an adversary through the connection between acculturation to European clothing and European weakness. The

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petticoat reference also indicated the specter of colonial influence. The denigration of the Delawares was framed in European clothing and the fact that the Delawares had known close connections with Europeans longer than perhaps any other Indian people in North America may have made them targets of charges of acculturation and adaptation to European effeminacy. Sexuality was introduced into this discourse as a consequence of power struggles in these colonial confrontations, as different interpretations of what it meant to be a man were used to convey different claims of authority and dominance.

A National Identity Many Delawares framed their interpretation according to another template, one that cast relationships between men and women in terms of brothers and sisters, rather than as sexual partners, or as fathers and sons. They considered themselves to be part of a nation of peacemakers, deriving their chief standing from the connections between powerful lineage matrons and their role in upholding and arranging for peace. As a people, the Delawares guarded the central council fi re and negotiated for peace in the entire region. This strategy sometimes took the form of a gendered perception in which “woman” or “sister” stood for peacemaking, while “man” and “brother” stood for preparations for hostility. The complementary relationship between genders in Lenape ceremony and cosmogony ensured that this was a possible construction that did not strip either category of power, but rather made them objects for negotiation. To be named sister, sister’s daughter, or sister’s son suggested not a designation along a vertical axis but a sign of one’s primary undertaking in life, perhaps one’s “national identity” as a peace broker. Lenapes used the Swedish colony as a test case to develop strategies of diplomatic interaction with Europeans, policies they perhaps had used previously in interactions with Native American strangers and neighbors. This approach was then extended to William Penn and his followers and constituted—perhaps—the most significant part of this covenant of friendship. It offered the Quakers an opportunity to practice their politics of peaceful interaction. Arguments for this hypothesis may be found in the extensive presence and decisive use of Swedish intermediaries and interpreters. The Lenapes thus were able to influence the construction of the diplomatic encounters between Europeans and Native Americans.49 It worked well for quite some time, and the Atlantic seaboard along the

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Delaware River was an unusually peaceful region well into the eighteenth century, so it is no wonder that the voices advocating just such a policy could prevail. Continued white infi ltration and conflicting land demands increased the pressure and forced more and more Indians, Delawares included, to question whether the honorable role as village matrons with peacekeeping responsibilities was functional or viable in their new world. By mid-century, Iroquois representatives used a term translated as “woman” in a decidedly derogatory manner, perhaps to tell the Lenapes to wise up to the realities of European interaction, or perhaps (and more likely) as part of establishing closer links with the English as their most important ally. Through such language the Iroquois and the English were constructed as virtuous men and bearers of honorable characteristics such as courage, sense of justice, generosity, temperance, and purity. That left only undesirable categories for the Delawares to fi ll. Some Delawares reacted violently to this division, while others such as Tamaqua, Netawetwees, and Packanke evoked and emphasized the older understanding of a diplomatic balance between sister/brother, woman/man, in a period of strained relations with both English and Indian neighbors and perhaps in direct contrast to Iroquois claims. For these men, a Delaware national identity as female peacemakers and grandfathers with a first and foundational contact with whites dovetailed neatly into the woman/queen metaphor, and thus they sought to maintain a specific Lenape tradition. Tamaqua was directly—and maternally—related to Sassoonan, who had used the language of female peacemaking on the Delaware. Netawatwees himself was old enough to remember the first agreements with the Penns. These three influential leaders—all unconverted and hostile (or at least reserved) in relation to European intrusion—embraced the role of women as peacekeepers and employed this language as an expression of a Delaware identity based on an understanding of a tradition that emphasized complementarity, not hierarchy, between genders and invested both with power and authority, perhaps stressing it in contrast to European notions of influence and hierarchy. Another man reported taking on this role was Wangomen, who together with his sister was prominent in opposition to the Christians. They sought to preserve what they perceived as a Delaware cultural practice distinct from European influence, in contrast to, for example, Teedyuscung. To this end they used “sister” among themselves and “female cousin” to other neighbors, but this position became increasingly untenable as Delaware autonomy decreased. Why did it end? A language of cross-dressing became less and less viable in an America dominated by European perceptions of gender, sexuality, and

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morality, while a language of peace still remained attractive. For Iroquois who continued to have alliances with whites that hinged on the deployment of military power, the language of peace quickly became co-opted by the language of male power. Other nations persisted longer in an older usage. Even so, by 1800 a male representative could no longer present himself as a queen. Yet this language still held sway with other Algonkian neighbors for a long time. Ritual mediated the divide between male warmaking and female peacekeeping. This was a role with indigenous traditions that could be used by some men to advance policies of balance and independence, perhaps to boost their own influence. But it only worked in a context in which gender was conceptualized as a role attached to a cluster of responsibilities rather than an equation of gender and sex. War, strife, hunger, removal, and death of individuals of all ages threatened all established ways of handling crises. Hegemonic interpretations of masculinity among Shawnees and Delawares emphasized a progression in a man’s responsibilities from brave warrior to sane peace leader, but conflicts with Europeans and other Indians elevated war captains, offering young men other models based on sexual domination. The breakdown in the cohesion of kin groups must have aided this process. There was nothing subservient about Delaware women. Male and female roles were different but they did not constitute categories of a set asymmetry. That remained for the Iroquois-English alliance and the emerging new republic to impress upon the Delawares.

Chapter 6

What the Hermit Saw: Change and Continuity in the History of Gender and Encounters

There is a spot of land at the edge of the great Pine or Beech Swamp, precisely where it is crossed by the road leading to Wyoming, which is called the Hermit’s Field, and of which the following account is given. A short time before the white people came into Pennsylvania, a woman from some cause or other had separated herself from society, and with her young son, had taken her abode in this swamp, where she remained undiscovered until the boy grew up to manhood, procuring a livelihood by the use of the bow and arrow, in killing deer, turkeys and other animals, planting corn and vegetables, and gathering and curing nuts and berries of various kinds. When after her long seclusion she again saw Indians, she was much astonished to fi nd them dressed in European apparel. She had become so attached to her place of abode, that she again returned thither and remained there for several years. I was shewn by the Indians in the year 1765, and often afterwards, the corn hills that she made; the ground, being a stiff clay, was not wasted or worn down, but was covered with bushes, and the traces of the labour of the female hermit were plainly discoverable. Thus the Indians will support themselves in the midst of the greatest difficulties, never despairing of their fate, but trusting to their exertions, and to the protection of the Almighty Being who created them.1

This chronicle of change from independence in the production of all necessities of life to dependence upon European wares, which occurred in the lifetime of one woman, illustrates the gendered nature of colonization. The story may be read as a mythic tale of great depth and significance for the people involved, one in which repetition brought both comfort and a glimpse of hope for the future. Delawares recounted the episode to their friend John Heckewelder in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Apparently a frequently recapitulated story, it was firmly tied in place and time to people who had begun to lose their sense of belonging and had repeatedly

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been compelled to rebuild their villages farther and farther west. European influence was an ever-present reality, ranging from the adoption of tools and weapons to the presence of colonists and military units on what had been their land. And so this story, rooted in a precise spot of land, told of the independent and courageous woman who subsisted on what the bountiful land could offer. Although she was alone with her son, they suffered no want, but were sustained by all the land could yield—deer, turkey, corn and vegetables, nuts and berries—all gifts from the Almighty Being. The lack of human society was not a detriment; they found all they needed from the land. Eventually the woman emerged to see other Indians and was astonished to discover how they had changed. Her primary observation was that they now wore European clothes. She chose to return to her place of seclusion, consciously rejecting all that was connected with a Europeanized lifestyle. There is much to ponder in this tale. The central character is a woman. She makes the choice to leave her community “from some cause or other” and sets out on her own. She is accompanied by a male—a son but not a husband. His role in the story is unclear but seems primarily to have been to aid in the subsistence work, emphasizing the relative insignificance of marriage bonds and the paramount importance of the role of mother. Yet the son is marginal to the story of how isolation from European contact ensures bounty in the traditional Delaware way. It is the woman who survives as a hermit; it is she who sees European-attired Indians, and she who decides to return to her place of abode, again rejecting human company. Several elements of this story make it indicative of the changes and continuities analyzed in this book. It places women at the center as autonomous procurers of the basic necessities of life with a special link with the land through their cultivation of corn and vegetables and their gathering of nuts and berries, and as mothers with a say in the decisions of the villages. Through mothers Lenape children inherited their connection to the lineage. As human beings women had access to divine guidance, which could call a person to abandon all the most pressing societal responsibilities, even to the point of making a life as a hermit. A century of contact had led to the erosion of the Lenape land base, that vital link between women and land, and to the adoption of certain European habits. European clothing stood for much more than a change in fashion. Returning to Indian clothes was fundamental to many of the prophets seeking to redress Indian problems through a revitalization of Indian culture during the mid- and late eighteenth century.

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Figure 12. Rufus Greider, “Pine Swamp Sketches.” Rufus Greider Collection I, 1853. Moravian artist Rufus Greider sketched this image from the Great Pine Swamp in the Wyoming region in 1853. Courtesy of Moravian Archives Bethlehem.

European clothes signified rejection of what the land had to offer, of the vibrant link between Indians and the land that fed and clothed them.2 This story has the quality of a mythic tale that carries significant information concerning gender and gender relations. Myths and stories tell us about a community’s concepts concerning such vital organizational principles as gender, economy, power, and spiritual authority. Yet, looking at the story as a historical account also yields important information. The Delawares were careful to show Heckewelder the actual geographic location of the hermit’s field, and he noted there some topographical characteristics that corroborated the story. The place he was shown lies at the heart of many of the events retold in this book. Wyoming was located on the north branch of the Susquehanna River (present-day Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania), and by the 1740s—after the disastrous Walking Purchase—many Delawares had removed there on the suggestion of the Six Nations. The town represented both a haven for scattered groups of people who were no longer able

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to maintain their locations on tributaries and shores along the coast, and an indication of what was to come. It was a multicultural town that during its short existence experienced much of the turmoil that came to be increasingly commonplace in Penn’s forests during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Moravian Indians and missionaries described it in fearsome tones as an evil town not suitable for Christians, but one to which people expelled from the mission towns could be sent. “Wild” conditions reigned there, represented by heathen religious practices and resistance to acculturation, implied in the account of the female hermit. For some this caused anxieties; for others it represented a calmer life in the vicinity of relatives.3 Accepting the story as an actual account means that the hermit would have been born in the latter part of the seventeenth century, somewhere in the eastern part of Pennsylvania. Her early experiences were along one of the many tributaries to the Delaware River, and she learned how to grow corn and gather wild vegetables and berries from her mother and female relatives. These skills allowed her to eke out her existence alone. Once they had left their town, she and her son lived in their own self-contained world, one in which bountiful resources sustained them without necessitating contact with friends or strangers of any kind. They lived as Indians would have imagined a world before Contact. Heckewelder’s account does not indicate why she finally decided to seek out other Delawares, but what she saw demonstrated a world substantially altered, a world in which new lines had been drawn and new categories created. Indians in European clothing were managing this novel place, and the hermit decided to return to her seclusion—a seclusion that Delawares and other Indians increasingly viewed as a dream when faced with the hardening confrontations of war and interracial bloodshed. The hermit’s choice of renewed separation echoed the teachings of female Delaware prophets who urged Indians to refrain from contaminating contact with Christians. Contrary to being an outcast, the hermit was likely one of many forceful, vocal women who emphatically held that native practices and independence from whites were the only solution for their people’s present problems. The reverence with which the story was retold strengthens this possibility. In some ways, then, the story can be read as a corollary to the metaphor that identified male Delawares as women in their political role as peacemakers by focusing on female Delawares as procurers and protectors of indigenous sustenance and traditions. However, just as the understanding of what it meant for a man to take on a female role was challenged and altered as a consequence of intercultural friction, the splendid isolation of the female hermit became increasingly un-

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tenable, and bore little resemblance to Delaware historical experiences. In fact, her isolation was the reverse of the choices her people made in relation to strangers. Already in the 1630s Indian-European encounters triggered events that intruded violently on the lives of Lenapes. Susquehannock attacks drove them across the Delaware River, forcing them to abandon cornfields and subjecting them to hunger. The spread of disease preceded and accompanied the arrival of Swedish and Dutch vessels up the river, causing villagers to suspect enemy witchcraft. Struggles for control over land and trade caught the Lenapes in intermittent confl icts between Iroquois, Susquehannock, Dutch, and English interests in the closing decades of the seventeenth century. While isolation may have appeared an ideal, in reality Lenapes engaged fully and openly in these encounters. These confl icts allowed them to fashion a policy of mediation that became the hallmark of Delaware national identity in the centuries that followed, precisely because they built on the involvement and practices of women and their responsibilities in society. All this meant that, far from occupying a position of seclusion in the complex and scattered colonial landscape, the Delawares in fact created and sought to maintain a place on the border between diverse groups and interests. The hermit’s life invoked wishful thinking, but it never had and never would be a collective Delaware experience. The choice of seclusion was an imaginary solution, not a reality, perhaps not even a desired reality, but it was her link to the land and to the spirit world that made her heroic. Instead, it was the place in the margins that allowed Delawares to manage their colonial new world and that offered an arena for the illumination of practices and metaphors of gender that have a bearing far beyond the history of the eastern seaboard. This arena also became a space where women took up roles and acted out their understanding of what was best for their collectives of connections. It is no coincidence that the hermit in the Delaware story is a woman. In this land of margins and conflicts, those with powers to broker peace and create kin also became heroic representatives of culture. In the larger circle of kinship and relations, Delawares belonged to an Algonkian network spanning the entire northeastern half of the American continent. Many of the events narrated here would have been familiar to all these people. The different entities, altering and coalescing over time, referred to one another with kinship terms. Delawares could in one situation be recognized as grandfathers to all other Algonkian tribes, in another sister’s children, and in a third sisters to their Shawnee brothers. Historical experience, circumstance, and strategy determined which appellation

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would be used. The persistent designation of Delawares as women was accompanied by women’s very real influence and decisive role in relationship to white missionaries and their evangelization and cultural propositions. Likewise, women participated forcefully in the challenge to revision of Indian religious and social practices. Algonkians shared cultural understandings of gender, but historical circumstance influenced how these were practiced and appropriated in collective identifications. Theda Perdue’s study of Cherokee women suggests substantial similarities with Delaware understandings of gender and power. Cherokee women’s roles as mothers in matrilineal communities and growers of corn entailed ritual, political, and economic influence. Yet history sent similar cultures in different directions. Discursive ideas about balance between female and male formulated as a reciprocal relationship between vegetable foods and meat, and between menstrual blood and war wounds, tipped over into a separation of areas of gendered influence with dominance for corn as a preferred food and increased emphasis on masculine warfare. Cherokee women could distinguish themselves as “War Women” and take on more public roles as “Beloved Women.” Cherokee women also sent peace messages, but by the end of the eighteenth century they too had become excluded from national councils. A much more developed social stratification over the course of the eighteenth century added to other distinctions in differentiating between sexes, as men as warriors, hunters, and traders had access to wealth through their contacts with colonial society.4 Property and trade also had consequences for gender relations among Creeks. Creek young men, perhaps in contrast to the substantial power wielded by women among their Cherokee enemies, responded to changes in the deerskin trade by emphasizing patriarchal prerogatives and undermining female-dominated households. Signaling these contrasts was the disdain in which old women were held among young Creek warriors, whereas postmenopausal women met with particular respect among Cherokees. Despite these differences both Creeks and Cherokees resisted patriarchy as white Americans attempted to impose it in the realms of household and marriages.5 The Shawnees make a particularly interesting case for comparison. They shared many of the Delawares’ experiences as they were press farther and farther west. Often they cohabited in villages along western Pennsylvania’s and Ohio’s river systems where they cooperated in several aspects of social economy, with women seeing to cultivation and men to hunting and warfare. Like the Delawares, Iroquois diplomats sometimes referred to

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them as “women,” and they—increasingly it seems—identified their origin from a female deity and recognized women peace chiefs. Yet, while the Delawares chose the role of mediators for peace as a national vocation, the Shawnees chose the warpath and the name “brothers.” Their close linkage with their Delaware sisters received a severe blow during Dunmore’s War in the mid-1770s. Desperate Shawnees bandied about for support as their towns were threatened by Virginia militia and sent war belts to allies in different directions. As we saw in the previous chapter, the Hurons and Miamis turned them down, while prominent Delawares such as Captain Pipe, White Eyes, and Killbuck strove in vain to negotiate a peace settlement, only to find themselves increasingly drawn into the conflict, brandished between the shields of the Iroquois on one side and the Virginians on the other. The Shawnees were themselves divided over this war, but the peace faction could not prevail against younger men’s anger and desire for revenge. Their losing battle at Point Pleasant meant that the Shawnees had to abandon their hunting grounds south of the Ohio River in Kentucky, but it also meant that they lost faith in Delaware peacemaking skills.6 The Shawnees and Creeks emerge toward the latter half of the eighteenth century as the most masculinist of the Algonkian eastern tribes. Young warriors dominated political discourse and disdained any connection with femaleness as they fiercely defended their manhood. Yet women could rise to chiefdom among the Shawnees at the same time that they were excluded from councils in Cherokee and Delaware national bodies. The Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa attracted followers with a message that emphasized manly restraint, a separation of spheres, and male dominance over women. Richard White notes how male visionaries replaced women at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But the Prophet, too, yielded to women’s dominance in agriculture, and Creek women resisted any attempts to establish patriarchal rule within domains they traditionally controlled.7 Tenskwatawa’s reordering of gender relations was echoed in the teachings of Handsome Lake, the Seneca prophet and social reformer. Iroquois women dominated the realm of the clearing and in the production of vegetable foodstuffs. They had a role as chief makers and a say in all matters concerning land. Studies suggest that matrilineal structures may in fact have grown stronger over the course of the first century of contact. But Canasatego more than anyone in frontier diplomacy invoked a language that severed links between women, land, and peacemaking and privileged a sexual language of male dominance and female submission as a template for

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relations between peoples. Half a century later Handsome Lake encouraged men to become farmers and head households, and a generation after that Senecas had adopted a nuclear and patrilineal household pattern. Even so, women remained in control of the clearing and the home, complicating any conclusions drawn from the change in family structure.8 Creek and Cherokee women’s resistance to missionaries’ drive to make men into farmers and heads of households found parallels among Delawares. In fact, controversies revolving around households and the authority within them abound from the decades before and around the turn of the nineteenth century, struggles that divided communities. Sometimes Indian women and missionaries appeared to be on the same side, while at other times Indian men sided with the Christians, and in certain situations yet other constellations emerged. In some ways, Delaware women found that the Moravian missionary program for order and civilization boosted their influence, while frustrating some of the men. In 1773, an all-male helpers conference held at Schönbrunn voiced an exasperated question: “Where does it come from, that when brothers and sisters are baptized, afterwards the women begin to argue and demand things from them, that had not come to their minds before?” They demanded help in agricultural work as well as “in the labor which is really the work of women.” When men did not come forth with assistance this led to “disunity and quarrel,” and it seemed that women “want to make their men into servants.” The minutes do not make clear whether this was the opinion of Delaware men or primarily a Moravian worry, but they emphasize that missionaries saw the need to mediate between couples. The scribe assured readers that both demands and quarrels were uncharacteristic, “as among the Wild people there is no quarrel and argument over this, the women know what their work is and what is their lot, it would not occur to them, that they could expect any of that from their men.” But occur to them it did; women saw opportunities to augment their influence through Christian practices, and this placed the missionaries in a bind. “It is surely good and we are glad to see it, when the husbands help their wives, we encourage them to do so, when it is necessary.” The sisters, however, had taken this too far, and the conference minutes concluded that “they have no right to demand this from their husbands.”9 Twenty-seven years later, it appears as though the missionary understanding of proper spheres for men and women had prevailed. In 1800, Mortimer reports a decision made in the town of Goshen. “It has been determined in council that the women shall no longer attend the men on their

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hunting parties, that they may have more time to attend to their domestic concerns, and that the men may be induced the sooner to return home again. This is also one of our regulations. Upon the whole, it appears to be their wish to introduce wholesome rules among them. We have been told that they expect that our presence would afford them much countenance in this respect, and that this is one of the reasons that has induced them to send for us.”10 However, this expression of wholesome civilized domestic ideology may be interpreted in other ways. Whether the decision emanated from the wishes of men or women or both, it is quite likely that women approved of it, but not necessarily from acceptance of Christian gender roles. Missionary concern over a young man baptized as Joel illustrates how complex the connections between gender, conversion, and civilization became, creating fractures that allowed for a multitude of interpretations and practices. When Joel entered the congregation at Muskingum and before his baptism, he “declared that he would be contented to live a single life.” This desire complicated his stay among the Christians, as he then had no household of his own. What particularly irked the missionaries was “the invariable custom among the heathen, that young men who board in a family, do not take share in their labors in the field.” Joel was thus advised “to go among the wild Indians in the woods, and seek for a wife who was willing to come to the cong[regatio] n.” The missionary fear of a man unattached to a household was apparently now greater than concern with the corruptive influences of heathen women. Joel followed the advice and difficulties ensued. He found a woman, but her mother did not want her to live in Goshen “and opposed the intention with all her might.” However, Joel reverted to bad habits and “fell again into the sin of drunkenness, became poor, and could buy no clothing for the family.” This threat to the well-being of her daughter and small children made the mother-in-law rethink her options. She changed her mind and when asked by the missionaries why responded only that “she was desirous to have her children” in the congregation.11 Joel’s story shows that the missionaries depended on older women to develop their version of civilized life. Young, unattached men did not stand under the authority of lineages or of missionaries and thus could not be told to work in the fields. The Moravians’ demand that Joel fi nd a wife meant that women still controlled the work in the fields, and their suggestion in this case bolstered the authority of women—as they headed the domestic establishments—over young men. In different ways young and unattached men and women worried both Moravians and older Indians. Young women

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who had no men frequently fared ill, while young men were difficult to control. Freedom from authority, both missionaries and Delaware elders, may well have been a reason for young men like Joel to prefer the single life. “Wholesome rules” and domestic ideology could thus be a double-edged sword in the struggle between and among Christians and Indians over what constituted a civilized society. Was the rise of a new American nation accompanied by starker lines drawn between the sexes in Indian communities? Tecumseh’s and Tenskwatawa’s political and moral vision seems to indicate so, as do the disappearance of women visionaries and women leaders. Likewise this study suggests that male persons increasingly dominated all aspects of political influence, even as they referred to themselves as “queens.” Toward the latter half of the eighteenth century gender rhetoric began to supplant the actual presence of female-bodied persons even as influential male leaders identified as women. In the early nineteenth century, Delaware male informants stated unequivocally that there were no female chiefs and that women had nothing to do with councils. Beata left her role as councilor because she was “just” a woman. It appears that the areas deemed appropriate for women’s influence and authority altered during the eighteenth century. At the same time, Moravian sources testify to the continuing agency of Delaware women in sending messages, stitching wampum belts, and evaluating both the Christian message and the social environment of the mission town.12 The influence of colonial encounters on gender thus presents a patchwork of political discourses, social structures, and religious invocations both between and within various ethnic entities. Interpretations of hierarchy, as well as gender, differed with circumstance. Some scholars argue that Indian and white men shared their understanding of gender and its relationship to hierarchy and they may well be right. But only partly. It worked as such in diplomacy because that was connected to warfare—to men’s sphere, men of a certain age. But Indians understood life to be about balance. Men’s exploits as warriors and negotiators were balanced by women’s endeavors as agriculturalists and kinmakers. Thus the resistance was great when whites sought to insert these activities into a single gendered hierarchy. Women and men could draw on this balance both to argue preeminence and to illustrate submission. But to subvert it threatened the whole idea of society. When the mist lifted from the “marshland” of cultural clashes leading up to the dawning of the American republic, masculine valor demonstrated in war and violence defi ned freedom and

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those it excluded. Gender and race were expected to fit into one hierarchy under God.13 From her vantage point the female hermit saw an altered world. She may have accepted one of my fundamental contentions that human beings, not gender or sex, form the baseline for culture. Gender is one of the tools humans use to fashion identities and communities. Historical experience is another. From common building blocks people who came to identify themselves (and be identified by others) as Delaware crafted political institutions, religious ceremonies, and rhetorical language based on an understanding of gender as a balancing principle requiring the cooperation of men and women. I have identified peacemaking rituals, an emphasis on strict gender balance in subsistence and ceremonies, women as agents in religious encounters and as prophetesses, and the metaphoric adoption of womanhood as interlinked aspects that I argue are more or less unique to LenapeDelaware identification. I have attempted to demonstrate how they grew out of a combination of historically specific experiences and an understanding of gender as malleable. The political role of peacemaking that the Delawares had taken upon themselves required constant mediation and incorporations of strangers into networks of kin. It grew out of their early encounters with Swedes and Dutch that allowed successful development of rituals designed to establish peace. The early depletion of furbearing animals in their region influenced subsistence practices and hindered men from achieving economic advantages as in the southern colonies. The appearance of the Moravians, who also emphasized peace and offered a visible place for women, in all probability strengthened Delaware women in their responsibility for lineage and house. All these developments served to keep balance and cooperation between genders as the ideal. The household as a locus for lineage and kin-making, with brothers and sisters constituting the fundamental dyad, emerged as the central cohesive force in Delaware society. Some women—as well as men—clearly found solace in the side hole of the crucified Lamb, for others salvation lay in adhering to ancient ways and they sought to adapt them to their new world. In addition to being personal choices, their actions had consequences for the nascent United States. If women had not furnished provisions, Shingas could not have led his warriors on the raids against outlying settlements that earned him the nickname “the Terrible.” If women had not stitched the white wampum beads into belts of peace, Tamaqua, White Eyes, and other chiefs could not have worked so tirelessly to seek to stem the flow of blood on the frontier. With-

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out women’s participation in prophecy, cultural preservation, and adaptation, the Delawares could not have emerged as a nation or maintained an identity into this century. Without their staunch cooperation the Delawares as a nation of women would have been just the slur so many observers have taken it to be. Some commentators found the Delawares to be the most acculturated of all the Indians. Yet in both peace and war, abroad and at home, Delaware men and women demonstrated that mixing and adaptations were choices dependent on conditions and did not simply happen. The combined efforts of Tamaqua and Shingas during the Seven Years War to work for peace, while simultaneously deciding how much encroachment and harassment the Delawares would accept, showed such design. Likewise Beata’s reasoned choices of metaphors to deliver a message of renewal grew out of practices of conditional adaptations. Again and again leaders as well as individuals weighed the advantages of contacts with strangers against the possibilities of maintaining life and lineage ties that could carry them into an unknown future. But the gender frontier was rapidly closing. From the earliest encounters on the shores of the Delaware River to the hills and plains of Oklahoma, white men have chosen to ignore the existence of unfamiliar gender structures, boosted a reliance on males, and worked to install hierarchies that benefited dominance over land, property, and women. By 1800 a new nation set the rules, and Indian household patterns and gender relations would be targeted to fit its expectations of civilization. How much of the gender anxiety in the early Republic was connected to the Delaware nation of women? That question is beyond the scope of this book. But for peacemaking to become a masculine endeavor, endowing free men with valor, it had to be wrested away from Indian matrons—whether they be male or female.

Abbreviations

APS

American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

Heckewelder, History

John Heckewelder, An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations; Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighbouring States. Philadelphia: Abraham Small, 1819.

Heckewelder, Communications

Communications made to the Historical and Literary Committee & to Members of the American Philosophical Society, on the Subject of the History, Manner & Languages of the American Indians. By the Revd John Heckewelder. 1821. APS.

Hesselius

“Magister Andreae Hesselii anmärkningar om hans resa till Åmerika och vistande där 1711–1724.” Svenska Linnésällskapets Årsskrift 21 (1938) : 95–145.

HSP

Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Indian Treaties

Indian Treaties printed by Benjamin Franklin 1736–1762, with an Introduction by Carl Van Doren and Historical & Biographical Notes by Julian P. Boyd. Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1938.

KB

Kungliga Biblioteket (Royal Library), Stockholm.

MAB

Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.

MPCP

Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, From the Organization to the Termination of the Proprietary Government, ed. Samuel Hazard. Harrisburg, Pa.: Theophilus Fenn, 1838–1853.

212

Abbreviations

NEM

Narratives of Early Maryland 1633–1684, ed. Clayton Colman Hall. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910.

NEP

Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey and Delaware 1630–1707, ed. Albert Cook Myers. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912.

NNN

Narratives of New Netherland 1609–1664, ed. J. Franklin Jameson. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909.

NYHM

New York Historical Manuscript: Dutch. Delaware Papers XVIII–XXI, ed. Charles T. Gehring. Baltimore: Genealogical Company, 1977, 1981.

OHS

Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

PA

Pennsylvania Archives, ed. Samuel Hazard et al. (1st ser., vols. I–XII). Philadelphia: J. Severns, 1852–1856.

RA

Riksarkivet (National Archives), Stockholm.

WHC

Western History Collection, Norman, Oklahoma.

UUB

Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek (Uppsala University Library), Uppsala

Zeisberger, History

David Zeisberger’s History of North American Indians, ed. Archer Butler Hulbert and William Nathaniel Schwartze, Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications 19 (Columbus: F.J. Heer, 1910).

Notes

Introduction: “We Are But a Women Nation” 1. “Journal of Moses Titamy and Isaac Hill to Minisinks, 1758,” PA III, 505; Paul A. W. Wallace, “Cooper’s Indians,” New York History 35, 4 (October 1954): 423–46; E. M. Ruttenber, History of the Indian Tribes of Hudson’s River (Albany, N.Y.: Munsell, 1872), 69–70; for Cooper’s history of the Delawares as women, see Edwin L. Stockton, Jr., “The Influence of the Moravians upon the Leather-Stocking Tales,” Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society 20, 1 (1964): 61–75. 2. In perceiving early America as a world of convolutions, see Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1991), and Ronald Hoffman, Mechal Sobel, and Fredrika J. Teute, eds., Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1997). That this was also a world of gendered confrontations is most succinctly argued in Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1996). 3. Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700–1835 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 3–4; I have discussed this—and the theoretical questions emanating from this concern—at some length in Gunlög Fur, “‘Some Women Are Wiser Than Some Men’: Gender and Native American History,” in Clearing a Path: Theorizing the Past in Native American Studies, ed. Nancy Shoemaker (New York: Routledge, 2002), 75–106; see also Patricia Albers and Beatrice Medicine, eds., The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983); Gretchen M. Bataille and Kathleen Mullen Sands, eds., American Indian Women: Telling Their Lives (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984); Laura F. Klein and Lillian A. Ackerman, eds., Women and Power in Native North America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995); Virginia Bergman Peters, Women of the Earth Lodges: Tribal Life on the Plains (North Haven, Conn: Archon, 1995); Nancy Shoemaker, ed., Negotiators of Change: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women (New York: Routledge, 1995). 4. In James Merrell’s pathbreaking book on Indian and white go-betweens in the Pennsylvania forests the question of women’s presence (or absence) is dealt with, and then dismissed, under the headline “‘Foolish People and Women’: Silencing Women.” He writes that “both colonists and Indians, from the first, excluded

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one sort altogether: women. . . . In Indian country, too, custom was against a woman fi lling this role. Her place was in the clearing, her domain its houses and fields. Diplomacy, which like hunting and war involved travel through the woods, was by definition a man’s realm.” James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: Norton, 1999), 68–70. 5. Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Patrick D. Hopkins, “Gender Treachery: Homophobia, Masculinity, and Threatened Identities,” in Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality: The Big Questions, ed. Naomi Zack, Laurie Shrage, and Crispin Sartwell (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 168–86. 6. The best discussion of the background to the people who became Delawares is found in Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage 10,000 BC to AD 2000 (Stanhope, N.J.: Lenape Books, 2001), 4–9. Kraft uses Lënapehòking to refer to the land of the Lenape, and states that this term was constructed in the 1980s by Delaware elder Norma Thompson Dean at Kraft’s request. However, Swedish pastor Andreas Sandel reported already in the early eighteenth century the use of a similar term, lenakokin; see Jesper Swedberg, America Illuminata: Skriven och utgiven av dess biskop år 1732, ed. Robert Murray (Stockholm: Proprius förlag, 1985), 96. Johannes Campanius reported that “Renáppi” meant “human being,” and gave the word “hockung” the meaning “tall dwelling, sky,” in Thomas Campanius Holm, Kort Beskrifning om Provincien Nya Swerige uti America, Som nu förtjden af the Engelske kallas Pensylvania (1702), facsimile Suecica Rediviva: A Collection of Facsimile Reprints of Swedish Books 112 (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Rediviva, 1988); Ives Goddard, “Delaware,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast, vol. ed. Bruce G. Trigger (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 213–39; Robert S. Grumet, Historic Contact: Indian People and Colonists in Today’s Northeastern United States in the Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 211–42. 7. Peter Lindeström, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians, trans. Amandus Johnson (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), 157–58; Pehr Kalm, Resejournal över Resan till Norra Amerika II, ed. Martti Kerkkonen and John E. Roos (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1970), 242–43; Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape: Archaeology, History, and Ethnography (Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1986), 118; Peter O. Wacker, Land and People: A Cultural Geography of Preindustrial New Jersey: Origins and Settlement Patterns (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 13–17; C. A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 32; “Relation of Captain Thomas Yong, 1634,” in NEP, 38–41; Grumet, Historic Contact; Peter Lindeström [map] + account, Handskrifter (Documents), E.S., B.X.1, 63, KB. 8. Mary Crow, interviewed 13 February 1984, Oklahoma Living Legends, no. 84.018, OHS; Edward Thompson, interviewed 13 February 1984, Oklahoma Living Legends, no. 84.018, OHS; Julia Hall, interviewed 1937, Indian-Pioneer History, Foreman Collection, vol. 60, WHS; Duane K. Hale, Peacemakers on the Frontier: A History of the Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma (Anadarko: Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma Press, 1987), xv.

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9. Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, 1982), ix. 10. Grumet, Historic Contact, 8; Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 1–9. 11. I elaborate my methodological approach in Gunlög Fur, “Reading Margins: Colonial Encounters in Sapmi and Lenapehoking in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Feminist Studies 32, 3 (Fall 2006): 491–521.

Chapter 1. The Power of Life: Gender and Organization in Lenape Society 1. Nicolaes van Wassenaer, “From the ‘Historisch Verhael’ by Nicolaes van Wassenaer, 1624–1630,” in NNN, 69; David Pietersz. de Vries, “From the ‘Kort historiael ende Journaels aenteyckeninge,’ by David Pietersz. de Vries, 1630–1633, 1643 (1655),” in NEP, 19, 22. 2. David Pieterszen de Vries, “Korte Historiael Ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge,” in NNN, 218–19. 3. Isaack de Rasieres, “Letter to Samuel Blommaert, 1628,” in NNN, 107–8; Adriaen van der Donck, “New Netherlands,” in Collections of the New York Historical Society I, 2nd ser. (New York, 1841), 208; Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 154, 167, 170, 179–80. Abundant sources testify to Lenape maize cropping, see, e.g., William Penn, “Letter to the Society of Traders,” in NEP, 232–33; Gabriel Thomas, “An Historical and Geographical Account of Pensilvania and of West-New-Jersey,” in NEP, 334; Holm, Kort Beskrifning, 125–26, 173–79; Prosten Biörck’s Berettelse om the Christne och Hedningarnas tilstånd i America (1697), Handskriftssamlingarna (Manuscript Collections), K3, UUB; Hesselius, 116; Goddard, “Delaware,” 216. Most historians and anthropologists are in agreement about corn as the basis of Lenape alimentary production, but cf. Marshall Becker for an alternative view. He proposes that Lenapes were primarily foragers, practicing some maize cultivation at their summer stations. Becker, “Hannah Freeman: An Eighteenth-Century Lenape Living and Working Among Colonial Farmers,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 114, 2 (1990): 249–69, and the literature cited there. See Kraft, LenapeDelaware Indian Heritage, 283–85 for a discussion of this controversy. 4. Wassenaer, “Historisch Verhael,” 69, 72; de Rasieres, “Letter,” 107; Lynn Ceci, “Watchers of the Pleiades: Ethnoastronomy Among Native Cultivators in Northeastern North America,” Ethnohistory 25, 4 (1978): 301–17; Clara Sue Kidwell, “Ethnoastronomy as the Key to Human Intellectual Development and Social Organization,” in Native Voices: American Indian Identity & Resistance, ed. Richard A. Grounds, George E. Tinker, and David E. Wilkins (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 5–19. 5. Wacker, Land and People, 71; Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 237; de Vries, “Korte Historiael,” NEP, 15, 21. 6. Israel Acrelius, Beskrifning Om De Swenska Församlingars Tilstånd, Uti Det så kallade Nya Swerige (Stockholm: Harberg & Hesselberg, 1759), 46, 73; Lindeström,

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Geographia Americae, 126, 139, 158–59, 177, 187–88; Kalm, Resejournal II, 390, 408, 409; de Vries, “Korte Historiael,” NNN, 209, 219–20, 222–23; Goddard, “Delaware,” 217; Kraft, Lenape, 126, 139. Harvest calculations from Andreas Hesselius Americanus, Vänskap och Trohet i Döden, eller den Indianska Printzessan Zaletta, Tragoedia i fem Öpningar (Stockholm, 1740), 21. He used the Swedish measure of tunna (barrel); 1 tunna equaled 147 liters; Carolyn Merchant, Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 75, 80, 297; Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 179–80. 7. Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 213–14; de Vries, “Korte Historiael,” NNN, 220; Kraft, Lenape, 155–56; Carol Barnes, “Subsistence and Social Organization of the Delaware Indians: 1600 A.D.” Bulletin of the Philadelphia Anthropological Society 1, 1 (1968): 23. 8. Johan de Laet, “New World,” NNN, 57; Wassenaer, “Historisch Verhael,” 69–71, 77; de Rasieres, “Letter,” 105–6; de Vries, “Korte Historiael,” NNN, 218–23; de Vries, “Korte Historiael,” NEP, 15, 21; Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 123–26; 221; William W. Newcomb, The Culture and Acculturation of the Delaware Indians, Anthropological Papers 10 (University of Michigan: Museum of Anthropology, 1956), 21, 25–29. Concerning adjacent peoples, see Helen C. Rountree, The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 88–100; Perdue, Cherokee Women, 17–40; Kathleen J. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 1500–1650 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996). 9. de Rasieres, “Letter,” 105, 107, 108; Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 123–24, 202; van der Donck, “New Netherland,” 207–8; “A Narrative of the Captivity of John McCullough” (hereafter McCullough) in Archibald Loudon, A Selection, of Some of the Most Interesting Narratives, of Outrages, Committed by the Indians, I (Carlisle, Pa.: Loudon, 1808–11), 313; Marion Morse Davies, ed., History of the Capture and Captivity of David Boyd from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 1756 (hereafter Boyd), 1931, Garland Library of Narratives of North American Indian Captivities 9 (New York: Garland, 1977), 34. 10. Mona Étienne and Eleanor Leacock, eds., Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Praeger, 1980), 8–9; Karen Anderson, “Commodity Exchange and Subordination: Montagnais-Naskapi and Huron Women, 1600–1650,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11, 1 (1985): 48–62; Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 109. 11. “A Relation of Maryland,” NEM, 75; Jasper Danckaerts, “Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679–1680,” in Original Narratives of Early American History, ed. Bartlett Burleigh James and J. Franklin Jameson (New York: Scribner’s, 1913), 159–60. 12. Gladys Tantaquidgeon, Folk Medicine of the Delaware and Related Algonkian Indians (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1972), 8, 11, 12, 18; Boyd, 33; McCullough, 307–8, 313, 353–54; David Jones, A Journal of Two Visits Made to Some Nations of Indians on the West Side of the River Ohio, In the Year 1772 and 1773 (Burlington, N.J., 1774; New York: for Joseph Sabin, 1865), 59; Hesselius, 124. Another indication of the connection between the female and healing properties is that when ill Indians would not eat of an animal that was not female,

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see Penn, “Letter,” 233; Francis Daniel Pastorius, “Circumstantial Geographical Description of Pennsylvania, 1700,” in NEP, 434. 13. Van der Donck, “New Netherlands,” 217–18; Holm, Kort Beskrifning, 111–12; Danckaerts, “Journal,” 77–78. This link is made specific in Regula Trenkwalder Schönenberger, Lenape Women, Matriliny, and the Colonial Encounter: Resistance and Erosion of Power (ca. 1600–1876) (Bern: Peter Lang, 1991), 162–63, 176–78. My own more cautious approach is based on the scarcity of obvious references in the early sources; see also Nancy Shoemaker, “Introduction,” in Negotiators of Change, 8; on women and peacemaking; Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and SPAniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), particularly chap. 1. 14. Wassenaer, “Historisch Verhael,” 72; de Vries, “Korte Historiael,” NNN, 222–23; Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 208, 214–15, 247; Holm, Kort Beskrifning, 148; Kalm, Resejournal II, 289–90; van der Donck, “New Netherlands,” 214– 16; Herbert C. Kraft, “The Religion of the Delaware Indians,” Bulletin of the New Jersey Academy of Science 13, 1 (Spring 1968): 50, 54; Mark R. Harrington, “Some Customs of the Delaware Indians,” Museum Journal, University of Pennsylvania 1, 3 (1910): 54. 15. Andrew White, “Extracts from the Annual Letters of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 1639,” in NEM, 125; Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 126– 30; “Risingh’s Journal,” in Stellan Dahlgren and Hans Norman, The Rise and Fall of New Sweden: Governor Johan Risingh’s Journal 1654–1655 in Its Historical Context (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1988), 174–78. 16. John Bierhorst, Mythology of the Lenape (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995), 117–21. 17. McCullough, 306–7; “Colonel Smith’s Captivity,” in Indian Captivities or Life in the Wigwam, ed. Samuel G. Drake (Auburn: Derby and Miller, 1851), 185–86; John Heckewelder, Thirty Thousand Miles with John Heckewelder, ed. Paul A. W. Wallace (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1958), 177–79, 321; see also Daniel K. Richter, “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 40 (1983): 528–59; Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 1995), 325. 18. Marshall J. Becker, “Lenape Maize Sales to the Swedish Colonists: Cultural Stability During the Early Colonial Period,” in New Sweden in America, ed. Carol E. Hoffecker, Richard Waldron, Lorraine E. Williams, and Barbara E. Benson (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), 121–36; Gunlög Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 202–4. See also Kalm, Resejournal II, 409. 19. Interviews with Delaware elders indicate the disappearance of ceremonies as a consequence of a loss of dreams: Anna Anderson Davis, interviewed 5 August 1968, American Indian Oral History, T-298, Doris Duke Collection, WHC; Edward Thompson, Oklahoma Living Legends, OHS. On tradition and planning for the future see Étienne and Leacock, Introduction (5) and Diane Rothenberg, “The Mothers of the Nation: Seneca Resistance to Quaker Intervention,” in Women and

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Notes to Pages 27–29

Colonization, 63–87; see also Patricia C. Albers, “Marxism and Historical Materialism in American Indian History,” in Shoemaker, ed., Clearing a Path, 116–17. 20. Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 197–200; Stephen R. Potter, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs: The Development of Algonkian Culture in the Potomac Valley (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 211–20; Rountree, Powhatan Indians, 100–113; Margaret M. Caffrey, “Complementary Power: Men and Women of the Lenni Lenape,” American Indian Quarterly 24, 1 (2000), 54; Grumet, Historic Contact, 197. 21. Grumet, Historic Contact, 232; Kraft, Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage, 249–50; on analogy with Iroquois, see Anthony F. C. Wallace, “Women, Land, and Society: Three Aspects of Aboriginal Delaware Life,” Pennsylvania Archaeologist 17, 1–2 (1947): 6, 11; Penn, “Letter,” 235; Zeisberger, History, 98. 22. De Laet, “New World,” 57–58; Wassenaer, “Historisch Verhael,” 70; Peter Lindeström, En kort relation ock beskrifning öfwer Nya Sweriges Situation ock beskaffenhet (1654), Rålambs samling, No. 201, KB; Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 171; also de Vries, “Korte Historiael,” in NEP, 20; “Representation of New Netherland,” in NNN, 30. 23. Robert S. Grumet, “Sunksquaws, Shamans, and Tradeswomen: Middle Atlantic Coastal Algonkian Women During the 17th and 18th Centuries,” in Étienne and Leacock, eds., Women and Colonization, 43–63. Other references to women chiefs are found in MPCP II, 420, 578–80; MPCP III, 80, 603; Donald H. Kent, ed., Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, vol. 1 of Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws 1607–1789 (Washington, D.C.: University of America Publications, 1979), 138, 124–25; Donald H. Kent, ed., Pennsylvania Treaties, 1737–1756, vol. 2 in Early American Indian Documents, 186; Jones, Journal of Two Visits, 87–89 describes meeting a Shawnee woman who was the chief of a mixed Shawnee and Delaware town. 24. It may be argued that the civil chief embodied all genders, to the extent that he—or she—provided a link between men and women. At a Munsee-Mahican bear ceremony women sat on the east side, and men on the west, while the chief sat on a bench between, half of his body on the women’s side and the other half on the men’s side. David Rockwell, Giving Voice to Bear (Niwot, Colo.: Robert Rinehart, 1991), 165–72. 25. Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 73–77; Ada van Gastel, “Van der Donck’s Description of the Indians: Additions and Corrections,” William and Mary Quarterly 47, 3 (1990): 418–21; Penn, “Letter,” 233, 234–36; Wassenaer, “Historisch Verhael,” 69–70, 77; Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, document 5, 59. 26. Penn, “Letter,” 233. 27. Wassenaer, “Historisch Verhael,” 69–70 Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 117; de Rasieres, “Letter,” 109. 28. “Colonel Smith’s captivity,” 257; “every town has its head-men, some of which are by us called kings; but by what I can learn this appellation is by the Indians given to none, only as they learned it from us,” Jones, Journal of Two Visits, 73. 29. Holm, Kort Beskrifning, 139–41; also Penn, in NEP, 234–35. The text is so similar that one can suspect that Holm based his account on Penn’s, yet Holm’s later description of an actual council gotten from his grandfather Johannes Campanius,

Notes to Pages 32–39

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confirms the account from a much earlier source; van der Donck, “New Netherlands,” 202–3. Women provided food for hunting and war expeditions, and with that as a lever, it is likely that their opinions weighed heavily on any decision, see Wallace, “Women, Land, and Society,” 9, 11, 13–14; Wassenaer, “Historisch Verhael,” 80. 30. “& thus every individual, who have any right must be fully acquainted with the Matter,” Lenape sachem Nutimus explained to John Logan in 1735. Quoted from Anthony F. C. Wallace, King of the Delawares: Teedyuscung 1700–1763 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1949, 1990), 21–22. 31. For a view of the European interests, see Amandus Johnson, The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware, 1638–1664 II (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1911), 418–20, 434–43; C. A. Weslager, The Swedes and Dutch at New Castle (New York: Middle Atlantic Press, 1987), 65–74; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 76–78. My interpretation also in Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 127–31. 32. Letter 13 July 1651, Handel och Sjöfart, 194: Köpebrev med indianerna 1651– 1652, RA. I thank Wim Klooster for his help in translating the Dutch text of the documents. 33. Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 109, 150; Grumet, “Sunksquaws, Shamans, and Tradeswomen,” 49; Penn, “Letter,” 234–35; Holm, Kort Beskrifning, 140–43; Schönenberger, Lenape Women, 175. 34. Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, document 11, 12, (emphasis mine). Later on, in 1654, when the new Swedish governor Johan Risingh reproached him for selling land to the Dutch, Peminacka could truthfully claim that “the land had not been sold to the Dutch. In return for presents they had given him, he had promised them they could build houses and a fort there,” Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 189; on the distinction between donation and sale, see Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 120–25. 35. Letters 3 July 1651 + 16 July 1651, Handel och Sjöfart, 194: Köpebrev med indianerna 1651–1652, RA. 36. Fur, “Reading Margins,” 509–10. 37. Zeisberger, History, 16, 81–82, 92, 98; John Heckewelder, Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren Among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians (Philadelphia: McCarthy and & Davis, 1820), 164, 166–67; Jones, Journal of Two Visits, 78; Zeisberger, History, 92–100. 38. John Heckewelder, Notes, amendments & additions to Heckewelder’s history of the Indians (1820), APS; Heckewelder, History, 268–70. For development of ethnic differentiation and cohesion among Delawares in Ohio see Amy C. Schutt, “Forging Identities: Native Americans and Moravian Missionaries in Pennsylvania and Ohio, 1765–1782” (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1995); Amy C. Schutt, “Tribal Identity in the Moravian Missions on the Susquehanna,” Pennsylvania History 66, 3 (Summer 1999): 378–98. 39. Hesselius, 130. 40. Rayna Green, “The Pocahontas Perplex: The Image of Indian Women in American Culture,” Massachusetts Review (Autumn 1975): 698–714. 41. “Meeting at John Harris’s, 5 April, 1757,” and “Meeting at Easton, 8 October 1758,” in Indian Treaties, 170, 215–16; Council held at Easton, 10 November 1756 and subsequent days, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Indian Committee records, AA1,

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Notes to Pages 40–44

231–36, Quaker Collection, Haverford College. A special thanks to Jean R. Soderlund for bringing this source to my attention. 42. Thomas Chalk[l]ey, A Journal or, Historical Account of the Life, Travels and Christian Experiences . . . (London, 1751), 50. On the close ties between Conestogas (Susquehannocks) and Delawares, see Grumet, Historic Contact, 311–16; MPCP II, 578–81; MPCP III, 45, 80, 603; Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 124–25, 138. Klein and Ackerman, eds., Women and Power, 14. 43. Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 4, 240, 249, 251; others argue that the distinction between public and private has been exaggerated also in histories of Europe, e.g., Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).Women’s ritual responsibilities in mourning ceremonies point to roles as guardians of the border between life and death, van der Donck, “New Netherlands,” 202; Heckewelder, History, 270–74. On cultural brokers, see Nancy L. Hagedorn, “‘Faithful, Knowing, and Prudent’: Andrew Montour as Interpreter and Cultural Broker 1740–1772,” in Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker, ed. Margaret Connell Szasz (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994,) 46, 50–51. On women’s danger to hunters and warriors, see Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The Native American Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 6–8; Perdue, Cherokee Women, 30, 34–35, 71. 44. “Letter of Pennsylvania Indians to the King of England,” in A. C. Myers, ed., William Penn’s Own Account of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians (Wallingford, Pa.: Middle Atlantic Press, 1970), 95; Logan Papers, vol. XI: Indian Affairs, No. 11:2, HSP; George Alsop, A character of the province of Mary-Land (London, 1666); MPCP II 578–81; Francis Jennings, “Susquehannock,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast, ed. Bruce G. Trigger (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 366; Donald A. Cadzow, Archaeological Studies of the Susquehannock Indians of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical Commission, 1936), 203–4. That there was a woman leader in Conestoga during several decades seems uncontestable. How she was known is more uncertain. The difficulty of reading the records has allowed for some confusion. In one account she is named Ojuncho, which so far as I can determine was the name of a male chief; see William Parker Foulke, “Notes Respecting the Indians of Lancaster County, Pa.” Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania 4, 2 (1850): 204–5. 45. Van der Donck, “New Netherlands,” 199. 46. Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 185–97. 47. Holm, Kort Beskrifning, 68–70; Campanius to the Archbishop, 30 January 1647, FVIII, 1647, Uppsala Landsarkiv (Regional State Archive), Uppsala; Andreas Hesselius, Kort Berettelse om Then Swenska Kyrkios närwarande Tilstånd i America, Samt oförgripeliga tankar om theß förkofring (Norkiöping, 1725), 3–4. 48. Kalm, Resejournal II, 230–31; Prosten Biörck’s Berettelse; An Indian’s Answer to a Swedish Missionary, 1704, Cox-Parrish-Wharton Papers 1600–1900, HSP; Danckaerts, “Journal,” 201–11, quote 204. 49. “Andreas Hesselius till Kungl. Rådet Greve Gustaf Cronhjelm, dat.

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Christina uti Pensylvanien den 1 december 1712,” appendix 2 in Hesselius, 144; Hesselius, 124. 50. Kraft, “Religion of the Delaware Indians,” 55; Tantaquidgeon, Folk Medicine, 7–15. 51. Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 140–41; Kalm, Resejournal II, 322; Mary Crow, Oklahoma Living Legends, OHS; Bessie Hunter Snake, interviewed 18 June 1967, American Indian Oral History, no. T-88, Doris Duke Collection, WHC; Leona Parton, interviewed 22 April 1938, WPA: Indian-Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma, no. 10500, OHS; Lynette Perry and Manny Skolnick, Keeper of the Delaware Dolls (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). 52. Hesselius, 133; MPCP III, 149–52; Sabine Lang, Men as Women, Women as Men: Changing Gender in Native American Cultures (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 171–76; Schönenberger, Lenape Women, 210–11; Will Roscoe, Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 11. 53. Chalkley, Journal, 50–51. 54. Andreas Rudman to Jacob Arrhenius, October 1697, B.X.1, 63: Handlingar rörande Svenska Församlingen i Pensylvanien, RA; NYHM XX, 18, 103; Kalm, Resejournal II, 289; Acrelius, Beskrifning, 46; see also Pehr Kalm, Resejournal över Resan till Norra Amerika IV, John E. Roos and Harry Krogerus, eds. (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1988), 238. 55. NYHM XIX, 235, 243, 264, 306–14, 321; Francis Jennings, “Indians and Frontiers in Seventeenth-Century Maryland,” in Early Maryland in a Wider World, ed. David B. Quinn (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1982), 223; Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travel and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791(Cleveland: Burrows Brothers, 1896–1901), 48, 77–79. 56. NYHM XIX, 337; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 262–77.

Chapter 2. Living Traditions in Times of Turmoil: Meniolagomekah 1. Quote from Merrell, Into the American Woods, 70; Joy Bilharz, “First Among Equals? The Changing Status of Seneca Women,” in Klein and Ackerman, eds., Women and Power, 103; Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1992), 22–24. 2. Stefan Hertrampf, “Unsere Indianer-Geschwister waren lichte und vergnügt”: Die Herrnhuter als Missionare bei den Indianern Pennsylvanias 1745–1765 (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997), 185–86, 189; Siegrun Kaiser, “Four Cases of Delaware Land Loss and the Moravian Church,” in Religion and Identity in the Americas: Anthropological Perspectives from Colonial Times to the Present, ed. Brigitte Hülsewiede and Ingo W. Schröder (Möckmühl: Saurwein, 1997), 137–38.

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3. Box 116, Folder 3, 1/7/1748, MAB (hereafter Moravian sources will be identified with B: box number, F: folder and/or item number, and date as month/day/ year). The name of the village was spelled somewhat differently in various sources. It has also been rendered as Meniolalomegock, Melelagamegak, Meniolagomek, Meniwolagamekah, Mælilagamégak. J. Max Hark, “Meniolágoméka—Annals of a Moravian Indian Village an Hundred and Thirty Years Ago,” Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society 2 (1886): 131. Hark suggests that the name meant FatLand-in-the-midst-of-Barrens; B116, F.4, 10/19/1748, 11/6/1748; F.5, 4/15/1749; F.6, 7/28/1749, 7/29/1749, 8/18/1749, 8/27/1749, 9/9/1749; F.7, 2/6/1750, 3/8/1750; family relationships from B313, “Generalia, Catalogs,” F.3, Bethlehem Church Register: Catalog of Baptized Indians 1742–1746, MAB. 4. Hertrampf, “Unsere Indianer-Geschwister”, 185–90; George H. Loskiel, Geschichte der Mission der evangelischen Brüder unter den Indianern in Nordamerika (Barby, 1789), 394–96, 415, 418; Heckewelder, History, 40–41, 44; Jane T. Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians & Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2003), 184–86. 5. B116, F.7, 4/2/1750; Hark, “Meniolágoméka,” 129–31: not only Zinzendorf but several other early missionaries passed through the town in the 1740s: “Indeed those rude little huts of skin and bark were often graced with the presence of saints and heroes whom we shall count it an honor, and blissful, once to meet in the glorious mansions of the New Jerusalem.” 6. Amy C. Schutt stresses the importance of female cross-cultural relationships in the Moravian mission towns. She fi nds that these contacts were especially firm during the early years of mission activity but declined at a time when the church began to restrict women’s public roles, “Female Relationships and Intercultural Bonds in Moravian Indian Missions,” in Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania, ed. William A. Pencak and Daniel K. Richter (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 87–103. 7. Ralph M. Radloff, Moravian Mission Methods Among the Indians of Ohio (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1973); Amy C. Schutt, “‘What Will Become of Our Young People?’: Goals for Indian Children in Moravian Missions,” History of Education Quarterly 38, 3 (1998). 8. Radloff, Moravian Mission Methods, 93–96; Earl P. Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware: David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier (Kent, Oh.: Kent State University Press, 1991), 21–23; Christopher P. Gavaler, “The Empty Lot: Spiritual Contact in Lenape and Moravian Religious Beliefs,” American Indian Quarterly 18, 2 (1994): 215–27. 9. Carola Wessel, “Missionary Diaries as a Source for Native American Studies: David Zeisberger and the Delaware,” European Review of Native American Studies 10, 2 (1996): 31–37; B177, F.4, 11/25/1753; B122, F.3, 6/6/1753. 10. See lists in B119, F.2, #2, 1/1/1752; #4, Aug 1752; F.3, #2, 10/22/1753. 11. This chapter is based on “Meniolagomekah diaries, 1752–1754,” found in B122, also for a few months in “Gnadenhütten, Pa, Diaries 1750–1753,” B177, F.4. Quotes will be specifically noted; B122, F.3, 2/25/1753; F.1, 5/11–25/1752; F.3, 4/4/1753.

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Siblings (Geschwister) is the most common collective reference to the baptized brothers and sisters. 12. B122, F.1, 2/6/1752. Alison Duncan Hirsch describes women as “often the silent partners in the trade” networks and “essential to it,” “Indian, Métis, and EuroAmerican Women on Multiple Frontiers,” in Pencak and Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods, 63–84, quote 73. 13. B122, F.3, 8/6/1753; Jane T. Merritt, “Cultural Encounters Along a Gender Frontier: Mahican, Delaware, and German Women in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania History 67 (2000): 525–27. Merritt suggests that involvement in the Euro-American market of exchange and labor where men’s work was more highly valued than women’s may have influenced the way in which women’s labor was perceived by the Indians themselves. 14. B122, F.1, 5/11/1752; F.3, 5/8/1753, 6/5/1753; McCullough, 313; Herrnhuter Indianermission in der Amerikanischen Revolution: Die Tagebücher von David Zeisberger 1772 bis 1781, ed. Hermann Wellenreuther and Carola Wessel (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995), 113, 278, 339, 381; see also descriptions of village life and chores in A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, by James E. Seaver, ed. June Namias (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992, 1995), 81, 84; Zeisberger, History, 82. 15. Wallace, “Women, Land, and Society,” 9, 11–12; e.g., Schutt, “Tribal Identity.” 16. B125, F.3 6/30/1762. 17. B122, F.1, 5/13/1752; 5/17/1752; F.3, 5/14/1753; F.2 7/14/1752; B319, F.4 Generalia—Indians, Christian, “Zeugniße von den braunen Geschwistern in Gnadenhütten Anno 1753.” In addition there is “Catalogus von Gnadenhütten und Meniwolagomeka vom 1tn Jan. 1752,” B119, F.2, #2; “Gnadenhütten, Meniolagomeka, Patgatgoch, etc—undated early in 1754,” B119, F.3, #6. 18. Merrell, Into the American Woods, 140–43, quote 262; Merritt, “Cultural Encounters,” 525. 19. B116, F.7, 2/7/1750. 20. B118, F.6, #6, 7/24/1755; F.3, 7/24/1753, 8/4/1753; B177, F.4, 11/24/1753. 21. Matthew 10:37. Verse 35–36 reads: “For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her motherin-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household” (NIV); Hertrampf, Unsere Indianer-Geschwister, 251–59. 22. B122, F.1, 5/18/1752; F.2 10/25/1752, 10/26/1752. 23. B122, F.3, 2/16/1754. 24. On only six occasions do the diaries record comings and goings of unidentified “strangers,” suggesting that this is a vastly underreported category; Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, 87–88, 93–95; Helen C. Rountree discovered when she set out to recreate a day in the life of a Powhatan village, that women were not as sedentary as she had expected: “Before I began the list, I had the usual Euro-American view of Indian women as stay-at-homes; now I know better,” “Powhatan Indian Women: The People Captain John Smith Barely Saw,” Ethnohistory 45, 1 (1998): 2. 25. Zeisberger, History, 99, 123. For accounts of violence in surrounding towns, see McCullough, 316–17; Jones, Journal of Two Visits, 26, 58, 69–70; James H. Merrell,

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“Shamokin, ‘The Very Seat of the Prince of Darkness’: Unsettling the Early American Frontier,” in Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750–1830, ed. Andrew R. L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1998), 16–59. 26. According to Hertrampf the tensions between converts and unbaptized were nowhere more obvious than in Meniolagomekah, Unsere Indianer-Geschwister, 252–53; B122, F.3, 7/15/1753; B117, F.4, 7/31/1753; B115, F.1, 7/26/1754; B116, F.5 #1, 7/1/1749; F.7 #1, 4/13/1750; B114, F.3 6/15–16/1751; F.8, 9/4/1753. For Augustus’s efforts to create a union of Christian Indians, see also B118, F.5, 5/19/1755. Other conflicts between Augustus and Teedyuscung (Gideon) in PA II, 729–30; B125, F.3 6/30/1762; 10/15/1762; Merritt, At the Crossroads, 208–10, 271. 27. B152, F.1, 11/3/1783; Bethlehem Diary January–June 1760, XXI, MAB; B127, F.2, 8/8/1764. 28. B122, F.3, 12/1/1753; B125, F.1, 5/1/1758; B124, F.2, 3/22/1761, 4/7/1761, 4/22/1761, 9/4–5/1761, 9/12/1761; B127, F.2, 3/17/1764; on Teedyuscung at Easton 1758, see Wallace, King of the Delawares, 92–207. The assignation of Anton and Nathanael as Unami or Munsee Indians is difficult to make, see Herrnhuter Indianermission, n 300, 159. For Samuel and Maria, see B122, F.1, 5/12/1752, 5/13/1752, 5/28/1752; F.2, 7/7/1752, 10/31/1752; F.2, 10/16/1752. F.3, 2/28/1754. 29. B122, F.2, 10/16/1752. 30. Zeisberger, History, 24–25; Heckewelder, History, 220–21; Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 239; Van der Donck, “New-Netherlands,” 208; Letter from Johan Thelin, Andreas Rudman, Eric Biörck, 30 October 1697, Westin 1208, Handskriftssamlingarna (Manuscript Collections), UUB; Kalm, Resejournal II, 175, 246. Thomas Budd, Good Order Established in Pennsylvania and New-Jersey in America: Being a True Account of the Country; with its Produce and Commodities there made in the year 1685 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1971), 69. 31. Herrnhuter Indianermission, for Zeisberger’s statement, 250; for references to women/girls seeking baptism, 153, 263–64, 280, 299, 331, 338, 426, 447, 487, 538; Jane T. Merritt, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood: Moravians and the Indian Great Awakening in Pennsylvania,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 54, 4 (1997): 745. 32. B122, F.3, 10/23–28 1753. 33. B122, F.3, 2/27/1754, 2/28/1754; 5/24/1753; Nathanael’s travels on account of illness, B122, F.3, 5/17/1753, 5/24/1753; Tantaquidgeon, Folk Medicine, 7–8, remedies 31, 33, 37, 43–44; Lindeström, Geographia Americae also mentioned particular remedies for pregnant women and newly delivered mothers. 34. B122, F.1, 5/22/1752; 6/1/1752; 6/10/1752 (Grube’s quote); Heckewelder, History, 158. 35. B177, F.4, 11/21/1753 (emphasis mine); B122, F.2, 10/6/1752; B177, F.4, 11/27/1753, 12/1/1753; cf. also B121, 3/3/1748: the Shamokin diarist notes “had no flesh confir’d with eich other how to get a little, in the Evening a Dellaware Woman brought & gave a fine fresh pice hir husband being just comn from hunting.” 36. One source has Naemi’s father as Wampanoag and her mother as Delaware, B124, F.2, 11/14/1760. Wampanoag may actually refer to a group the Moravians

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also called Wompanosch, and have been identified as eastern New England Indians, see Schutt, “Tribal Identity,” 382; B116, F.5, 5/8/1749. 37. B122, F.2, 8/12/1752. 38. B122, F.2, 7/17/1752, 7/21/1752, 8/3/1752, 4/4/1753, 4/10/1753, 4/30/1753, 9/2/1753, 10/5/1753; B116, F.5, 5/15/1749; B177, F.4, 11/20/1753, 11/27/1753, 12/1/1753. 39. B118, F.5, #18, 5/19/1755; B118, F.5, #21, 5/25/1755; B118, F.6, #2, 7/13/1755. I have been unable to determine the nature of the kinship, which Augustus opposed. It is possible that Joachim and Anna Rosina belonged to the same clan, as this is often a cause for complaints against the suggestions of the missionaries. 40. B118, F.6, #3, 7/20/1755; it is difficult to determine what it meant that the woman was of another nation. It could mean that she belonged to another clan than Augustus, or that she was a Munsee Delaware rather than a Unami, or that she perhaps was Wampanoag, see note 38; cf. Merritt, At the Crossroads, 137, n10. 41. B118, F.6, #6, 7/24/1755; about Augustus’s spiritual state see also B118, F.5, #21, 5/25/1755; the lot had been consulted at an earlier occasion and come out negative regarding marriage plans for Augustus, see B119, F.1, #10.8, 3/10/1754. 42. B118, F.6, #13, 9/22/1755; B124, F.3, 6/30/1762, 10/1/1762, 10/5/1762, 10/15/1762. 43. B127, F.2, 8/8/1764; B131, F.1 “Diary of the journey of Schmick and Zeisberger with the Indians from Nain and Wechquetank to the Susquehanna, to Machilusing,” 5/9/1765. 44. W. C. Reichel, “Wyalusing, and the Moravian Mission at Friedenshuetten,” Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society 1 (1876): 191; Schutt discusses changes in Delaware perceptions of the spiritual connections between hunter and keeper of the game and suggests an increased tendency to identify a single keeper of the game as both a reaction to the monotheism of Christianity and as a sign of an increased tribal identity, in Schutt, “Forging Identities,” 23–26; Merritt finds that “just as Indian dreams could have Christian meaning, Indian rituals could encompass the Christian God’s providence.” If properly invoked, the Lamb of God could offer hunting fortune just as well as animal spirits, Merritt, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood,” 740–41. 45. Herrnhuter Indianermission, 259–60, 537, quote from 540. 46. B122, F.3, 6/19 1753; B177, F.4, 11/21/1753, 11/24/1753, 11/26/1753; B117, F.3, 11/25/1752; B116, F.6, 7/29/1749. 47. B122, F.3, 10/8 1753; Robert S. Grumet, “The Minisink Settlements: Native American Identity and Society in the Munsee Heartland, 1650–1779,” in The People of Minisink, ed. David G. Orr and Douglas V. Campana (Philadelphia: National Park Service, 1991), 195. 48. Actual planting work is mentioned only 21 times, the rest deal with buildings and repairs, and a few mentions of berry picking and fishing; B122, F.1, 5/11/1752, 6/16/1752, 5/28/1752, 6/7/1752; F.3, 5/10/1753; Jones, Journal of Two Visits, 78. 49. B119, F.1, #4:16, 9/2/1749; B122, F.3, 5/22/1753, also B122, F.1, 5/29/1752, 5/30/1752; B122, F.3, 2/13/1753, 2/19/1753. 50. Delawares continued to reiterate that women owned houses and gardens; see Nora Thompson Dean, “Delaware Indian Reminiscences,” Bulletin of

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Notes to Pages 87–98

the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 35 (1978); B171, F.7, 10/3/1800; B171, F.6, 1/20/1800; Merritt argues that “by the 1750s, Christian Indian men were an integral part of agriculture,” and supports that with a quote from Meniolagomekah: “Jonathan and David from Gnadenhitt wass here to help hoe Corn” (B 122, F.2, 7/14/1752), in Merritt, “Cultural Encounters,” 524. I believe that she has exaggerated this change. July was not a major hunting period and instead earlier sources indicate that the summer was a time of congregation and communal efforts in several areas. 51. B122, F.1, 5/15/1752, 6/17/1752; F.3 6/19/1753; 10/1/1753; 11/23/1753. 52. William C. Reichel, ed., Memorials of the Moravian Church I (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1870), 211–12, 300, also 269 example of women participating in treaty meetings; B124, F.2, 9/12/1761; Schutt “Tribal Identity,” 385. 53. B122, F.1, 5/17/1752, 5/30/1752; F.3, 5/5/1753. 54. B125, F.1, 11/19/1758; B122, F.3, 4/13/1753, 5/11/1753, 5/15/1753; B122, F.3, 4/9– 10/1753; B124, F.4, 7/27/1763. 55. B122, F.3, 3/23–28/1753; B124, F.2, 7/15/1761, 7/24–25/1761, 7/30/1761, 8/23/1761, 10/4/1761. 56. B122, F.3, 2/9/1754 on absence from communion; B125, F.1, 11/19/1758; B135, F.2, 10/1/1768. 57. B177, F.4, 11/20/1753. 58. B122, F.3, 7/31/1753, similarly, when the brothers are away hunting, Büninger also takes leave of the village. B122, F.3, 9/21/1753; B122, F.3, 1/29–30/1754. 59. B177, F.4, 11/21/1753; B122, F.3, 4/4/1753; for more references to the condition of the heart, see B122, F.1, 5/12/1752, 5/28/1752; F.2, 10/31/1752; F.3, 4/5/1753, 5/2/1753, 10/13/1753, 6/29/1753. 60. B177, F.4, 12/2–4/1753; B122, F.3, 4/23/1753. 61. B122, F.1, 5/30/1752. Grube’s diary suggests that a real friendship developed between him and Augustus. Grube describes their interaction with great fondness. 62. B122, F.3, 6/26/1753; F.3, 6/23/1753; B319, F.4, “Generalia—Indians, Christian;” B122, F.3, 2/16/1754; B127, F.2 9/14/1764. 63. On the significance of words and singing, see Jane T. Merritt, “Metaphor, Meaning, and Misunderstanding: Language and Power on the Pennsylvania Frontier,” in Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750–1830, ed. Andrew R. L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American Culture, 1998), 60–87; David Brainerd, The Life of Rev. David Brainerd, ed. Jonathan Edwards and Philip E. Howard, Jr. (1749; Chicago, 1949), 173–75; Dowd, Spirited Resistance, 19; also Alfred A. Cave, “The Delaware Prophet Neolin: A Reappraisal,” Ethnohistory 46, 2 (1999); Zeisberger, History, 25, 127; Kraft, Lenape, 178–79; B127, F.2, 7/20/1764. 64. B122, F.3, 5/18/1753; B177, F.4, 12/1/1753; Merritt, “Cultural Encounters,” 511. 65. B116, F.5, 5/22/49; B127, F.2, 8/8/1764.

Notes to Pages 102–108

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Chapter 3. Powerful Women: Disruptive Women 1. Francis Daniel Pastorius, “Circumstantial Description of Pennsylvania,” in NEM, 434; Zeisberger, History, 81; for general discussions of changes in gender relations in Northwestern Europe, see Mary S. Hartman, The Household and the Making of History: A Subversive View of the Western Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 176–201; Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan Stuard, eds., Becoming Visible: Women in European History, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), esp. chaps. 8–10; N. H. Keeble, ed., The Cultural Identity of SeventeenthCentury Woman: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1994); a comparative perspective is offered in Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Gender in History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). 2. MPCP III, 48; “Journal of Beatty’s Trip to the Ohio Country in 1766,” in Journals of Charles Beatty, 1762–1769, ed. Guy S. Klett (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), 67; also Irma Corcoran, B. V. M. Thomas Holme 1624–1695: Surveyor General of Pennsylvania, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 200 (Philadelphia: APS, 1992), 239–40; B121, F.4, “Shamokin, Pa Diary, 1742–1755,” 3/24/48. 3. Hesselius, 133; “David Zeisburger [sic] Journal,” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications 21 (1912): 85; Zeisberger, History, 117; Peter C. Mancall, Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), 75–78. Mancall also clearly points out women’s efforts to limit the trade as they often suffered the consequences thereof, 112–19; on women and the spiritual significance of alcohol, see Merritt, At the Crossroads, 65–69. 4. Gunlög Fur, “The Struggle over Civilized Marriages in Early Modern Sweden and Colonial North America,” in Collisions of Cultures and Identities: Settlers and Indigenous Peoples, ed. Patricia Grimshaw and Russell McGregor (Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, 2006). 5. Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 109; Wassenaer, “Historisch Verhael,” 81; de Rasieres, “Letter,” 106, 108–9; “Representation of New Netherland,” 302; Penn, “Letter,” 232; de Vries, “Korte Historiael,” in NNN, 217–18; Kalm, Resejournal II, 168; Wiesner, Women and Gender, 23, 60, 62, 253. 6. Van der Donck, “New Netherlands,” 199; Zeisberger, History, 98–99; Wassenaer, “Historisch Verhael,” 77; Letter to P. S. DuPonceau, Bethlehem, October 5, 1816, Heckewelder, Communications, 11–12, APS; cf. PA V, 585–86; see also Schutt, “Forging Identities,” 39–40, and Caffrey, “Complementary Power,” 47–50. 7. Zeisberger, History, 99; Heckewelder, Notes, amendments & additions to Heckewelder’s history of the Indians (1820), APS. 8. Zeisberger’s Indian Dictionary, printed from the original manuscript in Harvard College Library (Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1887). The dictionary drew upon his more than fifty years of experience as a missionary. His linguistic skills were impressive. Apart from German he was fluent in Dutch, English, Mohawk, and Lenape, and he understood Onondaga and Shawnee, see Herrnhuter Indianermission, 77–78; Daniel G. Brinton and Rev. Albert Seqaqkind Anthony, eds., A LenapeEnglish Dictionary: From an anonymous MS. in the Archives of the Moravian Church at Bethlehem, Pa. (Philadelphia: HSP, 1888).

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Notes to Pages 108–115

9. On women’s initiative, see Wassenaer, “Historisch Verhael,” 70; de Vries, “Korte Historiael,” in NNN, 218; van der Donck, “New Netherlands,” 200; “Colonel Smith’s captivity,” 253; Heckewelder, History, 154–62. 10. de Rasieres, “Letter,” 108; Tantaquidgeon, Folk Medicine, 15–16, 45; Zeisberger, History, 82–83; Heckewelder, History, 161–62, 236; Robert Grumet points out that too little attention has been paid to “the social significance of the love-doctor,” “Sunksquaws, Shamans, and Tradeswomen,” 53; Bierhorst, Mythology, 43.The story was first published in 1905, but Bierhorst argues that the body of Lenape stories reveal a strong connection to their old Northeastern homelands, 6, 8. 11. B119, F.1, #3, 1/8–19/1748; B 116, F.3, 1/5–16/1748 (the peculiarity of the dates is a result of the use of both the Julian and the Gregorian calendar). 12. Merritt also discusses this event and argues that the Mahicans worried mostly about Tschanxeh’s ethnicity: “the Mahicans were probably not that concerned about Tschanxeh’s sexual behavior. Despite her confession and regret, which would have been sufficient for exoneration in other cases, the Mahican majority in Gnadenhütten had more pervasive reasons to exclude her from the community: she was a Delaware stranger. By wielding the same standards that they bent or ignored among their own, Mahican leaders could control the membership of their community,” At the Crossroads, 153–54. 13. Wassenaer, “Historisch Verhael,” 68, 80; on men and abstinence during war, see Dowd, Spirited Resistance, 9–10; Zeisberger, History, 119. The description of these friendships is made in positive terms and not, for instance, linked to his assertions of women’s practices of unnatural sins; “Kirchen-Buch der Gemeine in Bethlehem,” vol. II, 1756–1801, July 1758, MAB. 14. On ties to others than spouses, see Shoemaker, “Introduction,” 7; Kraft, Lenape, 134; White, Middle Ground, 17–20, 61; Zeisberger, History, 125. 15. Examples of lustful women: B116, F.2, 1/11/1747, 8/12/1747; B119, F.1, #10.3, #10.6, #10.7, #10.8; B115, F.1, 7/26/1754; B124, F.4, 1/10/1763; B131, F.6, 5/8/1769; B135, 12/3/69; B171, F.9, 4/28/1802, 5/13/1802; B173, F.3, 9/12/1806; David Zeisberger, Diary of David Zeisberger: A Moravian Missionary Among the Indians of Ohio, trans. and ed. Eugene F. Bliss (Cincinnati: Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, 1885), I: 134, 353–54; II, 6, 59, 117, 211, 513—and for an example of a lustful man, 254; Herrnhuter Indianermission, 165, 344; Moravians in Upper Canada: The Diary of the Indian Mission of Fairfield on the Thames 1792–1813, trans. and ed. Linda Sabathy-Judd (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1999), 11/15/1792, 4/25/1793. 16. B112, F.11, 5/30/1745, #2, May 1745, 4/14–25/1745; Jon F. Sensbach, A Separate Canaan: The Making of an Afro-Moravian World in North Carolina, 1763–1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1998), 131. 17. David A. Schattschneider, “The Missionary Theologies of Zinzendorf and Spangenberg,” Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society 22, 1 (1969): 217; Herrnhuter Indianermission, quotes from 170, 315, see also 427, 431–32, 544. During the socalled sifting-period in the early years of Moravian expansion, sexuality and sin were not conflated, as was the case in most other Protestant denominations; see Aaron Spencer Fogleman, “Jesus Is Female: The Moravian Challenge in the German Communities of British North America,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 60, 2 (April 2003).

Notes to Pages 115–119

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18. Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 99–100, 145; Holm, Kort Beskrifning, 146–48; Van der Donck, “New Netherlands,” 213, 216; quote from Kraft, “Religion,” 50; Kraft, Lenape, 163; Cave states that the “Evil One” had no counterpart in previous Lenape beliefs and represented an incorporation of a Christian idea of a supreme evil force. The same goes for the idea of hell, “Delaware Prophet,” 279–80. 19. Danckaerts, “Journal,” 76–77. The editor has added a footnote to Jasper’s mention of “Maneto.” The footnote clarifies: “The chief (evil) spirit;” on vision quests of young people (males); M. R. Harrington, “A Preliminary Sketch of Lenápe Culture,” American Anthropologist n.s. 15 (1913): 227; Harrington, “Some Customs,” 56–57. 20. Prosten Biörcks Berettelse, UUB; Brainerd, Life of Rev. David Brainerd, 175, see also 200–201 for an exchange with a woman that indicates the difficulties Indians had in conceiving of the devil and hell as a specific location and as an opposite to God; Jones, Journal of Two Visits, 79–80; Kraft, Lenape, 56; Jay Miller, “The 1806 Purge Among the Indiana Delaware: Sorcery, Gender, Boundaries, and Legitimacy,” Ethnohistory 41, 2 (spring 1994): 247; Holm, Kort Beskrifning, 147; Carl-Martin Edsman, “En religionsdialog år 1700 från mötet mellan svenskar och indianer,” in Studier i religionshistoria: tillägnade Åke Hultkrantz (Löberöd: Plus Ultra, 1991), 188–90. 21. Herrnhuter Indianermission, 134–35, quote from 304, 431–32; B135, F.1, 6/12/1768, 7/4/1768; F.2, 10/1/1768; “David Zeisburger Journal,” 51, 58; on the gender of spirits, Kraft, Lenape, 162–68; Schönenberger, Lenape Women, 186; B121, F.5, 4/14/1749. 22. B135, F.1 7/15/1768, 7/10/1768; Diary of David Zeisberger I, 296; the teachings of missionaries of different denominations relied on a rhetoric that clearly divided between two different kinds of people: those who belonged to Christ, signified by a rejection of mother and father and other relatives, and those who belonged to the devil, see, i.e., B118, F.2 8/24/1754; a story recorded in Oklahoma in the early twentieth century but stated to be of ancient origin describes the devil as the one who taught civilization to the whites, Bierhorst, Mythology, 9, 101–2; “Johannes (Tschops) letter to Zinzendorf,” B319, F.1 #3+4, 12/19/1741. His mother-in-law’s invective was a response to Tschop’s own allegations. In his letter he equates his previous forty years with a life as a dog. His wife’s mother then told him, that “I was not as good as a dog as I no longer believed in their God.” 23. Zeisberger’s Indian dictionary: evil = medhick, mamachtáchenîm (to speak evil of one; giech gemim gunának—they speak evil to us); devil = machtándo; A Lenape-English Dictionary: to speak evil of somebody = memachtakeniman, to speak evil to somebody = memachtschilan, to abuse, to scold = machtittonhen, wicked language, vile talk; rough speaking = mamachtaptonagan; for binary terms see Merritt’s excellent chapter in At the Crossroads, “Demonizing the Delawares.” 24. Zeisberger on women: B135, F.2, 12/17/1768. The original reads: Ich habe es doch nirgends unter den Indianeren so gesehen, daß die alte Weiber so treuer gehülfen des Satans sind u. so viel Eingang bey ihre kinder als hier. An English translation (in B135) renders this as: “I have not found elsewhere among the Indians that women are such instruments of Satan and influential among the people.” This translation misses both the connection between old women and the devil and that it is the influence over young people that worries Zeisberger; Zeisberger, History, 20–21, 79, 124–25, quotes from 99 and 119; B112, F.11, 4/14–25/1745.

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Notes to Pages 120–126

25. “Zeisberger to Seidel,” B229, F.2 #14, 10/20/1765; B122, F.2, 10/16/1752. 26. Herrnhuter Indianermission, quotes from 498, 123, 140; Diary of David Zeisberger I, 108, 355; II, 92; “Journal of Mr. Christ,’ Fred Post, in Company with Teedyuscung, Mr. John Hays, Isaac Still, & Moses Tattamy, to the great Council of the different Indian Nations, 1760,” Microfi lm no. 204, APS (Copied from Mrs. Henry P. Grummere, Upper Darby, Pa., in 1942) (hereafter Post’s Journal 1760), 6/13/1760; The idea that people could belong to either God or Satan was explained to the Indians in a helper’s conference in 1754: “To make it clearer br. Joseph made 2 classes in the first the Saviour and his People, in the other the Devil and his People; he illustrated this with some Examples,” B118, F.2, 8/24/1754. 27. Herrnhuter Indianermission, 558; Diary of David Zeisberger I, 353–54; II, 117, 211, 513. 28. B115, F.10, 12/8/1760. 29. B137, F.1, 5/3/70; 6/3/70, since Moravians made a clear distinction between the sexes, it is possible that Zeisberger considered himself unfit to speak to single women. However, he made no attempt to bring a Moravian sister there, nor did he refrain from speaking to women in other contexts; Wiesner, Women and Gender, 23, 253; I discuss this town in more detail in Gunlög Fur, “Weibe-Town and the Delawares-as-Women. Gender Crossing and Same-Sex Relations in EighteenthCentury Indian Culture,” in Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America, ed. Thomas A. Foster (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 32–50. 30. Edmund de Schweinitz, The Life and Times of David Zeisberger: The Western Pioneer and Apostle to the Indians (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1871), 361; Schutt connects this village to Richard White’s mention of the cult of virginity in Illinois Country, “Forging Identities,” 157; White, Middle Ground, 66–68; “David Zeisburger Journal,” 103; Bierhorst, Mythology, 51, 106–7. 31. Diary of David Zeisberger I, 134; Mortimer described single women as a source of “trouble and mischief which this class of persons in particular has for some years past but too often occasioned in the Indian cong[regation],” B171, F.9, 4/28/02; Herrnhuter Indianermission, 558, #18; see also B118, F.5, #14, 4/29/1755; Diary of David Zeisberger I, 118; II, 59. Among rules to safeguard married couples were injunctions against allowing “men to visit women when their husbands were not at home,” 135. 32. B137, F.3, 9/7/1772; Diary of David Zeisberger II, 6 (quote), 494; other examples B171, F.4, 8/16/1772, 9/7/1799; B111, F.1, 3/13/1743, 4/13/1743; B116, F.8, 1/2– 13/1747; B117, F.1, 12/4–15/1750; Merritt, At the Crossroads, chap. 4; Hertrampf, Unsere Indianer-Geschwister, 234–38. 33. Karen Anderson, Chain Her by One Foot: The Subjugation of Native Women in Seventeenth-Century New France (New York: Routledge, 1991), 58, 73; Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: Vintage, 1987, 1989), 119–20. 34. Zeisberger, History, 124–25. 35. B116, F.8, 1/2–13/1747; B116, F.6, 7/30/1749: “and our beloved Husband took us as we were, and absolved us, and acknowledged us as his Wife, who he will embrace as married, after that we had the love-kiss”; Fogleman, “Jesus Is Female,” 329–32;

Notes to Pages 126–139

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Merritt also notes the hardening of the Moravian leaders, Zeisberger in particular, “Cultural Encounters,” 530–31.

Mapping the Future: Women and Visions 1. Zeisberger, History, 125; Diary of David Zeisberger II, 93, 235. 2. Carol Devens, Countering Colonization: Native American Women and Great Lakes Missions, 1630–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 3–4; Anderson, Chain Her by One Foot; Merritt, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood,” 725. 3. Her baptism, and that of several of her children, are noted in church diaries from Bethlehem; her arrival in Gnadenhütten and subsequent interview in B116, F.5, 4/27/1749, 5/24/1749. 4. B116, F.6, 10/20/1749. 5. B122, F.1, 5/28/1752; F.3, 5/6/1753, 10/13/1753; Zeugniße von den Geschwistern, B319, F.4, 1753; B118, F.1, 4/8/1754. 6. B124, F.1, 8/5/1760; B131, F.2, 12/15/1765; B131, F.3, 2/10/1766; B131, F.5, 2/5/1768; B125, F.6, 12/17/1769; B144, F.2, 11/14/1773, 1/1/1774; B126, F.8, 6/1/1804; for Ruth’s children and marriages see Catalog of Baptized Indians in B313, “Generalia, Catalogs,” F.3; B124, F.2, 2/26/1761, 6/28/1764; B127, F.4, 1/6/1765; B131, F.6, 10/25/1769; B144, F.4, 1/28/1775; F.5, 9/29/1775. 7. B162, F.7, 1/6/1803, 1/19/1803. 8. B162, F.8, 6/1/1804. 9. B122, F.2, 10/25/1752; F.3, 4/18/1753, 5/22/1753. 10. B122, F.3, 4/7/1753, 4/30/1753, 10/5/1753; B177, F.4, 11/20/1753; Bethlehem Diary, XXI, 1760. 11. B319, F.4, #13, 1757. 12. B125, F.6, 12/17/1769. 13. David Brainerd, Memoirs of Rev. David Brainerd, 1744–1747, ed. J. M. Sherwood (New Haven, Conn.: Funk & Wagnalls, 1822), 177; Herrnhuter Indianermission, 241, 322, 382; Jones, Journal of Two Visits, 89; B124, F.2, 10/4/1761. 14. Jonathan Edwards, ed., The Life of Rev. David Brainerd, chiefly extracted from his diary (hereafter Life of Brainerd) (New York: American Tract Society, 1820), 133–34, 136. The quotes are from Edwards’s description of Brainerd’s missionary labor. 15. Life of Brainerd, 211. 16. Life of Brainerd, 229; “Journal of Beatty’s Trip,” 64. 17. Schutt, “Forging Identities,” 9; Merritt, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood,” 737. It is unclear whether the percentage Merritt arrived at refers to the entire Delaware population of the whole century or whether she is discussing the period between 1742 and 1763; Merritt, At the Crossroads, 102–5 and table. Based on church records she found that in 1742–1764, 276 Delaware and Mahican women were baptized, and 229 men. My own calculations are based on the records of baptism in the Bethlehem Church Register: Catalog of Baptized Indians 1742–1764 in B313, “Generalia, Catalogs,” F.3, and on Herrnhuter Indianermission. I arrive at the follow-

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Notes to Pages 139–145

ing numbers for the period 1745 (when the first Delaware was baptized) to 1764 and 1772–1781: 203 females (105 adult women, 98 girls), 168 males (87 adult men, 81 boys). The discrepancy between female and male converts is less in the first period (109 females and 99 males). During the initial period significantly more adult women than men were baptized, while during the second period the difference in numbers is a result of more girls than boys being baptized; Devens, Countering Colonization, 29, 113. 18. Explanations for Moravian success from Radloff, Moravian Mission Methods, 158; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 282–88; C. A. Weslager, The Delaware Indian Westward Migration: With the Texts of Two Manuscripts (1821–22) Responding to General Lewis Cass’s Inquiries About Lenape Culture and Language (Wallingford, Pa: Middle Atlantic Press, 1978), 35; Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware, 14–15; Schutt, “Forging Identities,” 39. 19. Dowd, Spirited Resistance, 149–53; Rothenberg, “The Mothers of the Nation”; Carola Wessel, Delaware-Indianer und Herrnhuter Missionare im Upper Ohio Valley (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999), 120; Merritt, “Metaphor, Meaning, and Misunderstanding,” n 74, 742; Merritt, At the Crossroads, 114–17; Loskiel, Geschichte, 527; Schutt, “Forging Identities,” 51. 20. Schattschneider, “Missionary Theologies,” 224; Reichel, “Wyalusing,” 192; See Herrnhuter Indianermission and the excellent treatment of the diaries as sources, 82–90, especially 88; Fogleman, “Jesus Is Female.” 21. B117, F.1, 12/19/1750; numbers based on information in the Bethlehem Church Register: Catalog of Baptized Indians, and Herrnhuter Indianermission. 22. Schutt, “Forging Identities,” 32–35; Schutt, “What Will Become of Our Young People?” 271; Herrnhuter Indianermission, 263–64; B122, F.3, 5/2/1753. 23. B122, F.3, 5/10/1753. 24. “Journal of James Kenny, 1761–1763,” ed. John W. Jordan, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 37, 1 (1913): 197. 25. Post’s Journal 1760; “John Hays’ Diary and Journal of 1760,” Pennsylvania Archaeologist 24, 2 (1954): 63–84; note the color symbolism in Hays’s account. Divergent opinions emerge from the literature. Some scholars connect the color red with women and the color black with men; see M. R. Harrington, “Religion and Ceremonies of the Lenape,” Indian Notes and Monographs, Museum of the American Indian (Heye Foundation, 1921), 83, 140–41, who notes that black represented warriors, and red represented women, and Jay Miller, “A Strucon model of Delaware culture and the Positioning of Mediators,” American Ethnologist 6 (1979): 796. Frank G. Speck noted the reverse; see Voices from the Delaware Big House Ceremony, ed. Robert S. Grumet (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 124. 26. Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 119, 124; Harrington, “Preliminary Sketch,” 230; Jay Miller, “Old Religion Among the Delawares: The Gamwing (Big House Rite),” Ethnohistory 44, 1 (Winter 1997); Kalm, Resejournal II, 289–90. On the number twelve and color symbolism, see Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 112. He describes how the matron of the house serves food of bread and meat to six plus six people at a time, 150; Hesselius, 115, 123; Frank G. Speck, A Study of the Delaware Big House Ceremony 2 (Harrisburg: Publications of the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, 1931), 37, 61–63. 27. Anon., A Short History or a Description of the Recitation Festival as Practiced

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by the Delaware or Munsie Tribe of Indians from Time Immemorial, Timothy Pickering Papers, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, Buffalo. The source is copied from the Pickering Papers and contains no information concerning author, date, or place. A note attached to it informs that John Witthoft judges it to be circa 1820, probably from the Grand River Munsees in Ontario. Witthoft speculates that the text may be penned by one of the Moravian missionaries at New Fairfield; see also Rockwell, Giving Voice to Bear, 165–72; and descriptions in Voices from the Delaware Big House Ceremony. 28. McCullough, 339–40; B121, F.2, 10/24/1745. 29. Prophets among Unami and Munsee Delawares during the eighteenth century have been in focus for a number of studies on nativist revivalism that emphasize the adaptive elements of these religious movements and conclude that they were a reaction to white religious and economic intrusiveness. According to Charles E. Hunter, “the Delawares had internalized white culture to the extent that they could no longer distinguish it from their own,” and nativist revival signaled “a basically European innovation expressed in native idiom,” “The Delaware Nativist Revival of the Mid-Eighteenth Century,” Ethnohistory 18, 1 (1971): 40, 47; Anthony F. C. Wallace, “New Religions Among the Delaware Indians, 1600– 1900,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 12, 1 (Spring 1956) and White, Middle Ground, 279–85, also stressed the Christian influence. Merritt, At the Crossroads, found that Christianity formed a determining framework for Indian renewals: “In the religious climate of the 1740s and 1750s, individuals and communities reframed their spiritual past to help them order their present immaterial as well as material needs. Still, their search for revitalized faith, even their dreams, increasingly reflected the defi ning terms of that which they embraced or resisted: white Christianity,” 104. In contrast Dowd stresses links to earlier Algonkian beliefs and practices and suggests that Nativist preachers “introduced or reintroduced ceremonies in an effort to gain power,” Spirited Resistance, 30–39; see also Cave, “Delaware Prophet.” Jay Miller, “Old Religion,” argued for the continuity of Delaware ceremonies from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth. With the exception of Miller’s, all these studies focus on male preachers and prophets and their message. Miller’s attention to gender is also found in Schönenberger, who along with Miller are the only—to my knowledge—to speak of a tradition of prophetesses, and she argues that they “showed resistance to European values and a gender division of labour that stressed the man as the breadwinner, farmer and head of the nuclear family while the woman was relegated to the house” in sharp contrast to male prophets’ patriarchal visions, which served as “an adaptation to the dominant culture, to Christianity and European values and gender role defi nitions,” Lenape Women, 270. 30. Life of Brainerd, 203–6. 31. Cave, “Delaware Prophet.” 32. Dowd, Spirited Resistance, 30; “The Reverend John Brainerd to Ebenezar Pemberton, 1751,” in Life of John Brainerd, the Brother of David Brainerd, ed. Thomas Brainerd (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Committee, 1865), 233–34. 33. B135, F.1, 7/10/1768, 7/15/1768, 8/16/1768; “David Zeisburger Journal,” 57–58; on Wangomen, see also Dowd, Spirited Resistance, 32–38.

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34. B135, F.1, 7/10/1768, 7/15/1768, 8/16/1768; Tantaquidgeon emphasizes the importance of words uttered from a deathbed: “So close was the connection of divination with the spiritual realm that the Delaware noted carefully the last words of a person near to death. At such a time the dying one is believed to be in close communication with the souls of the departed, who may impart messages of great importance through this medium to the living,” Tantaquidgeon, Folk Medicine, 19. 35. B135, F.2, 12/17/1768, 1/26/1769; “David Zeisburger Journal,” 99–100. 36. B177, F.7, 2/13/1805; B177, F.8, 1/25/1806; also B177, F.18 #1, 2/1/1806; B177, F.17 #1, 4/28/1805. 37. Kluge also called her “a lying Prophetess,” B177, F.18, 8/29/1806; F.7, 9/25/1805; F.7, 5/14/1805. 38. Miller, “Old Religion,” 125; Interview with Edward Thompson, Feb. 13, 1984, Oklahoma Living Legends, OHS. The emphasis on balance between men and women at the Big House ceremony is supported by several interviews: Nora Thompson Dean, interviewed April 1968, American Indian Oral History, T-296, The Doris Duke Collection, WHC; Anna Anderson Davis, WHC; Bessie Hunter Snake, WHC. 39. Cave, “Delaware Prophet,” 266, 284; Miller, “The 1806 Purge,” 253; B177, F.8, 1/25/06, 8/29/06, 9/6/06; cf. Margaret Connell Szasz, “Samson Occom: Mohegan as spiritual intermediary,” in Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker, ed. Margaret Connell Szasz (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 61–78. 40. B135, F.1, 7/6/1768; B147, F.2, 11/24/1776; B131, F.3, 10/21/1766; B174, F.3, 10/2/1802. 41. B173, F.2, 3/30/1805, 4/12/1805, 5/2/1805; F.3, 9/12/1806; Olmstead, Blackcoats, 118–22. It is difficult from the wording in these diaries to determine quite what Mortimer meant with “Ignatius’ family.” Earlier Moravians were sensitive to the meaning of the term family or freundschaft, but here it seems that Mortimer uses it only to designate nuclear, patriarchal units. The Delawares still recognized matrilines and Henry would have belonged to his mother’s (Christina) lineage, not to his father’s. 42. Heckewelder, History, 258–60, 274–75; Kraft, Lenape, 184, 186–87. 43. B171, F.13, 11/28/1803; Olmstead, Blackcoats, 206; B135, F.2, 10/21/1768; That Mortimer had understood the confl ict over Henry’s burial in very different terms from the Delawares is evident in his ending: “This contemptible usage—quite in character for poor heathens who are fond of spirituos liquors—we did not endeavor to prevent here. It is rather quite agreeable to us, that this grave should ever be considered as containing the corpse of a person who though he lived & died in the congn., was no believer, but a mere heathen and an enemy of the gospel.” B173, F.7, 8/2/1810. 44. Miller, “The 1806 Purge.” 45. B177, F.17 #1, 4/28/1805. 46. B131, F.7, 9/23/1770; B177, F.7, 8/26/1805. 47. Previous research has identified a focus on sin and morality in the teachings of the Delaware Nativist prophets during the eighteenth century. Wallace wrote that the prophets were “concerned less with issues of war, economic hardship, and

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loss of land than with restoring moral order and defining group identity,” “New Religions,” 19; Merritt notes the “occupation with sin and morality,” At the Crossroads, 133ff; and Cave, “Delaware Prophet,” makes similar points about Neolin; White, Middle Ground, 508.

Chapter 5. Metaphors and National Identity: Delawares-as-Women 1. Freely adapted from several Moravian sources: B137, F.1, 5/5/70, 7/11/70, 7/14/70. 2. For accounts of these interactions see Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire (New York: Norton, 1984), 325–46; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 173–96. 3. For the view that the Delawares were conquered and debased, see de Schweinitz, Life and Times of David Zeisberger, 45–47; C. A. Weslager, “The Delaware Indians as Women,” Journal of the Washington Academy of Science 34 (1944); C. A. Weslager, “Further Light on the Delaware Indians as Women,” Journal of the Washington Academy of Science 37, 9 (1947). Frank G. Speck argued that competing interpretations of what it meant to be a woman divided the Delawares and the Iroquois, with each side holding to its own interpretation in all ensuing negotiations. It was only through the injection of European judgment that Delawares came to suffer the “ignominy of feminization,” “The Delaware Indians as Women: Were the Original Pennsylvanians Politically Emasculated?” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (October 1946): 377–89; A. F. C. Wallace suspects that the language was never meant to be derogatory and that the designation should not be understood with “the attributes of weakness and inferiority” that white men understood when they heard it, “Women, Land, and Society,” 29; cf. Jay Miller, “The Delaware as Women: A Symbolic Solution,” American Ethnologist 1, 3 (1974): 507–14. See subsequent notes for further references to scholarly interpretations. 4. MPCP IV, 577–82. 5. For example, Grumet, Historic Contact, 239–40; Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 316–46; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 187–92; for an elaboration of Canasatego’s difficult balancing act, see William A. Starna, “The Diplomatic Career of Canasatego,” in Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods, 144–63. 6. Weslager, “Further light,” 299; Merritt, At the Crossroads, 220–23, quote 221, 220; Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York: Norton, 1988), 25–26, 33; Merrell, Into the American Woods, 123–24, 280; James Logan to Conrad Weiser, October 18, 1736; Weiser to Logan, October 27, 1736, James Logan Papers, APS. 7. MPCP VII, 79; MCPC IV, 721; a similar belligerent taunt came from Osages, who had claimed that all other nations were women, B 177, F.5, 2/21/1803. 8. Weslager, “Delaware Indians as Women,” 381; Richard Trexler, Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), 1, 76–79; Nancy Shoemaker, “An Alliance Between Men: Gender Metaphors in Eighteenth-Century American Indian

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Diplomacy East of the Mississippi,” Ethnohistory 46, 2 (1999): 254–55; John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 337; Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 356–80; Joane Nagel, “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, 2 (March 1998): 242–69. 9. Shoemaker, “An Alliance Between Men,” 241; Merritt, “Metaphor, Meaning, and Misunderstanding,” 77; Claudio Saunt also discusses gendered insults, and the practice of putting the petticoat on enemies. He suggests another opposition than one revolving on sexual conquest. Creek men claimed that enemies were like “old women,” thereby indicating that these epithets involved an aspect of age as well, A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733–1816 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 143. 10. Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York VII, vol. ed. E. B. O’Callaghan (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, 1856), 119, 160; de Schweinitz, Life and Times of David Zeisberger, 47; Weslager, “Delaware Indians as Women,” 381; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 181; Charles Hanna, The Wilderness Trail or The Adventures of the Pennsylvania Traders on the Allegheny Path I (1811; New York: AMS Press, 1971), 112; Daniel G. Brinton, The Lenâpe and Their Legends; With the Complete Text and Symbols of the Walam Olum (1885; New York: AMS Press, 1969), 109–10; Concerning the reinstating of the Lenni Lenape as Men, by the Six Nations, Heckewelder. Communications 3, APS. 11. Ann M. Little, Abraham in Arms: War and Gender in Colonial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 14; Merritt, “Metaphor, Meaning, and Misunderstanding,” 79; Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 268–69; Jane Kamensky, Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 158–59. 12. PA V, 335; Answers to Queries respecting Indian Tribes addressed to me by the Rev’d Samuel Miller of N[ew] York, Heckewelder. Communications 1a, APS. 13. Heckewelder, History, xxvii–xxviii, 56–65. 14. Zeisberger, History, 34–36; Jennings, “Indians and Frontiers,” 216–41; NYHM XIX, 306, 313–14, 321; NYHM XX, 18; Heckewelder’s Answers to Queries; Heckewelder described how when asking people about children “they call all the children of their brothers and sisters their children, both men & women (but only those from the same family) will say: it is my child, my son, my daughter,” Letter to P. S. DuPonceau, Bethlehem, October 5, 1816, Heckewelder. Communications 11–12, APS; Richter, Ordeal, 20–21; B157, F.5, 9/27/1808; Francis Jennings, ed., The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1985), 119–20. 15. B177, F.5, 2/21/1803. 16. Grumet, “Sunksquaws, Shamans, and Tradeswomen,” 52. For other instances of Delaware women (Munsees) selling land see Grumet, “Minisink Settlements,” 201 (1696), 221 (1667), 222 (1705, 1714), and Reginald Pelham Bolton, New York City in Indian Possession (New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1920, 1975), 104, 119, 122, 126. I am grateful to Linda Poolaw for bringing this publication to my attention.

Notes to Pages 172–177

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17. “Minutes of Provincial Council, July 6, 1694,” reprinted in Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 89–90. 18. MPCP II, 533. For another example of women offering messages and wampum belts, see MPCP V, 679. At this point in time the leader of Conestoga was Cannatowa suggesting that the male terminology in the phrase “Kings & Chiefs” might be questioned; MPCP II, 571–74. 19. Trexler, Sex and Conquest, 76–77; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 181–82; The OED emphasizes the subjection of the tribute-payer “in acknowledgment of submission,” something “paid or contributed as by a subordinate to a superior”; Francis Jennings, “Iroquois Alliances in American History,” in History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy: An Interdisciplinary Guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and Their League, ed. Francis Jennings et al. (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1985), 38–42; see also “Glossary of Figures of Speech in Iroquois Political Rhetoric,” in History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy, 123: “Wampum might signify a formal relationship as between the Iroquois League and a tributary. Reciprocal presentations of wampum denoted the acceptance by both sides of the responsibilities of that relationship. These varied with time and circumstance”; Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 8, 160–62, 239, 263. 20. MPCP II, 571–74. 21. MPCP II, 571–74; for discussions of why the belts were not delivered earlier, see Jennings, “Iroquois Alliances,” 39; Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 263–64. 22. Memorials of the Moravian Church I, 300, see also 211–12; Benjamin Franklin, Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America (1784) describes the role of Indian women in councils as keepers of the records: “The business of the women is to take exact notice of what passes, imprint it in their memories (for they have no writing), and communicate it to their children. They are the records of the council, and they preserve the tradition of the stipulations into treaties a hundred years back; which, when we compare with our writings, we always fi nd exact”; MPCP VIII, 157; consequently women frequently formed part of treaty delegations: Indian Treaties, 170, 215–16; B323, F.6 “Treaty held at Philadelphia, July 7–12, 1758”; B323, F.7 “Treaty held at Pittsburgh, August 15–18, 1760.” 23. MPCP IV, 649 (1743); MPCP VI, 156 (1754), 363 (1755), 615 (1755); MPCP VII, 540 (1757); MPCP VIII, 158 (1758), 341 (1759); PA I, 329 (1732); PA III, 193 (1757), 417–18 (1758), 505 (1758); Indian Treaties, 148 (1756), 178 (1757), 191 (1757), 204 (1757), 210 (1757); Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York VII, 119, 157, 160 (1756); B 177, F.5, 11/28/03. 24. MPCP VII, 297, also 22, 71; Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 268–71; Kamensky, Governing the Tongue, 40; Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York VII, 119; Nancy Shoemaker, A Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth-Century North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 105–7. 25. Treaty at Lancaster, May 1757, in Indian Treaties, 178. The other instance is a dispute between French and Delawares. Tessawhenand charged the commander of behaving like “an old Woman” and to “not scold any more like a Woman,” PA III, 417–18. This sets up an opposition between warriors and old women, but contains nothing of a sexual nature, cf. Wallace, King of the Delawares, 166; Shoemaker,

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“An Alliance Between Men;” Merrell discusses the language of private parts and although he does not make a point of it all his examples are from Iroquois men. He concludes, like Shoemaker, that in many ways “Indian and colonist were coming to understand one another too well,” Into the American Woods, 213–14. 26. Jennings, “Iroquois Alliances,” 48–57; Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 347–54; Richter, Ordeal, 134–42 and chapter 11 on the origins of the Covenant Chain; Jon W. Parmenter, “The Iroquois and the Native American Struggle for the Ohio Valley, 1754–1794,” in The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754–1814, ed. David Curtis Skaggs and Larry L. Nelson (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001), 105–24; Michael N. McConnell, “Peoples ‘In Between’: The Iroquois and the Ohio Indians, 1720–1768,” in Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in Indian North America, 1600–1800, ed. Daniel K. Richter and James H. Merrell (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 93–112; Merritt, At the Crossroads, 220. 27. Wallace, King of the Delawares, quote 265. 28. Indian Treaties, 210; Wallace, King of the Delawares, 111, 114, 153, 196. 29. James Logan to Geo. Clark, Jan 17th 1737 [note by Mrs. Logan], James Logan Papers, APS; Wallace, King of the Delawares, 57–58. Wallace cites John Watson, Annals of Philadelphia II, 171, who places the incident in 1754. I judge the Logan source to be the most accurate, there is no evidence that Elisabeth was in Albany in 1754 and a designation of her as a young woman would point to 1737 rather than the later date; MCPC VI, 363. 30. Caffrey, “Complementary Power,” 44–63; McCullough, 306–7; June Namias, White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 71–79, 174–75; Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, 36–37; “Colonel Smith’s Captivity,” 185–86; “An Account of the Captivity of Hugh Gibson . . . July, 1756–April, 1759,” Massachusetts Historical Collections 3rd ser. 6 (1887): 143; Perdue, Cherokee Women, 54–55, 69–70. 31. Indian Treaties, 210; Post’s Journal 1760. 32. Michael N. McConnell, “Pisquetomen and Tamaqua: Mediating Peace in the Ohio Country,” in Northeastern Indian Lives 1632–1816, ed. Robert S. Grumet (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), 273–94; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 210. Weslager’s interpretation of the level of violence perpetrated by Shingas and his followers touched upon the emasculation of the Delawares: “They were also flaunting in the faces of the Six Nations the folly of the myth that, since they had been figuratively emasculated, they must permanently play the undignified role of pacifistic women. The determination to express their manhood was a motivation, especially of the young warriors, that has not been fully recognized,” Delaware Indians, 230–31. 33. MCPC VI, 156–57; “The Journal of Christian Frederick Post, on a Message from the Governor of Pennsylvania, to the Indians on the Ohio, in the latter part of the same year (1758),” in Early Western Travel Journals 1748–1765, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1904), 274, see also 283, 287; Indian Treaties, 276. 34. Post’s Journal 1760; also Robert S. Grumet, ed., Journey on the Forbidden Path: Chronicles of a Diplomatic Mission to the Allegheny Country, March–September

Notes to Pages 183–195

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1760 (Philadelphia: APS, 1999), 68, n 45; after discussing the formidable challenges facing any interpreter and the different levels proceedings passed through before they became committed to paper, William Fenton judges that the “amazing thing in all of this literature of forest diplomacy is the degree to which the Indian flavor comes through the faulty chain of communication,” “Structure, Continuity, and Change in the Process of Iroquois Treaty Making,” in History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy, 25–27; Mary Druke writes that bad translations often were noted at the meetings and there were also charges that they could be purposefully inaccurate. Indians often insisted upon using interpreters whom they trusted, “Iroquois Treaties: Common Forms, Varying Interpretations,” in History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy, 87–88; Merrell, Into the American Woods, 183–84, 210–15; Wallace, King of the Delawares, 216–20; Heckewelder, Account of the History, 103, 150–53; Lenâpé-English Dictionary; on Iroquois usage, Fenton, “Structure, Continuity, and Change,” 10–12, 21–22; “Glossary of Figures of Speech,” 119; B131, F.3, 7/8/66; B144, F.6, 3/26/76. 35. B137, F.1, 5/5/70. This is the event reworked for the opening scene of this chapter. 36. B137, F.1, 7/11/70, 7/14/70. 37. Anthony, for instance, reported that the term used for Iroquois, mengwe, literally means testicle. Zeisberger in his history of Indians wrote that if Indians “would revile one another in the extremest fashion, they use some obscene expressions.” He makes it clear, however, that this applies to men and women equally. Zeisberger, History, 85. 38. Herrnhuter Indianermission, 100, n 53, 170, on how Zeisberger distanced himself and the Moravians from other whites. 39. Zeisberger, History, 34. 40. Shawnese Traditions: C. C. Trowbridge’s Account, ed. Vernon Kinietz and Erminie W. Voegelin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1939) 12–13. 41. Heckewelder, History, 56–58; Herrnhuter Indianermission, 224–25. 42. Zeisberger, History, 35. 43. Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 126–30; “Risingh’s Journal,” in Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 174–78, see also Chapter 1 of this book. 44. “Answers to Questions,” in Weslager, Delaware Indian Westward, 125–26; Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 222. 45. Cf. Shoemaker, who comments that petticoat did not mean the type of garment worn in England, Strange Likeness, 110. 46. Hanna, Wilderness Trail, 112; Brinton, Lenâpe and Their Legends, 109–10; Weslager, “Delaware Indians as Women,” 388; Trexler, Sex and Conquest, discusses it but does not link the making of Delawares into women to a berdache-practice. Perhaps because he, as I, does not see these roles as identical. 47. Hanna, Wilderness Trail, 118; Randolph Trumbach, “The Birth of the Queen: Sodomy and the Emergence of Gender Equality in Modern Culture, 1660–1750,” in Hidden from History. Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr. (New York: Penguin, 1989), 129–40, quotes 135, 139. 48. Roscoe, Changing Ones, 130–36; Lang, Men as Women, Women as Men, 247–57.

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49. Some authors have argued that there are no sources to prove that the Delawares in actuality acted as peacemakers among their Indian neighbors and in relation to the colonists, Weslager, Delaware Indians, 181; Wallace, “Women, Land, and Society,” 28. That, however, is incorrect. For additional references to Delawares as peacemakers see PA II, 446 (1777); XII, 239 (1780); MPCP VIII, 42–43 (1758); Post’s Journal (1758 and 1760), Answers to Queries, Heckewelder, Communications 1a, APS; Indian Treaties, 276 (1762). A Delaware tradition as peacemakers persisted into the late twentieth century: “The Delawares more than any other tribe had served as peacemakers, and as ambassadors between various Indian tribes and the United States. Their leaders because of their inclination towards peace, and also because of their special abilities as interpreters and as scouts for military and civilian expeditions, had always been on the cutting edge of the frontier expansion of the United States,” Hale, Peacemakers on the Frontier, xv; see also Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 271–75.

Chapter 6. What the Hermit Saw: Change and Continuity in the History of Gender and Encounters 1. Heckewelder, History, 200–201. 2. On conflicts between different adaptations to European customs and clothing: Hermann Wellenreuther, “White Eyes and the Delawares’ Vision of an Indian State,” Pennsylvania History 68, 2 (Spring 2001): 154; Miller, “1806 Purge,” 247, 254–55. 3. On myths and gender: Wendy Doniger, The Implied Spider: Politics & Theology in Myth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Alice B. Kehoe, “Blackfoot Persons,” in Women and Power, 116–20; Will Roscoe, The Zuni Man-Woman (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991), 147–69. On different opinions of Wyoming: B121, F.2, 10/9/1745; B117, F.4, 4/1/1753; B124, F.4, 4/14/1763. 4. Perdue, Cherokee Women, 25, 36–39, 90–94, 99–104. 5. Saunt, New Order, 143–44, 151, 154–55, 163; Nathaniel Sheidley, “Hunting and the Politics of Masculinity in Cherokee Treaty-Making, 1763–75,” in Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600–1850, ed. Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 167–77; Dowd, Spirited Resistance, 151–52. 6. Michael N. McConnell, “Kuskusky Towns and Early Western Pennsylvania Indian History, 1748–1778,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography 116, 1 (January 1992): 57; Wellenreuther, “White Eyes,” 144; C. F. Voegelin and E. W. Voegelin, “The Shawnee Female Deity in Historical Perspective,” American Anthropologist n.s. 46 (1944): 370–75; White, Middle Ground, 358–65. 7. White, Middle Ground, 358–65, 507–9; R. David Edmunds, The Shawnee Prophet (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 35–39; Dowd, Spirited Resistance, 135–36. 8. Bilharz, “First Among Equals?”; Anthony F. C. Wallace, Death and Rebirth

Notes to Pages 206–209

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of the Seneca (New York: Vintage, 1969, 1972); Rothenberg, “Mothers of the Nation”; Shoemaker, “An Alliance Between Men.” 9. Herrnhuter Indianermission, 557. 10. B171, F.7, 4/16/1800. 11. B171, F.9, 4/28/1802. Mortimer described young women as a nuisance: “young women among the Indian, who have not husbands, are, from various causes, in a peculiarly trying situation,” B171, F.9, 5/13/1802. 12. “The Cass-Trowbridge Manuscript” and “Answers to General Lewis Cass’s Questions,” in Weslager, Delaware Westward Migration, 92, 173, 175. 13. Arguments for shared concepts of gender hierarchy, Shoemaker, Strange Likeness, 105; the concept of marshland comes from Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), 112–13; on the links between freedom, race, and masculine virtues, see François Furstenburg, “Beyond Freedom and Slavery: Autonomy, Virtue, and Resistance in Early American Political Discourse,” Journal of American History 89, 4 (2003): 1295–1330; and between freedom and gender, Brown, Good Wives, 212–44.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations and maps. Achkonema (Delaware), 55, 62 Ackahorn (Lenape), 32, 34–35 adoption, 23, 181 Agnes (Delaware), 55, 70, 78, 93, 98, 141 alcohol, 102–3, 141, 156, 159, 227 n.3 Amalia (Delaware), 53, 55, 66, 70–71, 86, 89, 98, 99, 129, 133–35, 141 Andreas (Delaware), 55, 62, 69 Anna Benigna (Delaware), 55, 62, 78, 79 Anna Charity (Delaware), 157 Anna Johanna (Delaware), 121 Anna Maria (Delaware), 73–75, 76 Anna Regina (Delaware), 121 Anthony, Albert Seqaqkind (Munsee Delaware), 107 Aquila (Delaware), 81, 89, 90, 135 Armstrong, Catherine (Delaware), 45 Assinisink, 178, 184 Augustina (Delaware), 62, 80–81, 98 Augustus (or Mamanawad) (Delaware), 52, 53, 55, 56, 59, 62, 67–69, 72–73, 95, 98, 140, 224 n.26, 225 nn.39, n.41, 226 n.61; and hunting, 83–85; as interpreter, 95–96; and land ownership, 64; as leader, 83–92; and marriage, 79–81; relationship between Delawares and Mahicans, 70 authority, 2–4, 176–77, 186; among Indians, 29, 32–35, 54, 82, 153, 168, 196–97; and age, 81, 119, 207–8; and gender, 40, 81, 101, 119, 124, 147, 157, 162, 167, 171, 181, 195, 204, 207–8; and hierarchy, 25, 27–28, 30, 128, 164, 196–97; in missions, 11, 58, 113, 139, 144, 157; sources of, 10, 42, 44, 101, 116, 119, 153, 171. See also power baptism of Indians, 43, 139–43, 153; and children, 74, 93, 97, 142; and gender hierarchy, 123; and ill health, 74, 93,

97, 133, 141–42, 151; Moravian, 52–59, 206; relations between baptized and unbaptized kin, 69–72, 84, 103, 206, 224 n.26; and women, 74, 78, 92–93, 97, 117, 129, 131, 133. See also conversion Bathseba (Mahican), 109–10, 119–20 Beata (Munsee Delaware), 151–53, 158, 208, 210 Beaver River, 1, 121, 178, 185 Bedith (Delaware), 55, 62 Benjamin (Delaware), 63, 72 Bethlehem (Pa.), 50, 54, 57–58, 63–65, 75, 78, 81, 87, 88, 90–91, 113, 142, 165, 175, 178 Biörck, Eric, 43, 116 blood: in Moravian missions, 78, 98, 110–11, 114, 124, 126, 139; in native American cultures, 41, 139, 183, 187, 204; symbolism of, 32–34, 190 Blue Mountain, 11, 49, 53, 54 Brainerd, David, 97, 136–38, 148–49 Brandywine Creek, Indians from, 38 Brinton, Daniel, 107, 184, 193 Buckongahelas (or Pachgantschihilas), 152–53 Cammerhoff, Johann C. F. (bishop), 56, 78, 95 Campanius, Johannes, 21, 43 Canasatego (Onondaga), 162–67, 177 Canatowa, 40–41, 46 Canyase (Mohawk), 176 captives, 23, 37, 43, 61, 146 Caritas (Delaware), 75 ceremonies, 17, 20–21, 24, 29, 36, 45–46, 77, 105–6, 144–47, 149, 151–56, 163, 169–70, 177, 189–92, 194–96, 217 n.19, 218 n.24, 220 n.43, 233 n.29, 234 n.39 Chalkley, Thomas, 40–41, 46 Cherokee Indians, 181, 204–6 Chicalicka Nanni Kettelev (Lenape), 20, 44 Christian Renatus (Delaware), 53

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Christiana (Delaware), 53, 89 Christina (Delaware), 154–56, 234 n.41 Cock, Lasse, 172 Cock, Peter, 49 conceptions of evil, 44, 101, 109–21; and disorder, 109, 119, 123–24; evil words, 118, 158, 229 n.23; Indian, 115–19, 150, 228 n.18, 229 n. 20 and n.22; Moravian, 111–12, 114, 119–21, 123; Satan, 11, 101, 111, 114–18, 119, 123–24, 150; witchcraft or poison, 152. See also Devious One; manitous; hell Conestogas, 40–42, 45–46, 172–74, 220 nn.42, 44, 237 n.19 conversion, 53, 57, 66, 70, 91, 101, 154; and Indian women, 114, 125, 128–29, 136–44; opposition to, 95, 101, 120, 122–23, 149–50. See also baptism Cornelius (Delaware), 133 Covenant Chain, 173, 177–78, 238 n.26 Creek Indians, 139, 204–6, 236 n.9 Crow, Mary (Delaware), 45 culture, cultural encounters, 1, 3–4, 9–10, 41–43, 145, 208–10 Danckaerts, Jasper, 20–21, 44, 115 De Laet, Johan, 27 De Rasieres, Isaack, 30, 108 De Vries, David, 15 Deborah (Delaware), 121 Delaware River, vii, 5, 7, 10, 15–17, 21–22, 28, 47, 129, 182, 192, 197, 202–3; land along, 31–36 Delaware Water Gap, 1, 165 Delawares-as-women, women nation, 160–98 Devious One, 115, 117 diplomacy, 12, 27, 29, 51, 128, 137, 144, 158, 163–67, 179, 196–97, 205, 208; and metaphoric language, 163–67, 171, 176–77, 185, 204–5, 239 n.34; women in, 38–41, 136, 172–73, 175. See also treaties diseases (illness), 22, 44, 63, 72–74, 89, 117, 141, 203; smallpox, 48, 70, 72, 74 divorce. See marriage dreams, 17, 24, 27, 40, 42, 44, 46, 76, 97, 116–17, 147–49, 153, 195, 217 n.19, 225 n.44, 233 n.29 dress, 20, 24–25, 90; European, 193, 195–96, 199, 200, 202; homosexuality and crossdressing, 194, 196; Indian, 90, 97, 123, 134, 151, 173, 191–93 Dunmore’s War, 190, 205

Elisabeth (Delaware), Teedyuscung’s wife, 180 Erdmuth (Delaware), 55, 62, 70–71, 80–82, 98 Erwehong (Lenape), 49 Esopus, 7, 49, 101, 172 Esther (Mahican), 55, 62, 73, 78–79, 109, 132 family (Indian), 20, 25, 26, 70–71, 98, 105, 126, 138, 154–55; clans, 36, 61, 88, 187; as kinship and lineage, 19, 27, 31, 67–69, 84, 95, 97, 99, 118, 135, 149, 181, 187; metaphors of, 180–81, 194. See also friendship/freundschaft female hermit, 199–203, 209 Five Nations. See Iroquois food, 16–25, 42, 59–60, 82, 141, 170, 204; amounts grown, 17–18; feasting and distribution, 19–20, 22, 79, 87, 145; in relations to colonists, 23–24, 47, 87; and religion and ceremonies, 77, 106, 112, 115–16, 145–47, 152, 192; women providers, 16, 18, 20, 29, 32, 36, 108, 205. See also maize French and Indian War. See Seven Years War Friedenshütten, 140, 151, 160, 178, 185–86 friendship/freundschaft, 22, 49, 107–8, 172–75, 180–81, 183, 192, 234 n.41. See also family Gekelemukpechünk, 91, 178, 190 gender, 1–6, 9–13, 208–9; complementarity and hierarchy, 12, 39, 99, 102–4, 122, 124, 146, 157, 164, 180–82, 187–88, 195–97, 203–8; in diplomacy, 162–68, 184–89; domestic ideology, 40, 86, 157, 207–8; and metaphors, 160–98; and rituals and ceremonies, 17, 22–25, 144–47; roles, 41–42, 178–84, 137, 156–57, 194; and sexuality, 114, 118–20; of spirits, 119, 123; two-spirits and gender crossing, 45–46, 171, 192–96; and women’s authority, 38–42; and work, 19–20, 60–61 Gnadenhütten (Pa.), 51, 53, 64, 65, 78–80, 85, 90, 95, 109–12, 110, 132, 134, 178 Gnadenhütten (Ohio), 71, 83, 127, 157, 178 Goschgosching, 185–86 Goschgoschünk, 150, 178 Goshen, 154–56, 178, 206–7 Grube, Bernhard Adam (Moravian missionary), 52, 56, 59, 72, 77, 85, 90, 226 n.61 Handsome Lake (Seneca), 205–6 Hanna (Mahican), 114–15 Hays, John, 144–45

Index healing, 20–21, 25, 27, 44–46, 75, 97, 141 heart, 37, 83, 84; Indian discourse on, 70, 72, 91, 96, 111, 114, 117, 135, 137, 148–49, 180, 184; Moravian discourse on, 65, 67, 80–81, 90, 94, 132, 134 Heckewelder, John (Moravian missionary), 37–38, 73–74, 77–78, 106–8, 155, 167, 169, 181, 199 hell, as place for Indians, 118, 138, 141, 149, 159 Hendrick (Mohawk), 165–66 Henry (Delaware), 154–56, 234 n.41 Hesselius, Andreas, 20, 38–40, 43, 44, 45, 103 Hithquoquean (Delaware), 172, 175 Holm, Thomas Campanius, 20–21, 31 hunting, 6, 20, 34–35, 51, 59, 77–78, 85, 93, 129, 161, 187; and men, 18–19, 41, 60, 64–65, 82–84, 86–87, 91, 97, 108, 145, 204, 207–8; religious significance of, 21, 41, 82–84, 137, 146; and women, 87 Huron Indians, 128, 191, 205 Ignatius (Delaware), 154–56, 234 n.41 Iroquois Indians (Five Nations; Six Nations), 48–49, 53, 56, 150, 161–71, 173–83, 187, 190–95, 197–98, 201, 205, 238 n.32; sharing traits with Delawares, 27, 61 Isaac (Delaware), 55, 69 Jasper (Lenape), 21, 115–16 Jemison, Mary, 68 Joachim (Delaware), 79–80 Joel (Delaware), 63, 75, 207–8 Johan Thomas (Delaware), 62, 66, 86, 133–34 Johannes (Delaware), 55, 113 Johnson, William, 167, 176, 177 Jonas (Delaware), 52–53, 55, 66–67, 73, 89, 95, 99, 129, 132–33 Jonathan (Delaware), 55, 60, 63, 66, 68, 71–72, 75, 86, 89, 95, 98–99 Jones, David, 85, 116, 137 Josua (Delaware), 55, 78, 86, 93–94 Josua (Mahican), 53, 87–89, 109, 112, 119 Kalm, Pehr, 43, 104 Kaskaskunk, 185 Kenny, James, 144–45 Kiapes (Lenape), 33 Killbuck, 205 kinship terms: brother, 105, 161, 185, 187, 196–97; cousins, 161, 170; grandfather, 145,

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160, 169, 182, 190, 197, 203; sister, sister’s daughter, sister’s son, 105, 160–61, 170, 174, 184, 185–87, 189, 196–97, 203 Kittatinny Mountain. See Blue Mountain Kluge, John Peter (Moravian missionary), 151 Kuskuskies, 178, 182 land, vii, 10, 15–16, 42, 47, 49, 171–72, 179; alienation of, 8, 11, 15, 42, 129, 139, 161–65; and history, 64, 183; ownership, 29–35, 66, 84, 167, 174, 200, 203 Langundo-Utenünk, 178, 185 Lea (Delaware), 53, 121 lebenslauf (lebensläufe), 70, 74, 97, 134 Lehigh River, 50, 57, 64, 75, 111, 129, 163, 165, 178 Lenapehoking, 5, 20, 214 n.6 Lenape/Delaware, terminology, 6 Levi (Delaware), 60, 63, 98 Little Abraham (Mohawk), 176, 184 Lindeström, Peter, 7, 16, 19, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 44, 73, 104, 115, 192 Logan, James, 162, 164, 173–74 Mack, Anna (Moravian missionary), 71 Mack, Martin (Moravian missionary), 71, 74, 78, 95, 129, 132, 140, 146 Magdalena (Delaware), 90, 121 Mahicans, 51, 53, 55, 56, 62, 65, 70, 79, 91, 109, 111, 114, 118, 119, 125–26, 131, 139, 218 n.24, 228 n.12, 231 n.17 maize (corn), 15–19, 22–23, 29, 30, 36–37, 48, 59–61, 85–86, 139, 151; amounts, 18; origin myths and ceremonies, 20, 117, 145–46, 204; peaceful relations, 21–23, 192; and women, 20–22, 36, 77, 85, 145, 161, 187, 191, 199–200 manitous, 116–17 Maria (Wampanoag), 55, 62, 72–73, 89, 91–94, 120 Maria Elisabeth (Delaware), 123 Mariana (Delaware), 90 marriage, 11, 34, 42, 72, 99, 102, 112, 114, 181; colonial views of Indian, 42, 103–5; divorce among Indians, 105–6, 108; influence over, 79–82, 101, 104, 109, 119, 121–23, 204; Lenape customs, 34, 61, 105–6, 108, 113–14; love medicine, 109; and Moravian missions, 72–73, 78–81, 99, 119–23, 125; problems with studying, 105–6; and sexuality, 104, 109, 113–14

246

Index

Mattahorn (Lenape), 32, 34–35 matrilineage and matrilineal descent, 27, 35, 54, 61–63, 84, 91, 96, 99, 105, 116, 170, 181, 185, 187, 204–5, 234 n.41 McCullough, John, 23, 61, 146 Mechedachpisink, 83 men: and authority, 27–31, 36–37, 171; and masculinity, 159, 164–68, 176–77, 184–90, 192–98; responsibilities, 36–37, 87–92, 137, 145, 186; roles, 18–19; as warriors, 22–23, 37–38, 47–48, 167 169, 176, 182, 198, 204–5, 208; War Chiefs, 30, 37–38, 47, 172, 189–90 Meniolagomekah, 51–100, 56, 178; conflicts in, 69–73; hunting, 82–84; kinship in, 54–55, 61–62, 69–71; leadership, 87–92; subsistence work, 60–61, 84–87; traveling, 63–68; yearly cycle, 59–60 metaphors, 1–2, 4, 12, 149, 161, 164, 166–68, 175–81, 184–89, 191, 196–97, 209 Metatsimint (Lenape), 32, 34 Miami Indians, 191, 205 Michael (Delaware), 113 Mingos, 40, 41, 184, 190 Minisink, 1, 7, 165, 178, 185 Mohawk Indians, 30, 44, 49, 165, 176–78 Mohocksey (Lenape), 172 Moravian missions, 11, 47–50, 52–53, 56–58, 64–66, 109–12, 123; drawing lots, 58, 80; and gender, 81, 93, 120–25, 139–40, 206–7; and hierarchy, 58, 124; missionary methods, 57, 64, 66, 76, 84, 91, 139; theology of, 114–15, 123–25, 140 Mortimer, Benjamin (Moravian missionary), 86, 154–55, 206–7 mourning: rituals, 45, 103, 156, 220 n.43 Munsees, 6, 7, 30, 71, 82, 84, 89, 107, 151, 153, 163, 170, 179, 184–85, 218 n.24, 224 n.28, 225 n.40, 233 nn.27, 29, 236 n.16 Naaman, 22 Naemi (Delaware), 52, 55, 62, 66, 77–82, 87, 91, 92, 98, 134, 135 Nain (Pa.), 132, 134–35 Nanticokes, 90 Nathanael (Delaware), 52, 55, 68–71, 75–76, 84, 89, 93, 96, 97, 99, 132, 142 Native religious movements, 147–53 Nazareth (Pa.), 88, 132, 178 Neolin (Delaware), 147, 149–50, 158–59 Nescopeck, 79, 178

Netewarwhelemen (or Netawatwees) (Delaware), 182, 185 New Fairfield, 120, 129, 132 New Sweden, 16, 27, 28, 31–32, 42, 47–49, 192 Notike (Lenape), vii–viii, 31–36, 101, 171 Okehocking, 129, 178 Onondaga Indians, 172, 177 Pachgatgoch, 113 Packanke (or Custaloga) (Munsee Delaware), 182, 185–89, 197 Papunehank (Munsee Delaware), 82 Pastorius, Francis, 101 peacemaking: and kinmaking, 10, 181, 182, 203; and Lenapes, 22–23, 31, 37–38, 41, 49, 139, 160–62, 183–89, 196, 209–10; and women, 21, 23, 29, 47, 169–75, 184–89, 190–92, 195, 197, 204, 205 Peggy (Delaware), 121 Peminacka (Lenape), 32, 34–36, 219 n.34 Penn, William, 8, 27, 29, 34, 46–47, 174–75, 177, 181, 183, 196 Peters, Richard, 53 petticoats, 166–68, 180, 189–96, 236 n.9 Philadelphia, 46, 102, 165, 178; barracks in, 70–72, 97, 132, 135; and diplomacy, 38–39, 87, 162, 172–73 Pine Swamp, 199, 201 Pisquetomen (Delaware), 182 planting, vii, 6–7, 23, 59–61, 84–86, 146; and men, vii, 87, 206; and missions 63, 85; religious significance of, 20–21, 146; and women, 15–18, 87, 174–75, 199, 202, 204 Post, Christian Frederick, 120, 144–45, 181–82, 184 power, 21, 27, 41, 44, 46, 71, 96–97, 115–16, 153; and healing, 20, 44–45, 76, 112, 141, 216 n.12; and women, 101–5, 119, 139, 156, 162 Printz, Johan (governor of New Sweden), 32, 34–35, 192 Priscilla (Delaware), 55, 84, 96 Quenieck (Lenape), 32–34 Rauch, Christian (Moravian missionary), 109–12 Risingh, Johan (governor of New Sweden), 22, 219 n.34

Index Ruth (Delaware), 52, 53, 55, 66, 70, 98, 129–33, 135–36, 141 Ruth (Mahican), 131 sachems (chiefs), 19–20, 21, 22, 30–31, 34, 77, 81, 87, 89, 173; and authority, 29–30, 37–38, 171; and food, 20, 21, 32, 36; and matrilineages, 25, 27, 32, 196; men as, 27, 29–30, 175, 208; roles of, 29–30, 36–37, 145, 186, 209; selection of, 35, 27; women as, 28, 41, 172, 190–91, 205. See also authority Salome (Delaware), 121 Salomon (or Allemuwi) (Delaware), 133–34, 186, 189 same-sex loyalties: male friendships, 112–13; unnatural sins, 113–25; work groups, 87, 113, 122 Samuel (Delaware), 55, 62–63, 68, 72, 87, 89–93, 120–21, 132, 137 Sassoonan (or Alumapees), 169, 173, 182, 186–87, 189 Sawantaeny (Seneca), 45 Schebosch, Christiana (Moravian missionary), 56 Schebosch, John Joseph (Moravian missionary), 56, 72–73, 78, 91, 120 Schmick, Johann Jacob (Moravian missionary), 56, 64, 75, 78–82, 85–86, 93–94, 96, 98, 121, 134–35, 185 Schmick, Johanna (Moravian missionary), 56, 80, 93–94, 97, 98, 121 Schnall, Michael (Moravian missionary), 129, 133 Schönbrunn, 83, 120–22, 178, 190, 206 Shingas (Delaware), 1, 182, 209–10 Seidel, Nathanael (Moravian missionary), 114 Seneca Indians, 38, 45, 48–49, 103, 125, 139, 170, 172, 180, 205–6 Seven Years War, 53, 89, 97, 121, 150, 210 sexuality, 58, 101–8, 109–21, 123, 196, 228 n.17; European views of Indian, 104–5, 109–11, 114, 124; Indian perceptions of, 105–8, 111–14, 118–19, 159; same-sex relations, 113, 125, 167, 194–95; sexual taunts, 166–67, 176, 188. See also translations; vocabularies Shamokin, 69–70, 117, 178. See also Wyoming Shawnees, 45, 71, 90, 120, 147, 177, 187, 190–91, 193, 198, 203–5, 218 n.23 Shekomeko, 51, 114 Shingas, 1, 182, 209–10, 238 n.32

247

Six Nations. See Iroquois Smith, John, 23 sources, vii, 4–5, 8–11, 59, 144, 171; anomalies, 9, 32, 94; language of, 171, 187–89; Moravian, 8, 10, 51, 63, 68, 82, 85, 87, 115, 141–42; oral, 8, 22, 45, 145; problem with, 3, 11, 38, 77, 99 Spangenberg, August Gottlieb (bishop), 64, 66, 79, 81 Stuyvesant, Peter, 32, 34, 47 Sulamith (Delaware), 157 Susquehanna River, 8, 40, 62, 63, 90, 178, 201. See also Wyoming Susquehannock Indians, 7–8, 15, 22, 40–42, 47–49, 170, 203 Tagashata (Seneca), 180 Tamaqua (or King Beaver) (Delaware), 182–84, 186–90, 197, 209–10 Tecumseh (Shawnee), 147, 156, 166, 208 Teedyuscung (Delaware), 39, 55, 70, 71, 81, 82, 90, 179–85 Telepuwechque (or Rebecca) (Delaware), 55, 62, 66, 86, 89, 90, 98, 135 Tenskwatawa (Shawnee), 147, 205, 208 Thamar (Delaware), 55, 62, 66, 70, 71, 89, 96, 97 Thomas, George (Pennsylvania governor), 162 Thompson, Edward (Delaware), 153 Tobias (Delaware), 75 trade, 8, 10, 15, 22, 32–33, 47–48, 203–4; alcohol, 103; cultural impact of, 42, 60 translations, 95, 107, 162, 171–73, 184, 239 n.34; Indians as interpreters, 40, 72, 80, 95; vocabularies, 105, 107, 115, 158, 188 treaties, Easton, 39, 71–72, 90, 165, 180; Indian, 8, 27–28, 31, 40–41, 49, 90, 175; Lancaster, 89, 175, 176; Philadelphia, 38–39, 162, 172–73. See also diplomacy tribute paying, 173–75 Tschanxehs (Delaware), 109–13, 115, 119–20, 228 n.12 Tschop (Mahican), 118 Uchqueschis (or Anna Rosina) (Delaware), 55, 79, 225 n.39 Unalachtigo, 5–6 Unami, 5, 6, 71, 182, 233 n.29 Van der Donck, Adriaen, 20, 42, 104

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van Wassenaer, Nicolaes, 15, 17, 30, 112 Verona (Delaware), 55, 60, 63, 66, 70–72, 75, 93, 95, 98, 127 visions or visionaries, 24–25, 44, 76, 89, 97, 116–17, 139, 147, 158–59, 195, 205; prophetesses, 71, 129, 141, 148–53, 156, 201–3. See also dreams Walking Purchase of 1737, 49, 129, 163–64, 165, 177, 188, 201 wampum, 30, 160, 162–63, 186, 237 n.19; in ceremonies, 145, 146, 151, 191–92; as records, 25, 37, 49; and women, 137, 172–75, 208–9 Wangomen, 147, 150–51, 188, 197 Wangomen’s sister, 150–51, 157, 159, 197 Wechquetank, 72, 90, 132, 178 Weenepeeweytah (Shawnee), 45 Weiser, Conrad, 162, 164, 173 White Eyes, 137, 205, 209 Wiwunikamek (or Noah) (Delaware), 53 women: authority and power, 38–42; European perceptions of Indian, 101–4, 121–26; feeding guests, 20–22, 77–79; and land, 31–35, 167, 171–72, 175, 205; as matrons, 19–22, 25, 29, 31–32, 39, 79;

and missions, 127–29, 136–43, 156–59; peacemaking, 22–23, 171–75, 195–97; planting and gathering, 16–18, 84–85; responsibilities, 23–24, 41–42, 46–47, 98–99, 137, 140–42; roles, 18–19, 38–42, 195–97; star gazing, 17; and visions, 147–54. See also alcohol; healing; marriages; mourning Women’s Town, Weibe Town, 1, 121–22 words, 35, 89, 107, 110, 160, 188; Christian, 57, 70, 80, 95, 113, 151, 157; significance of, 30, 46, 96–97, 118, 141, 152–53, 157–58, 184–85, 234 n.34. See also translations Wyalusing, 82, 89, 132, 178, 185 Wyandot Indians, 152, 187 Wyoming, 66, 71, 80, 81, 84, 95–96, 129, 134–35, 149, 178, 201 Yong, Thomas, 7 Zeisberger, David, 27, 36–38, 69, 74, 82, 99, 101, 103, 106–8, 113–15, 119–23, 125, 127, 140–41, 150, 154–56, 170–71, 186, 188–89, 191, 230 n.29, 239 n.37 Zinzendorf, Count Nikolaus Ludwig, 56–57, 114, 126

Acknowledgments

A book this long in coming has amassed a debt not easily repaid. Debt can be a heavy load, but this one is borne on a buoy of gratitude for the many people who have supported me. Institutions have supported my research and writing, archivists have aided my search, colleagues have offered suggestions and discussed parts of the text at various stages, friends and family have read, given encouraging criticism, and encompassed me with kindness and support. For all that I am profoundly grateful! Some of the most pleasant research days of my life have been spent at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The magnolias outside the large windows are beautiful in all seasons, from the tiny cat’s paw buds in March to late summer foliage. Trees are excellent company, and so are the archive’s kind and knowledgeable staff. Vernon H. Nelson has gone out of his way to aid me and suggest items of value to my research, as well as offering me room and board while in Bethlehem. Tack så mycket för all din hjälp! He and the late Lothar Madeheim helped with translations of some of the trickier bits of handwriting, and Lanie Graf aided me during the last stages of searching for illustrations. In addition, Rose Nehring took me to see some of the actual places that I have written about in this book. We enjoyed a rainy and foggy day crossing Blue Mountain, weather conditions often described in the Meniolagomekah diaries as the inhabitants traveled to not-so-nearby Gnadenhütten, Nazareth, or Bethlehem. Archivists and librarians at Riksarkivet and Kungliga Biblioteket, Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek, American Philosophical Society, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Oklahoma Historical Society, Bartlesville Public Library, Western History Collection, New York Public Library, Van Pelt Library, Rutgers University Library, and not least De la Gardieskolan in Lidköping have also been exceedingly helpful, for which I am profoundly grateful. Significant financial support has come from Kungliga Vitterhetsakademien, Birgit och Gad Rausings Stiftelse för Humanistisk Forskning, Humanistisk-Samhällsvetenskapliga Forskningsrådet (HSFR), and Växjö University. A Fulbright Research Scholar Grant enabled me to spend a se-

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mester at the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University. This allowed me to work out the fundamental structure and argument of the book, as well as establish contact with University of Pennsylvania Press. I am most grateful to Nancy Hewitt for inviting me to Rutgers, and to Beth Hutchison and Marlene Importico who facilitated my stay at the IRW. Kiran Asher and Juliana Barr shared good food and companionship with me, lent me their cars, and engaged with me in animated discussions about feminist research. Thanks also to Paul Israel, among other things for introducing me to BtVS, and to David and Debi Belden for friendship, lively discussions, and solace. I have also benefited tremendously from opportunities to present parts of the book at various seminars and conferences. I am particularly grateful to Bernard Bailyn, Pat Denault, and the participants at the 1998 International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World at Harvard University; to Karen O. Kupperman and the Atlantic History Seminar at New York University; and to several SKOGH (Swedish Women’s and Gender Historians) conferences in Sweden. Several people have gone beyond professional courtesy and interest to aid me in this project. For their generosity and friendship I thank Rita Dockery who befriended a lonely Swede, and pointed me in the direction of some of my most important sources, Julie Stewart who generously allowed me to use her home as a base when in Philadelphia, Carla and Allen Messinger who provided me with a place to stay, fed me, and took me on road trips to learn about the land of the Lenapes, such as a memorable trek along the line of the Walking Purchase. Juliana Barr, Dag Blanck, and Cecilia Trenter have all endured my rantings and insecurities and only offered encouragement in return. It has been an honor to work with the editors and staff at University of Pennsylvania Press. Daniel K. Richter initially encouraged the manuscript and offered invaluable support and comments and Kathleen M. Brown has been an outstanding editor with sharp and inspirational observations. The manuscript has also benefited from insightful readings and remarks by Nancy Shoemaker, Juliana Barr, and Nicky Michael. My ties to Oklahoma, the land of the red people, remain forever tight through Cheryl Jones Fur. Over the years she has discussed every aspect of the project with me and read and edited the manuscript more times than she cares to remember. To her and to my parents, Ulla and Gunnar Fur, go my deepest thoughts of gratitude for their constant belief in me, and interest in what I do. I hope this book will make them proud.

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Lenape-Delaware people and their friends from the East Coast to Oklahoma have honored me with an interest in this project, which has offered me the best incentive. To them I dedicate this book.