The Lenâpé and their Legends. Rafinesque Constantine Samuel
points in the Walam Olum. There are no compounds more frequent in that document than those with the root signifying "light," "brightness," etc., and this is one of the evidences of its authenticity.
Next in order, or rather, parallel with and a part of the worship of Light, was that of the Four Cardinal Points, always identified with the Four Winds, the bringers of rain and sunshine, the rulers of the weather.
"After the strictest inquiry respecting their notions of the Deity," says David Brainerd, "I find that in ancient times, before the coming of the white people, some supposed there were four invisible powers, who presided over the four corners of the earth."[135]
The Montauk Indians of Long Island, a branch of the Mohegans, also worshiped these four deities, as we are informed by the Rev Sampson Occum;[136] and Captain Argoll found them again in 1616 among the accolents of the Potomac, close relatives of the Delawares. Their chief told him: "We have five gods in all, our chief god appears often unto us in the form of a mighty great hare, the other four have no visible shape, but are indeed the four winds, which keep the four corners of the earth."[137]
These are the fundamental doctrines, the universal credo, of not only all the Algonkin faiths, but of all or nearly all primitive American religions.
This is very far from the popular conception of Indian religion, with its "Good Spirit" and "Bad Spirit." Such ideas were not familiar to the native mind. Heckewelder, Brainerd and Loskiel all assure us in positive terms that the notion of a bad spirit, a "Devil," was wholly unknown to the aborigines, and entirely borrowed from the whites. Nor was the Divinity of Light looked upon as a beneficent father, or anything of that kind. The Indian did not appeal to him for assistance, as to his totemic and personal gods.
These were conceived to be in the form of animals, and various acts of propitiation to them were performed. Such acts were not a worship of the animals themselves. Brainerd explains this very correctly when he says: "They do not suppose a divine power essential to or inhering in these creatures, but that some invisible beings, not distinguished from each other by certain names, but only notionally, communicate to these animals a great power, and so make these creatures the immediate authors of good to certain persons. Hence such a creature becomes sacred to the person to whom he is supposed to be the immediate author of good, and through him they must worship the invisible powers, though to others he is no more than another creature."[138]
They rarely attempted to set forth the divinity in image. The rude representation of a human head, cut in wood, small enough to be carried on the person, or life size on a post, was their only idol. This was called wsinkhoalican. They also drew and perhaps carved emblems of their totemic guardian. Mr. Beatty describes the head chief's home as a long building of wood: "Over the door a turtle is drawn, which is the ensign of this particular tribe. On each door post was cut the face of a grave old man."[139]
Occasionally, rude representations of the human head, chipped out of stone, are exhumed in those parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey once inhabited by the Lenape.[140] These are doubtless the wsinkhoalican above mentioned.
There was a general belief in a soul, spirit or immaterial part of man. For this the native words were tschipey and tschitschank (in Brainerd, chichuny). The former is derived from a root signifying to be separate or apart, while the latter means "the shadow."[141]
Their doctrine was that after death the soul went south, where it would enjoy a happy life for a certain term, and then could return and be born again into the world. In moments of spiritual illumination it was deemed possible to recall past existences, and even to remember the happy epoch passed in the realm of bliss.[142]
The path to this abode of the blessed was by the Milky Way, wherein the opinion of the Delawares coincided with that of various other American nations, as the Eskimos, on the north, and the Guaranis of Paraguay, on the south.
The ordinary euphemism to inform a person that his death was at hand was: "You are about to visit your ancestors;"[143] but most observers agree that they were a timorous people, with none of that contempt of death sometimes assigned them.[144]
An important class among the Lenape were those called by the whites doctors, conjurers, or medicine men, who were really the native priests. They appear to have been of two schools, the one devoting themselves mainly to divination, the other to healing.
According to Brainerd, the title of the former among the Delawares, as among the New England Indians, was powwow, a word meaning "a dreamer;" Chip., bawadjagan, a dream; nind apawe, I dream; Cree, pawa-miwin, a dream. They were the interpreters of the dreams of others, and themselves claimed the power of dreaming truthfully of the future and the absent.[145] In their visions their guardian spirit visited them; they became, in their own words, "all light," and they "could see through men, and knew the thoughts of their hearts."[146] At such times they were also instructed at what spot the hunters could successfully seek game.
The other school of the priestly class was called, as we are informed by Mr. Heckewelder, medeu.[147] This is the same term which we find in Chipeway as mide (medaween, Schoolcraft), and in Cree as mitew, meaning a conjurer, a member of the Great Medicine Lodge.[148] I suspect the word is from m'iteh, heart (Chip. k'ide, thy heart), as this organ was considered the source and centre of life and the emotions, and is constantly spoken of in a figurative sense in Indian conversation and oratory.
Among the natives around New York Bay there was a body of conjurers who professed great austerity of life. They had no fixed homes, pretended to absolute continence, and both exorcised sickness and officiated at the funeral rites. Their name, as reported by the Dutch, was kitzinacka, which is evidently Great Snake (gitschi, achkook). The interesting fact is added, that at certain periodical festivals a sacrifice was prepared, which it was believed was carried off by a huge serpent.[149]
When the missionaries came among the Indians, the shrewd and able natives who had been accustomed to practice on the credulity of their fellows recognized that the new faith would destroy their power, and therefore they attacked it vigorously. Preachers arose among them, and claimed to have had communications from the Great Spirit about all the matters which the Christian teachers talked of. These native exhorters fabricated visions and revelations, and displayed symbolic drawings on deerskins, showing the journey of the soul after death, the path to heaven, the twelve emetics and purges which would clean a man of sin, etc.
Such were the famed prophets Papunhank and Wangomen, who set up as rivals in opposition to David Zeisberger; and such those who so constantly frustrated the efforts of the pious Brainerd. Often do both of these self-sacrificing apostles to the Indians complain of the evil influence which such false teachers exerted among the Delawares.[150]
The existence of this class of impostors is significant for the appreciation of such a document as the Walam Olum. They were partially acquainted with the Bible history of creation; some had learned to read and write in the mission schools; they were eager to imitate the wisdom of the whites, while at the same time they were intent on claiming authentic antiquity and originality for all their sayings.
The principal sacred ceremony was the dance and accompanying song. This was called kanti kanti, from a verbal found in most Algonkin dialects with the primary meaning to sing (Abnaki, skan, je
Brainerd,
His statements are in the
Wm Strachey,
Brainerd,
Charles Beatty,
One, about five inches in height, of a tough, argillaceous stone, is figured and described by Dr. C. C. Abbott, in the
From the same root,
The root
Compare Loskiel,
Schweinitz,
Heckewelder, MSS., says that he has often heard the lamentable cry,
"As for the Powaws," says the native Mohegan, the Rev. Sampson Occum, in his account of the Montauk Indians of Long Island, "they say they get their art from dreams."
David Brainerd,
Wassenaer's
See Brainerd,