Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians by Benjamin Drake
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page 9 of 274 (03%)
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island.[A]
[Footnote A: History of the Indian Tribes of North America, by James Hall and J. L. McKinney, a valuable work, containing one hundred and twenty richly colored portraits of Indian chiefs.] The Shawanoes have been known by different names. The Iroquois, according to Colden's history of the "Five Nations," gave them the appellation of Satanas. The Delawares, says Gallatin, in his synopsis of the Indian tribes, call them Shawaneu, which means _southern_. The French writers mention them under the name of Chaouanons; and occasionally they are denominated Massawomees. The orthography of the word by which they are generally designated, is not very well settled. It has been written Shawanos, Sawanos, Shawaneu, Shawnees and Shawanoes, which last method of spelling the word, will be followed in the pages of this work. The original seats of the Shawanoes have been placed in different sections of the country. This has doubtless been owing to their very erratic disposition. Of their history, prior to the year 1680, but little is known. The earliest mention of them by any writer whose work has fallen under our observation, was in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Mr. Jefferson, in his "Notes on Virginia," says that when captain John Smith first arrived in America a fierce war was raging against the allied Mohicans, residing on Long Island, and the Shawanoes on the Susquehanna, and to the westward of that river, by the Iroquois. Captain Smith first landed on this continent in April, 1607. In the following year, 1608, he penetrated down the Susquehanna to the mouth of it, where he met six or seven of their canoes, filled with |
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