Distribution of the Susquehannock language

The Susquehannock people were natives of areas adjacent to the Susquehanna River and its tributaries from the southern part of what is now New York, through Pennsylvania, to the mouth of the Susquehanna in Maryland^[1] at the north end of the Chesapeake Bay. These people were called:

• Andastes by the French (from the Huron name Andastoerrhonon),
• Minquas by the Dutch and Swedes (using the Lenape (Delaware) name meaning "treacherous"),
• Susquehannocks by the English of Maryland and Virginia (using the Algonquian name meaning "people of the muddy river", and
• Conestogas by the English of Pennsylvania (from Kanastoge, meaning "place of the immersed pole", the name of the Susquehanna village in Pennsylvania).

There is no record of what the Susquehannocks called themselves.

History

Susquehannock artifacts on display in the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.

Subtribes are but little known; they included the Akhrakouaeronon. The French name Andaste, from Andastoerrhonon, may refer to another subtribe. Possibly related tribes include the Scahentoarrhonon, Onojutta-Haga and the Tehotitachsae.

During the period of Dutch control of New Netherland, the Susquehannock traded furs with the Dutch. As early as 1626, they were struggling to get past the tribes of the Delaware in order to trade with the Dutch at Manhattan. In 1634, they were at war with the Delawares over access to the Dutch. The Delawares were defeated and may have become tributaries. In 1638, Swedish settlers established New Sweden at a location designed to intercept the Susquehannock trade with the Dutch.

In 1642, the English Province of Maryland declared war on the Susquehannocks. With the help of the Swedes, the Susquehannock defeated the English in 1644. The Susquehannocks were in an inactive state of war with Maryland until 1652. As a result, they traded almost exclusively with New Sweden. In 1652 they concluded a peace treaty with Maryland. In return for arms and safety on their southern flank, they ceded to Maryland large territories on both shores of the Chesapeake Bay.

In 1658, the Susquehannocks used their influence with the Esopus to end the Esopus Wars because it interfered with the important trade with the Dutch. From 1658 to 1662, the Susquehannocks were at war with the Iroquois. By 1661, Maryland's treaty of peace was expanded to a full alliance between the Maryland colonists and the Susquehannocks against the Iroquois. Besides goods and arms, fifty Englishmen were assigned to the Susquehannocks to guard their fort. In 1663, a large Iroquois invasion force was defeated at the home fort of the Susquehannocks.

In 1672, the Susquehannocks defeated an Iroquois war party. The Iroquois appealed to the French for support because the Iroquois could not "defend themselves if the others came to attack them in their villages". Some old histories indicate that the Iroquois defeated the Susquehannocks, but no record of a defeat has been found.^[2]

In 1675, the Susquehannocks were invited by colonists to Maryland, where they relocated because of pressure from the Iroquois. They became embroiled in Bacon's Rebellion the following year.^[3] After some Doeg Indians killed some Virginians, Virginians crossed into Maryland and killed some Susquehannocks. Virginia militia in alliance with Maryland militia surrounded the Susquehannock village on the Potomac. The Susquehannock held out for six weeks.

Virginia's governor was overthrown by Nathaniel Bacon and he promised to exterminate the Susquehannock. Instead he attacked some friendly Occaneechees. Governor Edmund Andros of the Province of New York told the Susquehannock they would be welcome in New York and that he would protect them from Maryland and Virginia. The Mohawk Nation invited them to move to New York as guests. Some moved to their homeland on the Susquehanna River, some fled to the Iroquois for shelter, and others moved to the upper Delaware River under the protection of New York. In 1677, the Shackamaxon Treaty was signed between the Susquehannock and New York. In 1677, New York ordered the Susquehannock to be expelled from the Delaware Valley. The Iroquois as adopters of a majority of the Susquehannock acquired a right to most of the Susquehanna River, but they never claimed below the falls.

Over the next hundred years, the Susquehannock population was devastated by the ravages of disease and warfare. The remaining Susquehannock, numbering only a few hundred, settled in a new village in Lancaster County called Conestoga Town, where they lived under the protection of the provincial government of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth. Their population declined steadily, with only twenty-two people counted in Conestoga Town in 1763. That year the Paxton Boys, in response to Pontiac's Rebellion on the western frontier, attacked the village and murdered all twenty people they found.

Language

The Susquehannocks were an Iroquoian-speaking people. Little of the Susquehannock language has been preserved. Almost the only source is a Vocabula Mahakuassica compiled by the Swedish missionary Johannes Campanius during the 1640s. Campanius's vocabulary contains only about 100 words, but it is sufficient to show that Susquehannock was a northern Iroquoian language closely related to those of the Five Nations.

Footnotes

References

• Illick, Joseph E. Colonial Pennsylvania: a History. New York: Scribner & Sons, 1976.
• Kent, Barry C. Susquehanna's Indians. Harrisburg: The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1984.
• Jennings, Francis, The Ambiguous Iroquois, 1984, ISBN 0393017192

External links

• "Where are the Susquehannock?" from native.brokenclaw.net
• "Susquehannock History" by Lee Sultzman

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