Indian History In Delaware County ! Names etc.

This is a 120 plus picture of boathouses on the west side of Darby Creek in Tinicum Twp. You can see the railroad tracks in the foreground. This is from a group of glass plate pictures I bought years ago,

Note: This is a nice look back on Indians in Delco. from names etc. Please share.

TRACES OF INDIANS IN DELAWARE COUNTY

         Anyone exploring 20^th Century Delaware County would find few reminders of the Indians who owned the land 300 years ago.  Recent maps show a few authentic Indian names:  Lenni, a village in Middletown, and Lenape, just across the Brandywine in Chester County, together give the name of the Algonquin tribe that lived in Delaware County when the first Europeans came.  Later they became known as the Delawares, after the English renamed the river which the Dutch and Swedes had called South River.  Tinicum comes from Tenakong, the Indian name for the island on which the Swedes, under Gov. Printz, founded the first permanent settlement in Pennsylvania.

         Muckinipattus Creek is the only stream in the county which retains its Indian name.  Naamans Creek was named for a chieftain whose speech at a great council held at Tinicum in 1654 kept peace between the Lenni Lenapes and the Swedes.  It was he who confirmed the purchases of land made earlier by the Swedes on which they based the claim that had long been disputed by the Dutch.

         Secane, a station on the Media Branch P.R.R., was named for one of the Indian chiefs with whom William Penn made a treaty in 1883 for purchase of the land between the Schuylkill River and Chester Creek.  That treaty begins:

         “We, Secane and Icquoquehan, Indian Shackemakers and right owners of ye Lands Lying between Manaiunk, alias Schuylkill, and Macopanackhan, alias Chester River does . . . hereby grant and sell all our Right and Title in ye said Landes,” etc.  Incidentally, the consideration was specified quantities of wampum, duffils (wooden goods), blankets, kettles, and guns, but no rum, which the while man had learned to withhold from the Indians.  By this deed, most of the present area of Delaware County was acquitted by Penn.

         Wawa, name of another P.R.R. station, is an Indian word meaning “wild goose,” but it apparently has no particular association with the county history.

         Aronimink, the name of a golf club located in Newtown Square, also the name of an Upper Darby community in which the club formerly had its course, is an Indian word meaning “by the beaver dam,” or “the place of the beaver.”  Its association with Delaware County began in 1900, when the Aronimink Golf Club of Philadelphia gave up its site on 49^th Street opposite the old Belmont Cricket Club, to which many of its members had belonged, and merged with groups from the Lansdowne County Club and the Bala Golf Club to found a new club in Drexel Hill with the old name, Aronimink.  Research on the history of this name, with the assistance of JM. G. Marquissee, Secretary, and Freas B. Snyder, led to two sources:  First, the original club site in Philadelphia was a farm located in the Indian village of Arunnamink, which lay south of Woodland Avenue between Karakung or Cobbs Creek, and the Schuylkill River.  Both the village and a stream of the same name are shown on old maps, with variations in the spelling.

         The second possible source was the name of Chief Aronimink, an elderly Indian boy, near 54^th Street and Whitby Avenue, in the 90’s .  There is also the possibility that his name came originally from the village.

         Though the name Aronimink did not belong to early Delaware County, it seems desirable to preserve it among traces of the Indians since it was a Lenni Lenape name and belonged to a village so close to the county border that its inhabitants might have had daily association with their cousins across the Kerakung.  These newer associations will at least keep the name alive and not allow it to be lost to memory as have so many of the Indian village names, including Conquannock, where Penn built early Philadelphia.

         In searching for traces of Indian occupier historians have tried to locate old trails.  Some believe that all early roads were laid on Indian trails, among the meandering courses of old roads to prover their theory, but early court records show that many of the first highways were laid out under rules made by the courts to carry roads from one plantation to another in the general direction desired.  No doubt, well-worn trails were used when possible, but travel was so difficult I pioneer days that roads wound this way and that to avoid hazards presented by swamps, woods, and steep hills, or to bring the traveler to a ford when the trail crossed a stream, in the days before ferries and bridges were established.

         Smith’s “Map of Early Settlements shows the Great Trail of the Minquas from the Susquehanna River to thee Schuylkill.  The Minquas were Indians of the Susquehannock tribe, belonging to the Iroquois group.  They were fierce and unfriendly, quite unlike the peaceable Delawares whom they held in subjection, jeering at them with impunity, calling them “cowards” and “women,” and coming to hunt in their territory whenever game was scarce in their own.  In the spring they came down to the Schuylkill to take the shad coming up the river to spawns, and at intervals came down to Ft. Beverside on the Schuylkill with thousands of beaver skins for trade with the Dutch and Swedes.

         This trail entered the county at the N. E corner of Thornbury, and extended southeastward through Edgmont, Middletown, Nether Providence, Springfield, Ridley and Darby to Karakung, where it turned south and met Minquas Creek, now called Mingo.

         The site of this trail has been marked with two monuments:  one on the Wilmington Pike south of West Chester; the other in Rose Valley, not far from Hedgerow Theater.

         More tangible evidence that this was Indian country may be found in the collections of Indian relics which are still treasured in many Delaware County homes, as well as in local museums.  These were gathered through the years by farmers who turned them up in their fields, or by youthful collectors who knew many places where they could dig up a rich harvest of arrowheads spear points, stone axes, and crude pottery.  Today such treasures are rather scarce, but in 1943 an important discovery was made in two rock shelters near Broomall, by three local residents who found an Indian burial site while hunting for arrowheads.

         When they realized that their discovery might have significance for archeologists, they reported it to the director of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, who assigned a member of his staff to supervise the excavation and study the findings.  After a careful survey of the site had been made, the whole collection of relics was removed and placed among the permanent exhibits of the museum.

         Since these were the first Indian shelters I Delaware County to bed uncovered and studied scientifically, the discovery was historically important.  It is believed that the shelters were used o winter hunting trips by Lenni Lenape Indians whose permanent villages were near the shores of the Delaware.  The completeness of the collection and the fact that it had been undisturbed for more than three centuries made it possible for the museum staff to reconstruct a phase of Indian life which throws new light on the early history of Delaware County.

         The passing of the Indians from the eastern seaboard was inevitable, as settlements multiplied, and the European population grew.  The Delaware always lived peaceably with their white neighbors, partly because they were not war-like, but principally because the white settlers treated them kindly and paid for the land on which they settled.  The treaties made by William Penn secured peace for Pennsylvania for many years until the outbreak of the French and Indian War threatened all of the colonies with the horrors of Indian warfare, though it never touched Delaware County.

         By 1775 the Delawares had all moved westward to sparsely settled land, excepting a few individuals who continued to live a free life on land where they were protected.  According to local historians, one little group consisting of Andrew, Isaac his son, and two sisters, Nanny and Betty, one of whom was Andrew’s wife, lived part of the time in Aston, where they had a wigwam on Chester Creek, as late as 1770.  They spent part of their time in another camp on Lownes Run near Joseph Gibbons’ house in Springfield.  Probably Andrew, Isaac, and Nany are the same Indians who lived on Thomas Minshall’s land near Dismal Run, until Andrew died in 1780.  He was buried in Middletown Friends Burying Ground, and the others joined their tribe in New Jersey.

         Dr. George Smith is authority for the statement that Indian Nelly, who had a cabin near Shipley farm in Springfield, as late as 1810, was the last of her race in the county.