The "Summary Of Native Americans Of Lancaster County" Story

 It was an ordinary day.  Trying to think what our country might have looked like before the first Europeans explored the "New World."   I'm sure it didn't resemble what our country looks like today.  There were no highways, no high-rise buildings and no automobiles.  For thousands of years before anyone arrived by boat and stepped foot on the "New World," North America was occupied by the various tribes of aboriginal people.  These inhabitants were mostly nomadic and moved from one location to another depending upon their food and shelter needs.  For about 2500 years, the area where I now live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania was inhabited by a group of people known today as the "Shenks Ferry Native Americans."  They disappeared around 1500 A.D. and by the time the first Europeans arrived in the area, it was occupied by a variety of diverse groups.  As they moved from location to location, they took the name of the place where they settled.  As an example, those living along the Piscataway Creek were referred to as Piscatways" until they began to migrate and where then known as the "Conoy."  To go along with all the names of the different groups, or tribes, the various European settlers translated the Native American tribal names into their own vernacular.  The league of nations was called "Five Nations" by the English and "Iroquois" by the French.  So what exactly was the league of nations?  Well, those living in what at the time was New York and Canada, were the Onondagas, Oneidas, Mohawks, Cyugas and Senecas.  Sometime in the mid-1400s, the five groups formed a league of nations called the "Haudenosaunea" or "People of the Longhouse."  The Council of 50 chiefs governed the league, but each tribe maintained its own language and territory with none being superior than the other.  In 1722, refuges from the Tuscarora tribe joined the league and it was renamed "The Six Nations."  The head village of these tribes was at Onondaga which was just south of Syracuse, New York.  Along the eastern seaboard of New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania lived the Leni Lenape who were made up of groups of related clans with similar languages.  They spoke primarily Unami and Munsee and were considered matrilineal or gaining their lineage through their mother's kin.  When the English settled in the area, they named the river after the first governor of Virginia, Thomas West who was the third Baron De Le Warr.  The English called the river the Delaware.  In 1624 the Dutch founded their colony and named it "New Amsterdam."  The Lenape began selling furs to the Dutch.  The English colony of Pennsylvania was founded in 1682 by William Penn who made a treaty with the Lenape under the famous tree at Shackamaxon to live in peace as long as the river flows.  But, Penn's sons didn't follow their father's policy and began to take land from the Lenape.  During the French and Indian War, the Lenape sided with the French since they said they would return their land to them if they won.  After the French lost, the Lenape began to move west to the Ohio Valley.  Another tribe, the Shawnee originated in the Ohio Valley which at the time included Pennsylvania and Virginia.  In 1698, 60 Shawnee families from Georgia applied to the Susquehannocks for permission to settle hear the Pequea Creek in what today is Lancaster County.  They named their town Pequehan.  They remained there about 34 years until their chief abdicated and Lakundawanna was elected his successor and they emigrated to Ohio.  The Conoy originally settled along the Piscataway Creek near the Potomac River.  In 1704 William Penn welcomed them to his province and they moved along the Susquehanna at a place called Conejohela which today is known as Long Level in York County.  They later moved to the other side of the river along the Coney Creek and called their settlement Conoytown in what today is Donegal Township.  Finally, the Susquehannocks occupied a town with a stockaded fort on the Susquehanna River at the foot of Turkey Hill in what today is Manor Township.  They had close to 600 warriors.  In 1608, Captain John Smith left Jamestown and sailed up the Chesapeake Bay and eventually encountered a hunting party of Susquehannocks.  Smith said they were much larger and muscular than most native Americans.  Eventually, when skeletons were found along the river, their size was documented being much larger than most Native Americans.  In 1658 a group of English Quakers explored the wilderness along the Susquehanna River looking for a place to settle.  They met the Susquehannocks and asked to buy some of their land, but by this time the Susquehannoks were busy with a war against the Five Nations.  After losing the war they moved up river to Turkey Hill and became known as the Conestogoes which meant "place of the immersed pole."  Today it is Manor Township.  The Conestogoes dwindled until they were a small remnant of twenty people.  They were eventually exterminated by a band of Scots-Irish vigilantes in Lancaster in December of 1763.  I have written about the massacre in the past.  Type: "Indian Massacre in Lancaster" in the small white box, top left, to read that story.  I posted it Friday, June 7, 2013.   I often wonder what the eastern part of the United States might look like today had all these tribes and  explorers lived peacefully way back then.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.