CHAPTER IX.
AN OLD DELAWARE LEGEND.
Sorrows of the daughter of Wawanosh -Delaware legend oŁ the rainbow.
C WO centuries have passed away since the fame of Wawanosh was sounded along the shores of Lake Superior. He was a Delaware chief of an ancient line, who had preserved the chieftainship in their family from the remotest
! The name Delaware, that the Indians of this nation bear, was given them by the whites. It is derived from Lord Delaware, one of the early English colonial governors in America. Among themselves these people are called Lenni Lennapi or the primitive nation. They re.ided anciently in a great country west of the Mississippi. With the "Five Nations" so renowned in the Indian history of this continent, they seized and occupied a large territory southeast of their ancient domain In the course of this long migration, the Delawares divided into three great tribes, called the Tortoise tribe, the Turkey tribe and the Wolf tribe. In the time of William Penn they occupied the whole of Pennsylvania, and extended from the Potomac to the Hudson. As the white population began to increase, strengthen and extend over these vast territories, the Delawares (like all the other tribes) found it necessary to plunge deeper into the forests and plains, and yield to their conquerors or usurpers. While a great part of the nation established themselves on the Ohio, or the margin of the Muskingum, others regained the shores and the forests of the Mississippi, whence, according to their traditions, their ancestors had set forth. When colonies of Europeans came to take possession of that large and handsome river, which the celebrated Jesuit Marquette first discovered, and [to which he] gave the now consoling and sublime name of the " Immaculate Conception," they repulsed once more the Delawares, and Government granted these Indians a little territory southwest of Fort Leavenworth on the Missouri. In 1854 the Delawares ceded this last foothold to the United States. Author's Note.