Susquehannock Totally Explained

Everything about Susquehannock totally explained

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 at the north end of the Chesapeake Bay. These people were called:

Andastes by the French (from their Huron name Andastoerrhonon),
Minquas by the Dutch and Swedes (their Lenape (Delaware) name meaning "treacherous"),
Susquehannocks by the English of Maryland and Virginia (an 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 their village in Pennsylvania).

It is unknown what the Susquehannocks called themselves.

History

The true nature of their society, whether a single tribe in a single village, or a confederacy of smaller tribes occupying scattered villages, will probably never be known, since Europeans seldom visited this inland region during the early colonial period. It's likely that the Susquehannocks had occupied the same land for several hundred years. They had a formidable village in the lower river valley near present-day Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when Captain John Smith of Jamestown met them in 1608. He was astonished to find the Susquehannocks were brokering trade with French goods. He estimated the population of their village to be two thousand, although he never visited it. Modern estimates of their population, including the whole territory in 1600, range as high as seven thousand.
   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, there were at war with the Delawares over access to the Dutch. The Delawares were defeated and may have become tributaries. In 1638, New Sweden was established 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 English were defeated in 1644. The Susquehannocks remainined in an inactive state of war with Maryland until 1652. As a result of this war, the Susquehannocks 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 the war interfered with trade with the Dutch. From 1658 to 1662 the Susquehannocks were at war with the rest of the Iroquois nations. By 1661, Maryland's treaty of peace was expanded to a full alliance between Maryland and the Susquehannocks against the Iroquois. Besides goods and arms, the Susquehannocks were supplied with fifty Englishmen 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 couldn't "defend themselves if the others came to attack them in their villages". Some old histories indicate that the Susquehannocks were defeated by the Iroquois, but no record of a defeat has been found and it can be stated that no defeat occurred. In 1675, the Susquehannocks after being invited, relocated themselves to Maryland. They became embroiled in Bacon's Rebellion the following year. 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 when in the middle of the night they walked through the English besiegers. Virginia's governor was overthrown by Nathaniel Bacon and he promised to exterminate the the Susquehannock. Instead he attacked some friendly Occaneechees. Governor Edmund Andros of the Province of New York told the Susquehannock they'd be welcome in New York and that he'd protect them from Maryland and Virginia. The Mohawks invited them to move in as guests. Some moved to their homeland on the Susquehanna River, some fled to the Iroquois for shelter, and others moved to the Delaware 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. After these many incidents of war and disease the remaining Susquehannock, numbering only a few hundred, eventually 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. Nevertheless, their population declined steadily, so that only twenty-two people remained in Conestoga Town in 1763. That year the Paxton Boys, in response to Pontiac's Rebellion on the western frontier, attacked the village and brutally murdered all twenty people that they could find.

Language

The Susquehannocks were 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 only contains about 100 words, but it's sufficient to show that Susquehannock was a northern Iroquoian language closely related to those of the Five Nations.

Footnotes

Further Information

Get more info on 'Susquehannock'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://susquehannock.totallyexplained.com">Susquehannock Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.