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Show MOONEY] DELAWARE TRADITION8- THE NAME TALLIGEWI 19 parent tribe and remove to the south. Six other chiefs follow in succession until we come to the seventh, who " went to the Talega moun ' tains." By this time the Delawares have reached the ocean. Other chiefs succeed, after whom " the Easterners and the Wolves"- probably the Mahican or Wappinger and the Munsee- move oflf to the northeast. At last, after six more chiefs, u the whites came on the eastern sea,'' by which is probably meant the landing of the Dutch on Manhattan in 1609 ( 7). We may consider this a tally date, approximating the beginning of the seventeenth century. Two more chiefs rule, and of the second we are told that " He fought at the south; he fought in the land of the Talega and I^ weta,'' and again the fourth chief after the coming of the whites " went to the Talega." We have thus a traditional record of a war of conquest carried on against the Talligewi by four successive chiefs, and a succession of about twenty-five chiefs between the final expulsion of that tribe and the appearance of the whites, in which interval the Nantieoke, Shawano, Mahican, and Munsee branched off from the parent tribe of the Delawares. Without venturing to entangle ourselves in the devious maze of Indian chronology, it is sufficient to note that all this implies a very long period of time- so long, in fact, that during it several new tribes, each of which in time developed a distinct dialect, branch off from the main Lenape' stem. It is distinctly stated that all the Talega went south after their final defeat; and from later references we find that they took refuge in the mountain country in the neighborhood of the Koweta ( the Creeks), and that Delaware war parties were still making raids upon both these tribes long after the first appearance of the whites. Although at first glance it might be thought that the name Tallige- wi is but a corruption of Tsalagi, a closer study leads to the opinion that it - is a true Delaware word, in all probability connected with vialoh or walok) signifying a cave or hole ( Zeisberger), whence we find in the Walam Olum the word oligonunk rendered as " at the place of caves." It would thus be an exact Delaware rendering of the same name, " people of the cave country,'' by which, as we have seen, the Cherokee were commonly known among the tribes. Whatever may be the origin of the name itself, there can be no reasonable doubt as to its application. " Name, location, and legends combine to identify the Cherokees or Tsalaki with the Tallike; and this is as much evidence as we can expect to produce in such researches." 1 The Wyandot confirm the Delaware story and fix the identification of the expelled tribe. According to their tradition, as narrated in 1802, the ancient fortifications in the Ohio valley had been erected in the course of a long war between themselves and the Cherokee, which resulted finally in the defeat of the latter.* The traditions of the Cherokee, so far as they have been preserved, iBrinton, D. G., Walam Olum, p. 231; Phlla., 1885. * Schoolcraft, H. R., Notes on the Iroquois, p. 162; Albany. 1847. |
