Delaware language

“ Mengwe, or Mingoes,—the Delaware name for those Indians who resided chiefly in the northern States of the Union, and who are better known as the “Iroquois.”
[15] “Master Reginald” might well puzzle the chief, as there is no letter r in the Delaware language, though some of them contrive to pronounce it.
[16] “Netis” signifies, in their tongue, “a trusted friend,” “one to whom all secrets are confided.”
[17] The village was called Gnaden–Hütten—“tents,” or “cabins of grace.”
[18] Every Indian tribe has its peculiar mark or sign ”

“ By God, sir, the oldest man among the council can not remember when a Delaware dared speak without permission of an Iroquois! As an Iroquois and an Oneida, I bid the Delawares to speak only when addressed. But as a white man, I answer you that I require no instruction concerning my conduct, and shall merely thank you for your good intentions and your kind advice, which is the more generous because unsolicited and wholly undesired! ”

“ Only a few English, however, had come to Delaware to live. The people of Wilmington (once Christinaham, or Christina Harbor) and of New Castle, were principally Dutch and Swedes. They were simple farmer people, raising crops and cattle and chickens, and they were very willing to keep the laws that the English at New York made for them. The Indians were still [52] troublesome at times, but the settlers had their block-houses or forts to retreat to and were generally able to protect themselves. ”

“ Small as is the State of Delaware, it has long and honorable history. Many landings of famous men and nationalities have been made on its shores, which face the ocean and a noble bay and river. The Dutch, the Swedes, the Cavalier English, the Quakers May and Verhulsten, Peter Minuit, George Holmes, and William Penn, stepped in succession on the soil. The descendants of the original cosmopolitan population were bitterly opposed to British rule, and were ready at the Revolution to assert and maintain independence. ”

“ Across the dang'rous Delaware.
Oh, wherefore, soldiers, would you fight
The bayonets of a winter storm?
In truth it were a better night
For blazing fire and blankets warm!
We seek to trap a foreign foe,
Who fill themselves with stolen fare;
We carry freedom as we go
Across the storm-swept Delaware!
The night is full of lusty cheer
Within the Hessians' merry camp;
And faint and fainter on the ear
Doth fall the heedless sentry's tramp.
O hirelings, this new nation's rage
Is something 'tis not well to dare;
You are not fitted to engage
These men from o'er the Delaware! ”

“ The proper name of the Delaware nation was and still is Len âpé, “we men,” or “our men,” and those critics who have maintained that this was a misnomer, introduced by Mr. Heckewelder, have been mistaken in their facts. [264]
I have not done with the root nē. I might go on and show you how it is at the base of the demonstrative pronouns, this, that, those, in Delaware; how it is the radical of the words for thinking, reflecting, and meditating; how it also gives rise to words expressing similarity and identity; how it means to be foremost, to stand ahead of others ”

“ And the lights gleamed gold o’er the river cold,
For the murk of the furnace shed a copper veil;
And the veil was grim at the great cloud’s brim,
And the lights went molten, now hot, now pale.
O gold little lights at Carney’s Point,
You gleam so proud o’er the Delaware;
When the moon grows wan in the eastering dawn,
Then you sparkle gold points o’er the Delaware.
Aureate filigree on a Croesus’ brow,
You hasten the dawn on a gray ship’s prow.
Light you streams of gold in the grim ship’s hold
O’er the sullen flow of the Delaware? ”

“ Persons unacquainted with the fact will find it difficult to believe that one state of the great American Republic still holds to the practice of lashing men and women, white and black. Delaware—one of the smallest states of the Union, the citizens of which are proverbially generous and hospitable, a state which has produced a Bayard—is, to her shame we regret to say, the culprit which sins against the spirit of civilization in this nineteenth century, one hundred years after the fathers of the Republic declared equal rights for all men. ”

“ The Delawares as a rule are not in love with the white settlers. When a colony is attacked there are generally Delawares among the reds who creep up to surprise the poor settlers. Why should a Delaware want to do us a good turn; tell me that, Bob?”
“Well, now, I am just as much in the dark as you are,” returned Bob; “unless that was a Delaware youth you rescued, Sandy, from that horrible quicksand late in the autumn on that day you went out hunting alone.” ”

“ In 1906–1907 Delaware College had 20 instructors and 130 students. The college is a part of the free school system of Delaware, and tuition is free to all students from the state. There is an agricultural college for negroes at Dover; this college receives one-fifth of the appropriation made by the so-called “new Morrill Bill” of 1890.
History.—Delaware river and bay were first explored on behalf of the Dutch by Henry Hudson in 1609, and more thoroughly in 1615–1616 by Cornelius Hendrikson, whose reports did much to cause the incorporation of the Dutch West India Company. ”

“ After the English conquest on the Delaware, not a few of the Dutch migrated to Maryland, where their descendants, it is said, are still to be found. Some in later years returned to the Delaware, where on the whole, notwithstanding the early confiscations, English rule seemed to promise well. The very first documents, the terms of surrender both on the Delaware and on the Hudson, breathed an air of Anglo-Saxon freedom. Everybody was at liberty to come and go at will. Hollanders could migrate to the Delaware or to New York as much as before. ”

“ Those who criticise the whipping post adversely overlook the fact that Delaware is the broad highway between four chief American cities.
Our unthinking critics include those who do not know that time or the loss of time means nothing at all to a very large proportion of our population. A day, or a week, or a month, more or less, costs a low-grade negro nothing at all in opportunity or in money. The native negroes of Delaware know their place and make no trouble. ”

“ We have the best people in the world in Delaware, friend Custis: few traders, little law, scarcely any violence, and they are easy to please; but it is a high offence in this state not to be what is called 'a clever man.' You must stop, whatever be your errand, and smile and inquire of every man at his gate for every individual member of his household. ”

“ Only thirteen out of the forty-eight states of our Union are original colonies, and Delaware is one of these famous thirteen. You are the young citizens, therefore, of an historic state. To you it will fall, some day, to uphold the honor of Delaware. May you be as patriotic and as brave as the Delaware settlers who conquered the wilderness and the Delaware soldiers who laid down their lives for liberty and right.
The Delaware Society of the ”

“ All were well pleased to be relieved from the stagnant despotism of the Duke of York and to take part in the free popular government of William Penn in Pennsylvania. They became magistrates and officials, members of the council and of the legislature. They soon found that all their avenues of trade and life were quickened. They passed from mere farmers supplying their own needs to exporters of the products of their farms.
Descendants of the Swedes and Dutch still form the basis of the population of Delaware. ”

“ In one form, we have wulik-hannésipu, 'best rapid-stream long-river;' in the other, wuliké-sipu, 'best long-river.' Heckewelder's derivation of the name, on the authority of a Delaware legend, from the mythic 'Alligewi' or 'Talligewi,'—"a race of Indians said to have once inhabited that country," who, after great battles fought in pre-historic times, were driven from it by the all-conquering Delawares, [23] —is of no value, unless supported by other testimony. ”

“ According to promise, I now write you a little about Delaware. Persons in your vicinity look upon the 'Little Diamond State' as a mere bog, or marsh, and mud and water they suppose are its chief productions; but, in my opinion, it is one of the finest little states in the Union. Although small, in proportion to the size it produces more grain and fruit than any other state in the country, and they are unexcelled as regards quality and flavor. Crime is kept in awe by that best of institutions, the whipping post and pillory! ”

“ Our lips will never know a song
As sweet as the songs of old.
Maid of Shehawken, dearer far
Than any that I know,
Lighting my pathway like a star,
Afar from thee I go,
But tho' I leave the Hills of Wayne
My heart is still with thee,
O maiden, may we meet again
In the days that are to be.
Table of Contents
To the Delaware ease thy murmuring, Delaware,
For thy many braves so fair
Who are sleeping by thy stream—
Rouse them not—there let them dream.
For upon that silent shore
[Pg 23] Indian's cry shall sound no more. ”

“ The Delaware Indians regarded this measurement as a pure fraud and refused to abandon the Minisink region north of the Lehigh. The proprietors then called in the assistance of the Six Nations of New York, who ordered the Delawares off the Minisink lands. Though they obeyed, the Delawares became the relentless enemies of the white man and in the coming years revenged themselves by massacres and murder. They also broke the control which the Six Nations had over them, became an independent nation, and in the French Wars revenged themselves on the Six Nations as well as on the white men. ”

“ And so, in the massacre of Zwannendael, ended the first settlement ever made on Delaware soil.
Yet still the land had been possessed by the Dutch. It was not, any more, unclaimed land that belonged to any man that came along. When the King of England gave away all the land along that part of the coast to Lord Baltimore, only three years later, he could not give this land of Delaware, because it had already been settled by DeVries for Holland. Our state began when the Dutch colonists first stepped ashore on Paradise Point. ”

“ Nature, therefore, as if anticipating some foolish political boundaries on the part of man, prepared one drain and channel of ingress at the southwestern corner of Delaware to the splendid bay of Virginia.
Around that corner of the little Delaware commonwealth, in a flat, poor, sandy, pine-grown soil, Jimmy Phœbus rode by the stranger in the afternoon of October, with the sun, an hour high in the west, shining upon his dark, Greekish cheeks and neck, and he hearing the fall birds whistle and cackle in the mellowing stubble and golden thickets. ”

“ The first was, that they declared the Delaware nation to be the woman in the following words: 'We dress you in a woman’s long habit, reafilled ching down to your feet, and adorn you with ear-rings;’ meaning that they should no more take up arms. ”

“ An honest Delaware now, being fairly vanquished, would have lain still, and been knocked on the head, but these knavish Maquas cling to life like so many cats-o'-the-mountain. Let him go—let him go; 'tis but one man, and he without rifle or bow, many a long mile from his French commerades; and, like a rattler that has lost his fangs, he can do no further mischief, until such time as he, and we too, may leave the prints of our moccasins over a long reach of sandy plain. See, Uncas," he added, in Delaware, "your father is flaying the scalps already. ”

“ Because many they-are-called but
tatthiluwak achnaeknuksitschik.
they-are-few the-chosen.
The asterisk occurs in the original apparently to indicate that a word is superfluous or doubtful. The interlined translation I have supplied from the materials in the mission-Delaware dialect, but my resources have not been sufficient to analyze each word; and this, indeed, is not necessary for my purpose, which is merely to present an example of the true Unami dialect.
The Moravian Bishop, John Ettwein, was another of their fraternity who applied himself to the study of the Delaware. ”

“ I am to drive the missionary to-day. He goes to the Delaware line once more."
"Ha! The Delawares!" sneered old Fire-Flower. "I like not those
Delawares. They worship idols. It is not good to dance around idols."
"Not good," again echoed Fish-Carrier.
"Still the Delawares are not really bad people," said Wampum. "I don't like their hideous idol, and some day I hope to see it cut down," he added earnestly.
"Then it will be a brave man who will do it," asserted Fire-Flower. "The Delawares are a fierce tribe. Their eyes are too black. They cannot be trusted. ”

“ If Christianity is right, Delaware is right. If God will damn every body forever simply for being intellectually honest, surely he ought to allow the good people of Delaware to imprison the same gentleman for two months. Of course there are thousands and thousands of good people in Delaware, people who have been in other States, people who have listened to Republican speeches, people who have read the works of scientists, who hold the laws of 1740 in utter abhorrence; people who pity Judge Comegys and who have a kind of sympathy for the grand jury. ”

“ The Mingos had been directed to talk with the Delawares and the Shawnees, and ask them to take up the hatchet against the French, and against the Ottawas and the Potawatomis of the north, who were allies of the French. But the Delawares and Shawnees of the Ohio were undecided.
King Shingis of the Delawares spoke fiercely. He was a small man, but strong and quick, and his eyes glowed hotly. He hated the English, and wished no white men at all.
“No,” he said. “This is our country. The Delaware are men. They stand on their own ground. ”