TRIVIA:
QUOTES:
CHUCKLES/BELLY
LAUGHS & GROANERS
TRIVIA:
PENNSYLVANIA ON THE EVE OF COLONIZATION
Indians: The First Inhabitants
When first discovered by Europeans, Pennsylvania,
like the rest of the continent, was inhabited by groups of American Indians,
people of Mongoloid ancestry unaware of European culture. The life of the
Indians reflected Stone Age backgrounds, especially in material arts and
crafts. Tools, weapons and household equipment were made from stone, wood,
and bark. Transportation was on foot or by canoe. Houses were made of bark,
clothing from the skins of animals. The rudiments of a more complex civilization
were at hand in the arts of weaving, pottery, and agriculture, although
hunting and food gathering prevailed. Some Indians formed confederacies
such as the League of the Five Nations, which was made up of certain New
York-Pennsylvania groups of Iroquoian speech. The other large linguistic
group in Pennsylvania was the Algonkian, represented by the Delawares,
Shawnees, and other tribes.
The Delawares
The Delawares, calling themselves Leni-Lenape
or "real men," originally occupied the basin of the Delaware River and
were the most important of several tribes that spoke an Algonkian language.
Under the pressure of white settlement, they began to drift westward to
the Wyoming Valley, to the Allegheny and, finally, to eastern Ohio. Many
of them took the French side in the French and Indian War, joined in Pontiac's
War, and fought on the British side in the Revolutionary War. Afterward,
some fled to Ontario and the rest wandered west. Their descendants now
live on reservations in Oklahoma and Ontario. The Munsees were a division
of the Delawares, who lived on the upper Delaware River, above the Lehigh
River.
The Susquehannocks
The Susquehannocks were a powerful Iroquoian-speaking
tribe who lived along the Susquehanna in Pennsylvania and Maryland. An
energetic people living in Algonkian-speaking tribes' territory, they engaged
in many wars. In the end, they fell victim to new diseases brought by European
settlers, and to attacks by Marylanders and by the Iroquois, which destroyed
them as a nation by 1675. A few descendants were among the Conestoga Indians
who were massacred in 1763 in Lancaster County.
The Shawnees
The Shawnees were an important Algonkian-speaking
tribe who came to Pennsylvania from the west in the 1690s, some groups
settling on the lower Susquehanna and others with the Munsees near Easton.
In the course of time they moved to the Wyoming Valley and the Ohio Valley,
where they joined other Shawnees who had gone there directly. They were
allies of the French in the French and Indian War and of the British in
the Revolution, being almost constantly at war with settlers for forty
years preceding the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. After Wayne's victory
at Fallen Timbers (1794), they settled near the Delawares in Indiana, and
their descendants now live in Oklahoma.
The Iroquois
The Iroquois Confederacy of Iroquoian-speaking
tribes, at first known as the Five Nations, included the Mohawks, Oneidas,
Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. After about 1723 when the Tuscaroras from
the South were admitted to the confederacy, it was called the Six Nations.
The five original tribes, when first known to Europeans, held much of New
York State from Lake Champlain to the Genesee River. From this central
position they gradually extended their power. As middlemen in the fur trade
with the western Indians, as intermediaries skilled in dealing with the
whites, and as the largest single group of Indians in northeastern America,
they gained influence over Indian tribes from Illinois and Lake Michigan
to the eastern seaboard. During the colonial wars their alliance or their
neutrality was eagerly sought by both the French and the British. The Senecas,
the westernmost tribe, established villages on the upper Allegheny in the
1730s. Small groups of Iroquois also scattered westward into Ohio and became
known as Mingoes. During the Revolution, most of the Six Nations took the
British side, but the Oneidas and many Tuscaroras were pro-American. Gen.
John Sullivan's expedition up the Susquehanna River and Gen. Daniel Brodhead's
expedition up the Allegheny River laid waste to their villages and cornfields
in 1779 and disrupted their society. Many who had fought for the British
moved to Canada alter the Revolution, but the rest worked out peaceful
relations with the United States under the leadership of such chiefs as
Cornplanter. The General Assembly recognized this noted chief by granting
him a tract of land on the upper Allegheny in 1791.
Other Tribes
Other Tribes, which cannot be identified with
certainty, occupied western Pennsylvania before the Europeans arrived,
but were eliminated by wars and diseases in the 17th century, long before
the Delawares, Shawnees and Senecas began to move there. The Eries, a great
Iroquoian-speaking tribe, lived along the south shore of Lake Erie, but
were wiped out by the Iroquois about 1654. The Mahicans, an Algonkian-speaking
tribe related to the Mohegans of Connecticut, lived in the upper Hudson
Valley of New York but were driven out by pressure from the Iroquois and
from the white settlers, some joining the Delawares in the Wyoming Valley
about 1730 and some settling at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Two Algonkian-speaking
tribes, the Conoys and the Nanticokes, moved northward from Maryland early
in the 18th century, settling in southern New York, and eventually moved
west with the Delawares, with whom they merged. The Saponis, Siouan-speaking
tribes from Virginia and North Carolina, moved northward to seek Iroquois
protection and were eventually absorbed into the Cayugas. In the latter
part of the 18th century there were temporary villages of Wyandots, Chippewas,
Missisaugas, and Ottawas in western Pennsylvania.
QUOTES:
"If we listened
to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship.
We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense.
You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the
way down."
--Ray Bradbury
As long as you keep
a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down,
so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.
--Marian Anderson
Some minds are like
concrete: thoroughly mixed up and permanently set.
--Unknown
Whatever enlarges
hope will also exalt courage.
--Samuel Johnson
Life is short, but
there is always time enough for courtesy.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
A champion is someone
who gets up when he can't.
--Jack Dempsey
Victory is sweetest
when you've known defeat.
--Malcolm Forbes
"A simple way to
take the measure of a country is to look at how many want in...
and how many want
out."
--Tony Blair