In 1682, the seat of the Delaware government was at Shackamaxon, now Germantown, Pennsylvania. There Penn found them and made his famous treaty with them. Although extremely warlike, they had surrendered their sovereignty to the Iroquois about 1720. They were pledged to make no war, and they were forbidden to sell land. All the causes of this step were not known. Because of it the Iroquois claimed to have made women of the Delaware. They freed themselves of this opprobrium in the French and Indian War.
The steady increase of the whites drove the Delaware from their ancient seat. They were crowded off the waters of the Delaware, and settled on the Susquehanna. As early as 1742 they were to be found about Wyoming. It was soon impossible for them to remain there, and they went back of the mountains to the head waters of the Allegheny. They slowly spread down this stream, living for some time on the Beaver. At that time the Wyandot were holding the western country for their kindred, the Iroquois. Seeing the Delaware hard pressed, the Wyandot tendered them a home, and suggested that they seat themselves on the Tuscarawas River, an upper branch of the Muskingum. They were later visited by the Moravians, who established missions among them, chiefly those living on the Tuscarawas. These missions were in a flourishing condition when the Revolutionary War came on. That struggle put these Christian Indians in a false position. They wished to remain on their farms and by their churches. The heathen Indians about Upper Sandusky accused them of being in the confidence of the whites of Western Pennsylvania. At the same time the whites accused them of being in league with the heathen Indians. They became an offense to both parties. Divisions in the tribe had already appeared. White Eyes, the great chief, the friend of the Americans, was gradually superseded by Hopocan, or Captain Pipe, as head chief. Pipe was the head of the war faction, in the interest of the British at Detroit. Through his influence the Christian Indians and their teachers were forcibly removed to Upper Sandusky. Returning in the winter to gather their corn, they were set upon by a force from Western Pennsylvania under Captain Williamson. Nearly a hundred were murdered in cold blood after capture and confinement in a cabin. This only provoked more frequent and deadly Indian forays, to stop which, another force was raised in Pennsylvania to invade the Indian country about Upper Sandusky. Colonel William Crawford commanded this expedition, which met with disaster. Crawford was captured, and Captain Pipe burned him at the stake.
The first treaty ever made with an Indian tribe by the United States was concluded with the Delaware at Fort Pitt, September 17, 1778. It was signed by Andrew Lewis, Thomas Lewis, White Eyes, The Pipe, and John Kill Buck. It provided for the formation of an Indian State with a representative in Congress.
The Delaware had part in all the wars against the Western settlers. These wars were terminated by Wayne’s victory. Prior to this the Delaware had commenced to settle on the White River, in Indiana, by permission of the Miami and Piankashaw. They continued their westward migration, crossing the Mississippi on the invitation of the Spanish Government of Louisiana. One Lorimer, who was afterwards commandant of the post at St. Genevieve, induced the Delaware and Shawnees to accept the offer of the Spaniards. There were Delaware about St. Louis before this, however. In 1788 a band of them attacked residences on the outskirts of that town. A Frenchman named Duchouquet was slain at Chouteau’s Pond by a band of Delaware in that year. Here is an incident in the life of the Delaware band at Cape Girardeau:
The Delawares and Shawnees built several villages in the neighborhood of Cape Girardeau; and, after the establishment of the United States government, so sensible were they of the good results of its working, that they determined to fashion a government as near like it as their knowledge and circumstances admitted, and resolved to adopt the habits of civilization. They gave up the chase, buried the tomahawk, and devoted themselves for a little season to the pursuits of agriculture. In their first criminal court, three men were convicted of murder, and without any time for repentance they were taken back of one of the villages, there tomahawked, their bodies burnt upon a pile, and the ashes scattered to the winds.
It is stated in the treaty of November 7, 1825, with the Shawnees, that the Delaware abandoned the Cape Girardeau reservation in 1815. Most of these found their way to Texas by the year 1820. Some of them wandered westward, and settled in Southwest Missouri. On the 3d of October, 1818, those members of the tribe still residing on the White River, in Indiana, made a treaty at St. Mary’s, Ohio, ceding their lands and agreeing to remove west of the Mississippi to a home to be provided for them, but which was not described. Under the terms of this treaty, the remnant of the Delawares settled on a reservation on the James Fork of the White River. This tract embraced parts of the following Missouri counties: Greene, Taney, Christian, Barry, McDonald, Newton, Jasper, and Lawrence. They were followed there by the Peorias and Piankashaw, or porti