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Another Route to the New World

With all this in mind, let us take a look at the American Indian traditions -- do any of the tribes trace their ancestry back across the Bering Sea to Siberia? And can we trace their origins further west than Siberia?

Long before great cities of steel and glass arose above the landscape of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, this area was the home to another nation -- an almost forgotten nation with its own traditions, history and past heroes. With the arrival of the Europeans this nation was shattered and swept away to become mute entries in encyclopedias and works of history of the white man. But all was not lost. It left behind -- in ancient pictographs -- a record of its history to give us a last glimpse of Ancient America. This account is called the WALLAM OLUM (the RED RECORD), and the people who recorded it are the LENNI LENAPE -- later named the "DELAWARE INDIANS."

In The Red Record: The Oldest Native North American History, translated and annotated by David McCutchen, we read --

The aboriginal source of the RED RECORD, the Lenni Lenape, or "ORIGINAL PEOPLE," were widely known and respected among the Indian tribes. With a deep knowledge of their past and a tradition of PICTOGRAPHIC RECORDS, the Lenni Lenape were uniquely qualified to write this chronicle of ancient heroes and events. -- Avery Publishing Group Inc., Garden City Park, N.Y. 1993. P. 4.

Anthropologist Werner Muller (Pre-Columbian American Religions) adds --

In the long chain of tribes along the East Coast, one ethnic group stands out, not only in the European written sources but also in the judgment of the Indians themselves. This remarkable group was the DELAWARE, called in their own language the LENNI LENAPE. They had a special status in the eyes of many other Indian peoples: they were reverenced as the 'grandfathers,' representatives, after a fashion, of authority and legality. -- P. 162.

The Wallam Olum (the Red Record) is the record of the Delaware Indians' ancient history -- told in the form of an epic song. "Recorded in pictures and words, the saga tells of the rise to glory of the Lenni Lenape and their great Lenape family, also called the ALGONQUIANS, the most populous and widespread Native American language group in ancient North America. The Delawares today firmly believe that this is the record of their past" (The Red Record: The Oldest Native North American History. P. 4).

The Algonquian people, comprised of several hundred tribes, occupied most of the Canadian region lying to the south of Hudson Bay between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. Also, they occupied that section of what is now the United States extending northward from North Carolina and Tennessee. In addition, Algonquian tribes lived in various isolated areas to the south and west -- including parts of what are now South Carolina, Iowa, Wyoming and Montana.

The best known of the Algonquian tribes include the Algonquian (from which the stock takes its name), Amalecite, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Conoy, Cree, Delaware, Fox, Gros Ventre, Kickapoo, Massachuset, Miami, Micmac, Mohegan, Mohican, Montagnais, Musi, Narraganset, Naskapi, Nipmuc, Ojibway, Ottawa, Pequot, Potawatomi, Sac, Shawnee, Tete de Boule and Wampanoag.

The Encyclopedia Britannica (1943 edition) relates that this stock "is one of the great stocks of native North America, perhaps the largest on the continent in point of area occupied, extending around latitude 55 degrees continuously from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, and to the south less regularly as far as Cape Hatteras and the Ohio river. This is essentially the natural region of northern woodland, whose coniferous forests the Algonkin tribes occupied almost exclusively and the deciduous ones largely" (Vol. 1, p.622).

The encyclopedia goes on to note --

In general the southern Algonkin tribes farmed, the northern ones were non-agricultural. Three divisions drifted into the northern Plains and became nomadic bison hunters: the Arapaho and Gros Ventre, the Blackfeet and the Cheyenne. The speech of the first two is highly specialized, indicating their separation for a long time; the Cheyenne are later comers in the Plains. In recent generations some of the Cree and Ojibway have begun to take on the Plains type of customs. -- Vol. 1, p.622.

Cyclone Covey, in his article Algonquins, Egyptians, and Uto-Aztecs, informs us that when the Algonquin ancestors wended their way to the Great Lakes forests, some groups descended into the St. Lawrence Valley, while one group in particular extended up to North Labrador and down to New Jersey.

In recent years anthropologists have come to realize that the speech of the Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland, the Kootenay of British Columbia and the Wiyot and Yurok of the Californian coast is a remote branch of Algonquin.

By the time the Europeans arrived in North America, the Delaware may have numbered as many as 20,000, but several wars and at least 14 separate epidemics reduced their population to around 4,000 by the year 1700 -- the worst drops occurring between 1655 and 1670. Since the Delaware afterwards absorbed peoples from several other Algonquian-speaking tribes, this figure remained fairly constant until 1775. By 1845 it had fallen to a combined total of about 2,000 Delaware AND Munsee in both the United States and Canada. The 1910 census came up with roughly the same number; but the current Delaware population has recovered to about 16,000 -- most of them living in Oklahoma. Nearly 10,000 Delaware are in eastern Oklahoma and, until quite recently, were considered part of the Cherokee Nation.

"Delaware" is not a Native American name. The Delaware called themselves Lenape, translated either as "original people" or "true men." The Swedish form was Renape -- showing a link to the Scandinavian countries. For many Algonquian (as in other groups), the Lenni Lenape were the "grandfathers," a term of great respect stemming from the widespread belief that the Lenape were the original tribe of all Algonquian-speaking peoples; and this often gave the Lenape the authority to settle disputes between rival tribes.

A common tradition shared by most Algonquian maintains that the Lenape, Nanticoke and Powhatan were, at some point in the past, a single tribe which lived in the Lenape homeland. Linguistic evidence and migration patterns tend to support this -- leaving only the question of "when."

Occupying the area between northern Delaware and New York, the Lenape were not really a single tribe in 1600 but a set of independent villages and bands. There was no central political authority, and Lenape sachems (chiefs), at best, controlled only a few villages usually located along the same stream. The three traditional Lenape divisions (Munsee, Unami and Unalactigo) were based on differences in dialect and location. However, there was a common sense of being "Lenape" from a shared system of three MATRILINEAL clans which cut across their village and band organizations. Among the Unami and Unalactigo, the Turtle clan ranked first, followed by the Wolf and Turkey. The Munsee apparently only had Wolf and Turkey.

Despite the European insistence that they were one, the Lenape were not a unified tribe until after they had moved to Ohio in the 1740s. Even then their tribal organization followed the pattern of their traditional clans. The tribal council was composed of three sachems, one each from the Turtle, Wolf and Turkey clans with the "head chief" almost always being a member of the Turtle clan. These were hereditary positions from selected families but still required election for confirmation. War chiefs, however, were chosen on the basis of proven ability.

Crossing the Sea

The RED RECORD begins its narrative with the Lenape accounts of Creation and of the great flood of Genesis 7. It continues with the crossing of the Lenape people FROM SIBERIA INTO THE NEW WORLD, and of their encounters with the people who were already inhabiting the North American continent. It includes a TIME SCALE covering more than a THOUSAND YEARS, and an ACCURATE RECORD of their travel over THOUSANDS OF MILES from the cold wastes of Arctic Siberia to the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.

"The compressed, evocative nature of the words of the Red Record," writes translator David McCutchen, "is consistent with descriptions of the Lenape language. William Penn, for example, called the language 'lofty, yet narrow, but LIKE THE HEBREW; in signification full, like short-hand in writing; one word serveth the place of three, and the rest are supplied by the Understanding of the Hearer...And I must say, that I know not a Language spoken in Europe, that hath words of more sweetness or greatness, in Accent and Emphasis, than theirs'" (The Red Record, p.16).

To retrace the migration of the Lenni Lenape to the New World, we must project ourselves into the remote wilderness of Siberia, and into the most distant historical past revealed in the Red Record. The eastern part of Siberia is vast -- as large as the continental United States. To the north, the cold, dry tundra of the NORTH SLOPE extends eastward in a long peninsula of barren mountains leading to the Bering Strait. In the center are the evergreen taiga forests, situated beyond low ranges of windswept mountains. These vast forests are watered by the great LENA RIVER -- a river longer than the Mississippi.

To the west, Siberia extends all the way to the Ural Mountains, and for about a third of its area -- from the Urals to some distance beyond the Yenisey River -- is a great plain with few sharp elevations. Sloping generally downwards, from south to north in the west part of this area, are large tracts of swamp punctuated with thousands of small lakes.

The shore of the Arctic Ocean is low and flat. Almost the entire north section of Siberia, extending from the Arctic Ocean south for almost 250 miles, is TUNDRA -- treeless and marshy plains that are perpetually frozen to great depths. The tundra surface thaws sufficiently in summer to permit short-lived vegetation (such as perennial mosses, lichens, and stunted shrubs) to grow, providing support for the migrating REINDEER HERDS.

The evidence in the words and symbols of the Red Record clearly show how, from the cold mountains of their first home, the LENAPE HUNTERS FOLLOWED THE HERDS OF REINDEER and the rivers northward -- spreading into the snowy TUNDRA of the NORTH SLOPE. When their enemies (the Snake people) fled eastward across the rugged and barren wastelands, THE LENAPE PURSUED THEM UNTIL THEY REACHED EASTERN SIBERIA. Hard-working and ingenious, the Lenapi prospered, living off the herds in the plains of Eastern Siberia.

Notes David McCutchen: "The traditions of the Lenni Lenape, as recorded by Heckewelder in a later time when they were known as the Delaware Indians, state that their ancestors came out of a LAND OF ICE AND SNOW in the FAR NORTHWEST of the continent. Other traditions of their closest relatives -- the NANTICOKES, the SHAWNEE, and the MOHICANS -- give even more detail, including what may be descriptions of THE ACTUAL CROSSING OF THE BERING STRAIT itself" (Ibid., p. 38).

A Shawnee legend describing an exploration of the New World was recorded from an oral story related by an old Shawnee at Piqua in Ohio in 1823. It describes in great detail AN ANCIENT ARCTIC HOME, and how and why their ancestors crossed the ocean -- which in the legend is called the GREAT SALT LAKE. "...At some indefinitely remote past, they had arrived at the main land after CROSSING A WIDE WATER. Their ancestors succeeded in this by...walk[ing] over the water as if it had been land."

The symbols and words found in the Red Record clearly show that this crossing was accomplished on a BRIDGE OF ICE; and this event is echoed by a NANTICOKE legend put down in writing in 1767 by the missionary Charles Beatty --

They came to a GREAT WATER. One of the Indians that went before them tried the depth of it by a long pole or reed, which he had in his hand, and found it too deep for them to wade. Upon their being nonplused, and not knowing how to get over it, their God made a BRIDGE over the water in one night, and the next morning, after they were all over, God took away the bridge. -- Journal, p. 21.

The MOHICANS, also closely related to the Lenni Lenape, recalled this event. According to Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, in his Lenape and Their Legends, "the Mohican's description reflects the strong currents characteristic of the BERING STRAIT, as well as its abundant marine life, with great numbers of whales migrating between the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean" (Pp. 136-137).

Even the mighty CHEYENNE, a LENAPE TRIBE of the great plains, have a tradition of this crossing. In an extraordinary narrative they recall:

...having lived in a land that was perpetually covered with ice and snow. Trying to escape the continual rule of Hoimaha [the winter storm], they started EASTWARD toward the sun. After many years, they came to a NARROW NECK OF SEA at a time when the water was frozen. As the people were about halfway across the frozen water, one of the young women discovered a horn sticking out of the ice.

The horn took her fancy. Even in these difficult times of moving, the women and the children made sliding sticks from horns and managed to enjoy life a little more. The woman wanted this horn, for it was large and long, and would make a splendid sliding stick. She tried to pull the horn out of the ice, but the harder she pulled, the tighter the horn seemed to be imbedded. Finally, she called to her relatives for assistance. Some of the men came and helped her. But, like her, they were unable to pull the horn out. Then, they began to cut the horn, for they liked the girl and wanted to make her happy. As they cut deeper into the horn, blood spurted out in great gushes.

The people were frightened and grouped together on both sides of the men who had been cutting the horn. Just as they realized that the horn must be that of a monster, they felt a great tremor and knew that the monster must be struggling below the FROZEN WATER. Before anyone could move away, the ICE suddenly broke, the horn disappeared, and a great chasm appeared. Some of the people were drowned. Many of them found themselves before an ever-widening channel of water, so they had to retreat to the land from whence they had come. THOSE ON THE SIDE TOWARD THE SUN watched their friends retreat; then, saddened by the insuperable gulf between them, they took flight onward IN PURSUIT OF THE SUN and moved INTO THE EAST and THE NEW LAND. Never have these people -- the Tsi-Tsi-Tsas [Cheyenne] -- forgotten this story.-- Horn In The Ice, by Dusenberry. P. 12. Recorded in a personal interview with Rufus Wallowing, Lame Deer, Montana, 1955, who had heard it in 1951 from Frank Old Bird, age 80, of the Southern Cheyenne.