SUSQUEHANNOCK

The Susquehannock lived along the river named after them, the Susquehanna River, flowing from the Catskill Mountains in New York, through central Pennsylvania, and emptying into the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Although the Susquehannock ranged up and down the entire length of the river in the course of their history, they lived mostly within the present-day boundaries of Pennsylvania. Their name, pronounced sus-kwuh-HAN-ock, and possibly meaning “roily river,” also appears with the same spelling and pronunciation as the river—that is, Susquehanna. Or they are sometimes referred to as the Conestoga or Andaste, both from the Iroquoian word kanastoge, meaning “at the place of the immersed pole.”

The Susquehannock spoke an Iroquoian dialect, but they separated from other Iroquoians long before Europeans arrived in North America. They lived like other Woodland Indians, combining hunting, fishing, and gathering with farming, and they shared many other cultural traits with fellow Iroquoians, such as the use of longhouses. But they are not referred to as IROQUOIS (HAUDENOSAUNEE), a name applied to the tribes of the Iroquois League living to their north.

In fact, for much of their history, the Susquehannock were bitter enemies of the Iroquois. During the 1600s, both tribes made frequent raids on each other. Small war parties, armed with bows and arrows, tomahawks, and scalping knives, would set out on foot through the virgin forests or in elm-bark canoes along the twisty Susquehanna River and travel into enemy territory for quick forays on stockaded villages. This was the period of Dutch activity in North America, and the colonists of New Netherland traded for furs with the Susquehannock.

In 1675, a decade after the British had taken control of Dutch lands in North America, the Susquehannock suffered a major defeat at the hands of their Iroquois enemies. It is thought that epidemics brought to the Susquehannock by European traders helped weaken them prior to their defeat in battle. At this time, most Susquehannock bands left their original homelands.

Some of the Susquehannock who resettled in Maryland were involved in the 1676 conflict known as

Bacon’s Rebellion. Nathaniel Bacon was a younger cousin to the governor of Virginia, William Berkeley. Bacon and his followers—mainly farmers and frontiers-men—rebelled against colonial authority for several reasons, including high taxes, low prices for tobacco, special privileges granted to the Jamestown, Virginia, aristocracy, and the failure of colonial officials to defend the frontier against Indian attacks.

Bacon and his vigilante army did not distinguish one group of Indians from another. Fighting originally broke out because of a dispute between the NANTICOKE of Maryland and settlers over stolen hogs. But Bacon led attacks on other Indians in the region, including Susque-hannock. The Susquehannock responded with frequent raids on settlers.

Bacon, before his death from disease, marched on Jamestown with his army and forced Berkeley and other colonial officials to grant much-needed farm reforms. But there was no justice for the Susquehannock, who were reduced in numbers and dispersed from the area because of repeated attacks.

The Susquehannock found themselves in the middle of a similar situation of the OTTAWA and other tribes almost a century later, in 1763, during Pontiac’s Rebellion. Colonists on the Pennsylvania frontier, angered because of attacks on their settlements by the rebelling tribes, sought revenge on all Indians. A mob out of Paxton, Pennsylvania, who came to be known as the Paxton Boys, descended upon the Christianized Indians of the Conestoga Moravian Mission and murdered three men, two women, and a boy, scalping all of them. For their attack, the Paxton Boys used the excuse that an Indian had stolen and melted down a pewter spoon. Some sympathetic whites gave the surviving Conestoga refuge in the Lancaster jailhouse. But the Paxton Boys broke in and massacred 14 more men, women, and children.

The governor of Pennsylvania at the time was John Penn, a descendant of the Quaker William Penn, who had founded the colony. Governor Penn issued a proclamation condemning the massacres. In response, the Paxton Boys marched on the capital of Philadelphia and threatened to kill all the Indians in the city. The city mobilized an army to defend itself, but Benjamin Franklin negotiated a treaty with the rebels. The Paxton Boys agreed not to attack peaceful Indians on the condition that the whites received bounties for scalps from the tribes participating in Pontiac’s Rebellion.

It was already too late for the people known as Susquehannock. They had suffered too much disease and warfare. The survivors settled among other Indian peoples and lost their tribal identity. Some Susquehannock descendants now live among the SENECA and CAYUGA in Oklahoma.

TAINO.

See ARAWAK (TAINO)