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The Susquehanna River is named after
the dominant tribe that lived in the Northern Chesapeake watershed
— the Susquehannocks. But anthropologist Paul Wallace notes in his
book Indians in Pennsylvania that Captain John Smith's interpreter
— a Powhatan Indian from Virginia — may have made the tribe's name
up. Susquehannocks means "people of a well-watered land" in Iroquois
language. The nearby Delaware Indians called the same tribe...the
Minquas. This name may be a kind of private joke — for it means "stealthy"
or "treacherous" in the Delaware language. What the tribe actually
called themselves is lost and may never be known.
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All text and images courtesy of Watershed
Radio. More information can be found on their website.
What's in a name?
The Susquehannock Indians were living along — what we now call
— the Susquehanna River and its branches from the north end
of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland across Pennsylvania into southern
New York. The tribe of the Susquehannock Indians was thriving and
they were the dominant tribe in this region when the Europeans first
made contact with them in the early years of the 1600s.
Not much is known, however, about the culture of the Susquehannocks
because their villages were inland and not often visited by settlers
before they had been decimated by epidemic diseases and wars with
other Indian tribes. Archaeologists have found out that the Susquehannocks
were mostly farming and fishing people. In the Spring, they would
plant maize, beans and squash in the fields in their villages, after
which they would moved south near the Chesapeake Bay to fish and gather
shellfish. Then in the Fall, the Susquehannocks again returned to
their villages to harvest their crops and to hunt.
According to some, the name Susquehannock is derived from the Algonquian
word Susquehanough, which meaning varies from "people at the
falls," and "people of the Muddy River," to "People
of a well-watered land." In his book "Indians in Pennsylvania"
Paul Wallace notes that this name, "Susquehannock," was
not the name the tribe called itself. Captain Smith apparently picked
it up from his interpreter, who is believed to have been a member
of the Powhatan tribe. The nearby Delaware Indians called the same
tribe the "Minquas." And the European colonists even had
some other names. The French called them Andaste or Andastes from
their Huron name Andastoerrhonon and the Dutch and Swedes used the
Delaware name of Minquas meaning "stealthy" or "treacherous."
The French also used the term "Gandastogues," meaning "people
of the blackened ridge pole," but what the tribe actually called
themselves is lost and may never be known...
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LINKS
Visit the following three links to learn more about the Susquehannock
Indians...or whatever they were called:
The
Indian Occupation of Mother Bedford/The Land of the Susquehannock
Susquehannocks
By Stacey Marley, 2001
Susquehannock
History
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