Beyond Manhattan: A Gazetteer of Delaware Indian History
[Robert S. Grumet (2014)] of Salamanca in the Seneca Indian Alle- woman who became the prominent leader of a Delaware Indian gany Reservation bears the surname of the prominent Delaware community often referred to as Queen Esther’s Town after the death Beyond Manhattan, Robert S. Grumet 97 of her husband, the noted Munsee leader Egohohowen, at Wilawana (see below). A sister of Andrew Montour (see in Pennsylvania Central below), daughter of French Margaret, and granddaughter of Madam Montour, Queen Esther became notorious among American colonists after she executed several prisoners taken at the battle of Wyoming (see in Pennsylvania Central below) in July 1778. SING SING (Chemung County). The eight-mile-long Sing Sing Creek tributary of the Chemung River (see above) preserves the memory of the Delaware Indian town of Assinisink (see in Cohocton above). Located a few miles below the creek mouth, Assinisink was visited by Post in 1760 and burned by Montour’s raiding party four years later (in Grumet 1999). STOCKBRIDGE (Madison County). The Town of Stockbridge is located in part of Oneida Indian territory where Mahican and Munsee Christian Indian converts from Stockbridge, Massachusetts accepted an Oneida invitation to move among them in 1785. Naming their community New Stockbridge, they gave sanctuary to Indian Brothertown Movement expatriates from Long Island and New England. In 1801, they were joined by Brotherton Reservation Delawares from New Jersey (see Indian Mills in New Jersey South in Part 1 above). Most members of the community moved farther west to a town they also named Stockbridge built in Calumet County (see in Wisconsin below) in 1831. Many of these people lived there until 1836, when much of the community relocated farther west to the present-day Stockbridge-Munsee Indian Reservation (see in Wisconsin below). 1870:324). Also identified as Wilawamink on February 4, 1769, and as “Wilawaning, or the Big Horn,” the following year, Wilawana was abandoned after Egohohowen died sometime around 1772. Some of Wilawana’s people went west to the Munsee towns around Tionesta (see in Pennsylvania West below). Others, determined to remain in the area, moved with Queen Esther to her town at the mouth of Chemung River across from Tioga Point (see in Pennsylvania Central below). American militiamen destroyed Queen Esther’s Town along with the other Indian communities around Tioga in the fall of 1778. Today, Wilawana adorns a hamlet located at what is thought to have been the original site of Egohohowen’s town. The name also adorns the road that passes through the community as it runs parallel to the Chemung River from the VENANGO (Chautauqua County). Rising in the community of French Creek, New York, the Venango River (see in Pennsylvania West 2 below) flows south to its junction with the Allegheny River. WAPPASENING (Tioga County). The lower course of Wappasening Creek flows into the Susquehanna River at the Village of Nichols from its headwaters farther south (see in Pennsylvania Central below). WILAWANA (Chemung County). Whritenour thinks that Wilawana sounds very much like a Munsee word, wiilaawanal, “horns or antlers.” Home to the Munsee leader Egohohowen and his wife, Esther Montour (see Queen Esther above), Wilawana was the name of what Zeisberger called the Monsey town of Wilawane where he spent three days during the fall of 1767 (De Schweinitz 98 Beyond Manhattan, Robert S. Grumet PENNSYLVANIA CENTRAL River. der, and Union counties). Heckewelder (1834:364) wrote that Bald Eagle Creek was an English translation of a Delaware Indian place name wapallannewachschiehhanne, “the stream on which the bald eagle’s nest is.” Historian William A. Hunter (in P.A.W. Wallace 1981:173) noted that the actual identity of the Indian that local tradition identifies as the namesake of the creek, valley, mountain, township, and other places that currently bear the name Bald Eagle is not known. Bald Eagle may have been a Munsee leader who fought alongside or against colonists during the Revolutionary War. Heckewelder suggested that Bald Eagle’s town, wapallannewachschiéchey, “Bald Eagle’s Nest,” was located in the presentday Borough of Milesburg. Bald Eagle and Upper Bald Eagle townships and Bald Eagle Creek appeared in the 1792 Howell map. Two streams bearing the name Bald Eagle Creek presently flow in opposite directions in the Bald Eagle valley below the western slope of Bald Eagle Mountain. The lengthier of these is the northeasternflowing 55-mile-long stream that runs past Milesburg to its junction with the West Branch of the Susquehanna River at the City of Lock Haven. The other is a southwestward-running ten-mile-long tributary of the Juniata River that rises just below the larger Bald Eagle spellings of this place name. 31-mile-long Aughwick Creek, its Little Aughwick Creek headwater, and the present-day communities of Aughwick and Aughwick CAPOUSE (Lackawanna County). Colonists moving onto the land Mills along the main stem of the stream in Shirley Township. that was formerly the site of a large Lackawanna River valley MunBALD EAGLE (Blair, Centre,