Tamaqua, Pennsylvania - Anatomy of a Name

One way to unravel the meaning of the name Tamaqua is to review the historical documents. The area in which Tamaqua is located officially became part of the colony of Pennsylvania in 1749. The lands between the "Mahonoy" (River), on the east side of the Susquehanna, and the Delaware (River) north of the Blue Mountains, were obtained in the Purchase of 1749, which would extend the northern extremity of the Pennsylvania Colony from the Kittatinny or Blue Mountain to a line beginning at the western extremity of Mahanoy Mountain (twelve miles below the forks of the Susquehanna River) and running North 60 degrees East (about one hundred and ten miles) to the confluence of Lackawaxon Creek and the Delaware River. This land added to the colonial land of existing Lancaster (already created from Chester County), Bucks and Philadelphia counties. 

Pennsylvania shortly after created four new counties. In 1749 York County was created from western Lancaster County.  In 1750 Cumberland County was created from lands west and north of new York County (acquired in the Treaties of 1736).  Then in 1752 Berks was created from north and west Philadelphia and north and east Lancaster counties.  In that same year Northampton County was created from Upper Bucks County. The land where Tamaqua would eventually be located was then part Northampton County.

First Historical References

So what are valid historical documents? From the first Portuguese expeditions down the West African coast and Columbus's voyage, the European nations considered cartographic information to be critical to establishment, the maintenance and expansion of their empires. In their early maps of the Americas, the Spanish, French, British and other Europeans also relied on native American maps and knowledge of the interior, but as the Europeans explored more extensively, the Indian information and place names gradually disappeared from American maps. [See Cartography in the Colonial Americas.] So we begin here with maps. 

The 1759 Scull Map shows a very good depiction of what was then called the Tamaguay Creek (now the Little Schuylkill River), shown named for probably the first time, although an earlier map (1756) by Thomas Kitchin, showed the river without a name.  This first large-scale map of Pennsylvania and an important eighteenth-century map was engraved in what is now the United States (by Streeter). The mapmaker, Nicholas Scull (1700-1762), was Surveyor General of Pennsylvania from 1748 to 1761, and was the first member of a North American family to engage in mapmaking as a business. 

1759 Scull Map showing the Tamaguay Creek

Unrest in the colonies during the French and Indian War and afterwards during the colonists' disputes with the British government and the eventual independence of the United Staes of America, persisted. These conditions slowed migration above the Blue Mountain.  Mapmakers, however, (particularly Scull's successor William Scull – his grandson) continued to produce quality maps of these isolated areas:

• Scull map of the province of Pennsylvania showing the Tamaguay Creek, 1770, published by James Nevil in Philadelphia, PA
• Scull’s 1775 map showing the Tamaguay Creek published by Robert Sayer and John Bennett in London
• A map (creator unknown) depicting Berks County in 1776.  The stream is now identified using both names – Little Schuylkill and Tamaquon (Tamaguan), different from the previous but recognizable as the Tamaguay.
• A map by Sauthier published in 1776 showing the "Tamauguay" Creek, from a Map of The Provinces of New-York and New-Jersey, with a part of Pennsylvania and the Province of Quebec, published in Germany in 1777.

Claude Joseph Sauthier was the official surveyor of the province of New York from 1773 to 1776, a period that witnessed numerous boundary disputes both within the colony and with neighboring Quebec, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. These disputes fostered a wealth of new survey information and encouraged a careful re-examination of older survey work. 

Note Sauthier's accurate depiction of the Tamauguay Creek. Ft Allen is present day Weissport. Sauthier or his survey crews predated Burkhardt Moser by 25 years in walking in the Tamaqua area.

The earliest explorers/cartographers in the present-day Tamaqua area, clearly knew the area as "Tamaqua" or one of the Anglicized variations of that name - Tamaguay, Tamauguay or Tamaquon/Tamaguan, and all because of the river. These people relied on native American knowledge of the interior and as they explored more extensively, the Indian information and place names were used and published.

So Which Indians Provided the Information and What Does "Tamaqua" Mean

Immediately before the appearance of the Europeans, eastern Pennsylvania was inhabited principally by native groups belonging linguistically to Algonquian speakers. An important tribe within this group was the Lenni-Lenape (now known as the Delaware). However, the Delaware were not the sole inhabitants of the area. When the Europeans (Dutch) arrived (1609), the Iroquois tribes (of southern New York) were in the midst of exercising hegemony over the various tribes located in Pennsylvania. These Five Nation Iroquois had defeated and practically eliminated the Susquehannock tribe (who were also Iroquoian speakers, linguistically) who lived near the Susquehanna River and were familiar with the Schuylkill area ay there eastern borders. The Five Nation Iroquois (under the stewardship of the Seneca tribe) also controlled the Delaware tribes and claimed responsibility for the administrative control of the land upon which the Delaware lived (although it is important to know that the upper Schuylkill Valley contained no permanent Indian settlements but was an area used for hunting and fishing). Even though the Iroquois controlled the Delaware, it was the Delaware who utilized this land as their homelands.

Drawing of a Lenni Lenape family near the colony of New Sweden) near Pennsylvanis, from a Swedish artist published in a book in 1703

Pennsylvania is filled of water bodies and places named with Native American origin, or they are places with a Native American connection historically. As noted above, during the early European historic period, predominantly Algonquian speaking tribes inhabited eastern Pennsylvania. Credit for originally documenting and recording Algonquian place names goes to three Moravian missionaries who lived among the Delaware during the 18th and early 19th Centuries - John Gottlieb Ernst Heckewelder, David Zeisberger, and Count Nickolaus Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf. 

 

Heckewelder who interacted extensively with the Delaware, as depicted (age 63) in an 1807 sketch by Henry Howe

One thing stands out from the above cartographic and native history.  The early name of the Little Schuylkill River was the Tamaguay (or Tamauguay) or Tamaqua Creek (or river). In 1822, Heckewelder (and Ponceau [see Heckewelder, John, and Peter S. Du Ponceau. “Names Which the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians, Who Once Inhabited This Country, Had Given to Rivers, Streams, Places, &c. &c. within the Now States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia: And Also Names of Chieftains and Distinguished Men of That Nation; With the Significations of Those Names, and Biographical Sketches of Some of Those Men. By the Late Rev. John Heckewelder, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Communicated to the American Philosophical Society April 5, 1822, and Now Published by Their Order; Revised and Prepared for the Press by Peter S. Du Ponceau.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 4, 1834, pp. 351–396]) published a list of names which the Delaware Indians used. Because of Tamaqua’s potential vast mineral deposits its name was included in the list, as follows:

Tamaquon 

Tamaquehanne or (short) Tamakhanne, the Indian name, as it stands on record, of Little Schuylkill. The word signifies beaver stream, a stream on which the beavers were numerous, where they built dams and mud houses to dwell in. [Emphasis added]

In this same book it is instructive to see what Little Beaver Creek is called:

Little Beaver Creek. . . Tankamochque and Tankamockh'anne. Both these names are proper, and signify the small beaver stream or creek. 

It is unknown why the name of the place was not simply Tamaqua or even Tamauguay but this is likely as Heckewelder himself notes that, “These facts have not always been attended to in the English spelling of those names. Most of the faults which exist in the common spelling of Indian names are owing to the want of an Indian ear. I have in the spelling of Indian names (where I do not copy them from books, maps or records) adopted the German orthography, conceiving that the powers of the German alphabet are better calculated than those of the English to convey the true sounds of a foreign idiom.”  

In fact, the Lenape/Delaware language itself has the word, “tëmakwe”, which means beaver. Lenape is an eastern Algonquian language originally spoken in eastern Pennsylvania, southeastern New York, all of New Jersey, and northern Delaware in three various dialects. The dominant modern version of the Southern Unami dialect called "Lenape" is being taught by the Delaware Tribe of Indians, headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, under the Lenape Language Preservation Project. So the Delaware Indian word - tëmakwe - became the name of the creek or river. AND "tëmakwe" means, without further context, the animal, beaver.

From the Delaware Tribe online language dictionary

To gain further context, from the Ohio Journal of Science (59:6), November 1959, PRACTICAL REASONS  FOR  ALGONKIAN INDIAN STREAM  AND PLACE NAMES, comes this finding from August C. Mahr, a professor of German at Ohio State University, who expanded Heckewelder's understanding of Delaware Indian place names:

Whether on the march or at home, the Delaware Indians, men, women, and children, mainly subsisted on meat. Plentiful hunting, therefore, was not a luxury but a constant necessity. Hence, it was an advantage to the tribe to be familiar with names for localities where the   Thus, it happened that in the entire Delaware terrain, from the Atlantic into Ohio, there exist, less in the original Indian than in English adaptations, innumerable rivers, creeks, runs, etc., named after bear, beaver, deer, fawn, elk, and other game animals: 'hunters' hints,' if there ever were any. Very much the same is true for the former hunting grounds of other Indians, especially Algonkians such as the Shawnee, Miami, Ottawa, Chippewa, Menominee, etc., both in the United States and Canada.

It appears that in Pennsylvania, that is, in the eastern portion of the Delaware Indian domain, such 'hunters' hints' have better persisted in their original Delaware versions or, at least, semblances of such, than west of Pennsylvania. On modern maps, for example, there occurs Moshannon as the name of a southern tributary to the Susquehanna's West Branch, in Clearfield Co., Pennsylvania; an older version, Moshannock, is mentioned by the Moravian missionary Rev. John Ettwein, who in 1772, when leading a migration of Delaware and Mohican mission converts westward, made camp at that river (Jordan, 1901: 213; Mahr, 1953: 263). Moshannock exactly reflects Del. moos/hdnlk, a compound from moos- 'an elk,' and -hanxk (-hana, -hane) 'a stream (in compounds),' meaning 'Elk Creek.' Farther toward the SE, in Berks Co., on U. S. Rd. 222 between Reading and Allentown, we find a place name, Maxatawny, and not far from it, on Pa. St. Rd. 100, Macungie. Roughly fifty miles NW of it, in Schuylkill Co., on the Tamaqua river, there occurs another place name, Tamaqua. All three names indicate that, formerly, they had been Delaware 'hunters' hints.' …

Heckewelder likewise listed the true Delaware name form for present Tamaque (Heckewelder, 1834: 361). He wrote Tamaquon and stated that its correct Delaware version was Tamaquehanne "or (short) Tamakhanne, the Indian name, as it stands on record, for Little Schuylkill." His interpretation is "beaver stream." The Delaware term is a compound of t*machkw} -  (also amochk, Zeisberger 1887: 20)  'a beaver,' and -hane  (-han]k, -hana) 'stream, creek, river  (in compounds)'; comp.,  Zeisberger,  (1887: 160).

Thus the Delaware word tëmakwe means not only beaver (the animal) but is a hunter's hint that "hunters were most likely to find enough game animals [in this case beavers] to supply the common need."  Mahr confirms Heckewalder's conclusion that, "The word signifies beaver stream, ... on which the beavers were numerous, where they built dams and mud houses to dwell in." 

For the avoidance of doubt, "beaver" in the Iroquoian language of the Seneca is "nagarriaki", a word bearing no resemblance to “tëmakwe”. Clearly, Tamaqua derives from a Delaware word.

After the Revolutionary War 

Settlement really opened up above the Blue Mountain after the Revolution. Examining the Warrant Register for Northampton County, several properties are identified as located in the location of the "Tamaqua [or Tamoqua] Creek". This further supports the derivation of the Tamaqua name for the creek and the eventual settlement.

Moreover, several Commonwealth Legislative Reports indicate the investigation of the Tamauguay Creek or River in 1790.  Further evidence of the historic “Tamauguay” Creek or river name comes from The Journal of the Twenty-sixth House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, December 5, 1815:

1. Report of the Commissioners appointed to view and explore the river Schuylkill & c. by John Adlum and Benjamin Rittenhouse to Thomas Mifflin, President of the Supreme Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Appendix II), pp. 6-7 of Appendices, 1790 – “We further observe that … the Legislature to declare them public highways, if not already done; more particularly that branch called the Tamauguay, as we are credibly informed it opens a communication, with a very short distance of land carriage to the Nescopeck Creek which empties into the north-east branch of the Susquehannah river.”
2. Report of the Commissioners appointed to view and explore the head-waters of the rivers Delaware, Lehigh and Schuylkill and the north-east branch of Susquehanna by Reading Howell, W. Dean and Frederick Antes to Thomas Mifflin, President of the Supreme Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Appendix IV), p. 25 of Appendices, November 27, 1790 – “[W]e … proceeded by road to over the Broad mountain into Quacake valley, and up the same to Little Schuylkill or Tamauguay creek, at a place where a horse road crosses it leading from the settled parts of the Schuylkill below into Quacake valley thence leading to Berwick, &c.”

Thus all the early historical evidence shows that the Little Schuylkill River was called the Tamaqua (or some variation thereof) by the native-Americans and the early mapmakers or residents who relied initially on the identification of the original dwellers of the land for the description. That being said, by the dawn of the 19th century, the name of the Tamaqua Creek was losing its usage and becoming instead the Little Schuylkill River, as shown in the below analysis of the name usage by mapmakers (in the 80-year period between the first acquisition of the land from the Delaware until the incorporation of the town):

Year	Tamaqua (or Variation)	Little Schuylkill
1759	Yes
1770	Yes
1775	Yes
1776	Yes	Yes
1777	Yes
1790	Yes	Yes
1792		Yes
1830	Yes	Yes
1838		Yes

The area of the town was initially settled in 1799 when Burkhardt Moser and others arrived and built a saw mill near the junction of the Panther Creek and the Little Schuylkill River (Tamauguay/Tamaqua).  What was to become the town lay in original West Penn Township, then, newly formed, Rush Township by 1807. The village grew slowly because it was limited to the sawmill and lumbering business.  Moser himself did not appear to live permanently there. In the 1800, 1810 and 1820 censuses Moser’s address was still Lynn Township, below the Blue Mountain.

The fact that changed the course of history for Tamaqua was the discovery by Moser and others of large deposits of coal around the small hamlet. In 1817 developers became interested in the town and soon an expanded town and regional center for coal mining and support industries was planned for development by the Little Schuylkill Navigation Railroad and Coal Company chartered in 1826.  By 1829, the Little Schuylkill Railroad had secured large tracts of land, and the community of Tamaqua was laid out with individual lots being sold or prescribed for. A c. 1830 lithograph, "Plan of the Town of Tamaqua," shows Tamaqua lots, rivers and planned rail lines as well as regional coal communities, rail roads, proposed railroads [See original nomination document for Tamaqua Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.]

Tamaqua Becomes a Regional Center for Coal and Railroads and Tamaqua Loses its True Meaning, Getting Lost in Improper Translation

An 1830 map of Schuylkill County shows the Little Schuylkill River (still also) called Tamaqua River. In 1838, Thomas G. Bradford created and published a map of Pennsylvania. For the first time (or one of the first times) in a large scale Pennsylvania map, the settlement of Tamaqua is shown. 

In 1874, Sarah Ann McCool, who wrote Historical Gleanings for the Shenandoah Weekly Herald from February 7, 1874 to November 27, 1875, penned this:

Tamaqua was laid out in the year 1829, by Mr. Edward Smith, the first superintendent and engineer employed by the Little Schuylkill Navigation Company. It is located in a narrow dell between Sharp mountain in the south and Locust mountain, a branch of Broad mountain, on the north, on both banks of the Little Schuylkill River. This stream was called Tamaqua creek by the Aborigines, and from the circumstance the town derives its name…

According to Munsell’s History [HISTORY OF SCHUYLKILL COUNTY, PA, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers, New York: W. W. Munsell & Co., 36 Vesey Street, 1881, Press of George Macnamara, 36 Vesey Street, N.Y.], published in 1881 the name began losing its actual true meaning:  

For the space of twenty-five years from the first settlement in 1799 but few dwellings were erected.  The town was laid out from parts of West Penn and Schuylkill townships in 1829, at which time the population was about 150.  As the waters of the Tamaqua, rechristened Wabash, the west branch of the Little Schuylkill, passed through the tract, it was decided to name the infant with the name of the creek, Tamaqua, which is Indian for running water. In 1832 the town was incorporated.

According to this document, the town name was adopted from the River running through it (although the editor confuses the River naming the Wabash, being a separate, third river within the Tamaqua limits) BUT the true meaning if the Delaware word "tëmakwe" was incorrectly translated and stated. This was not unsurprising since in 1881 practically all remnants of the native Americans was a distant eight-decade memory. Furthermore, in the Delaware language the phrase for running water is pempehelak (flowing water). In Iroquoian the water for water is ochnecanos (in Onandaga), so it would be some variation of that.  In Tuscaroran the word for water is À:we. Thus none of the explanations of running water are based upon a word in any of the subject native languages.

Another twist was added in the early 20th century. In 1907, another Schuylkill County history was published, History of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania ... including a genealogical and biographical record of many families and persons in the county; edited by Adolf W. Schalck and D. C. Henning, where at p. 299 the following is noted:

Under the provisions of a law passed in 1851 [probably meaning 1831] a charter was granted creating the borough of Tamaqua. The name of the town is of Indian derivation, meaning "running water." There was also an Indian chief named "Tamaquay" who signed many of the early deeds to Indian lands.

This was a wholly new hypothesis for the name, but presented over 100 years after its original founding, and with no documented support. Although research reveals there is no Tamaquay on any early or later Pennsylvania deeds (but see below for New Jersey). One Delaware chief who did sign treaties with Penn was Tamanend.  The name is similar and may have caused confusion to Schalck and the Pottsville Republican reporter (below) who presented these origins of the name Tamaqua.

In 1916 the Pottsville Republican newspaper of June 20, featured a story describing Tamaqua’s history, taking a cue from the Schalck History:

The word “Tamaqua” is of Indian derivation and means “running water” one of the many Indian chiefs was named “Tamaquay” and he signed many of the early deeds for lands owned by the Indians.

However, another historical document A History of the Indian Villages and Place Names in Pennsylvania by George P. Donehoo (1929) goes back to the Heckewelder explanation in 1822:

The name is derived from that of the stream Tamaqua, or Little Schuylkill. Tamaque or Tamaqua is a corruption of Tankamochk, “little beaver,” and with the suffix hanna, meaning “little beaver stream.”  The stream is referred to in 1790 as “Tamagaay or little Schuylkill” (Archives XI. 678). …

Tamagaay – Lloyd (1790), Archives XI. 678. Tamaqua. - Morris, map, 1848, also Little Schuylkill.  Tamauguay. - Scull, map, 1770 (large map), little Schuylkill. – Howells, map 1792

From the 1933 history of Pennsylvania by Frederic A. Godchales, Pennsylvania: Political, Governmental, Military, and Civil. Complete in Five Volumes, including Military Volume, Political and Civil History Volume, Physical, Economic, and Social Volume, Governmental Volume, and an Additional Biographical Volume:

TAMAQUA — Incorporated from Rahn Township in 1832, and named for Tamaqua Creek ...

However, note that Rahn Township from West Penn, was not erected until 1860.

In the 1970s, the Environmental Protection Agency, records collection noted the following:

Tamaqua, roughly translated from the Iroquois as “land wherein the dwells the animal that lives in the water” or beaver …

There is no word “Tamaqua” or similar in the Iroquoian language.  Moreover, no Iroquois groups lived in or hunted in the Upper Schuylkill Valley, although many traveled on the Indian paths which run through Schuylkill and Carbon Counties.

In the Allentown Morning Call of August 22, 1999:

The area was named Tamaqua by local American Indian tribes. Loosely translated, the name means "land where the beaver dwells in the water."

From NATIVE  AMERICAN  WATERBODY AND  PLACE  NAMES  WITHIN  THE SUSQUEHANNA  RIVER  BASIN AND  SURROUNDING  SUBBASINS by Stephen A. Runkle in 2003 a totally new and unrelated origin for the name as follows:

Tamaqua                      

"Little beaver" - town in Schuylkill County, Pa., named for the famous Delaware Turkey Clan (Unalachtigo) chief, King Beaver.

King Tamaqua (Beaver) was an actual historical figure who died in Western Pennsylvania in 1769.  His origins were from the lower Schuylkill Valley near Reading (Tulpehocken).  Before the French and Indian Wars began, he and his family (Pisquetomen and Shingas) and most of the tribe had moved to western Pennsylvania as their homelands were sold to the Pennsylvania proprietors. This chief Tamaqua had no interactions with settlers in eastern Pennsylvania. And while he lived in Reading he was not a "chief", which was actually his uncle - Sassoonan or Allumapees. There is no evidence that this distant mid-18th century person would have anything but a passing connection with the Tamaqua area in the mid-19th century when the town was incorporated.

On June 27, 2013, nearly 100 years later than the newspaper's story above, the Pottsville Republican again printed a story on Tamaqua.  In this story the origin of the name was completely different from its 1916 version and combining two theories:

…the Tuscarora which had a saying, “Tah-mah-mochk-hanna”, meaning “land where the beaver dwells in the water.”  From that and the Indian chief “Tankamochk” or “Tam-a-kwah,” a new town earned its name.  

Now a different Indian tribe is invoked. The Tuscarora were a transient Indian tribe that spent several decades traveling through the Schuylkill area. They are also Iroquoian speakers who would not be "saying" the word tëmakwe or something like for "beaver", which would be closer to nagarriaki in their dialect.

From 2014, BEYOND MANHATTAN: A GAZETTEER OF DELAWARE INDIAN HISTORY REFLECTED IN MODERN-DAY PLACE NAMES by Robert S. Grumet, Munsee and Northern Unami Interpretations by Ray Whitenour, New York State Museum Record 5:

TAMAQUES (Union County). Nora Thompson Dean (in Kraft and Kraft 1985:45) thought that Tamaque sounded much like a Southern Unami word, tëmakwe, “beaver.” Today, the 106-acre Tamaques Park and its focal point, Tamaques Pond, are located on land acquired during the early 1960s by Westfield Township. The name first appeared in the area as Tamaques, the Indian name of the place “called by the English the Great Swamp,” in a deed to land in the area signed on September 14, 1677 (New Jersey Archives, Liber 1:251[88]-250[89] on verso).  

An Indian man variously identified as Tamack and Tamage signed deeds to lands at and around the Great Swamp between 1668 and 1677 (New Jersey Archives, Liber 1:42-43, 121-122; Liber A:328). 

Places bearing the name of the eighteenth-century Delaware Indian sachem Tamaqua, also known as Beaver or the Beaver King (McConnell 1995), are located farther west in Pennsylvania (see Beaver in Pennsylvania West and Tamaqua in Pennsylvania Central in Part 2)

TAMAQUA (Monroe and Schuylkill counties). Similar in appearance and meaning to Tamaques (see in New Jersey North above), Tamaque Lake in the Monroe County Township of Tobyhanna and the Borough of Tamaqua in Schuylkill County commemorate the memory of eighteenth-century Ohio Valley Delaware leader King Beaver (see Beaver in Pennsylvania West in Part 2 below).

Again there is no research in this book that links the distant and 18th century King Beaver with 19th century Tamaqua. It does support the " beaver" (tëmakwe) animal connection.

However, this book does establish an Indian with a name similar to Tamaqua - Tamack or Tamage signing a treaty more than two centuries before the village of Tamaqua was established (and 250 years until it was named). This is a very unlikely scenario again given the distance and the time between events. [NOTE: Another Indian signer of treaty in New Jersey was Tantaqua whose mark appears on three deeds - 1668, 1671 and 1686. See PERSONAL NAMES OF INDIANS OF NEW JERSEY..., by WILLIAM NELSON, THE PATERSON HISTORY CLUB, PATERSON, NJ, 1904. The lands were near a creek was called "Tantaqua" (Overpeck) and was the site of a Hackensack village.]

Conclusion

The overwhelming evidence from historical documents is that name of the town of Tamaqua comes from the river that flows through it, now known as the Little Schuylkill before the late 18th century as the Tamaguay or one of many variations of that form.

Tamaqua is a variation or Anglicization of the Delaware Indian word tëmakwe, meaning beaver but more than just the animal, it is a hunter's hint that in context means place where the beavers live and can be found in great quantity or alternatively a "beaver stream". 

Little Schuylkill River, formerly the Tamaguay, near Tamaqua

The name shares nothing with "running or flowing water" and in fact connotes an opposite meaning, hindered in flowing by the profusion of beaver dams.

The name is not related to any other native language - Iroquoian, whether Susquehannock, Tuscaroran or of the Five Nation confederation in New York.

The name has nothing to do with Chief Tamaqua a Delaware leader in western Pennsylvania or Ohio, other than his name means "beaver". The differences in distance and time are too great.

The name has nothing to do w ith signers of early Indian treaties and land sales, such as Tamanend. Tamack or Tamage. Again the differences in time and place are even greater.

Mahr puts ir best stating, "in Schuylkill Co., on the Tamaqua river, there occurs another place name, Tamaqua. [A]...Delaware 'hunters' hints.' … Heckewelder likewise listed the true Delaware name form for present Tamaque (Heckewelder, 1834: 361). He wrote Tamaquon and stated that its correct Delaware version was Tamaquehanne "or (short) Tamdkhanne, the Indian name, as it stands on record, for Little Schuylkill." His interpretation is "beaver stream." The Delaware term is a compound of t*machkw} -  (also amochk, Zeisberger 1887: 20)  'a beaver,' and -hane  (-han]k, -hana) 'stream, creek, river  (in compounds)'; comp.,  Zeisberger,  (1887: 160)."

Mesingw - Schuylkill County's Link to its Lenni Lenape Past

Schuylkill County was once a territory within the homelands of the Lenni Lenape and Susquehannock native tribes. neither of these tribes had permanent settlements in this territory but traversed the area as a place to mostly hunt and trap. The territory was also crossed by documented Indian trails were the native peoples in the northeastern part of what was to become the United States traveled between their homes and other tribes (for trade or occasional wars) or for access to the bountiful game for food and other necessities (furs for clothing and blankets). The Schuylkill County of today have some evidence of these links to its native past - Indian fields, place names, even evidence if the old Indian trails, if you look closely enough. But this article is about a truly unusual artifact that attests a link to Schuylkill County that is tangible and conclusive.

Spirit Mesingw as found in Schuylkill County. The dimensional reference is a 12-inch ruler.

The discovery of the Mesingw petroglyph

On May 10, 1968, a fascinating discovery was made on a hillside of West West Mountain along the west branch of the Gordon Nagle Trail (State Route 901) about two miles from Llewellyn in Branch Township, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Francis P. Burke of Mar Lin was traveling near the west branch of the Schuylkill River looking for Native American sites. He saw a dark area in the hill and, thinking it indicated a rock shelf, followed a path into the mountain to investigate. The path led to a small clearing, but after following a small stream that ran through the area he realized he had gone too far but hadn’t yet seen anything.

Going back from where he came, he now observed a niche and then an area opened up. He saw a little part of a sandstone boulder. The rest was covered over with brush and a laurel bush. Working to remove the debris and he first saw a mouth, then a nose, then two eyes. Burke said, “I got the thrill of my life.” He had happened upon a petroglyph, a rock (sandstone) carving, dating back to the 17th century and thought to be a representation of the Lenni Lenape (Delaware Indian) spirit Mesingw and now located in The State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg. [See Richardson, Leslie, Locally discovered petroglyph replica on display at county historical society, The Pottsville Republican, October 19, 2009] 

Mesingw is an important Lenni Lenape spirit being who rode through the forest on the back of a large deer; Mesingw is believed to have made sure that all the animals were healthy and fed. Lenape hunts were believed likely to be more successful if Mesingw was remembered and commemorated. 

Schuylkill County was once within the homelands of the Lenni Lenape (known as the Delaware by the settlers) people. The Lenape were part of the Unami- and Munsee-speaking (Algonquian dialects) peoples of the Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill, and New Jersey and lower Hudson (New York/New England) River valleys. At the time of the coming of the Europeans, the entire area occupied by the Lenape was known as Lenapehoking. Schuylkill County was located (mostly) in Unami territory (the Schuylkill and Delaware - below the Lehigh - river areas).

Lenapehoking

Surrounding Lenapehoking, were other unrelated native people groups. To the west, beyond the Schuylkill River, were the Susquehannock who occupied most of the Susquehanna valley down to the Cheasapeake Bay and west into the Allegheny Mountains. The Susquehannock were Iroquois speakers, a distinctly different native language group. Part of the homelands of the Susquehannock also encompassed the western parts of Schuylkill County.

However, neither the Lenape nor Susquehannock had permanent or semi-permanent communities within the future borders of Schuylkill County. Both indigenous groups lived in semi-permanent villages exclusively all near larger rivers – the Delaware, the lower Lehigh and lower Schuylkill – and in the case of the Susquehannock – the Susquehanna, where the inhabitants lived for ten to twenty years and then moved on to new areas as the land became exhausted from farming. Schuylkill county, was mostly a place where the groups of each tribe would travel to several times each year to hunt, fish and trap.

Mesingw and the Indian path to the hunting grounds

Moreover, Schuylkill County was the locus of four “Indian trails,” the interstate highways of early native and then European North America. These four paths began in the present-day Reading area, where they connected to other paths to the east and south. Reading lies on the Schuylkill River upstream (about 60 miles from from Philadelphia). It became a center of the Indian population as settlers moved into the Bucks, Philadelphia and Chester County areas that had been purchased by William Penn in the 1680s. These four paths themselves led to other trails into the deeper interior of Pennsylvania and also to New York (home of the Five Nations Iroquois) or to the west in Pennsylvania, further and deeper into Indian territory towards the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley west of Pittsburgh. These four paths are:

    • Tulpehocken Path between Wolmelsdorf (west of Reading) and Shamokin (present day Sunbury),

    • Schuylkill Path between Reading and Shamokin,

    • Catawissa Path (east) between Reading and Catawissa, and

    • Nanticoke Path (north) between Reading and Nanticoke.

Of interest here is the Schuylkill Path because that appears to be where Burke discovered the Mesingw petroglyph. This path was also a forerunner to the Kings‘s Highway (1770) and of the Centre Turnpike (1809).

In the earlier Indian Era it appears that this path was a route that intersected with the Maxatawney Path from from Lechauwekink (Easton) at the Forks of the Lehigh River and thus provided a route from Easton to Sunbury that may have been faster that from Easton to Sunbury using portions of the Maxatawny Path, Lehigh Path, Nescopeck Path and Great Warriors Path.

The petroglyph when it was discovered in its natural state somewhere near the Schuylkill Path

There was also an Indian settlement at Maxatawny (Kutztown and vicinity) to Maiden Creek and Reading. The area now comprised in Maxatawny Township was much desired by the Lenape Indians, who remained here for some time after white settlers surrounded them from the east and south, maintaining relations with the newcomers, until about 1736, when these lands were purchased by Penn’s proprietors. There is a lack of explicit evidence for this traditional Indian path. But the known presence of so many natives in Maxatawny presupposes connections with the Forks of the Delaware and the Indian paths radiating from it, as also with Reading, where the Allegheny Path from Philadelphia to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh crossed the Schuylkill River. There is also reason to believe that hunting, trapping and fishing in the Upper Schuylkill was an attraction that drew Indians from Easton, Philadelphia and the Susquehanna areas into the headwaters of the Schuylkill River. As noted this area was devoid of permanent Indian settlements so likely a good place for Indians from all regions to visit for these reasons. 

The presence of Indian fields in the Upper Schuylkill area also supports this theory as does the use of “hunter’s hints” in place names in this area. According to Mahr [Mahr, August C., PRACTICAL REASONS FOR ALGONKIAN INDIAN STREAM AND PLACE NAMES, THE OHIO JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 59(6): 365, November, 1959, p. 368], whether on the go or at home, the Lenape Indians, men, women, and children, mainly subsisted on meat. Plentiful hunting, therefore, was not a luxury but a necessity. Hence, it was an advantage to the tribe to be familiar with names for localities where the hunters were most likely to find enough game animals to supply the common need. On modern maps, for example, there occurs place names such as Tamaqua, Maxatawny, Macungie. Heckewelder [John Heckewelder was a Moravian missionary to Pennsylvania from 1754. See Heckewelder, J. 1834. [On Indian names.] Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc, n.s. 4: 351-396. 1881. History, manners, and customs of the Indian nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania and the neighboring states. 450 pp. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia] listed the true Delaware name form for present Tamaqua, referring to the Little Schuylkill River (Heckewelder, 1834: 361). He wrote Tamaquon and stated that its correct Delaware version was Tamaquehanne "or (short) Tamakhanne, the Indian name, as it stands on record, for Little Schuylkill." His interpretation is "beaver stream." Similarly Heckewelder established Maxatawny as Machksithanne and interpreted it as "bears' path creek or the stream on which the bears have a path" (Heckewelder, 1834: 360), and another such hint at good bear-hunting was Macungie. Heckewelder gave its Delaware form as Machkunshi (spelling modified), which he rendered as "the harboring or feeding place of bears" (Heckewelder, 1834: 357). 

Finally, a great many “hunters'-hints” names, however, made no such special mention of the game which they promised. Their hints were broader. It was well known, for instance, among the Delaware that there was good hunting of all sorts of game near any natural outcropping of salt, be it a salt lick or a saline spring which equally attracted the animals. That is why in the whole Lenapehoking the Lenape hunters formed numerous names for big and small water courses with their term m’honi, “a salt lick,” usually adding to it their locative final -’nk: m’honink, “where there is a salt lick.” Because of salt licks in their head waters, several such streams were called m’honink siipunk, or m’honink/ hdnna, “river where there is a salt lick.” And so it is along this Indian Path. In Schuylkill County, there is the Mahanoy Creek and (Mahanoy Township and City). 

The path starts near Saconk, an Indian village at the confluence of the Schuylkill River and the Maiden (Ontaulanee) Creek (Berkley), which was the terminus of the Maxatawny Path. The path runs along side the Schuylkill River through Leesport, Hamburg to Port Clinton. The Path crossed the Little Schuylkill River south of Molino and then to Deer Lake and Schuylkill Haven. Then the path followed the West Branch of the Schuylkill River to Yorkville and Minersville and then turning west [this describes Route 61 and then Route 901] towards Beury’s Lake past Deep Creek headwaters. [The bold text describes the area where Mesingw was discovered - Llewellen.] The path continues to the north to Taylorsville to cross the Mahanoy Creek and then the Shamokin Creek in Mt. Carmel.  The path continued west re-crossing the Shamokin Creek at Paxinos and then to Stonington, Oaklyn and Sunbury (Shamokin). [This latter part describes Route 54 and then Route 61, again.] (See Wallace, Paul A., HISTORIC INDIAN PATHS OF PENNSYLVANIA, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1952, drawing between pp. 438 and 439)

The Schuylkill Path – Saconk to Shamokin, following the Schuylkill River and where Mesingw was carved

Mesingw (probably pronounced MUH-seeng-wah) means "living solid face" or "masked being" and he was the protector of all animals of the forest, but is most strongly associated with deer. Some Lenape people describe him as taking humanoid form and riding through the woods on the back of a deer, helping respectful hunters and punishing those who despoil the forest.  His purpose was to reconcile the native's need for meat with the resentments of the animals who were the game. 

The Lenape nation today considers Mesingw important enough to place a likeness on their official seal.  The Mesingw face is in the center of the seal as the Keeper of the Game Animals on which the Lenape depended for food. The face was carved on the center post of the Big House Church ("Xingwekaown”), a wooden structure which held the tribe’s historic religious ceremony in Oklahoma (where the tribe was forced to live over the 19th century). To the right of the mask is the fire drill traditionally used to start sacred fires. Mesingw was so important that the Lenape would have a large gathering to celebrate its spirit. During this celebration, the mask painted 1/2 red and 1/2 black along with a fur skin was worn by a tribe-member to invoke the Mesingw's spirit. In that attire, he would then go through the forest.

The seal of the Lenape (Delaware) tribe adopted in 2012. Mesingw was however also on the previous versions.

This Mesingw petroglyph really exemplifies a connection between native Americans and Schuylkill County. It weaves Lenape traditions – religion, way of life (hunting, trapping and fishing), place-naming conventions, travel - with an artifact created in the county centuries ago.