Talk:Susquehannock

Civilized Indian Tribes
Does this tribe fall under any of the Civilized Indian Tribes? Does anyone know where information like this can be found? I tried running it on the smithsonian website but got no return137.240.136.86 16:07, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The Susquehannocks were wiped out by the 1760s (see the article) and relatively little is known about them. I have never heard of them referred to as a "Civilized Indian Tribe" - do you mean the five tribes (see Five Civilized Tribes Museum)? If that is what you mean, then no. There are two refs given in the article for more information on the Susquehannocks - hope this helps, Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 16:19, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Compliments for your's a joy to read. Conaughy (talk) 05:46, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

They were an offshoot of Huron, Petun, and Erie. Pzrschreck (talk) 01:26, 10 January 2022 (UTC)


 * They were one of the Iroquoian-speaking tribes. The term Five Civilized Tribes generally refers to the major tribes in the Southeast who were forced to remove to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River after 1830: Choctaw, Muscogee Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Seminole.Parkwells (talk) 22:09, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Susquehannough
I found this alternate spelling in a book about the region. --Teda13 (talk) 17:51, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * According to Trubull's The Composition of Indian Geographical Names, he states: "The other substantival component of river-names, - HANNE or - HAN (Abn. -ts[oo]ann or -tann; Mass. -tchuan;) denotes 'a rapid stream' or 'current;' primarily, 'flowing water.'" Like the Abenaki and Massachusett forms, Ojibwe is also -jiwan, exactly with that very meaning. Since people written things as it sounded to them, you will find great amount of spelling variations, but the key here is how was is pronounced (at the time the name was recorded that led to the particular transcription). So, don't sweat the -hannock/-hannogh/-hannaug variations.  The three parts found in the name are /s(a)saske/(mud(dy)) + /han(a)/(current/flow) + /hak(i)/(land), which is why the river's name don't have the -ock/-ogh at the end, but the names of land which that river flows through and the people living on that land do have the -ock/-ogh/-aug in their names. Trumbull also states "The Massachusetts OHKE (Narr. aûke; Delaware, hacki; Chip. ahke; Abnaki, 'ki;) signifies LAND, and in local names, PLACE or COUNTRY . The final vowel is sometimes lost in composition. With the locative suffix, it becomes ohkit (Del. hacking; Chip. ahkin; Abn. kik;) at or in a place or country." CJLippert (talk) 15:19, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Susquehannough mapped area
The Suequehanna's area is too small. It should include the eastern slopes of the Alleghenies in the area of the tributaries on the Potomac to the mouth of the Potomac embayment. Archeology shows their area was twice as large as the map presently demonstrates. Ishwar or another editor should consider modifying the map. Or, I'll change the area after a month of this posting, else, if objection please reply. Conaughy (talk) 21:16, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Paxtang
I followed a link to here, from the Paxtang page. Should towns that were settled nearby be included in this article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.199.8.90 (talk) 17:42, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Removal of improperly sourced information
I just reverted a large amount of material that was unsupported by reliable sources. Material that is print-on-demand by a vanity press is considered to be a self-published source and unreliable. GregJackP  Boomer!   22:33, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

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Endonym
The "Names and Endonym" section doesn't seem to actually list an endonym. Susquehannock, Minqua, Conestoga, and related names all seem to be exonyms. Does an endonym exist? Maybe Mahakuassica from the mentioned Vocabula Mahakuassica?

> Unfortunately, Mahakuassica would also be an exonym, originating from an Algonquian language MT301 (talk) 19:05, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I have seen the name "atraekwaeronon" given here and there by people who claim to be descendants. There is this essay for starters, which also makes a credible-sounding claim about the origin and meaning of "Mengwe," the Lenape name for the Susquehannocks. If there is an endonym, it would have to be consistent with Iroqois phonetics, right? Sti11w4ter (talk) 20:59, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

> There are a few issues with that. First, "atraekwaeronon" in a Google search returns multiple hits from a single person commenting on YouTube videos. If that is the same person as the author of the article, then you're referencing just a single source. Second, "Mengwe" is usually considered to come from "treacherous, sneaky" rather than "without penis". Using "without penis" to describe women is simply defining them as "not men", something that might come from patriarchal English speakers, but not likely from a matriarchal culture. Third, you're right that the endonym should match Iroquoian phonetics, but it should specifically match actual Susquehannock language. "Atraekwaeronon" is clearly Wendat phonetically, and while Wendat is also an Iroquoian language, they are phonetically distinct. You can see the original reference in Thwaites' Jesuit Relations, p 105 for English:

"4th, that the Iroquois, having gone during the winter in full force against the Atraʽkwaeʽronnons or Andastoɩeʽronnons, had had the worst of it."

p. 104 for French:

"4° que les Iroquois estans allez l'hyuer en grosse armée, contre les Atraʽĸȣaeʽr ou Andastoɩeʽr. auoient eu du pire."

While the Susquehannock and Wendat were allies, their languages are quite distinct. MT301 (talk) 23:41, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

MT301, it is clear that you know much more than I do about this topic. The quote from Jesuit Relations seems to contain the sought endonym for the Susquehannocks. I have no idea how the commenter on the YouTube videos and the Susquehanna Life articles got that name (however misspelled), if not from Jesuit Relations. Are you saying Jesuit Relations isn't definitive enough? Are there any other reliable sources for the endonym? Thanks for your work on this. Sti11w4ter (talk) 00:22, 5 March 2022 (UTC)


 * You're right that "atraekwaeronon" probably comes from Atraʽkwaeʽronnons in the Jesuit Relations, but both Atraʽkwaeʽronnons and Andastoɩeʽronnons are still exonyms, since they're both Wendat terms for the Susquehannocks rather than the Susquehannock term. E.g., the nd and ɩ in Andastoɩeʽronnon are distinctive characteristics of Wendat, where the other Iroquoian languages have n and k/g (cf. ɩAndastoɩe and Conestoga). In their writings, the Jesuits generally retained Wendat terminology they were familiar with rather than switch to "foreign" terms. For instance, when referring to the Senecas, they used variations of the Wendat term Tsonnontȣoinronnon rather than using a form of the Seneca endonym Onödowáʼgaʼ. Also, thanks for the thanks! MT301 (talk) 05:39, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Edited for corrections
The article is very odd, overly relying on dated information from American Heritage. The Five Nations of the Iroquois had a confederacy or league; they identified as the Haudenosaunee, not the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.Parkwells (talk) 04:47, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Edit to reduce repetition
The article repeats the same limited amount of information about the Susquehannock in the 17th century (and maybe later as well). Needs strong editing to sort this out and reduce the circularity of the text. I've done some.Parkwells (talk) 04:47, 8 January 2022 (UTC)


 * The section "Historical range" was created a few months ago but has now been deleted as the information it contained appears elsewhere in the article and was also somewhat misleading. The Susquehannock migrated from what is now Bradford County to the lower Susquehanna River valley c. 1550 but the area between was uninhabited for most of the 17th century. The Susquehannock did use it as their hunting grounds. Griffin&#39;s Sword (talk) 23:19, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Heritage group
A new user (using User:Conestoga131191 and two IP addresses) has repeatedly tried to insert ConestogaSusquehannockTribe.Com into this article and the List of unrecognized tribes in the United States. The group has absolutely no mentions in any secondary, published source. This effort is promotional and reflects a conflict of interest. The information about the failed 1941 bill is cited by published sources, so I restored that. The article already freely acknowledges that there are likely living descendants, but that doesn't mean the tribe survived. Any claims to the contrary would need to have some serious published evidence. Yuchitown (talk) 02:12, 28 November 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown

Original research?
I'm placing this paragraph here on the talk page, so if any knowledgeable editors see merit in it, they can better cite it and return what's useful to the article. Yuchitown (talk) 18:31, 28 February 2023 (UTC)Yuchitown

Possible Connection With Senedo Tribe, aka Shenandoah Indians
''Archaeology has revealed that the Shenandoah Valley was occupied by Native peoples until within a couple of decades of the arrival of the first white settlers. Other tribes claimed a people called the Senedo- which the river and valley was later named after and recontextualized by locals as Shenandoah- had been residing somewhere in that valley, until they were chased out in a war with the Catawba prior to the year 1700. The only tribes who would have been in this valley at the time would have been related to either the Saponi or Susquehannock. The Susquehannock had been conquered by the Iroquois and were still claiming the western Potomac through the Iroquois government for some time after, the Iroquois went to war with the Saponi and Manahoac nations immediately following the Susquehannock's defeat, and this war lasted between approximately 1680 and 1701. The combined Saponi and Manahoac refugees seem to have fled south, to the Catawba during that time, meaning it is most likely that the people the Catawba would have been at war with, in this region, during this time period, would have had to have been remaining Susquehannocks and Iroquois allies. ''

The fact that there is a well-known Iroquois chief whose name is related to the word Shenandoah'' would also suggest the veracity of Shenandoah, and the earlier Senedo, being of Iroquoian origin. '' Yuchitown (talk) 18:31, 28 February 2023 (UTC)


 * The two book citations don't substantiate the material in this section. The Basye Vortex is a rather wacky, wp:self-published website. Yuchitown (talk) 18:33, 28 February 2023 (UTC)Yuchitown

Missing Lead
This article lacked an appropriate lead. According to the Wikipedia Manual of Style, "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview. It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies." A new lead has been created and information about historical range moved to a new section. Griffin&#39;s Sword (talk) 19:56, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Protohistory and European contact
This article relies far too heavily on outdated tertiary sources such as Hodge's Handbook of American Indians and Brandon's The American Heritage Book of Indians. Very few references are made to reliable secondary sources such as Kent's Susquehanna's Indians.

The result is an article that contains discredited information and fails to reflect modern scholarship. For example, archaeological evidence only supports one of the six "towns" that John Smith placed on his map. When Smith encountered the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannock he was unable to converse directly with them. He didn't visit any of their settlements and most of what he learned about them came from Algonquian-speaking informants.

Similarily, there is no evidence that supports the claim that Champlain's Carantouan was a Susquehannock settlement. Archaeological surveys at Spanish Hill and other nearby sites have not shown any evidence of an early 17th century Susquehannock presence in the area. Champlain never visited Carantouan and had to rely on what the Wendat and Etienne Brule told him. It should also be noted that he placed Carantouan in the Delaware River valley on his 1632 map.

Population estimates are speculative at best. "5,000 to 7,000 in 1600" does not appear in the source cited. In Susquehanna's Indians, Kent used Smith's "600 warriors" to estimate a total population of 2000.

"Before European contact" has been revised and renamed Protohistory. "European contact" is in the process of being revised. Griffin&#39;s Sword (talk) 15:35, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Iroquoian peoples
The list of Iroquoian peoples at the end of the article is redundant so has been deleted. It is stated elsewhere that the Susquehannock were of Iroquoian ancestry and became culturally distinct from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) c. 1450. The list doesn't add anything to this.

The inclusion of the Akhrakouaeronon as a Susquehannock subtribe in the list is problematic since the sole citation for Wikipedia's article on the Akhrakouaeronon is Hodge's 1910 Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. The entry in Hodge cites The Jesuit Relations as its source, however, the references to the Akrakouaeronon in the Relations are in the context of the Haudenosaunee attacks in the Niagara region on the Neutral and Erie people c. 1651. The c. 1641 Carte de la Nouvelle-France, attributed to Jean Bourdon, shows the Akrakouaeronon (misspelled as Akhrakovaetonon) living on the east side of the Niagara River. Griffin&#39;s Sword (talk) 18:05, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Susquehannock descendants
It is likely that Susquehannock descendants can be found among the members of all three Seneca nations in the United States as well as among members of the Six Nations of the Grand River in Canada, not just the Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma. It is also likely that Susquehannock descendants can be found among members of other Indigenous nations particularly the Oneida.

Any Susquehannock descendants would need to trace their ancestry back to the late 17th century. When the Susquehannock abandoned their settlement on the Susquehanna River c. 1675, some went south into Maryland, some went east into Lenape territory, and some were given refuge by the Haudenousaunee. When a settlement near the Conestoga River was reestablished in the 1690s, its population was likely a mix of Susquehannock refugees who had been living with the Haudenosaunee, and of Seneca migrants. Collectively they became known as the Conestoga. It is uncertain, however, whether any other Susquehannock refugee groups joined them. Griffin&#39;s Sword (talk) 20:15, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Society (Culture)
This section, which was flagged in March 2021 due to a lack of citations, has been renamed "Culture" and extensively revised using reliable secondary sources such as Kent's Susquehanna's Indians and Raber's The Susquenannocks: New Perspectives on Settlement and Cultural Identity.

The writing in this section toggled between stating the obvious (e.g., when maize, beans and squash were harvested) and wild speculation (e.g., the importance of dreams to the Susquehanocks). A significant amount of the material was dubious if not blatantly incorrect. The Susquehannock did not trade with the Cherokee or hunt bison, nor were they a confederacy similar to the Haudenosaunee. They built their villages on river terraces, not Appalachian Mountain ridges. There is no evidence of a "religious complex" in the upper Susquehanna River valley, and while the Susquehannock did use dugout canoes, such vessels were unsuitable for long-distance travel.

The revisions reflect current thinking about the Susquehannock based primarily on archaeological evidence since ethnographic data about their culture is limited. Griffin&#39;s Sword (talk) 20:38, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Alliance with Maryland & Covenant Chain Treaty
These sections lack citations and contain information that is outdated, speculative or incorrect. They are in the process of being revised using reliable secondary sources including Kent's Susquehanna's Indians and Jennings "The Susquehannock Indians in the 17th Century." Both Jennings and Kent refer to primary sources such as the Jesuit Relations and records in the Maryland State Archives.

The history of the Susquehannock after 1675 is confusing and contentious since they "splintered" after abandoning their town on the Susquehanna in 1675. One group moved south into Maryland, was besieged by Virginia and Maryland militia, escaped and raided plantations in Virginia, was attacked by the Occaneechee, and may have merged with the Meherrin. Another group moved east to the Delaware River valley to live among the Lenape. While most of this latter group agreed to merge with the Haudenosaunee in 1677, several families continued to live among the Lenape. Yet another group moved to hunting camps in the Upper Potomac, but returned to the Susquehanna River in 1676. By 1680 this group also appears to have joined with the Haudenosaunee. Griffin&#39;s Sword (talk) 11:40, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Recent changes to lead
According to the Wikipedia Manual of Style the lead section is an introduction to an article and a summary of its most important contents. The information about the 1872 Joint Resolution and the 1941 Susquehannock Indian Reservation Bill recently added to the lead already appeared in History. Its importance when compared to other content, however, is questionable. While there are certainly people alive today with Susquehannock ancestry, the tribe ceased to be a distinct cultural entity when the Conestoga (an amalgam of Susquehannock, Haudenosaunee, and Shawnee) were massacred by the Paxton Boys in 1762. It can even be argued that this cultural extinction occurred in the late 1680s when many of the Susquehannock were "adopted" by the Haudenosaunee.

Incidentally, there is evidence that the "1941 Susquehannock Indian Reservation Bill" was the result of a fraud perpetrated by a person with no Indigenous ancestry. Griffin&#39;s Sword (talk) 13:55, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Unnecessary edits
Two recent unnecessary edits replaced information from Kevin Kenny's Peaceable Kingdom Lost with information from H. W. Brands's The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. While Brands may be a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, his brief coverage of the Conestoga Massacre relies far too heavily on Franklin's biased and emotionally charged Narrative of the Late Massacres. Kenny, a Professor of History at New York University, cites copious primary sources in his history of the Conestoga Massacre and provides a far more balanced account. His book is therefore a more appropriate source for an article about the Susquehannock. The previous version of the relevant paragraph has been restored. Griffin&#39;s Sword (talk) 15:06, 3 July 2024 (UTC)