Excerpt from The Yale Literary Magazine, Vol. 15: June, 1850

SO eminently adapted by nature for the abode of man, it seems to have been a favorite possession of the aborigines, from a period in definitely remote. An unknown and primitive race, receding far back into antiquity, farther than tradition penetrates - a race of which noth ing is told but the simple fact of its past existence, and that not told by human tongue, has left here, as in some other parts Of the conti nent, a few lasting foot-prints. Near the centre of the valley, on op posita banks of the stream, the remains may still be seen, not quite obliterated by the hand of cultivation, of two large mysterious-looking mounds, which were found by the first white settlers in a tolerable state of preservation; though the age of a superincumbent growth of trees, assigned to one of them the antiquity of a thousand years.

Previous to the immigration of the whites, the valley had long been held under the nominal jurisdiction of the Six Nations, but Occupied in lawless freedom, by belligerent parties of the Nanticokes, the Dela wares, and the Shawanese, who, in the intervals of war, cultivated the plains and pursued game on the mountains. Count Zinzendorf and the Moravian missionaries - the first white men that ever set foot in owyoming - have handed down some singular accounts of the bick oringa Of these savage tribes, one of which is particularly worthy of mention, as a kind of satire on the warfare of more refined nations.

One day, while the Delaware and Shawanese parties, whose do mains lay on opposite sides of the river, were enjoying a temporary peace, the warriors had gone out on distant hunting excursions beyond the mountains. It happened that the Shawanese children, having crossed over to the Delaware side, quarreled with the children of the other clan, for the possession of a gaudy insect. The juvenile con test grew warm. The women came as umpires, but soon took sides. The afi'ray, becoming more and more general, was kept up with ia creasing violence, until night brought the warriors to the scene. Then commenced war in earnest - the first of a connected series of wars, which spread through all the neighboring tribes, and were protracted through a long term of years. In this literal strife for a butterfly the Shawanese forfeited their all, and the victorious party became sole lords of the territory.

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