This band of about fifty families,âpé or one hundred men (about three hundred souls), are stated to have come from South Carolina to the Potomac late in the seventeenth century, and in 1731 were settled partly on the Susquehanna and partly on the upper Ohio or Alleghany. Their chief was named Aqueioma, or Achequeloma.
Their name appears to be a compound of _assin_, stone; and _wikwam_, house, and they were probably Algonkin neighbors of the Shawnees in their southern homes, and united with them in their northern migration.[47]
[17] Heckewelder, _History of the Indian Nations_, p. 60, and _Narrative of Hendrick Aupaumut_, 1791, in _Mems. Hist. Soc. Pa._, Vol. II. The latter, himself a native Mohegan, repeatedly refers to "the ancient covenant of our ancestors," by which this confederacy was instituted, which included the "Wenaumeew (Unami), the Wemintheew (Minsi), the Wenuhtokowuk (Nanticokes) and Kuhnauwantheew (Kanawha)." From old Pennsylvania documents, Proud gives the members of the confederacy or league as "the Chiholacki or Delawares, the Wanami, the Munsi, the Mohicans and Wappingers." _History of Penna._, Vol. II, p. 297, note. Compare J. Long, _Voyages and Travels_, p. 10 (London, 1791), who gives the same list. Mr. Ruttenber writes: "In considering the political relations of the Lenapes, they should be considered as the most formidable of the Indian confederacies at the time of the discovery of America, and as having maintained for many years the position which subsequently fell to the Iroquois."--_Indian Tribes on Hudson River_, p. 64.
[18] Trumbull, _Indian Names in Connecticut_, p. 31. Schoolcraft had already given the same derivation in his _History and Statistics of the Indian Tribes_.
[19] Capt. Hendricks, in _Mass. Hist. Soc. Colls._, Vol. IX, p. 101. Lewis H. Morgan, _Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity_, p. 289.
[20] Ruttenber, _History of the Indian Tribes of Hudson's River_, p. 50.
[21] Morgan, _Ancient Society_, pp. 173-4.
[22] These opinions are from a MS. in the library of the American Philosophical Society, in the handwriting of Mr. Heckewelder, entitled _Notes, Amendments and Additions to Heckewelder's History of the Indians_ (8vo, pp. 38.) Unfortunately, this MS. was not placed in the hands of Mr. Reichel when he prepared the second edition of Heckewelder's work for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.