They were divided into four bands,âpé as follows:--
1. _Piqua_, properly _Pikoweu_, "he comes from the ashes."
2. _Mequachake_, "a fat man filled," signifying completion or perfection. This band held the privilege of the hereditary priesthood.
Of these, that which settled in Pennsylvania was the _Pikoweu_, who occupied and gave their name to the Pequa valley in Lancaster county.[41]
According to ancient Mohegan tradition, the New England _Pequods_ were members of this band. These moved eastwardly from the Hudson river, and extended their conquests over the greater part of the area of Connecticut. Dr. Trumbull, however,[42] assigns a different meaning to their name, and a more appropriate one--_Peguitóog_, the Destroyers. Some countenance is given to the tradition by the similarity of the Shawnee to the Mohegan, standing, as it does, more closely related to it than to the Unami Delaware.
It has been argued that a band of the Shawnees lived in Southern New Jersey when that territory first came to the knowledge of the whites. On a Dutch map, drawn in 1614 or thereabouts, a tribe called _Saw wanew_ is located on the left bank of the Delaware river, near the Bay;[43] and DeLaet speaks of the _Sawanoos_ as living there.
I am inclined to believe that, in both these cases, the term was used by the natives around New York Bay in its simple geographical sense of "south" or "southern," and not as a tribal designation. It frequently appears with this original meaning in the WALUAM OLUM.
A tribe called the Sapoonees, or Saponies, is mentioned as living in Pennsylvania, attached to the Delawares, about the middle of the last century.[44]
They are no doubt the Saponas who once dwelt on a branch of the Great Pedee river in North Carolina, and who moved north about the year 1720.[45]
They were said to have joined the Tuscaroras, but the Pennsylvania records class them with the Delawares. Others, impressed by the similarity of _Sa-po-nees_ to _Pa-nis_, have imagined they were the Pawnees, now of the west. There is not the slightest importance to be attached to this casual similarity of names.
They were called, by the Iroquois, _Tadirighrones_, and were distinctly identified by them with the nation known to the English as the Catawbas.[46] For a long time the two nations carried on a bitter warfare.