Friday Reprise: Buckongahelas of the Delaware, 1720-1805

Buckongahelas (c 1720-1805) was a war leader of the Delaware/Lenape people.  The Lenni Lenape are an Algonquian-speaking people whose name for themselves translates as 'pure man'.  Settlers called them Delaware, because their original home range was along the Delaware River, including parts of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.  Buckongehalas was born somewhere in present-day Delaware, but would live to see his people pushed into the Ohio River Valley by advancing settlement.  His known family included a son, Mahonegon, who was killed by a settler in 1773. 

Buckongahelas was already a noted warrior by the time of the French and Indian War (1755-1763), where he took the side of the Settlers against the French.  Sources conflict as to whether he was a titled chief, or a war leader.   Either way, he was a fierce opponent in battle and his enemies, Native or European, did not take him lightly.  During the Revolutionary War, he sided with the British against the Americans.  He broke away from a larger band led by White Eyes, and moved his followers closer to the village of Blue Jacket, a Shawnee leader.  The two men became close friends and allies in war.  A number of Lenape had converted to Christianity and lived at the Moravian mission village at Gnadenhutten in Ohio.  Buckonghelas told them that the Settlers would have no regard for the fact that they were Christians and would kill them anyway.  He urged these vulnerable Delaware to leave with his band.  They refused and in March, 1782, most of these Natives were killed in the Gnadenhutten Massacre.

After the Revolution, Buckongahelas joined his Shawnee allies in several skirmishes aimed at repelling American settlement into the Ohio Valley.  These clashes led to the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795).  Eventually, the Americans prevailed, forcing the British to leave the Ohio Valley.  American forces now occupied the home territory of the Shawnee, the Lenape and their allies, and the conflict continued.  His warriors, along with Blue Jacket's Shawnee and Little Turtle's Miami, were present at the Battle of the Wabash, on November 4, 1791, where they inflicted a decisive defeat on American General Arthur St. Clair, who lost 600 men.  This battle was the most devastating military defeat suffered by American forces at the hands of Native Americans up to that time.  Nevertheless, the Americans rallied and defeated the Native alliance at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, 1794.  Buckonghelas was among those leaders who signed the Treaty of Greenville I 1795, and the Treaty of Vincennes in 1804, seeking to preserve his people's Ohio Valley homeland against further White encroachment. 

Buckonghelas lived out his final years near what is now Muncie, Indiana.  He died in 1805 from either smallpox or influenza.  Some of the Delaware believed that the illnesses, whatever they were, were brought on by witchcraft and executed a few of their own.  The despair and sense of defeat of the Delaware and the other peoples in the Ohio Valley led to the rise of the Shawnee Prophet and Tecumseh, who would try again where Buckongahelas and White Jacket had left off.  Although there are no likenesses of Buckongahelas, he was described as being 5' 10" and a strong, powerfully-built man.  A statue of him cradling the body of his dying son was erected in a park in Buckhannon, West Virginia, commemorating his assistance to the settlers during the French and Indian War.

(This entry first appeared in May, 2016).