OCTOBER 13:

October 13, 1656:  For several years, the Dutch and the local indian tribes near New Amsterdam and Pavonia have been fighting.  Hackensack chief, Oratamin, negotiates a peace between the warring parties.  It is another ten years before another major conflict erupted.

1812 Queenston Ontario - James Secord, of the 1st. Lincoln Militia, badly wounded in the Battle of Queenston Heights. The following May, Queenston is again invaded by the Americans, this time successfully; all men over 18 made prisoners of war, but due to his wounds, Secord allowed to stay in his home with his wife, Laura Ingersoll Secord, and three US officers billeted in the house. In June, 1813, the couple overhear the Americans planning a surprise attack on Lt. FitzGibbon and his Mohawk warriors at Beaverdams. Laura walks 32 km to the Decew house where FitzGibbon is staying; her warning and a decisive American defeat leads to the salvation of Upper Canada.

October 13, 1864:  On this date Little Buffalo, with 700 of his fellow Comanches, and Kiowas, launched a series of raids along Elm Creek, ten miles from the Brazos river, in north-western Texas. Sixteen Texans and some twenty indians were killed in the fighting with the settlers and the rangers in the area.
 

BACKGROUND:
 

Excerpt from:  http://lenapeculture.org/history.html

History of The Lenape Nation
 

The Lena'pes were once sovereign over a vast domain stretching along the Middle Atlantic coast from New York Bay to Delaware Bay, between the Hudson and Delaware river valleys. They called their homeland Lenapehoking "Land of the Lena'pes." In their language, their name means "ordinary people" or "common people." They are also sometimes known as Lenni Lena'pe, which translated roughly as "we, the people." Lena'pes have always thought of themselves as members of a single ethnic group sharing a common sense of identity and heritage.

When the first European colonist settled on their lands in the early 1600s, there were between 8,000 and 12,000 Lena'pes, according to conservative estimates. Most recent studies, however, strongly indicate that their population was probably twice as large. The Lena'pe at that time were divided into as many as 20 different groups variously referred to as bands, villages, or tribes. Traditional Lena'pe social and political life has always been organized around a complex but flexible network of closely related independent communities. When Europeans first met the Lena'pe, these Indians asked who or what they were; they usually would identify themselves as inhabitants of a particular place, members of a certain family, or followers of an influential leader. Thus, place names such as Manhattan, which means "island," had social and political as well as geographic significance.

The egalitarian nature of their society enabled the Lenapes to respond flexibly to changing conditions. ... The respect accorded individual Lena'pes by family members and fellow tribes people in turn encouraged them to act loyally and responsibly toward their own communities. Traditions of tolerance, respect, and flexibility thus created a generally harmonious society. These traditions helped the Lena'pes survive the shock and stress of European invasion followed by 200 years of dispossession and poverty.

Their descendants continue to carry on these traditions. Their original territory is now a part of the United States. Western Connecticut, southern New York, eastern Pennsylvania, and all of New Jersey and Delaware occupy their ancient homeland. Lena'pe who live on their ancestral lands are regarded as legal residents of their respective states, and all Lena'pes living in the United States or Canada are citizens of their respective nations.

Separated by vast distances and divided by international borders, most descendants of the Lena'pes continue to recognize a common identity and history marked by hardship and struggle. The story of their survival is a testimony to the strength of their traditions. It is also a testimony to the human will not just to survive but to preserve a unique sense of identity and purpose in a changing and often hostile world.

The Lena'pes spoke a language belonging to the widespread Algonquian linguistic family, one of the major groupings of languages in the world. The Lena'pes have long lived in a complex social and political environment in which names often signify different roles and values. For this reason, the Lena'pes as ancestors have been known as "Grandfathers" by many neighboring Eastern Alonquian speaking people. Other Algonquians living to the west of the Appalachian Mountains refer to the Lena'pes as Woapanachke, "Easterners."  Dutch, Swedish, and English colonists moving into Lenapehoking during the 1600s knew the Lena'pes as "River Indians."

The southern group of Lena'pes in southern New Jersey, southeast Pennsylvania, and Delaware diverged not only in speaking Unami, their social organization also differed from their northern neighbors. These Unami speakers dispersed themselves into a large number of small, independent villages. Among the better known of these were the villages of Sanhikan, Rancoca, and Narraticong, in southern New Jersey; the villages of Playwicky, Passayunk, Tulpehocken, and Qukehocking, in southeast Pennsylvania; and the villages of Quenomysing, Minguannan, Shackamaxon, and Sickoneysinck, in Delaware.

The Lena'pes' location initially gave them a certain advantage. Their beaches were particularly rich sources of the clamshells used to make small, tubular, purple and white beads known as wampum. Produced in quantity after Europeans introduced metal drills that allowed quick mass production, wampum became a highly prized commodity in colonial and Indian communities. Indians, for their part, had long used shell beads for sacred rituals and diplomatic maneuvers. Short of coins. Europeans soon used wampum as currency.  The Lena'pes tried to exploit this resource. Working industriously, they manufactured millions of shell beads for trade.

To prevent competition in the fur trade, Lena'pes moved nearer to the colonist' towns to take advantage of closer trade and social contacts. By the 1630s, many Lena'pe living around the mouth of the Schuylkill River were driven east, into what became New Jersey. Most of these people settled along the many small creeks flowing through the Jersey pine lands. Most later moved north to central New Jersey or to the Lehigh River country above Easton, Pennsylvania, and farther west to Tulpehocken (Turtle Place) upon the upper Schuylklll above Reading, PA. Others later moved south of Philadelphia to communities located at Okehocking (Surrounded Place) on Brandywine Creek.

Lena'pe communities located between major European settlements generally maintained a surprising degree of independence. Indians living in the Raritan River country of central New Jersey, between Manhattan and Philadelphia, took advantage of the intense rivalries dividing the colonial governments. Frequently switching loyalties, the Lena'pes would play contending provinces against one another.  Most Lena'pes, however, simply protected their own interests by allying themselves with their closest neighbor, Those to the south, along the lower Delaware River, looked for allies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

This complex system of interlocking alliances uniting Lena'pes and colonies throughout British North America became known as the Covenant Chain, after the agreements, or covenants, among the involved parties. Membership in this alliance provided important benefits to the Lena'pes. First and foremost, Covenant Chain allies provided military protection against the French and their Indian allies to increasingly weak Lenape communities. Covenant Chain allies could also make available better and more plentiful trade goods while providing limited legal and political safeguards for Lena'pe lands, lives, and livelihoods. Colonial authorities tended to deal justly with Covenant Chain Indian allies so long as their demands did not conflict with government policies.

Lena'pes and colonists held different views of land ownership and use. The Lena'pes faced a dilemma. How could they appease Europeans without losing everything. Wiser Lena'pe leaders, with their time honored traditions of subtlety, moderation, and compromise, did their best to slow down land transfers. Whenever possible, Lena'pe leaders steered European purchasers away from their lands to those of other tribes.

For example, in 1663, the Hackensack chief Oratam, explaining that his elders did not want to sell their lands near Newark, New Jersey, told prospective Dutch purchasers that better lands were available in Esopus country. Knowing that the Esopus were then at war with the Dutch, Oratam broadly hinted that it might be easier and cheaper to seize their lands than to force reluctant allies to sell inferior lands closer to home. Oratsm's ploy evidently worked, as the Dutch never did buy the Hackensack lands.

Such stratagems did not always succeed. When purchasers insisted on acquiring land, Lena'pe leaders did their best to limit the area they were forced to sell and restrict it to less desirable locations. They further delayed being evicted from lands already sold by using the European legal system. Although they did not fully understand the intricacies of the law, they did know enough to tie things up in court. Exploiting the widespread knowledge that Indians were often victims of land fraud, Lena'pe leaders often challenged the legal validity of deeds to their lands. Taking advantage of unclear wording and vague boundary descriptions, they also played rival landowners against one another. Years passed before some conflicts were resolved; one dragged on in the courts for more than 50 years, through the American Revolution.

Other Lena'pes learned to manipulate European land laws to further their own people's interests. They transformed Indian deeds from simple contracts into legal devices approaching the status of treaties, often allowing them continued hunting and fishing rights on the land, or continued possession of land while cases dragged on in court.

Such leaders, both men and women, were able to attract great numbers of followers. Seen as cooperative by colonial authorities, they were also able to increase their influence among Europeans. In this way, Lena'pe leaders such as Oratam and Sassoonan, who repeatedly affixed their marks to Indian deeds, were more than mere figureheads. They safeguarded their people's life and property under extremely difficult conditions, such leaders came to be chosen by a consensus of both the Lena'pe and the colonist. In early Pennsylvania, for example, the power of the near legendary chief Tammamend was enhanced by his 1683 treaty of friendship with William Penn (1644-1718), Quaker founder of that colony. (Tammamend, celebrated for his wisdom and virtue, would become the namesake of New York City's Tammany Hall political organization in the 1800s.) As the colony grew, so did the power of Tammamend's successor, Sassoonan, would rule through the tacit consent of PA authorities.