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The Susquehannock's were once thought
to be of southern origin, but archaeological evidence now confirms a
tradition of Mohawk ancestry. Their forebears, along with the ancestors
of the Cayugas, are supposed to have split off from the Iroquois Mohawks
at about A.D. 1300. About 1550 the Susquehannock's become identifiable
archaeologically as a separate tribal entity, then residing in
widespread small hamlets on the North Branch of the Susquehanna River, in an area between
the presentday cities of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and
Binghamton, New York. Sometime before 1570, they migrated from this
region, and by 1580 they had settled in a single large community
in presentday Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They appear to have spread
out from this center to villages at intervals along their river.6
Archaeological evidence indicates that their stature was, if anything,
rather short by modern standards. The skeletal remains unearthed at one
site show a height ranging from 4 feet, 10.9 inches, to 5 feet, 7.7
inches, with a mean stature of 5 feet, 3.7 inches.7 They had a sedentary
agricultural society with a familiar division of labor in which the
women farmed while the men hunted, fished, traded, and fought.8
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Notes: |
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6 |
Vitthoft, "Ancestry,"
pp. 1929. |
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7 |
John
Witthoft, W. Fred Kinsey, III, and Charles H. Hoizinger, "A
Susquehannock Cemetery: The Ibaugh Site," Susquehannock
Miscellany, p. 111. |
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8 |
Witthoft, "Ancestry,"
p. 33; The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents . . . 16101791,
ed., Reuben Gold Thwaites (73 v., Cleveland, 18901901) 18: pp.
233234. |
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