Antiquities

[FilthyBroke]

I don't techinically collect these, but I found some interesting items to complement my hammered coin collection. (plus, I just thought they were cool!

Anyone else have any antiquities to post?  I'd like to see 'em!

[RHM22]

I don't have any photos, but I do have a few antiquities. I have a scraper from Missouri from the 1st century to 12th century AD, a bronze Roman fibula from the 7th century AD, a Roman bronze spearpoint from the 3rd century BC to 7th century AD and a fragment from an 11th century Viking cross. Nothing I have is really valuable, but it's certainly interesting. Your key is very interesting as well.

[FilthyBroke]

I don't have any photos, but I do have a few antiquities. I have a scraper from Missouri from the 1st century to 12th century AD, a bronze Roman fibula from the 7th century AD, a Roman bronze spearpoint from the 3rd century BC to 7th century AD and a fragment from an 11th century Viking cross. Nothing I have is really valuable, but it's certainly interesting. Your key is very interesting as well.

I looked at a few Viking antiquities, but nothing has struck me yet.  I'd love to have a gaming token or something similar.  Preferrably one with a coin or stone inset.  If you get it photographed some day, I'd love to see a pic of your Viking cross fragment, it sounds interesting.

[RHM22]

Viking artifacts can be very pricey. Mine isn't much to see, but it is dated to the 11th century and was found near the Black Sea in Bulgaria, so it's conceivable that it could be linked to the Varangians. It obviously dates to after the conversion, so it's already interesting, but having something linked to the Varangians is very uncommon. I don't have any proof, though, so it will probably remain a mystery. I'll post pictures when I dig it out, but you'll probably be disappointed in the relative simplicity of it compared to some of the more magnificent objects the Norse people crafted.

[Larry]

Here's our prized antiquity, discovered in 1946 when excavating for the basement of my wife's parents' home here in Chicago. Their new home would be just about 100 feet north of the boundary of the Caldwell Reserve, an Indian reservation that lay outside the "Indian Boundary" inside which Indians could not live after 1830.  Ny 1840 they had to move west of the Mississippi River.

Chief Sauganash, also known as Billy Caldwell was deeded 1,600 acres.  That land was along the West Fork of the North Branch of the Chicago River.



Since receiving the artifact, I have learned of a few Indian ancestors.  Thinking for more than 60 years that I was all-Irish, i learned in the past two years that I have had ancestors named Lenape, his son Big Chief Leni-Lenape, father of Bright Lighting, an Indian princess.  That was all before 1730 or so.

The Lenni-Lenape tribe was later renamed the Delaware tribe.  The Delaware tribe had nothing to do with our artifact.

[RHM22]

That's very interesting and unusual!

[Billy Kingsley]

Lenni-Lenape and Delaware are not the same tribe. Not in the renaming sence. They were two off-shots of the same tribe you could say, and in time they merged togther. It's somewhat hard to explain, and I'm honestly not even sure I understand it, as tribe interrelations were convoluted and kept only verbally, not hard documentation like most of the rest of the world did.
After the Europeans came in, many tribes were decimated by warfare or disease. When that happened, there were some tribes that were so badly hit, they dissapeared off the face of the earth, forever. Some, were so vastly reduced, they joined other tribes to create new tribes in rare instances, but mostly they were absorbed by a tribe they were already related to anyway. This is what happened with the Lenni Lenape and Delaware.

Many of the tribes ranging from the Adirondack Mountains of New York down to the Delaware/Maryland area were related, either by blood or by pact.

Part of the problem is that every single offshoot tribe usually had their own unique language. Adding to that is that the tribes did not use written language, or at least any that the Europeans could or tried to figure out. There are mutliple spellings of many words, places and people, which derives from the fact that the Europeans wrote "it" as it sounded to them, regardless of what the "it" was.

I have studied some history on the Indian tribes of this area, and the Lenapes are one of them. I've even learned a few words, the books I have, originally written in the 1850s, provided some pronunciation guides.

I found out earlier this year that my great-grandfather 15 times back, was actually Sachem (translates to King) of the Montauk tribe on Long Island, which was the first time that Hudson encountered when "discovering" this area. Unfortunatly, he was poisoned by a European in (I THINK) 1642. His daughter married a Dutch settler, they had a child, who eventually had another child, and so forth, leading to me. 

My hometown, Wappingers Falls NY, is so named for the Wappinger Indian tribe. Which Might have been part of the Lenni Lenape, but most likely were not. It is unknown the exact relation, but if they were not related, or a part of it, they were neighbors who occasionally would share land.

It's actually a very sad and bothersome story of what happened to the native inhabitants of what would eventually become the USA. Reading about it makes me very angry in fact, and I am not one to anger quickly or often, but some of what was done, if it had happened today, would prompt worldwide outrage.

I take solace in the fact that the land I live on was not aquired by settlers in a bad way, the Wappinger Indians approached the settlers to buy it, it was not just simply taken. At one point I even knew what they recieved for it, but I can't recall any more, as I have not read the books in over a year.

I can pull them out and summarize the Lenni Lenape's history if you would like.