File: <Lenape
Migration.htm> Archeology Index Viking Index <American Archeology> <Home>
|
For teaching purposes; Quote cited references when available Ancient Emigrations To America |
|
Greenlander Viking Exodus Maalan Aarum = "Engraved Years" (Contact) Many of the Vikings in Greenland,
often referred to as the "Lenape Norse", immigrated 4,000 miles to
North America over a period of more about 600 years. They started in
Greenland, walked through the Dakotas, and ended along 1,200 miles of the Atlantic The history is recorded
in the Maalan Aarum, which means “Engraved Years.” The Maalan
Aarum defines the route of the emigration that began in 1346, lasted for 150
years and involved thousands of emigrants.
The record of past events ceases about 1585. There are still four groups of Lenape still living in New
Jersey and New York. The Maalan
Aarum is a collection of 184 drawings that aid in deciphering versus, which
reveal a history of the early immigrants.
Roman Catholic Bishop Gnuppson in the 14th Century became aware of
Viking history from the drawings.
Gnuppson spoke Old Norse and is believed by some to have been in James Bay, Canada about 880 years before
2017. The drawings were subsequently
studied through following generations, and Lenape historians used the
drawings to recite the verses. They also added more drawings and verses to the
Engraved Years. A painting by Hal
Sherman, an adopted Shawnee native, depicts a probable scene in 1820 when an
old Lenape historian gives the 184 sticks to Dr. Ward. The historian told the
doctor that a verse or a song went with each stick (Hubbard-Brown ). The ability to decipher
the Maalan Aarum into Old Norse syllables reveals a lot of Viking
history. The discoveries of a student
at Kean University resolved more details of the Lenape story. The discoveries
were: 1) that decipherment of oral sounds for the Maalan
Aarum could be evaluated by the Drottkvaett format and 2) the 1720 Carte du Canada that describes America at the end of the 17th
Century had more details of the route taken by Lenape immigrants (Guilliaume 1720). The Greenland Vikings in
1350 spoke Old Norse. The Norse in
Greenland called themselves "LENAPE,"which means to "Abide
With The Pure." Thousands of
them emigrated from Greenland to New Jersey via the Dakotas before the Little
Ice Age. They may have lived in four
large areas seen on the map, the Christinaux, the Asslenipolls, the Ilinois, and Pennsylvania. The sum of these areas was about twenty times
the area occupied later by the first Europeans. The yellow stripe on the map is the journey of nearly four
thousand Lenape, who lived on Greenland until the start of the Little
Ice Age.
“On the wonderful, slippery water, on the stone hard water, all went on the great tidal sea, all went” over the puckered pack ice. I tell you it was a big mob. “In the darkness, all in one darkness to the other side, to the west, in the darkness they walk and walk, all of them.” The Maalan
Aarum does not reveal how many “All of them” were. Modern evidence is that they left behind houses for about 5,000
people. Also a reporter on the spot,
Professor Lyons, recorded that nearly four thousand people walked into Hudson Strait and never returned. So
“all of them” probably meant “nearly four thousand Lenape.” Professor Lyons had other collaborators:
Icelandic Bishop Oddson who thought the Greenland people abandoned their
faith and turned to their friends in America and Ivar Bardsson who was the
King’s and Church’s agent in Greenland during the time that nearly 4 out of 5
people vanished. Bardsson reported in
writing about the disappearance of the people in the Northern Settlement
(Brinton 1960). The first two chapters of
the Maalan Aarum had been created about 220 years earlier as
Bible lessons. Those two chapters
tell the same Genesis story as
the first eight chapters in the King James Bible. But the Maalan
Aarum was created 500 years earlier! The Greenland Lenape were
Christians for nearly 350 years, 1,000-1350, before they were forced to leave
home by the extreme cold. Christian beliefs arrived in Greenland before the
Roman Catholic Church. Eric the Red’s wife built her own chapel. There was an Island and a Fjord named
“Hrein” It is now apparent that
the next stage of the Lenape migration began in James Bay. 1. Wulamo linapioken manup shinaking. = 1. Long ago the fathers of the
Lenape were at the land of spruce pine.” "Before the pure
people certainly came to look where there was an abundance of rivers."
Out of the twenty-one
rivers flowing into James Bay, Canada,
only six are major rivers. Three
major rivers were on each side of James
Bay. Most of the rivers
flow into James Bay from the
southeast or southwest. The six marks
of the "spruce-pine" may represent the six major rivers depicted as
if the verse maker was trying to draw what a high flying wild goose would
see. The sounds imply that the
original verse maker knew that a location of many rivers was a special place,
which was located only at James Bay. But as generations passed the Lenape forgot
the meaning. The drawing does look like a spruce or pine. Somewhere through the generations the
Lenape historians may have lost the meaning “The hunters, about to depart, met together.”
After the passage over
the Ice, the Lenape at James Bay
held a conference, which was called a "thing." Apparently the people south of James Bay attended. For whatever reason,
the Lenape decided not to move en masse to the south. Instead they stayed along the shore of Hudson Bay, where the geese and large
fish allowed their population to increase. Another result of the
"Thing" may have been a decision to record the Ice crossing
episode. The vital element was the
creation of the oral verse, a self-verifying memory verse. A verse has eight lines,
but each pair of lines usually provided an understandable thought. A Lenape historian taught the verses to
young children similar to the way children learn nursery rhymes. So the
verses stayed in the Lenape collective knowledge for life. The long lasting memories learned in childhood and the ability
to recreate the drawings for memory cues enabled the Lenape to sustain their
Bible lessons for 880 years and their migration history for 660 years. The first big event
recorded after the "Thing" was the proposed rescue by a fleet of
Norwegian ships under the command of Paul Knudson. The Maalan Aarum contains a drawing of a Norse prince straddling
two countries (Reman 1949).. "No one went from
here to there. No deserter went to the home of the Norse Gods."
The drawing and the verse
say that no Lenape wanted to be rescued.
There is evidence further in the Maalan Aarum that the Norwegian rescue boats stayed with the
Lenape as support transportation up the Nelson,
through Lake Winnipeg, and on
up the Red River of the North. The probable migration pattern of the
major group of Lenape may have been a cluster of camps within a larger area
of thousands of Lenape. There might
have been camps on both sides of a river. Young hunters could have
patrolled the fringes of the large area where they hunted for food such as
bison, seals, etc. The main group is
believed to have moved by at the rate of 20 miles a year. Meanwhile, small clusters of Lenape might have branched out to form new
tribes. At Sisilaki “In Buffalo land, to the east was fish
land, toward the lakes.” In a drawing
made near Big Stone Lake the
verse maker made an effort to tell where the main Lenape group was. At
equinox with the evening shadow lying straight east he looked over fish
country to the two great lakes that touch.
The Lenape name indicates the verse maker was in "Sisilaki"
“Sisil” means “Buffalo.” "Aki" means "Land," Sisseton, SD
may mean Buffalo Town (Brinton 1960, Paine 2007 & 2008). The Maalan
Aarum reports that the Lenape were getting along very well with all the
surrounding tribes. Then suddenly ten
men of the Norwegian support crew were beaten to death. The Maalan
Aarum records fishing and ten companions. A Swedish rune maker carved this
same episode into a tombstone for ten of the crew. Today the Kensington Rune Stone
has been moved from Illinois to the Alexandria
Museum in Minnesota. The rune maker carved the date, 1362, into
the tombstone with Arabic letters. “Corn-Breaker was Chief. Who brought about The planting of corn.” The immigration slowed
down when they reached the eastern Dakotas where buffalo and deer could be
hunted through the winter. They may have journeyed down the Big Sioux River Valley to Minnie Ha Ha County at Sioux Falls. Minnie Ha Ha translates to "Little Water
Fall" in Old Norse. A
small waterfall, The Palisades, lies northeast of Sioux Falls. There they began to grow corn. In the Maalan
Aarum the translation is “There was no rain, and no corn, so we moved further
seaward,” The word "corn"
was used by Europeans to mean grasses they were familiar with, such as oats,
barley, rye and wheat. They did not
find maize, which has become known as "corn" in America. Following a severe
drought the immigrants headed to the east where they may have found the Lake of the Ilinois or Lake
Michigan: “At the place of
caves, in the buffalo land, they at last had food, on a pleasant plain.”
“They settled again on the Yellow River,
and had much corn on stone-free soil.
Then they traveled about 20 miles a year southward through Iowa and
Missouri until they settled at the Yellow River, which may actually be the Missouri River (Paine 2007 & 2008).. “They separated at
‘mixtisipi’ river; the lazy ones remained there.” The Maalan
Aarum drawings appear to show increasing warfare with tribes from the
west. Then about 1450 the main group
crossed the Mississippi, going
east. They encountered a
"torn" people. East of the Mississippi they began to call
themselves Ilini. The tribal stories of the
Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Illinois, and Shawnee all tell of their fore
fathers coming over a salty sea in the east.
The Lenape now located in New Jersey have tribal stories that their
fore fathers came from the west. The tribal stories are coherent when the
route of the earlier immigrants is considered. When the French found the Ilini around 1650, they reported that
the Ilini lived on the "River of the Divine." “The Fire-Builder was chief; they all gave
to him many towns.’ Many towns came to the Lenape leaders. Many events are recorded for many
generations in the Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio areas. “The Nanticokes and the Shawnees going to
the south.” The main Greenland group
kept migrating up the Ohio until they reached a decision point. To get to the Atlantic Ocean, which appeared to be a cherished goal for
six generations, they had to go east up the smaller streams and over the
Alleghenies or go south. So they divided into the northern group who went
over the Alleghenies and the
Southern group that went south. One of the southern
groups, known as Shawnee today, might have recorded the fifth chapter of the
immigrants' history. There are
several verses about going south and southwest. There is one verse about fighting all the enemies on the west
side of the Mississippi. “White-Body was chief on the sea
shore.” Then the Maalan
Aarum shows drawings of men, who watched toward the east. This verse was made
before 1472 (Marx & Marx 1992, Paine 2007 & 2008). “At this time whites came
on the Eastern sea.” In 1472 a ship
with big sails appeared. This ship
was probably the Pining and Pothorse’s ship from Norway on a voyage with
representatives from Portugal as reported in Norwegian records. The people on the ship did show a cross.
But the dot in the circle may indicate that they did carry smallpox disease. Then the Lenape main
group arrived at the Atlantic
Coast and spread 1,200 miles north and south along the coast. Drawings show many chiefs looking east out
to sea. Then a drawing shows a chief
going south to battle. The time frame
indicates that the enemy was De Soto.
After stopping the De Soto the Shawnee returned to the Ohio area and
infected many in the Midwest. Then a
ship, possibly the second English voyage to America, is shown, and that is
where the Maalan Aarum ends. Conclusions
The Greenland Norse emigration involved thousands of emigrants that
came to America several centuries before Columbus. They journeyed en masse over the greater part of Midwestern
North America via Canada and the Dakotas, some by an ancient waterway that
was transformed by Europeans centuries before the Christian Era.
However, Dr. Paine (2007, 2008)
implies also that there were many converted Christians among the later
Greenland immigrants, and Roman Catholic at that. It is doubtful that in the long absence of contact with Rome
native Americans would have retained their faith into the time after
Columbus. Also, Dr. Paine's
indictment of English colonists exterminating native Americans goes contrary
to historical evidence. Although
initially conflicts arose with certain Northeastern tribes, for the most part
the relationship was rather more amenable and mutually beneficial. Formal trade in 1609 is known with tribes
along the Hudson River. There is also some evidence of a treaty
with the Lenape Indians known as The Penn Treaty that
allowed colonists land on which to farm.
But the treaty was never recorded and with time was broken. Land guaranteed to native Americans has
been regularly overrun with development up to the present 2017 government
expansion of mining interests in Utah. |
