Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Teedyuscung

TEEDYUSCUNG, Delaware chief, b. near Trenton, N. J., about 1700; d. in Wyoming valley, Pa., 16 April, 1763. He was also known as Honest John and War Trumpet. His father, “Old Captain Harris,” and his brothers and half-brothers, “Captain John,” “Young Captain Harris,” “Tom,” “Joe,” and “Sam Evans” (names given them by the English), were all high-spirited men. In 1730 he settled in the forks of the Delaware, and he united in 1749 with the Moravian Indian mission at Gnadenhuetten, Carbon co., Pa., where, on 12 March, 1750, he was baptized by Bishop Cammerhoff, receiving the name of Gideon. Aware of how his countrymen were being injured by the whites and oppressed by the Six Nations, in 1754, when the Delawares and their allies appealed to him to lead them and be their king, he deserted the Moravian mission. Henceforward his name is conspicuous in the provincial history of Pennsylvania. After the repulse of Braddock in July, 1755, he assembled the Delawares, Mohicans, and Shawnees in the Wyoming valley, and in the winter began to wage war among the whites that resided within the “Walking Purchase.” In 1756 the government sought the pacification of the Delaware king, which, through treaties at Easton in July and November, 1756, and November, 1757, was accomplished. In the following spring, agreeably to his request and the conditions of the treaty, a town was built for him and his followers in the Wyoming valley. One of the objects of his life was to recover for the Lenni Lenape that dignity which the Iroquois had treacherously wrested from them in 1742. He was burned to death with his house while asleep under the influence of liquor, the incendiary being instigated by his enemies. Teedyuscung was a fine-looking man, endowed with good sense, quick of comprehension, ambitious, and a patriot.