Walam Olum

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The Walam Olum, usually translated as "Red Record" or "Red Score," is said to be a Lenape or Delaware Native American origin narrative, although most consider it to be a spurious account. The contents of the text include a summary of the history and migrations of the tribe. The original was allegedly recorded in pictographs on wooden tablets with an explanatory accompanying transcription of verses in the Lenape language.

A purported English translation of the Walam Olum was published by the naturalist Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz in his book, The American Nations, in 1836. Rafinesque claimed therein to have acquired the wooden tablets from "the late Dr. Ward," who had supposedly received them directly from the Lenape in return for a medical cure. The translation's 183 verses total less than 3000 words; the supposed Lenape pictographs and verses in the Lenape language that explain them appear separately in Rafinesque's manuscript. The original tablets were never accounted for. Scholars have only had Rafinesque’s “copy” to study.

The Walam Olum includes a creation account, a flood story and a series of migrations, which Rafinesque and others claimed or interpreted to begin in Asia. A long list of alleged chiefs are included, intended by Rafinesque as a means to provide dates for his epic. According to Rafinesque, the earliest chiefs appear as early as 1600 B.C.E.

Despite the dubious origins of the Walam Olum, it was treated as an accurate account by historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists for many years. Ephraim G. Squier, widely regarded as an influential figure of American archaeology, was first to republish the text in 1849. He was followed by a host of leading scholars from that time until the late 20th century. For example, in 1885, the well-known ethnologist, Daniel G. Brinton, published a new translation of the text. In 1954, a team of scholars from multiple disciplines published yet another translation and commentary. Other translations and commentaries would follow.

A minority of scholars had long been suspicious of the Walam Olum’s veracity. As early as 1849 Henry Rowe Schoolcraft wrote to Ephraim Squier that he believed the document might be fraudulent. In 1952 renowned archaeologist James Bennett Griffin publicly announced that he “had no confidence in the Walam Olum.” Historian William A. Hunter also believed the text a hoax. In 1954 archaeologist John G. Witthoft found linguistic inaccuracies and suspicious resemblances of words in the texts to 19th century Lenape-English word lists but was unable to convince most of his colleagues that the text was spurious. A Walam Olum project was announced in 1955 by Witthoft in the Journal of American Linguistics (Witthoft 1955), but this project apparently never materialized.

Some of this research contributed to an eventual determination of inaccuracy. For example, Witthoft's analysis indicated that Rafinesque composed the narrative himself from Lenape texts that had already been put into print (Witthoft 1955). By the 1990's, the Walam Olum was considered to be a well-made fraud. Steven Williams summarized the history of the case and the evidence against it, lumping in the text with many other famous archaeological frauds, in his 1991 publication.

Herbert C. Kraft, an expert on the Lenape, had also long suspected the document to be a fraud. Kraft stated that it did not square with the archaeological record and cited a 1985 survey conducted among Lenape elders by ethnologists David M. Oestreicher and James Rementer revealing that traditional Lenape had never heard of the document.

Notwithstanding Witthoft's tentative steps, and the doubts of these many authors, there was still insufficient evidence for a satisfactory textual debunking of the narrative until quite recently. In 1994, and afterwards, textual evidence that the Walam Olum was apparently a hoax was promulgated by David M. Oestreicher in “Unmasking the Walam Olum: A 19th Century Hoax.” Oestreicher argued that Rafinesque crafted the linguistic text from specific sources on the Delaware Language published by the American Philosophical Society and elsewhere; that the supposedly “Lenape” pictographs were in fact truncated hybrids from published Egyptian, Chinese, and Mayan sources. Oestreicher also asserted that the stories were a conglomerate assembled from numerous sources on different cultures that literally spanned the globe; and that the Walam Olum was produced in part to win the international Prix Volney contest hosted in Paris and to prove Rafinesque’s long held theories regarding the peopling of America. A good summary of Oestreicher’s findings appears in Kraft’s last work and magnum opus, The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 BC to AD 2000.

Many traditional Lenape believe they have lived in their homeland (that is, in the New Jersey/Pennsylvania/New York City area) forever. Others, who have recently learned of the Walam Olum, have accepted that account. ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] External links

Oklahoma Lenape Homepage http://www.delawaretribeofindians.nsn.us

Lenape Nation at http://www.lenapenation.org/main.html

[edit] References

• Brinton, Daniel G.. 1885. The Lenâpé and their Legends: With the Complete Text and Symbols of the Walam Olum.
• Kraft, Herbert C.. 1990. The Lenape: Archaeology, History, and Ethnology. American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 14, pg. 421-422.
• Kraft, Herbert C.. 2002. The Lenape/Delaware Heritage: 10,000 B.C.-2000 A.D.. Lenape Books.
• Kraft, Herbert C. and David M Oestreicher. 1995. "The Red Record: The Walam Olum, Translated and Annotated by David McCutchen." Book Review, North American Archaeologist 16(3):281-285.
• Oestreicher, David M.. 1994. Unmasking the Walam Olum: A 19th Century Hoax. Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 49:1-44.
• Oestreicher, David M.. 1995a. The Anatomy of the Walam Olum: A 19th Century Anthropological Hoax. Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University. New Brunswick, New Jersey. Reprint Edition, University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• Oestreicher, David M.. 1995b. Text Out of Context: The Arguments that Created and Sustained the Walam Olum. Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 50:31-52.
• Oestreicher, David M.. 1996. Unraveling the Walam Olum. Natural History 105 (10):14-21. Subsequently reprinted in Portraits of Rafinesque, Edited by Charles Boewe. The University of Tennessee Press, 2003.
• Oestreicher, David M.. 1997. Reply to Harry Monesson Regarding the Walam Olum. Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 52:98-99.
• Oestreicher, David M.. 2000. In Search of the Lenape: The Delaware Indians Past and Present. Catalogue of the exhibition at the Scarsdale Historical Society. Scarsdale Historical Society, Scarsdale New York. [First published by Scarsdale Historical Society, 1995].
• Oestreicher, David M.. 2002. The European Roots of the Walam Olum: Constantine Samuel Rafinesque and the Intellectual Heritage of the early 19th Century. In New Perspectives on the Origins of American Archaeology. Edited by Stephen Williams and David Browman. The University of Alabama Press.
• Oestreicher, David M.. 2002. The Algonquian of New York. The Rosen Publishing Group’s Power Kid’s Press. New York, NY.
• Oestreicher, David M.. 2004. Walam Olum. In The Encyclopedia of New Jersey. Rutgers University Press.
• Oestreicher, David M.. 2005. Tale of a Hoax, in The Algonquian Spirit, edited by Brian Swann. University of Nebraska Press.
• Rafinesque-Schmaltz, Constantine Samuel. 1836. "The American Nations; or, Outlines of a National History; of the Ancient and Modern Nations of North and South America." Philadelphia.
• Voegelin, Carl F., with contributions by Eli Lilly, Erminie Voegelin, Joe E. Pierce, Paul Weer, Glenn A. Black, and Georg K. Neumann. 1954. Walam Olum, or: Red Score, the Migration Legend of the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware Indians, a New Translation, Interpreted by Linguistic, Historical, Archaeological, Ethnological, and Physical Anthropological Studies. Indiana Historical Society. Indianapolis, IN.
• Williams, Steven. 1991. Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
• Witthoft, John. 1955. The Walam Olum Project. International Journal of American Linguistics Vol. 21, pg. 194.