delphia was
afterwards built. There were at that time Indian villages where West
Philadelphia now stands. The headwaters of streams flowing into the
Schuylkill were only a short distance from the headwaters of streams
flowing into the Susquehanna, so that the valley of the Schuylkill
formed the natural highway into the interior of Pennsylvania. The route
to the Ohio River followed the Schuylkill for some thirty or forty
miles, turned up one of its tributaries to its source, then crossed the
watershed to the head of a stream flowing into the Susquehanna, thence
to the Juniata, at the head of which the trail led over a short divide
to the head of the Conemaugh, which flowed into the Allegheny, and the
Allegheny into the Ohio. Some of the Swedes and Dutch appear to have
followed this route with the Indians as early as 1646.

The Ohio and Allegheny region was inhabited by the Black Minquas, so
called from their custom of wearing a black badge on their breast. The
Ohio, indeed, was first called the Black Minquas River. As the country
nearer the Delaware was gradually denuded of beaver, these Black Minquas
became the great source of supply and carried the furs, over the route
described, to the Schuylkill. The White Minquas lived further east,
round Chesapeake and Delaware bays, and, though spoken of as belonging
by language to the great Iroquois or Six Nation stock, were themselves
conquered and pretty much exterminated by the Six Nations. The Black
Minquas, believed to be the same as the Eries of the Jesuit Relations,
were also practically exterminated by the Six Nations. *

* Myers, "Narratives of Early Pennsylvania", pp. 103-104.

The furs brought down the Schuylkill were deposited at certain rocks two
or three miles above its mouth at Bartram's Gardens, now one of the city
parks of Philadelphia. On these rocks, then an island in the Schuylkill,
the Swedes built a fort which completely commanded the river and cut the
Dutch off from the fur trade. They built another fort on the other side
of Bartram's Gardens along the meadow near what is now Gibson's Point;
and Governor Printz had a great mill a couple of miles away on Cobb's
Creek, where the old Blue Bell tavern has long stood. These two forts
protected the mill and the Indian villages in West Philadelphia.

One would like to revisit the Delaware of those days and see all its
wild life and game, its islands and shoals, its virgin forests as they
had grown up si