EPISODE FOURTEEN - MATOAKA
She was born in a small village along the Delaware River in 1699. The morning of her 28th birthday Seabreeze asked her why she had features of a woman from the Middle East. Named after her grandmother’s grandmother Pocahontas, Matoaka had been told from birth her heritage for thousands of years. Born a Delaware princess she could recite the family tree back to Lenni Lenape that settled New Jersey and Pennsylvania. She asked Rebecca if they had the whole weekend for the story because telling parts over time would break up the wholeness of the telling. Rebecca said they had more than that if it called for it, and Mataka began from the start.
For many centuries before the Canaanites moved into Palestine (between 3000-2500 B.C.), her ancestors lived in caves outside of a walled city, later to be known as Jericho. They had been there under Babylonian rule since the great flood. After the flood the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham (Chem), and Japheth erected the Tower of Babel in Shinar, but the One God Jehovah struck down the tower and caused all the people to speak in different tongues. Of the three Ham was cursed to have descendants that work for Japheth descendents. Ham’s son Kenaan (Canaan) carried his father’s curse. Kana originally meant low or in the figurative sense, small, humble, despicable, subjected. In the days of trading with Phoenicians the land was called Kena’ani also Kinahhi, Kinahni, and Kinahna. Egyptian Pharaos had Syrian symbols of an earlier word Kana. Canaan’s sons Sidon, the Hethite, Jebusite, Amorrhite, Gergesite, Hevite, Aracite, Sinite, Aradian, Samarite and the Hamathite and later the families of the Canaanites were spread abroad. The limits of Canaan were from Sidon down to Gaza including Sodom and Gomorrha. The original tribes of Canaan were mixed in Palestine over time through intermarriage between tribes and with Matoaka’s ancestors, eventually coming under the rule of Tothmes III and future Egyptian Pharaos and paid them tribute. The people reverted back to the worship of the pagan gods Baal and Moloch and their goddesses Astarte and Ashera who demanded the sacrifice of new born babies and practices of moral perversion. Later the Phoenician princess Queen Jezebel of Israel returned to these Goddesses. Still later, King Solomon through forced statute labor, subjugated the whole Cannanite population. Thus Canaan had become once and for all the servant of Shem. Afterwards Phoenicia with its colonies was subjugated by the Romans, sons of Japheth, and soon vanished from the roll of nations. So through intermarriages Matoaka’s people shared blood lines with peoples from Jericho, Sodom, Gaza, Syria, and Babylon.
When Joshua invaded the “promised land,” he and the Israelites chased the Canaanites into Egypt, where they built two cities Tinge and Tanger in Numidia. Two giant columns of white stone surrounded a great fountain that said in Phoenician, “We are Canaanities, Whom Joshua the thief chased away.” They continued along the northern coast line of Africa and became known as Berbers and Moors. Later along with “hatters” from France formed groups known as Pirates of the Barbary Coast. Continued pursuit from Israelites sent them to Scandinavia and the British Isles where they were called “Beaker people”.
In 1149 B.C., Hu Garnarn Hyscion (Isaacson) or Hu the Mighty, direct descendant from Abraham, that came from the “land of summer” near Constantinople was in Joshua in his later years. (Hu is short for Hesus in Celtic, which in Spanish is Jesus, and Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name for Joshua.) Hu (Joshua) chased the Canaanities (Berbers, Beakers) north to the northern most lands of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of the old Soviet Union, using the name “”Liber Pater”. Besides chasing the Canaanities out of Western Europe, he settled Israel peacefully in the British Isles. Lapland is the name eventually given to the northern reaches where children were hung in trees and given a bottle that was filled with the marrow of animals rather than to be breast fed while the mothers hunted with their husbands, this feeding remains to this day totally unique to humans. The Lapps (Canaanities) later were called “Picts.” It was the Picts that defended Scots and Irish settlements from marauding hordes and were rewarded with Scot and Irish princesses and exchanged wives for years. It was said that the Picts of Ireland are the Pactyae of Thrace (Phoenician) and they called themselves Piki and Peukini.
The Laplanders (Canaanities) migrated with the reindeer herds over the “bridge of ice” into North America from the West as well as down the St. Lawrence in ships from Scandinavia from the East. They encountered Mongoloid peoples along the Siberian River Lena that migrated to today’s Mexico and Central American Aztec tribal sites. But Matoaka’s story is not of the Asian race in the Americas, instead it is one of migration from the Euphrates and Jordan rivers on through all of the known world, a story of a cursed peoples of Noah’s son, Ham chased through the ages by descendants of Abraham, the Israelites.
By this point in the story, they were by the fireplace on the main floor and Seabreeze was on the couch with a pillow under her head. It was near midnight and Matoaka (Rebecca- Matoaka’s Christianized name) was getting tired. She asked if they could wait until morning to continue. Seabreeze wasn’t a bit sleepy. The story that had been unfolding was awakening the school teacher in her, long buried in attending to the demands of high society in Philadelphia. She watched Mato as she slept. The ancient lines of her profile flickered in the flames from the fireplace. She had a new respect for Mato and the excitement of discovery forced her well into the night to assimilate these new facts into the world as she now knows it.
Seabreeze woke with a start. A pot had been dropped in the kitchen and the clang echoed through the main floor. There was some hushed conversation as a cook’s helper was reprimanded for being so careless. Both her and Mato were side by side in front of the embers in the fireplace. Still warm from the fire that made sleeping possible, given the frosty air of early spring. The Rebeccas went into the kitchen for breakfast of cornmeal muffins and quail breasts with plums and apples from the orchard. Seabreeze should have been tired from a couple hours of sleep, but instead rushed her breakfast and told the staff she was not to be disturbed for any reason again today, like yesterday. Any “emergency” was to be given to Emerson the Major Domo or wait till Hans gets home. Mato hurried as well hearing the instructions being given, knowing Seabreeze would want to continue with the story immediately after eating. They filled a basket up with some fruit, a half dozen roles and added two bottles of white Zinfandel wine from a neighboring vineyard. Then a blanket, three pillows and off to a grassy knoll under some tall oak trees to continue the story of Mato’s family tree.
Matoaka was from the Monseys tribe of the headwater region of the Delaware River.. The Algonquian tribes had been strewn far and wide over the years and included not only Pocahontas of the Powhatan clan at Werowocomoco, but had ancestral ties to the Lenni Lenape. The Lenni Lenape were called the “grandfathers of all Indians of North America. They had the “Red Record” a book handed down for generations that began with the Biblical flood and told of marrying into the sons of Canaan and crossing the “ice bridge” and coming to settle in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas. The name Algonquian was more about language than actual tribe identification. The language was used by the Yurok tribe in California, Powhatan in Virginia, the Cheyenne in the Great Plains, the Nakapi in northern Labrador, the Shawnee on Ohio, the Chippewa and the Blackfoot in the Dakotas, as well as several dozen other distinct tribes throughout the continent. William Penn said after reading the “Red Record” (Wallam Olum) that it was similar to the Hebrew dialect.
The Lenni Lenape tribe used cradleboards for mothers to carry their babies in, still used by women today for carrying their young. Later the tribe was called Delaware Indians because they lived on the banks of the Delaware River. Before 1601, other names that Lenapi were known by included “common people”, “Original people”, “Men among men”, and “Men of our kind”.
In 1610, Sir Samuel Argall explores the bay named Zuydt the year before by Henry Hudson and renames the river after the 12th Lord De la Warr later to be known as Delaware. So the river, the colony, and the Lenni Lenapi all get called the Delaware. 1620-1630 the Dutch attempt to settle the Delaware Valley but fail since the Indians don’t understand the concept of private land ownership. In 1638 the Swedes settle in several localities. 1650-1660 land changes hands several times between the Dutch and the Swedes. In 1665 Quakers move into Pennsylvania. 1681 William Penn receives charter from the crown for a colony along the Delaware River and sells 40,000 acres to Welsh Quakers. The Lenni Leapi think the settlers of Philadelphia are strange for living in caves. By 1700 the Delawares move into the Ohio Valley and feel the Iroquois “Six Nations” exert influence over them.
Mato looked sad as she talked about the few areas the Delaware and Minisinks still were allowed to live, namely, on the Brandywine, areas of Reading, Kutztown, Maxatawny, and in the Lehigh Valley also known as the Forks. Mato became quiet as she finished listing the few places left a once proud people could live.
TO BE CONTINUED