A Sermon Preached at Scipio, N.Y. at the Execution of John Delaware, a Native; for the Murder of Ezekiel Crane

Albany: Charles R. and George Webster, 1804. First edition. Very Good +. Printed paper self wrappers. 122 x 204 mm. 24 pp., complete. Front wrapper partially loose from binding, but still holding. A remarkably fresh copy overall despite some foxing to last couple leaves. A clean and fresh copy, Very Good+

The killing of Ezekiel Crane by John Delaware (sometimes written as Delaware John or John the Delaware) took on a somewhat legendary quality in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, and the accounts of the killing that we could locate are colored with sensationalistic details. The basic facts, shared by most accounts, seem to be that John, (truncated) a Native man of the Delaware (Lenape) tribe, and George Phadoc, a white man, agreed to share a hunting cabin near Cayuga Lake in New York in the winter of 1803. After John was less successful in his hunt than Phadoc, John intended to attack Phadoc when he returned to the cabin one day. John's neighbor, Ezekiel Crane, chose that day to pay a visit to the hunting cabin, and John accidentally shot him instead, believing him to be Phadoc. According to later histories of Cayuga County, John's killing of Crane was the first recorded murder in the county.

Notably, John was living on the historic lands of the Lenape just twenty-five years after his tribe had recently been forced to relocate. The Lenape had lived along the Delaware River in what is now New Jersey and New York, but were forced to cede their lands when they signed a treaty with the United States in 1778 (becoming the first tribe to sign such a treaty with the new nation). They relocated first to Ohio, eventually settling in groups across Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and parts of Canada. John's personal refusal to leave his home, despite the pressure of the treaty, plays a key role in Rev. Woodruff's sermon. Woodruff explicitly references the removal of the Lenape from their lands ("The very spot on which we stand, was lately occupied by a savage tribe!") and blames the killing, essentially, on John's inability to assimilate with the Christian population. Woodruff frames John as a heathen who has refused to accept the influence of his Christian neighbors, and claims that John, after killing Phadoc, had broader plans to "take the life of every white brother" in the area. Woodruff's argument is clear: the Native people who still lived among white Christians in Cayuga County were a threat, motivated by heathenism and racial hatred, and Woodruff uses John's act of violence to justify the removal of Native people from their lands. Later retellings of the story echo these sensational aspects of John's story, taking Woodruff's rhetoric and building on it. The account in J.O. Noyes' The Lakes and Legends of Central New-York (1857) claims that the other remaining members of the Lenape tribe planned to carry out a massacre against white residents while they were distracted by the hanging. Noyes also claims that John had "ideas of necromancy" in mind when planning to kill Phadoc; other nineteenth-century accounts accused him of "witchcraft" and insanity.

Other than a few sensationalized retellings of the story framed as myths and ghost stories, however, we could find few records of John, his crime, and his execution. This item, then, is a scarce record of the event, and a view into the rhetoric that white Christians used to justify the removal of Native people from their land. Very Good +. (Inventory #: 6778)