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Fisher, Sydney George, 1856-1927

"The Quaker Colonies, a chronicle of the proprietors of the Delaware"

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 since the glacial age, untouched by
the civilization of the white man.


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