The Susquehannock
of the 17th and early 18th centuries, also known as the
Conestoga, Minquas, and Andaste, were an Iroquoian people who lived in the
lower Susquehanna River watershed in what is today the States of Maryland, New
York and Pennsylvania, USA. According to
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, they are thought to have been
subdivided into several subtribes and clans.
Their name means “people of the muddy river” and may have
referred originally to a confederacy of tribes. Like other Iroquoian tribes, they were
semisedentary agriculturalists, who ate a diet of corn (maize) and the meat of wild
game and fish, a diet high in protein.
Captain John Smith, who explored the upper
Chesapeake Bay area, first described the Susquehannock as a “gyant-like people” and continued with “Such
great and well proportioned men are seldome seene, for they seemed like Giants to English, yea and to the
neighbors...”1 in the summer of 1608.
But
were they true giants, standing over seven feet (2 meters) tall2, or
were they simply, just big people, who were taller than their shorter Eastern
Algonquin Lenape neighbors and the English colonists? Let’s look at the archeological record and
see what we can dig up.
Robert
Vaughan’s 1624 engraving has two drawings of John Smith capturing the Kings of
Pamaunkee and of Paspahegh. In both
pictures Captain John Smith is shown as much shorter than the Native Americans chieftains he is capturing.
It
is obvious, in Captain Smith’s mind the Susquehannock were “tall”, but just how
tall were they and were they taller than other Native Americans?
According
to archeologist Marshall J. Becker, Captain Smith’s observations were accurate,
the Susquehannock were tall. He reported
that the height range of male skeletal remains excavated from the circa 1550’s palisaded
Susquehannock village (46HM73) along the South Branch of the Potomac River was between
5 feet, 5 inches (165.9 cm) to 5 feet, 10 inches (180 cm) and the average
height was 5 feet 8 inches (173 cm) and that “The limited evidence now
available suggests that Susquehannock males of the 16th century were
taller than other Native American males in that region. Since the higher status males who met Captain
John Smith in 1608 were at the taller end of this range and well above the
average of 173.7 cm. [5 feet 8 inches]”3. Becker explains that this height difference
between Iroquoian Susquehannock and the Eastern Algonquin Lenape tribes in the
region of the Chesapeake Bay, was due to the Susquehannock and other Iroquoian
tribes using corn (maize) “as a dietary staple, rather than as a simple food
supplement as was the case among the maize ‘gardening’ Lenape”4.
Captain
John Smith was about 5 feet, 4 inches (1.62 m) tall, and would
be thought of by modern people today, as being rather short. But would he have been considered of average
height during the 1600s? And just how
tall were the English explorers during the early 1600s? That question is difficult to answer since
comparable information on the height men from the British Isles during the
period between 1550 to 1620 is scarce.5
During
the Middle Ages the average height of the Englishmen was 5 feet, 8 inches (1.72
m) with a range from 5 feet, 3 inches to 6 feet, 2 inches (1.59 to 1.87 m)6,
as shown the skeletal remains from the cemetery of St. Nicholas Shambles, which
contained burials from the 11th and 12th centuries. However, as the Age of Exploration (the 15th
century to the 17th century) advanced, the height of the inhabitants
of the British Isles and most other European nationalities diminished. Unfortunately, economic development does not
automatically result in better nutrition.
Historically, economic growth and rapid urbanization has often resulted
in poor nutrition and a subsequent decrease in height. The European decline in height from the Middle
Ages until the middle of the 20th century, was due to poor nutrition brought
about by economic growth and rapid urbanization, an increasing population,
increasing food prices and a decrease in protein consumption. Because of this Europeans were noticeably
shorter, than Native Americans, and the later American colonists and citizens,
throughout the 18th century and until the mid-20th
century.
As
we have already discussed, the overall height of European males had decreased
due to rapid population growth, rapid urbanization, and a poor diet with less
protein, and this was particularly true among urban English males, or as M.
Becker wrote, “...in 1608 these Susquehannocks may have averaged 10 [4
inches] or more centimeters taller than Smith and other urban English males
of the time” 7.
This
would mean the estimated height of men from the British Isles during the 1550s
to the 1700s should range from 5 feet, 1 inch (155 cm) to 5 feet, 9 inches (175
cm), with an average height of 5 feet, 5 inches (165 cm). The authors of “European Heights in the Early
18th Century”, calculated the average heights of English soldiers to
be 5 feet, 5 inches (165 cm), Irish soldiers as 5 feet, 6 inches (168 cm) and Scottish
soldiers as 5 feet, 4 inches (163 cm) during early 1700s8, and this
compares well with the estimated height of men from the Britain during this period. So, Captain John Smith would have been close
to average height for a man from the Britain in 1608, but he would have been 3
inches (7.6 cm) shorter than the average Susquehannock.
An
interesting exception to this overall decline in the heights of Europeans, was
the Dutch, who during the Dutch Golden Age (circa 1580 to 1660) benefited from both
rising prosperity and better nutrition, and therefore the Dutch enjoyed an
average height for men of 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 meters), with range 5 feet 5
inches to 5 feet 9 inches(1.66 to 1.76 meters)9. The reason this is interesting is that in
1644 Dutchman Johannes Megapolensis noted, while commenting on the height of
the Mohawks, another Iroquoian people who were native to
eastern New York state, that “The people and Indians here in this country
are like us Dutchmen in body and stature...”10.
This
would confirm Marshall Beckers conjecture that the Iroquoian tribes’ reliance
on corn (maize) as a “dietary staple, rather than as a simple food
supplement”, was a reason for their relatively “gyant-like” height, since it can be
implied that related tribes with a similar diet would likely be about the same
height, and both the Dutch and Mohawk had similar height ranges and average
heights, as the Susquehannock.
Now
we know that the Susquehannock were in fact just big people, not giants, and
that it is was due to high protein diet with grain as a dietary staple,
something that modern Americans share with the Susquehannock and the other Iroquoian
tribes of Native Americans, besides height.
I
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That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1 From “The Stature of the Susquehannock Population of
Mid-16th Century Based on Skeletal Remains from 46HM73”, by Marshall
Joseph Becker, page 74.
2 To
be diagnosed with gigantism, a person must be over 7 feet (2.1 meters) tall.
3 From
“The Stature of the Susquehannock Population of Mid-16th Century
Based on Skeletal Remains from 46HM73”, by Marshall Joseph Becker, page 77.
4
Ibid., page 83
5 Ibid.,
page 82
6 Interestingly
the height of English women buried in St Nicholas Shambles cemetery, averaged 5
feet 2 inches with a range of 4 feet 11 inches to 5 feet 8 inches (152 to 174 cm),
which is the same range as the Susquehannock women buried at 46HM73, although
the average height for the Susquehannock women was 5 feet 4 inches.
From
the Skeletal Remains from the Cemetery of St Nicholas Shambles, City of
London, by William J. White, page 30, and “The Stature of the Susquehannock
Population of Mid-16th Century Based on Skeletal Remains from 46HM73”, by
Marshall Joseph Becker, page 77.
7
From “European Heights in the Early 18th Century”, by John Komlos
and Francesco Cinnirella.
8
Ibid., page 5
9
From “Observations on the history of Dutch physical stature from the late-Middle
Ages to the present”, by Hans De Beers, pages 46 to 47.
10
From “The Stature of the Susquehannock Population of the Mid-16th
Century Based on Skeletal Remains from 46HM73”, by Marshall Joseph Becker, page
75.
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