>Is the name Street not also found among the Nanticokes of Sussex county and >those who resided at six nations. Did not Chief Clark - in early 1900's go to >the Six Nations reserve and they dance around him at the site of their long >lost brother.. Did not Frank G. Speck come to study us and our ways and found >numerous items and customs of our people which lived on.... ??? Speck seems to have made some errors in his interpretation of Indian culture among 20th century Nanticokes: From "Quest for Identity: The Formation of the Nanticoke Indian Community at Indian River Inlet, Sussex County, Delaware," by Frank W. Porter III, 1978 U. of Maryland Doctor of Philosophy, pp. 110-111: An interesting sidelight to Speck's investigations at that time qualifies one facet of an earlier Nanticoke hunting technique. While interviewing Elwood Wright, a rather gifted craftsman, the conversation shifted to the method of cudgelling rabbits. Elwood recalled that about forty years earlier Bill Coursey had visited his home enroute to cudgel rabbits on the north shore of Indian River. Wright went on to describe the actual throwing stick, how it was thrown, and that it was an individual, not communal, hunt. In response to a written inquiry from Speck about rabbit cudgelling, Winona Wright, a teacher at the Indian Mission School, informed the anthropologist that no one in the community recollected such a method of killing rabbits. Warren Wright, the brother of Elwood, said that he never heard nor saw any method other than the snare or trap. "Evidently the Courseys read of the Indian method," Speck admitted afterwards, but "This does not alter the MS material." Speck had already published his findings, but he fully recognized the significance of Winona Wright's reply. f.n. 27, Frank G. Speck, "Cudgelling Rabbits, an old Nanticoke Hunting Tradition and its Significance," Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Delaware 4 (February 1946):2-4. Speck to Weslager, no date, Weslager MSS. The moral here is that the presence of Indian customs among contemporary populations is not necessarily evidence that these people are direct descendants of the aboriginal group. In fact, surviving Indian customs and practices are rather widespread throughout long-standing rural populations, whatever their racial-ethnic provenance. Jack Weatherford's "Indian Givers" is a good, non-academic introduction to this topic. The other interesting thing about Speck is that he was also very involved in teaching Indian customs and traditions to people he thought might be Indian descendants--including the Delaware Nanticoke people. In other words, once he identified a group as a possible Indian survival, he did what he could to foster and grow their Indian identity.