WALAM OLUM, otherwise known as the "Red Scoreo of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians, and supposed to be a record of the migrations of the tribe. The word "Olumo signifies a record, and "Walam,° painted. Red is the color used. "Olum° was commonly ap plied to a notched sticic, an engraved piece of wood or bark; but it is not unlikely that the engraved stone gorgets, notched along all their edges, or partly so, are to be included as rec ords. The notching is too inconspicuous to be considered as ornamentation, but is so cleanly cut and defined that some serious purpose was evidently in mind in making it. The historic "Walam Olum,o for which we are indebted to Rafinesque, is declared by Antony, a Dela ware Indian, to be a genuine composition of a member of that tribe. This composition or record of events during the wanderings of the people, is asserted by Brinton to be °not of foreign origin, but wholly within the Cycle of the most ancient legends of that stock° the Algonkin. If read aright, it is a record of
wanderings from the Labrador region south ward and westward, and again eastward to the Atlantic Coast of the middle United States. As a record of a migration that was possibly more extensive and fateful to these people than any one other of which they had knowledge, too much value has been placed upon it. Those ethnologists who have strongly leaned to the extreme modernity of man in America have thought they found evidence therein that the whole Atlantic seaboard, and for many leagues inland, was uninhabited and had so remained for all time until this wandering, described in the Walam Olum, took place. This conclusion does not seem to be supported by the results of geological research. Entirely too much has been made also of the assumption that the mi gration of the Lenni Lenape, supposedly de scribed in the "Walam Olum,* was their only one.