Details

Standardized Title:

Wallam olum.

Subjects:

Delaware Indians -- History.
Delaware Indians.
History.
Delaware Indians -- Legends.
Delaware Indians -- Writing.
Delaware language -- Texts.
Indians of North America -- Languages.
Delaware language.
Writing.
Middle Atlantic States -- Languages.
Middle Atlantic States.
Language and languages.

Form/Genre:

Drawings (visual works)
Histories.
Poems.
Translations (documents)
Manuscripts, American.
Texts.
Legends.

Language:

English and purported Delaware.

Summary:

Two notebooks bound together containing supposed translations of poems about creation and arrival in America (first notebook, Part I, f. 1r-23v) and historical chronicles of events after arrival in America (second notebook, Part II, f. 24r-44v) in Delaware words and pictographs, made and later published by C. S. Rafinesque. This manuscript is now challenged as a hoax manufactured by Rafinesque.

Contents:

1. f.3r-9r: On the creation & ontogony.
2. f.10r-14r: On the deluge etc.
3. f.15r-21r: On the passage to America.
4. f.25r-34r: From arrival in America to settlement in Ohio etc.
5. f.35r-41r: From Ohio to Atlantic states and back to Missouri.
6. f.42r-44v: Fragment on the history of the Linapis since about 1600 when the Wallamolum closes / translated from the Linapi by John Burns.
7. f.45r: [Clipping about antiquities in Alabama and Mississippi]
8. f.46r: [Fragment of mailing envelope with provenance note by Brantz Mayer]

Notes:

Ms. codex.
Title from caption title for Part II (f. 24r); the caption title for Part I reads Wallamolum (f. 24r).
Foliation: Paper, x (later 19th-century paper) + 46 + x (later 19th-century paper); modern foliation in pencil, lower right recto.
Layout: Beneath each verse in Delaware are 3 rough columns of Delaware words, English translations, and a numbered pictograph.
Script: Written in cursive script in the hand of C. S. Rafinesque.
Decoration: Ink drawings of pictographs throughout.
Binding: 19th-century half leather with marbled endpapers.
Origin: Written, probably in Philadelphia, in 1833 (f. 1r, 2r, 23r, 24r).

Penn Provenance:

Rafinesque supposedly purchased the "wooden original" of these texts in Kentucky in 1822 (note on title page, f. 2r).
Formerly owned by Brantz Mayer, corresponding secretary of the Maryland Historical Society (note about the manuscript signed by him and dated 1876 is bound in at the end of the manuscript, f. 46r).
Formerly owned by Daniel Garrison Brinton (ex libris stamp on verso of front endpaper, and on title page, f. 2r).

Cited in:

Described in Weeks, John M. The Library of Daniel Garrison Brinton (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2002), p. 378-379 (no. 4358).

Publications about:

Oestreicher, David M. "The anatomy of the Walam Olum: the dissection of a 19th-century anthropological hoax." PhD diss., Rutgers University, 1995.
Boewe, Charles. "The other candidate for the 1835 Volney Prize: Constantine Samuel Rafinesque," in: The Prix Volney: early nineteenth-century contributions to general and Amerindian linguistics: Du Ponceau and Rafinesque, ed. Joan Leopold (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publications, c1999; Prix Volney essay series, v. 2), 267-304.

Cited as:

UPenn Ms. Coll. 700, Item 217

Contributor:

Rafinesque, C. S. (Constantine Samuel), 1783-1840.
Mayer, Brantz, 1809-1879, former owner.
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison), 1837-1899, former owner.

OCLC:

63630133