[muawiyah]

Yup, and after Penn bought the land and started bringing English Quakers, even the Lutherans in the former Nieuwe Sverge colony began complaining "back home". New, tougher Lutheran ministers were sent out to whip the Quakers into line so they would no longer bother the Swedes, Finns and Sa'ami who made up the colony.

They weren't tough enough ~ so the colony relocated to York County PA, abandoning even Elkton Maryland.

The not-so-tough ministers went back home and in short order the old Sa'ami gods (Little Red Man, Herb Woman, and the ever present Reindeer Man) were inflicted on American culture and the rest is history.

The Swedes continued to bring Sa'ami to America over the next century until the great famines and then half the Swedes themselves left the old world to settle the Northern Midwest.

I've found what I believe to be a strong remnant of the first Scandinavian colonists (from the 1600s) in Southern Indiana. They seem to be predominantly Sa'ami. At the same time I've found the traces of a number of Swedish lords and magnates who abandoned Finland about 1809 and moved into the same area with the Sa'ami and other Finns.

Nearby Indiana University is the only school in North America that regularly provides instruction in the Sa'ami languages ~ which I think is strictly coincidental!

[Knitting A Conundrum]

Hubby’s folks ended up in Berks County before his line of them moved on to the Carolinas. There’s a lot of interesting things that happened in the early settlement that just doesn’t get talked about much, but is interesting!