Delaware Indians

The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory included present-day northeastern Delaware, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania along the Delaware River watershed, New York City, western Long Island, and the lower Hudson Valley. Today, Lenape people belong to the Delaware Nation in Oklahoma; the Stockbridge–Munsee Community in Wisconsin; and the Munsee-Delaware Nation, Moravian of the Thames First Nation, and Delaware of Six Nations in Ontario.

The Lenape have a matrilineal clan system and historically were matrilocal.

During the last decades of the 18th century, most Lenape were removed from their homeland by expanding European colonies. The divisions and troubles of the American Revolutionary War and United States' independence pushed them farther west. In the 1860s, the United States government sent most Lenape remaining in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territory) under the Indian removal policy. In the 21st century, most Lenape now reside in Oklahoma, with some other communities in Wisconsin and Ontario.

Name

The name ''Lenni Lenape'', also ''Leni Lenape'' and ''Lenni Lenapi'', comes from their autonym, ', which may mean "genuine, pure, real, original", and ', meaning "real person" or "original person" (cf. Anishinaabe, in which ', cognate with ', means "man" or "male" ). Alternately, ' may be translated as "man"."Lenape Talking Dictionary."
''Delaware Tribe of Indians.'' Retrieved 2 Dec 2013.

The Lenape, when first encountered by Europeans, were a loose association of related peoples who spoke similar languages and shared familial bonds in an area known as Lenapehoking,Newman 10 the Lenape traditional territory, which spanned what is now eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Lower New York, and eastern Delaware.

The tribe's common name ''Delaware'' is not of Native American origin. English colonists named the Delaware River for the first governor of the Province of Virginia, Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, whose title was ultimately derived from French. (For etymology of the surname, see Earl De La Warr§Etymology.) The English colonists then began to call the Lenape the "Delaware Indians" because of where they lived. Swedish colonists also settled in the area, and Swedish-language sources listed the Lenape as the ''Renappi''.

Territory

Traditional Lenape lands, the Lenapehoking, was a large territory that encompassed the Delaware Valley of eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey from the north bank of the Lehigh River along the west bank of the Delaware then south into Delaware and the Delaware Bay. Their lands also extended west from western Long Island and New York Bay, across the Lower Hudson Valley in New York into the lower Catskills and a sliver of the upper edge of the North Branch Susquehanna River. On the west side, the Lenape lived in numerous small towns along the rivers and streams that fed the waterways, and likely shared the hunting territory of the Schuylkill River watershed with the rival Iroquoian Susquehannock.

Languages

The Unami and Munsee languages belong to the Eastern Algonquian language group and are largely mutually intelligible. The German and English-speaking Moravian missionary John Heckewelder wrote:

"The is quite different even though came out of one parent language."

Today, most who continue to speak the language are tribal elders, although some young Lenape youth and adults learn their language.

William Penn, who first met the Lenape in 1682, stated that the Unami used the following words: "mother" was ', "brother" was ', "friend" was '. Penn instructed his fellow English colonists: "If one asks them for anything they have not, they will answer, ', which to translate is, 'not I have,' instead of 'I have not'."

The Lenape language used to be exclusively a spoken language. However, in 2002, the Lenape Nation received grant money to fund The Lenape Talking Dictionary, preserving and digitizing the Southern Unami dialect. This language is currently recognized by both the Oklahoma Lenape and the Delaware Valley Lenape.

The nation, led by Professor Shelley DePaul of Swarthmore College, is researching and revamping the Lenape language for future generations to more easily learn. Depaul collaborated with elders and transcribed decades worth of documents to teach a Lenape class at Swathmore College starting in 2009. Research shows that voluntary, locally based language practice and learning is key to restoring and maintaining a fading language. There is some disagreement within the Lenape Nation on whether the language should be taught as adapted to the times or taught as historically accurate. DePaul's approach is focused on a "living language" philosophy.

Society

Clans and kinship systems

At the time of first European contact, a Lenape person would have identified primarily with his or her immediate family and clan, friends, and/or village unit; then with surrounding and familiar village units. Next with more distant neighbors who spoke the same dialect; and ultimately, with all those in the surrounding area who spoke mutually comprehensible languages, including the Nanticoke people, who lived to their south and west in present western Delaware and eastern Maryland, and the Munsee, who lived to their north. Among many Algonquian peoples along the East Coast, the Lenape were considered the "grandfathers" from whom other Algonquian-speaking peoples originated.

The Lenape had three clans at the end of the 17th century, each of which historically had twelve sub-clans:
* Wolf, ''Tùkwsit''

:* Big Feet, ''Mä an'greet''
:* Yellow Tree, ''Wisawhìtkuk''
:* Pulling Corn, ''Pä-sakun'a'-mon''
:* Care Enterer, ''We-yar-nih'kä-to''
:* Across the River, ''Toosh-war-ka'ma''
:* Vermillion, ''O-lum'-a-ne''
:* Dog standing by fireside, ''Pun-ar'-you''
:* Long Body, ''Kwin-eek'cha''
:* Digging, ''Moon-har-tar'ne''
:* Pulling up Stream, ''Non-har'-min''
:* Brush Log, ''Long-ush-har-kar'-to''
:* Bringing Along, ''Maw-soo-toh''

* Turtle, ''Pùkuwànku''

:* Ruler, ''O-ka-ho'-ki''
:* High Bank Shore, ''Ta-ko-ong'-o-to''
:* Drawing Down Hill, ''See-har-ong'-o-to''
:* Elector, ''Ole-har-kar-me'kar-to''
:* Brave, ''Ma-har-o-luk'-ti''
:* Green Leaves, ''Toosh-ki-pa-kwis-i''
:* Smallest Turtle, ''Tung-ul-ung'-si''
:* Little Turtle, ''We-lung-ung-sil''
:* Snapping Turtle, ''Lee-kwin-a-i
:* Deer, ''Kwis-aese-kees'to''

* Turkey, ''Pële''

:* Big Bird, ''Mor-har-ä-lä''
:* Bird's Cry, ''Le-le-wa'-you''
:* Eye Pain, ''Moo-kwung-wa-ho'ki''
:* Scratch the Path, ''Moo-har-mo-wi-kar'-nu''
:* Opossum Ground, ''O-ping-ho'-ki''
:* Old Shin, ''Muh-ho-we-kä'-ken''
:* Drift Log, ''Tong-o-nä-o-to''
:* Living in Water, ''Nool-a-mar-lar'-mo''
:* Root Digger, ''Muh-krent-har'-ne''
:* Red Face, ''Mur-karm-huk-se''
:* Pine Region, ''Koo-wä-ho'ke''
:* Ground Scratcher, ''Oo-ckuk'-ham''

Lenape kinship system has matrilineal clans, that is, children belong to their mother's clan, from which they gain social status and identity. The mother's eldest brother was more significant as a mentor to the male children than was their father, who was generally of another clan. Hereditary leadership passed through the maternal line, and women elders could remove leaders of whom they disapproved. Agricultural land was managed by women and allotted according to the subsistence needs of their extended families. Families were matrilocal; newlywed couples would live with the bride's family, where her mother and sisters could also assist her with her growing family.

By 1682, when William Penn arrived to his American commonwealth, the Lenape had been so reduced by disease, famine, and war that the sub-clan mothers had reluctantly resolved to consolidate their families into the main clan family. This is why William Penn and all those after him believed that the Lenape clans had always only had three divisions (Turtle, Turkey, and Wolf) when, in fact, they had over thirty on the eve of European contact.

Members of each clan were found throughout Lenape territory and clan lineage was traced through the mother. While clan mothers controlled the land, the houses, and the families, the clan fathers provided the meat, cleared the fields, built the houses, and protected the clan. Upon reaching adulthood, a Lenape male would marry outside of his clan. The practice effectively prevented inbreeding, even among individuals whose kinship was obscure or unknown. This means that a male from the Turkey Clan was expected to marry a female from either the Turtle or Wolf clans. His children, however, would not belong to the Turkey Clan, but to the mother's clan. As such, a person's mother's brothers (the person's matrilineal uncles) played a large role in his or her life as they shared the same clan lineage. Within a marriage itself, men and women had relatively separate and equal rights, each controlling their own property and debts, showing further signs of a woman's power in the hierarchical structure.

As in the case of the Iroquois and Susquehannocks, the animosity of differences and competitions spanned many generations, and in general tribes with each of the different language groups became traditional enemies in the areas they'd meet. On the other hand, The New American Book of Indians points out that competition, trade, and wary relations were far more common than outright warfare—but both larger societies had traditions of 'proving' (blooding) new (or young) warriors by'' ' counting coup' on raids'' into another tribes territories. Ethnicity seems to have mattered little to the Lenape and many other "tribes". Archaeological excavations have found Lenape burials that included identifiably ethnic Iroquois remains interred along with those of Lenape. The two groups were sometimes bitter enemies since before recorded history, but intermarriage occurred — and both groups have an oral history suggesting they jointly came east together and displaced the mound builders culture. In addition, both tribes practiced adopting young captives from warfare into their tribes and assimilating them as full tribal members. Iroquoians adopting Lenape (or other peoples) were known to be part of their religious beliefs, the adopted one taking the place in the clan of one killed in warfare.

Early European observers may have misinterpreted matrilineal Lenape cultural practices. For example, a man's maternal uncle (his mother's brother), and not his father, was usually considered to be his closest male relative, since his uncle belonged to his mother's clan and his father belonged to a different one. The maternal uncle played a more prominent role in the lives of his sister's children than did the father—for example likely being the one responsible for educating a young man in weapons craft, martial arts, hunting, and other life skills. Early European chroniclers did not understand this concept.

Hunting, fishing, and farming

Lenape practiced companion planting, in which women cultivated many varieties of the " Three Sisters": maize, beans, and squash. Men also practiced hunting and the harvesting of seafood. By the time of the arrival of Europeans, the Lenape were cultivating fields of vegetation through the slash and burn technique. This extended the productive life of planted fields. According to Dutch settler Isaac de Rasieres, who observed the Lenape in 1628, the Lenape's primary crop was maize, which they planted in March. They quickly adopted European metal tools for this task.

The men limited their agricultural labor to clearing the field and breaking the soil. They primarily hunted and fished during the rest of the year: from September to January and from June to July, they mainly hunted deer, but from the month of January to the spring planting in May, they hunted anything from bears and beavers to raccoons and foxes. Dutch settler David de Vries, who stayed in the area from 1634 to 1644, described a Lenape hunt in the valley of the ''Achinigeu-hach'' (or "Ackingsah-sack", the Hackensack River), in which one hundred or more men stood in a line many paces from each other, beating thigh bones on their palms to drive animals to the river, where they could be killed easily. Other methods of hunting included lassoing and drowning deer, as well as forming a circle around prey and setting the brush on fire. They also harvested vast quantities of fish and shellfish from the bays of the area, and, in southern New Jersey, harvested clams year-round. One technique used while fishing was to add ground chestnuts to stream water to make fish dizzy and easier to catch.

The success of these methods allowed the tribe to maintain a larger population than other, nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples in North America at the time, could support. Scholars have estimated that at the time of European settlement, around much of the current New York City area alone, there may have been about 15,000 Lenape in approximately 80 settlement sites. In 1524, Lenape in canoes met Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor.

European settlers and traders from the 17th-century colonies of New Netherland and New Sweden traded with the Lenape for agricultural products, mainly maize, in exchange for iron tools. The Lenape also arranged contacts between the ''Minquas'' or ''Susquehannocks'' and the Dutch West India Company and Swedish South Company to promote the fur trade. The Lenape were major producers of labor intensive ''wampum'', or shell beads, which they traditionally used for ritual purposes and as ornaments. After the Dutch arrival, they began to exchange wampum for beaver furs provided by Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannock and other Minquas. They exchanged these furs for Dutch and, from the late 1630s, also Swedish imports. Relations between some Lenape and Minqua polities briefly turned sour in the late 1620s and early 1630s, but were relatively peaceful most of the time.

Clothing and adornment

The early European settlers, especially the Dutch and Swedes, were surprised at the Lenape's skill in fashioning clothing from natural materials. In hot weather men and women wore only loin cloth and skirt respectively, while they used beaver pelts or bear skins to serve as winter mantles. Additionally, both sexes might wear buckskin leggings and moccasins in cold weather. Women would wear their hair long, usually below the hip, while men kept only a small "round crest, of about 2 inches in diameter". Deer hair, dyed a deep scarlet, as well as plumes of feathers, were favorite components of headdresses and breast ornaments for males. The Lenape also adorned themselves with various ornaments made of stone, shell, animal teeth, and claws. The women often wore headbands of dyed deer hair or wampum. They painted their skin skirts or decorated them with porcupine quills. These skirts were so elaborately appointed that, when seen from a distance, they reminded Dutch settlers of fine European lace. The winter cloaks of the women were striking, fashioned from the iridescent body feathers of wild turkeys.

Leisure

One of the more common activities of leisure for the Lenni Lenape would be the game of ''pahsaheman'': a football-like hybrid, split on gender lines. Over a hundred players were grouped into gendered teams (male and female), and would attempt to get a ball through the other team's goal post. However, men could not carry and pass the ball, only using their feet, while the women could carry, pass, or kick. If the ball was picked up by a woman, she could not be tackled by the men, although men could attempt to dislodge the ball. Women were free to tackle the men. These gender-split rules highlight how a woman's role in Lenape society was harmonious to a man's role, rather than acquiescent.

Another activity common was that of dance, and yet again, gender differences appear: men would dance and leap loudly, often with bear claw accessories, while women, wearing little thimbles or bells, would dance more modestly, stepping "one foot after the other slightly forwards then backwards, yet so as to advance gradually."

Units of measure

A number of linear measures were used. Small units of measure were the distance from the thumb and first finger, and the distance from first finger to pit of elbow. Travel distance was measured in the distance one could comfortably travel from sun-up to sun-down.

Ethnobotany

Lenape herbalists, who have been primarily women, use their extensive knowledge of plant life to help heal their community's ailments, sometimes through ceremony. The Lenape found uses in trees like black walnut which were used to cure ringworm and with persimmons which were used to cure ear problems.

The Lenape carry the nuts of ''Aesculus glabra'' in the pocket for rheumatism, and an infusion of ground nuts mixed with sweet oil or mutton tallow for earaches. They also grind the nuts and use them to poison fish in streams. They also apply a poultice of pulverized nuts with sweet oil for earache.

History

European contact

The first recorded European contact with people presumed to have been the Lenape was in 1524. The explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano was greeted by local Lenape who came by canoe, after his ship entered what is now called Lower New York Bay.

Early colonial era

At the time of sustained European contact in the 1600s and 1700s, the Lenape were a powerful Native American nation who inhabited a region on the mid-Atlantic coast spanning the latitudes of southern Massachusetts to the southern extent of Delaware in what anthropologists call the Northeastern Woodlands. Although never politically unified, the confederation of the Lenape roughly encompassed the area around and between the Delaware and lower Hudson rivers, and included the western part of Long Island in present-day New York.Paul Otto, 179 "Intercultural Relations Between Native Americans and Europeans in New Netherland and New York" in ''Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations,''SUNY Press, 2009 Some of their place names, such as Manhattan ("the island of many hills"), Raritan, and Tappan were adopted by Dutch and English colonists to identify the Lenape people that lived there.

17th century

The Lenape had a culture in which the clan and family controlled property. Europeans often tried to contract for land with the tribal chiefs, confusing their culture with that of neighboring tribes such as the Iroquois. As a further complication in communication and understanding, kinship terms commonly used by European settlers had very different meanings to the Lenape: "fathers" did not have the same direct parental control as in Europe, "brothers" could be a symbol of equality but could also be interpreted as one's parallel cousins, "cousins" were interpreted as only cross-cousins, etc. All of these added complexities in kinship terms made agreements with Europeans all the more difficult. The Lenape would petition for grievances on the basis that not all their families had been recognized in the transaction (not that they wanted to "share" the land).William Christie MacLeod.
The Family Hunting Territory and Lenape Political Organization
" ''American Anthropologist'' 24. After the Dutch arrival in the 1620s, the Lenape were successful in restricting Dutch settlement until the 1660s to Pavonia in present-day Jersey City, which allowed settlement west of the Hudson within the province of New Netherland. This land was purchased from the Lenape after the fact.

New Amsterdam was founded in 1624 by the Dutch in what would later become New York City. Dutch settlers also founded a colony at present-day Lewes, Delaware, on June 3, 1631 and named it ''Zwaanendael'' (Swan Valley).Munroe, John A.: ''Colonial Delaware: A History'': Millwood, New York: KTO Press; 1978; pp. 9–12 The colony had a short life, as in 1632 a local band of Lenape killed the 32 Dutch settlers after a misunderstanding escalated over Lenape defacement of the insignia of the Dutch West India Company. In 1634, the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannock went to war with the Lenape over access to trade with the Dutch at New Amsterdam. They defeated the Lenape, and some scholars believe that the Lenape may have become tributaries to the Susquehannock. After the warfare, the Lenape referred to the Susquehannock as "uncles". The Iroquois added the Lenape to the Covenant Chain in 1676; the Lenape were tributary to the Five Nations (later Six) until 1753, shortly before the outbreak of the French and Indian War (a part of the Seven Years' War in Europe).

Based on the historical record of the mid-17th century, it has been estimated that most Lenape polities consisted of several hundred people but it is conceivable that some had been considerably larger prior to close contact, given the wars between the Susquehannocks and the Iroquois,Josephy 188–189 both of whom were armed by the Dutch fur traders, while the Lenape were at odds with the Dutch and so lost that particular arms race.

During the Beaver Wars in the first half of the 17th century, European colonists were careful to keep firearms from the coastally located Lenape, while rival Iroquoian peoples such as the Susquehannocks and Confederation of the Iroquois became comparatively well armed. Subsequently, the Lenape became subjugated and made tributary to first the Susquehannocks, then the Iroquois, even needing their rivals' (superiors') agreement to initiate treaties such as land sales. Like most tribes, Lenape communities were weakened by newly introduced diseases originating in Europe, mainly smallpox but also cholera, influenza and dysentery, and recurrent violent conflict with Europeans. Iroquoian peoples occasionally fought the Lenape. As the 18th century progressed, many surviving Lenape moved west—into the (relatively empty) upper Ohio River basin.

Smallpox devastated Native American communities even located far from European settlements by the 1640s. The Lenape and Susquehannocks fought a war in the middle of the 17th century that left the Lenape a tributary state even as the Susquehannocks had defeated the Province of Maryland between 1642-50s.

The Lenape's quick adoption of trade goods, and their desire to trap furs to meet high European demand, resulted in their disastrous over-harvesting of the beaver population in the lower Hudson Valley. With the fur sources exhausted, the Dutch shifted their operations to present-day upstate New York. The Lenape who produced wampum in the vicinity of Manhattan Island temporarily forestalled the negative effects of the decline in trade. Otto, Paul, 91 ''The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley''. New York: Berghahn Press, 2006. Lenape population fell sharply during this period, due to high fatalities from epidemics of infectious diseases carried by Europeans, such as measles and smallpox, to which they had no natural immunity.

In 1682, William Penn and Quaker colonists created the English colony of Pennsylvania beginning at the lower Delaware River. A peace treaty was negotiated between the newly arriving colonists and Lenape at what is now known as Penn Treaty Park. In the decades immediately following, some 20,000 new colonists arrived in the region, putting pressure on Lenape settlements and hunting grounds. Penn expected his authority and that of the colonial government to take precedence. His new colony effectively displaced many Lenape and forced others to adapt to new cultural demands. Penn gained a reputation for benevolence and tolerance, but his efforts resulted in more effective colonization of the ancestral Lenape homeland than previous ones.

18th century

William Penn died in 1718. His heirs, John and Thomas Penn, and their agents were running the colony, and had abandoned many of the elder Penn's practices. Trying to raise money, they contemplated ways to sell Lenape land to colonial settlers. The resulting scheme culminated in the so-called Walking Purchase. In the mid-1730s, colonial administrators produced a draft of a land deed dating to the 1680s. William Penn had approached several leaders of Lenape polities in the lower Delaware to discuss land sales further north. Since the land in question did not belong to their polities, the talks came to nothing. But colonial administrators had prepared the draft that resurfaced in the 1730s. The Penns and their supporters tried to present this draft as a legitimate deed. Lenape leaders in the lower Delaware refused to accept it.

According to historian Steven Harper, what followed was a "convoluted sequence of deception, fraud, and extortion orchestrated by the Pennsylvania government that is commonly known as the Walking Purchase." In the end, all Lenape who still lived on the Delaware were driven off the remnants of their homeland under threats of violence. Some Lenape polities eventually retaliated by attacking Pennsylvania settlements. When they resisted European colonial expansion at the height of the French and Indian War, the British colonial authorities investigated the causes of Lenape resentment. The British asked Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to lead the investigation. Johnson had become wealthy as a trader and acquired thousands of acres of land in the Mohawk River Valley from the Iroquois Mohawk of New York.

Beginning in the 18th century, the Moravian Church established missions among the Lenape. The Moravians required the Christian converts to share their pacifism, as well as to live in a structured and European-style mission village. Moravian pacifism and unwillingness to take loyalty oaths caused conflicts with British colonial authorities, who were seeking aid against the French and their Native American allies during the Seven Years' War. The Moravians' insistence on Christian Lenapes' abandoning traditional warfare practices alienated mission populations from other Lenape and Native American groups, who revered warriors. The Moravians accompanied Lenape relocations to Ohio and Canada, continuing their missionary work. The Moravian Lenape who settled permanently in Ontario after the American Revolutionary War were sometimes referred to as "Christian Munsee", as they mostly spoke the Munsee branch of the Lenape language.

During the French and Indian War, the Lenape initially sided with the French, as they hoped to prevent further European colonial encroachment in their territory. But, such leaders as Teedyuscung in the east and Tamaqua in the vicinity of modern Pittsburgh shifted to building alliances with the British colonial authorities. After the end of the war, however, Anglo-American settlers continued to attack the Lenape, often to such an extent that the historian Amy Schutt writes the dead since the wars outnumbered those killed during the war.Schutt, (2007), p.118

In 1757, the "New Jersey Association for Helping the Indians" wrote a constitution to expel native Munsee Lenape from their home in the Washington Valley of Morris County, New Jersey