Lenape

the historic homeland of the Lenape. In the north were the Munsee, the center the Unami and in the south the Unalichtigo a subdivision of the Unami]] The Lenape ( or ) are a group of several organized bands of Native American people with shared cultural and linguistic characteristics. Their name for themselves (autonym), sometimes spelled Lennape or Lenapi, means "the people." They are also known as the Lenni Lenape (the "true people") or as the Delaware Indians. English settlers named the Delaware River after Lord De La Warr, the governor of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia. They used the exonym above for almost all the Lenape people living along this river and its tributaries.

At the time of European contact in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Lenape lived in the area referred to as Lenapehoking, roughly the area around and between the Delaware and lower Hudson Rivers. This encompassed what are now known as the U.S. state of New Jersey; eastern Pennsylvania around the Delaware and Lehigh valleys; the north shore of Delaware; and much of southeastern New York, particularly the lower Hudson Valley, Upper New York Bay, Staten Island and western Long Island. They spoke two related languages in the Algonquian subfamily, collectively known as the Delaware languages: Unami and Munsee.

Lenape society was organized into clans determined by matrilineal descent. Territory was collective, but divided by clan. At the time of European contact, the Lenape practiced large-scale agriculture, mostly companion planting, their primary crops being varieties of the "Three Sisters." They also practiced hunting and the harvesting of seafood. They were primarily sedentary, moving to different established campsites by season.

After the arrival of settlers and traders to the 17th-century colony of New Netherland, the Lenape and other native peoples became extensively involved in the North American fur trade. Their trapping depleted the beaver population in the region, proving disastrous for both the Lenape and the Dutch settlers. The Lenape were further weakened by newly introduced infectious diseases, and by conflict with both Europeans and the traditional Lenape enemies, the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannock. Over the next centuries, they were pushed out of their lands by Iroquoian enemies, treaties and overcrowding by European settlers, and moved west into the Ohio River valley. In the 1860s, most Lenape remaining in the Eastern United States were sent to the Oklahoma Territory. In the 21st century, most Lenape now reside in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, with some communities living also in Kansas, Wisconsin, Ontario, and in their traditional homelands.

Society

Early Indian "tribes" are perhaps better understood as language groups, rather than as "nations". At the time of first European contact, a Lenape individual would likely have identified primarily with his or her immediate family and friends, or village unit; then with surrounding and familiar village units; next with more distant neighbors who spoke the same dialect; and ultimately, while often fitfully, with all those in the surrounding area who spoke mutually comprehensible languages, including the Mahican. Among other Algonquian peoples, the Lenape were considered the "grandfathers" from whom all the other Algonquian peoples originated. Consequently, in inter-tribal councils, the Lenape were given respect as one would to elders.

Those of a different language stock – such as the Iroquois (or, in the Lenape language, the Minqua) – were regarded as foreigners. As in the case of the Iroquois, the animosity of difference and competition spanned many generations, and tribes became traditional enemies. Ethnicity seems to have mattered little to the Lenape and many other "tribes". Archaeological excavations have found Munsee-speaking Lenape burials that included identifiably ethnic Iroquois remains interred along with those of Lenape. The two groups were bitter enemies since before recorded history. Intermarriage clearly occurred. In addition, both tribes practiced adopting captives from warfare into their tribes and assimilating them.

Overlaying these relationships was a phratry system, a division into clans. Clan membership was matrilineal; children inherited membership in a clan from their mother. On reaching adulthood, a Lenape traditionally married outside the clan, a practice known by ethnographers as, "exogamy". The practice effectively prevented inbreeding, even among individuals whose kinship was obscure or unknown.

Early Europeans who first wrote about Indians found matrilineal social organization to be unfamiliar and perplexing. Because of this, Europeans often tried to interpret Lenape society through more familiar European arrangements. As a result, the early records are full of clues about early Lenape society, but were usually written by observers who did not fully understand what they were seeing. For example, a man's maternal uncle (his mother's brother), and not his father, was usually considered to be his closest male ancestor, since his father belonged to a different clan. The maternal uncle played a more prominent role in the lives of his sister's children than did the father. Early European chroniclers did not understand this concept.

Land was assigned to a particular clan for hunting, fishing, and cultivation. Individual private ownership of land was unknown, as the land belonged to the clan collectively while they inhabited it. Clans lived in fixed settlements, using the surrounding areas for communal hunting and planting until the land was exhausted. In a common practice known as "agricultural shifting", the group then moved to found a new settlement within their territories.

The Lenape practiced large-scale agriculture to augment a mobile hunter-gatherer society in the region around the Delaware River, the lower Hudson River, and western Long Island Sound. The Lenape were largely a sedentary people who occupied campsites seasonally, which gave them relatively easy access to the small game that inhabited the region: fish, birds, shellfish and deer. They developed sophisticated techniques of hunting and managing their resources.

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. They also harvested vast quantities of fish and shellfish from the bays of the area, and, in southern New Jersey, harvested clams year-round. The success of these methods allowed the tribe to maintain a larger population than nomadic hunter-gatherers could support. Scholars have estimated that at the time of European settlement, there may have been about 15,000 Lenape total in approximately 80 settlement sites around much of the New York City area, alone. In 1524 Lenape in canoes met Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor.

History

European contact

's painting (in 1771) of William Penn's 1682 treaty with the Lenape]] The first recorded contact with Europeans and 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. The Lenape occupied coastal areas throughout the mid-Atlantic and New York.

The early interaction between the Lenape and Dutch traders in the 17th century was primarily through the fur trade, specifically, the Lenape trapped and traded beaver pelts for European-made goods. 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.

In May, the Lenape planted kidney beans near the maize plants; the latter served as props for the climbing bean vines. The summers were devoted to field work and the crops were harvested in August. Women cultivated varieties of maize and beans, and did most of the field work, processing and cooking of food. 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. 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.

European settlement

New Amsterdam was founded by the Dutch in what would later become New York City in 1624. Dutch settlers founded a colony at present-day Lewes, Delaware on June 3, 1631 and named it Zwaanendael (Swan Valley). The colony had a short existence, as in 1632 a local band of Lenape Indians 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 Lenape were added to the Covenant Chain by the Iroquois in 1676, remaining tributary to the Five (later Six) Nations until 1753.

The Lenape's quick adoption of trade goods, and their need 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 population fell, due mostly to epidemics of infectious diseases carried by Europeans, such as measles and smallpox, to which they had no natural immunity.

Differences in conceptions of property rights between the Europeans and the Lenape resulted in widespread confusion among the Lenape and the eventual loss of their lands. 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 along the Hudson. The Dutch finally established a garrison at Bergen, which allowed settlement west of the Hudson within the province of New Netherland.

In the early 1680s, William Penn and Quaker colonists created the English colony of Pennsylvania on the Delaware River. In the decades immediately following, some 20,000 new colonists arrived in the region, putting pressure on Lenape settlements and hunting grounds. Although Penn endeavored to live peaceably with the Lenape and to create a colony that would do the same, he also expected his authority and that of the colonial government to take precedence. His new colony effectively displaced the Lenape and forced others to adapt to new cultural demands. Penn gained a reputation for uncommon benevolence and tolerance, but his efforts resulted in more effective colonization of the ancestral Lenape homeland than previous ones.

18th century

painted by Gustavus Hesselius in 1735.]] William Penn died in 1718. His heirs, John Penn and Thomas Penn, and their agents were running the colony, and had abandoned many of the elder Penn's practices. In 1737, the colonial administrators claimed that they had a deed dating to the 1680s in which the Lenape-Delaware had promised to sell a portion of land beginning between the junction of the Delaware River and Lehigh River and extending "as far west as a man could walk in a day and a half." They contrived to have runners travel west, and thus claim huge swaths of land in the eastern portion of the state. Although reluctant to agree to the dubious claim, after years of fighting protest, the Lenape acquiesced to the Walking Purchase.

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 authorities, who were seeking aid against the French and their Native American allies during the French and Indian War (Seven Years War). The Moravians' insistence on Christian Lenapes' abandoning traditional warfare practices also alienated mission populations from other Lenape and Native American groups. 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 Delaware language.

The Treaty of Easton, signed in 1758 between the Lenape and the Anglo-American colonists, required the Lenape to move westward, out of present-day New York and New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, then Ohio and beyond. Sporadically they continued to raid European-American settlers from far outside the area.

During the French and Indian War, the Lenape initially sided with the French. But, such leaders as Teedyuscung in the east and Tamaqua in the vicinity of modern Pittsburgh shifted to building alliances with the English. After the end of the war, however, Anglo-American settlers continued to kill Lenape, often to such an extent that people claimed the dead since the wars outnumbered those during the war.

In 1763 the Lenape known as Bill Hickman warned English colonists in the Juniata River region of an impending attack. Many Lenape joined in Pontiac's War, and were numerous among those Native Americans who besieged Pittsburgh. In April 1763 Teedyuscung was killed when his home was burned. His son Captain Bull responded by attacking settlers from New England who had migrated to the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania. The settlers had been sponsored by the Susquehanna Company.

The Lenape were the first Indian tribe to enter into a treaty with the new United States government, with the Treaty of Fort Pitt signed in 1778 during the American Revolutionary War. By then living mostly in the Ohio Country, the Lenape supplied the Continental Army with warriors and scouts in exchange for food supplies and security.

19th and 20th centuries

Amateur anthropologist Silas Wood published a book claiming that there were several American Indian tribes that were distinct to Long Island, New York. He collectively called them the Metoac. Modern scientific scholarship has shown that two linguistic groups represented two Algonquian cultural identities on the island, not "13 individual tribes" as asserted by Wood. The bands to the west were Lenape. Those to the east were more related culturally to the Algonquian tribes of New England across Long Island Sound. Wood (and earlier settlers) often misinterpreted the Indian use of place names for identity as indicating their name for "tribes."

Over a period of 176 years, European settlers progressively crowded the Lenape out of the East Coast and Ohio, and pressed them to move further west. Most members of the Munsee-language branch of the Lenape live on three Indian reserves in Western Ontario, Canada. They are descendants of those Lenape of Ohio Country who sided with the British during the Revolutionary War. The largest reserve is at Moraviantown, Ontario, where the Turtle clan settled in 1792 following the war.

Ohio: 1750s to 1812 (American Revolution and War of 1812)

After the signing of the Treaty of Easton in 1758, the Lenape were forced to move west out of their native lands (in Delaware, New Jersey, eastern New York, and eastern Pennsylvania) into what is today known as Ohio.

During the American Revolution, the Munsee-speaking Lenape (then called Delaware) bands of the Ohio Country were deeply divided over which side, if any, to take in the conflict. Years earlier, many Lenape had migrated west to Ohio from their territory on the mid-Atlantic coast to try to escape colonial encroachment, as well as pressure from Iroquois tribes from the north. They resettled there, with bands in numerous villages around their main village of Coshocton. By the time of the Revolutionary War, the Lenape found their villages lay between the western frontier strongholds of the war's opponents: the American colonists' military outpost at Fort Pitt (present-day Pittsburgh) and the British with Indian allies around Fort Detroit (in present-day Michigan).

Some Lenape decided to take up arms against the American colonials and moved to the west, closer to Detroit, where they settled on the Scioto and Sandusky rivers. Those Lenape sympathetic to the United States remained at Coshocton, and leaders signed the Treaty of Fort Pitt (1778) with the Americans. Through this, the Lenape hoped to establish the Ohio Country as a state inhabited exclusively by Native Americans, as part of the new United States. A third group of Lenape, many of them converted Christian Munsees, lived in several mission villages run by Moravians. (They spoke the Munsee branch of Delaware, an Algonquian language.)

White Eyes, the Lenape chief who had negotiated the treaty, died in 1778. (Some thought he had been murdered by American militia.) Many Lenape at Coshocton eventually joined the war against the Americans. In response, Colonel Daniel Brodhead led an expedition out of Fort Pitt and on 19 April 1781 destroyed Coshocton. Surviving residents fled to the north. Colonel Brodhead convinced the militia to leave the Lenape at the Moravian mission villages unmolested, since they were unarmed non-combatants.

Brodhead's having to restrain the militia from attacking the Moravian villages was a reflection of the brutal nature of frontier warfare. Violence had escalated on both sides. Relations between regular Continental Army officers from the East (such as Brodhead) and western militia were frequently strained. The tensions were worsened by the American government's policy of recruiting some Indian tribes as allies in the war. Western militiamen, many of whom had lost friends and family in Indian raids against settlers' encroachment, blamed all Indians for the acts of some.

Notable Ohio Village Sites

Hell Town, Ohio

Village located on Clear Creek, known today as Clear Fork, near the abandoned town of Newville, Ohio. The site is on a high hill just north of the junction of Clear Creek and the Black Fork of the Mohican River.

From Semi-Weekly News (Mansfield, Ohio): 2 August 1898, Vol. 14, No. 64: Helltown -- town of the clear water—was situated a mile below Newville, on the Clear Fork of the Mohican, in what is known as the Darling settlement. Helltown was abandoned in 1782, after the massacre of the Moravian Indians at Gnadenhutten and a new village (Greentown) was founded on the Black Fork, where a more favorable site for defense was obtained. Greentown was named for Thomas Green, a white man, who was a Tory, and who after aiding the Mohawks in the Wyoming massacre of 1778 sought retreat and seclusion with the Indians in the west.

From History of Richland County. By A J. Baughman. CHAPTER XVI. Monroe Township: William Norris, who lives on a 500-acre farm in "Possum Valley" also owns a fine tract of land which was a part of the original Darling tract, at the site of the former Indian village of Helltown, where the first bridge below Newville crosses the Clearfork.

Mohican Johnstown

Located south of Jeromesville, Ohio.In 1808-09 early white settlers to the area of what is now Jeromesville in Ashland County, Ohio, on the Jerome Fork of the Mohican River found Delaware people living at the old Mohican village of Johnstown (about three-fourths of a mile southwest of the present site of Jeromesville) near which was located the home of Old Captain Pipe. Many stories of the settlers and the remaining Delaware talk of Old Captain Pipe living there until 1812.

Description of portages leading to and from Mohican Johnstown:

This trail (Portage Trail) also branched off at Mohican Johnstown, passing through Plain township by the “Long Meadow” or perhaps a little south by Mohican John’s Lake in Wayne county, thence across Killbuck some twelve miles south of Wooster where Rogers crossed that stream, and probably Col. Crawford also crossed and encamped near O’ Dell’s (formerly Mohican John’s Lake) on his expedition to the Moravian settlement on Sandusky creek, in Crawford county. There was another trail from Mohican Johnstown running north-west to Greentown, by or near the site of GOUDY’S old mill, to the Quaker springs in Vermillion township; thence southwest over Honey creek to a point about three miles west of Perrysville. This trail, afterwards known as the Old Portage road, was the route of many of the pioneers in Green township. The trail continued in the direction of the site of Lucas to near Mansfield.

From Mohican Johnstown another trail ran up the Jerome fork, a favorite route of the Mohicans on their hunting excursions on the Black river; and the north part of Ashland county, to the junction of the Catotaway in the eastern part of Montgomery township, where it crossed and passed near the residence of Moses LATTA and BURKHOLDER’S mill, thence up the creek past the old GIERHART farm, where resided CATOTAWAY, an old Indian hunter after whom the stream was named. There was another trail passed up in the direction of Vermillion lake and down the Vermillion river. Various other trails generally following the course of some stream branched out to different points.

Greentown - Located west of Perrysville, Ohio. Burned during the War of 1812 (August 1812).

Coshocton- In 1778, Pipe, and the warlike members of his tribe, departed from the Tuscarawas and relocated on the Walhonding River, about fifteen miles above the present site of Coshocton, Ohio.

Kilbuck. Also known as Buckstown

Notable Ohio Lenape

Captain Pipe (1725? – 1818?)

Also called Hopocan, was an 18th Century chief of the Lenape (Delaware) Indians, and a member of the Wolf Clan.

White Eyes

The Lenape chief who had negotiated the Treaty of Fort Pitt, died in 1778.

Killbuck

Killbuck was a tribal leader of the turtle clan of the Delaware Indians. He became a leader when his grandfather, Newcomer, died in 1776.

During the early 1770s, missionaries, including David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder, arrived in the Ohio Country near the Delaware villages. The Moravian Church sent these men to convert the natives to Christianity. The missionaries established several missions, including Gnadenhutten, Lichtenau, and Schoenbrunn. The missionaries asked that the natives forsake all of their traditional customs and ways of life. Many Delawares did adopt Christianity, but others refused to do so. The Delawares became a divided people during the 1770s. This was even true for Killbuck's family. Killbuck resented his grandfather for allowing the Moravians to remain in the Ohio Country. The Moravians believed in pacifism, and Killbuck believed that every convert to the Moravians deprived the Delawares of a warrior to stop further white settlement of their land.

During the French and Indian War Killbuck actively assisted the English against their French enemy. In 1761, Killbuck led an English supply train from Fort Pitt to Fort Sandusky. The British paid him one dollar per day.

Killbuck became a leader in a very dangerous time for the Delawares. The American Revolution had just begun, and Killbuck found his people caught between the English in the West and the Americans in the East. At the war's beginning, Killbuck and many Delawares claimed to be neutral. In 1778, Killbuck did give permission a force of American soldiers to traverse Delaware territory so that the soldiers could attack Fort Detroit. In return, Killbuck requested that the Americans build a fort near the natives' major village of Coshocton to provide the Delaware Indians with protection from English attacks. The Americans agreed. While the Delawares had begun to side with the Americans, other groups, especially the Wyandot Indians, the Mingo Indians, the Munsee Indians, the Shawnee Indians, and even the wolf clan of the Delaware Indians favored the British. The English natives planned to attack Fort Laurens in early 1779 and demanded that the neutral Delawares formally side with the British. Killbuck warned the Americans of the planned attack. His actions helped save the fort, but the Americans still abandoned it in August 1779. The Delawares had lost their protectors and, in theory, faced attacks from the English, their native allies, and even American settlers that flooded into the area in the late 1770s and early 1780s. Most Delaware Indians formally joined the British after the American withdrawal from Fort Laurens.

Facing pressure from the British, the Americans, and even his fellow natives, Killbuck hoped a policy of neutrality would save his people from destruction. It did not.

Notable Ohio Events and Landmarks

Gnadenhütten Massacre

The Gnadenhutten massacre, also known as the Moravian massacre, was the killing on March 8, 1782, of ninety-six Christian Lenape (Delaware) by colonial American militia from Pennsylvania during the American Revolutionary War. The incident took place at the Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhütten, Ohio, near present-day Gnadenhutten. The site of the village was preserved. A reconstructed cabin and cooper's house were built there, and a monument to the dead was erected. The village site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Crawford Expedition

The Crawford expedition, also known as the Sandusky expedition and Crawford's Defeat, was a 1782 campaign on the western front of the American Revolutionary War, and one of the final operations of the conflict. Led by Colonel William Crawford, the campaign's goal was to destroy enemy American Indian, including the Delaware towns along the Sandusky River in the Ohio Country, with the hope of ending Indian attacks on American settlers. The expedition was one in a long series of raids against enemy settlements which both sides had conducted throughout the war.

Crawford led about 500 volunteer militiamen, mostly from Pennsylvania, deep into American Indian territory, with the intention of surprising the Indians. The Indians and their British allies from Detroit had already learned of the expedition, however, and gathered a force to oppose the Americans. After a day of indecisive fighting near the Sandusky towns, the Americans found themselves surrounded and attempted to retreat. The retreat turned into a rout, but most of the Americans managed to find their way back to Pennsylvania. About 70 Americans were killed; Indian and British losses were minimal.

During the retreat, Colonel Crawford and an unknown number of his men were captured. The Indians executed many of these captives in retaliation for the Gnadenhutten massacre that occurred earlier in the year, in which about 100 peaceful Indians were murdered by Pennsylvanian militiamen. Crawford's execution was particularly brutal: he was tortured for at least two hours before being burned at the stake. His execution was widely publicized in the United States, worsening the already-strained relationship between Native Americans and European Americans.

Pipe's Cliff

Pipe's Cliff is in Monroe Township, Richland County, Ohio, nine miles southeast of Mansfield, on the Pleasant Valley road, a short distance from the Douglass homestead.

Pipe's Cliff is named for Capt. Pipe, an Indian chieftain of pioneer times, from the fact that his sister (Onalaska) was killed upon the summit of those rocks. As the story goes, Capt. Pipe's sister was married to a young warrior named Round Head, and that after the massacre of the Indians at Gnadenhutten (1781), Round Head with his wife and child in company with several other Indians, left their Muskingum village home for the Sandusky country. The party encamped for a rest from their journey on the ledge of rocks, now known as Pipe's Cliff, and while there were fired upon by a squad of soldiers, killing Onalaska and her child, and wounding two others of the party. It is stated that the squaw was standing upon a perpendicular rock at the south end of the ledge, with her child in her arms, and that when shot, she fell from the cliff and that her body was buried at its base. When viewed from the road, this rock presents a monumental appearance, but can best be seen when the leaves are off the trees. This rock is called "Onalaska's Tower" in commemoration of her tragic death.

The squad of troops who fired upon this party belonged to Col. Broadhead's expedition against the villages of the forks of the Muskingum, known in the history as the "Coshocton campaign" and the soldiers were scouts and could not see through the thick foliage that they fired upon a woman. But, as the warriors of the party were enemies, Onalaska had to share the consequences of war with her friends with whom she was encamped.

Among the names given to different parts of Pipe's Cliff are "Dragon's Mouth", "Hanging Rock", "The Porch", "Altar Rock", "Frowning Cliff", etc. The cliff rises to a height of 100 feet above the valley and commands a fine view of the surrounding country. Around the base and sides of this ledge of rocks are caves and caverns, whose depths and lengths have never been explored. There is historical authority to confirm, in the main, the traditions of the valley concerning the death of Onalaska, as above described.

Indiana to Missouri

By the Treaty of St. Mary’s, signed October 3, 1818 in St. Mary's Ohio, the Delaware ceded their lands in Indiana for lands west of the Mississippi and a annuity of $4,000. Over the next few years the Delaware settled on the James River near its confluence with Wilson Creek, occupying eventually about of the approximately allotted to them. Anderson, Indiana is named after Chief William Anderson whose father was Swedish. The Delaware Village in Indiana was called Anderson's Town while the Delaware Village in Missouri on the James River was often called Anderson’s Village. The tribes cabins and cornfields were spread out along the James River and Wilson Creek.

Role in western history

Many Delaware participated in exploration of the western United States, working as trappers with the mountain men, and as guides and hunters for wagon trains. They also served as army guides and scouts in events such as the Second Seminole War, Frémont's expeditions, and the conquest of California during the Mexican-American War. Occasionally, they played surprising roles as Indian allies.

One of the more prominent examples was Black Beaver. Born in present-day Illinois near St. Louis in 1806, he began trapping and trading beaver pelts to the white men as a teenager. In his 1859 guide book “The Prairie Traveler,” Randolph Marcy wrote that Black Beaver “had visited nearly every point of interest within the limits of our unsettled territory. He had set his traps and spread his blanket upon the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia; and his wanderings had led him south to the Colorado and Gila, and thence to the shores of the Pacific in Southern California. His life had been that of a veritable cosmopolite, filled with scenes of intense and startling interest, bold and reckless adventure. He was with me two seasons in the capacity of guide, and I always found him perfectly reliable, brave, and competent. His reputation as a resolute, determined, and fearless warrior did not admit of question, yet I have never seen a man who wore his laurels with less vanity.

“The truth is,” Marcy added, “my friend Beaver was one of those few heroes who never sounded his own trumpet; yet no one that knows him ever presumed to question his courage.”

Black Beaver spoke fluent English, French, Spanish and about ten Indian languages, and was able to communicate with even more tribes through sign language. His skills became invaluable to white settlers and military expeditions. When Marcy escorted the first five hundred emigrants from Ft. Smith to California during the gold rush days of 1849, he engaged Black Beaver as his guide. On the way back, Black Beaver, anxious to return home, took a shortcut across the prairie that reduced the two month trip to two weeks. Thousands of future emigrants followed his California Trail west.

By 1860 Black Beaver was the wealthiest and most famous Lenape Indian in America, and was living comfortably at present-day Anadarko, Oklahoma. But that was soon to change. In May 1861, General William H. Emory, stationed at Fort Arbuckle, learned that 6,000 Confederate troops were advancing toward him from Texas and Arkansas. He gathered the soldiers from Forts Washita, Cobb and Arbuckle near Minco, but to escape to Kansas across the open prairie he would need a guide.

All the other Indian guides turned him down because they knew the advancing rebels would punish them for aiding the Union troops. Desperate, Emory guaranteed Black Beaver the government would reimburse him for any losses, so he agreed to help. He scouted the approaching Confederate troops and provided information for Emory to capture their advance guard, the first prisoners captured during the Civil War. Black Beaver then guided over 800 Union soldiers, their prisoners, 200 teamsters, eighty wagons and 600 horses and mules in a mile-long train across 500 miles of open prairie to safety at Fort Leavenworth without the loss of a single man, horse or wagon.

Sure enough, the Confederate Army destroyed Black Beaver’s ranch and placed a bounty on his head that kept him in Kansas for the rest of the war. His losses were never fully compensated by the government.

After the war, Black Beaver and his friend Jesse Chisholm returned and converted Black Beaver’s escape route into what became the Chisholm Trail. Three million head of stray Texas cattle were herded to railheads in Kansas, from which they were shipped east to feed a hungry nation.

Black Beaver resettled at Anadarko, building the first brick home in the area. He had 300 acres of fenced and cultivated land as well as cattle, hogs and horses. He died at his home on May 8, 1880, and was buried on his ranch. In 1976 his grave was moved to Ft. Sill.

He was the first inductee in the American Indian Hall of Fame in Anadarko, which is located on part of his ranch.

Sagundai accompanied one of John C. Frémont's expeditions as one of his Delaware guides. From California, Fremont needed to communicate with Senator Benton. Sagundai volunteered to carry the message, through some 2,200 kilometres of hostile territory. He took many scalps in this adventure, including that of a Comanche with a particularly fine horse, who had outspeeding both Sagundai and the other Comanches. Sagundai was thrown when his horse stepped into a prairie-dog hole, avoided the Comanche's lance, shot him dead, and caught his horse by the trailing lariat to make good his own escape. Upon his arrival among his own people, the Delawares held the last war and scalp dances in their history. These were held "where Edwin Taylor now (in 1918) lives, on the hill", at Edwardsville, Kansas.

Kansas reservation

By the terms of the "Treaty of the James Fork" made September 24, 1829 and ratified by the US Senate in 1830, the Delaware were granted lands west of the Missouri River in Indian Territory in exchange for lands on the James Fork on the White River in Missouri. These lands, in what is now Kansas, were west of the Missouri River and north of the Kansas River. The main reserve consisted of about with an additional "outlet" strip wide extending to the west. About 1,000 Delaware lived on the Delaware Reservation in Kansas, many in log cabins, but some in substantial farm houses with outbuildings. The center of activity was in what is now Muncie, Kansas a neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas north of Delaware Crossing on the Kansas River. The Delaware Indian agency, the blacksmith, and the Baptist and Methodist missions were located there.

White encroachment

At the same time that Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 which created the Territory of Kansas and opened the area for white settlement, it authorized negotiation with Indian tribes regarding removal. The Delaware were reluctant to negotiate but feared serious trouble with white settlers, which developed.

As the Delaware were not citizens they had no access to the courts, and thus no way to enforce their property rights. That was, theoretically, done by the United States Army after the Indian Agent had followed onerous procedures requiring both posting a public notice warning trespassers and serving written notice on them. Major B.F. Robinson, the Indian Agent appointed in 1855, did his best, but could not control the hundreds of white trespassers who stole stock, cut timber, and even built houses and set up housekeeping on Delaware lands. By 1860 the consensus had developed to leave Kansas, which was in accord with the government's Indian removal policy.

Oklahoma

The main body of Lenape arrived in the northeast region of Oklahoma in the 1860s. Along the way many smaller groups left, or were told to stay where they were. Consequently today, from New Jersey to Wisconsin to southwest Oklahoma, there are groups who retain a sense of connection with ancestors who lived in the Delaware Valley in the 17th century and with cousins in the Lenape diaspora.

The two largest groups are the Delaware Nation (Anadarko, Oklahoma), and the Delaware Tribe of Indians (Bartlesville, Oklahoma), the only two federally recognized Lenape (Delaware) tribes in the United States. The Oklahoma branches were established in 1867. The Delaware were required to purchase land from the reservation of the Cherokee Nation; they made two payments totaling $438,000. A court dispute followed over whether the sale included rights for the Delaware as citizens within the Cherokee Nation.

While the dispute was unsettled, the Curtis Act of 1898 dissolved tribal governments and ordered the allotment of tribal lands to individual members of tribes. After the lands were allotted in 160 acre (650,000 m²) lots to tribal members in 1907, the government sold "surplus" land to non-Indians. It soon became obvious that the land was not suitable for subsistence farming on such small plots.

In 1979, the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs revoked the tribal status of the Delaware living among Cherokee in Oklahoma. They began to count the Delaware as Cherokee. The Delaware had this decision overturned in 1996, when they were recognized by the federal government as a separate tribal nation.

The Cherokee Nation filed suit to overturn the recognition of the Delaware. The tribe lost federal recognition in a 2004 court ruling in favor of the Cherokee Nation, but regained it on 28 July 2009. After recognition, the tribe reorganized under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act. Members approved a constitution and bylaws in a May 26, 2009 vote. Jerry Douglas is serving as tribal chief.

Lenape communities today

Oklahoma:

Delaware Tribe of Indians (Bartlesville, Oklahoma), US federally recognized

Delaware Nation (Anadarko, Oklahoma), US federally recognized

Ontario, Canada:

Munsee-Delaware Nation 1, Ontario, Canadian reserve

Moravian of the Thames First Nation, Canadian reserve

Delaware of Six Nations (at Six Nations of the Grand River), two Canadian reserves

Wisconsin:

Stockbridge-Munsee Community, US federally recognized

Notable Lenape

Black Beaver, 1806-1880. Trapper, trader and scout; first inductee into the American Indian Hall of Fame.

Buckongahelas, Wolf clan war leader

Captain Jacobs, War Chief

Captain Pipe, Wolf clan war chief

Charles Journeycake, Chief of the Wolf Clan from 1855 and principal chief from 1861. Visited Washington, D.C. 24 times on his tribe's behalf.

Killbuck (Gelelemend), Turtle clan leader

Oratam, sachem of the Hackensack

Neolin, the "Delaware Prophet"

Shingas, Turkey clan war leader

Tamanend, leader who, according to tradition, negotiated treaty with William Penn

Tamaqua, Turkey clan civil leader, aka "King Beaver"

Teedyuscung, "King" of the eastern Delawares

White Eyes, Turtle clan civil leader

Chief Newcomer, who founded the village of Gekelmukpechunk in Ohio in the 1760s, which white settlers and traders later named after him as Newcomerstown.

Dan Barker, founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation

Literature

The Delaware feature prominently in The Last of the Mohicans and the other Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper.

The Delaware are the subject of a legend which inspired the Boy Scouts of America honor society known as the Order of the Arrow.

The Walam Olum, which purported to be an account of the Delaware's migration to the lands around the Delaware River, emerged through the works of Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in the nineteenth century. For many decades, scholars believed it was genuine. In the 1980s and 1990s, newer textual analysis suggested it was a hoax. Nonetheless, some Delaware, upon hearing of it for the first time, found the account to be plausible.

In Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, the group of American scalphunters are aided by an unspecified number of Delaware Indians (5-6 minimum), who serve as scouts and guides through the western deserts.

In The Light in the Forest, True Son is adopted by a band of Lenape.

In Mark Raymond Harrington's 1938 book , a group of Lenape find a shipwrecked English boy. His gradual integration provides a backdrop for an examination of Lenape life, society, weaponry, and beliefs. The book includes a glossary for the Lenape terms used throughout it.

Trouble's Daughter: The Story of Susanna Hutchinson, Indian Captive is a young adult novel of a fictional account of the kidnapping by the Lenape Turtle Clan of a daughter of Anne Hutchinson, the religious reformer and founder of the Rhode Island colony.

Moon of Two Dark Horses is a novel of the friendship between a white settler and a Lenape boy at the time of the Revolutionary War.

Standing in the Light: The Captive Diary of Catharine Carey Logan, part of the Dear America series of fictional diaries, is a novel by Mary Pope Osborne. It tells the story of the capture of a teenage girl and her brother by a band of Lenape, and the youths' gradual assimilation into Lenape culture.

Peter Lindestrom's Geographia America with an Account of the Delaware Indians is one of the few sympathetic contemporary accounts (and most reliable) of Lenape life in the lower Delaware River valley during the 17th century.

Moravian missionary John Heckewelder published a sympathetic account of the Lenape in exile in the Ohio Valley. His account, published in 1818, provides some alternate Lenape tribal history disputing the tributary relationship with the Susquehannock.

See also

Burial Ridge

Ramapough Mountain Indians

Walking Purchase

Unalachtigo Lenape

Museum of Indian Culture

Hell Town, Ohio (Lenape settlement in Ohio)

Economy of the Iroquois

Notes

References

Weslager, C.A., The Delaware Indians: A History, Rutgers University Press (1972), hardcover, 546 pages, ISBN 0-8135-0702-2

External material

Bibliography

Adams, Richard Calmit, The Delaware Indians, a brief history, Hope Farm Press (Saugerties, NY 1995) [originally published by Government Printing Office, (Washington, DC 1909)]

Bierhorst, John. The White Deer and Other Stories Told by the Lenape. New York: W. Morrow, 1995. ISBN 0-688-12900-5

Brown, James W. and Rita T. Kohn, eds. Long Journey Home ISBN 978-0-253-34968-2. Indiana University Press (2007).

Burrows, Edward G. and Wallace, Mike, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1989 ISBN 0-19-514049-4 Oxford Univ. Press (1999).

Dreibelbis, Dana E., "The Use of Microstructural Growth Patterns of Mercenaria Mercenaria to Determine the Prehistoric Seasons of Harvest at Tuckerton Midden, Tuckerton, New Jersey," thesis, Princeton University, 1978.

Jackson, Kenneth T. (editor) The Encyclopedia of New York City ISBN 0-300-05536-6 Yale University Press (1995).

Jennings, Francis, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 2000, ISBN 0-393-01719-2

Kraft, Herbert C. (ed.) A Delaware Indian Symposium [Proceedings]. Anthropological Series no. 4. Harrisburg, PA: Pennsylvania Historical Society Museum Commission, 1974.

Kraft, Herbert C. (ed.) The Lenape Indian: A Symposium. South Orange, NJ: Archaeological Research Center, Seton Hall University, 1984.

Kraft, Herbert C., The Lenape: archaeology, history and ethnography, New Jersey Historical Society, (Newark, NJ 1986)

Kraft, Herbert C. The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 B.C. to A.D. 2000. Stanhope, NJ: Lenape Books, 2001.

Kurlansky, Mark. The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell. Random House Trade Paperbacks (January 9, 2007). ISBN 978-0-345-47639-5

Mitchell, S. H. The Indian Chief, Journeycake. Philadelphia : American Baptist Publication Society (1895). Available on the Internet Archive

O'Meara, John, Delaware-English / English-Delaware dictionary, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, 1996) ISBN 0-8020-0670-1.

Oestreicher, David. "Unmasking the Walam Olum: A 19th-Century Hoax," in Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey, #49, 1994, p. 10-44.

Otto, Paul, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006). ISBN 1-57181-672-0

Pritchard, Evan T., Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquin People of New York. Council Oak Books: San Francisco, 2002, 2007, ISBN 1-57178-107-2.

Richter, Conrad, The Light In The Forest, (New York, NY 1953).

Spady, James. "Colonialism and the Discursive Antecedents of Penn's Treaty with the Indians". in Daniel K. Richter and William A. Pencak, ed., Friends and Enemies in Penn's Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania. University Park, PA: PSU Press, 2004. p. 18-40.

Weslager, Clinton Alfred, The Delaware Indians: A history, Rutgers University Press, (New Brunswick, NJ 1972).

Wick, Steve. "The First Long Islanders." Newsday.com [Accessed July 30, 2008]

External links

Delaware Nation (Anadarko, Oklahoma)

Delaware Tribe of Indians (Bartlesville, OK)

Lenape/English dictionary

Lenni Lenape Historical Society

Lenape (Southern Unami) Talking Dictionary

The Indigenous Maps and Mapping of North American Indians

Category:Native American tribes in Oklahoma Category:Native American tribes in New Jersey Category:Native American tribes in Pennsylvania Category:Native American tribes in New York Category:Native American tribes in Delaware Category:Native American tribes in Ohio Category:First Nations in Ontario Category:Native American history of New York Category:Native American history of Pennsylvania Category:Native American history of Ohio Category:Native American history of New Jersey Category:Native American history of Delaware Category:First Nations history Category:Algonquian ethnonyms Category:People of New Netherland