Lenape people

Jennie Bobb and her daughter, Nellie Longhat (both Delaware), Oklahoma, 1915[1]
Total population
Estimated 16,000[2]
Regions with significant populations
United States ( Oklahoma) 11,1951 (2010) [3]  United States ( Wisconsin)  Canada ( Ontario)
Languages
English, Munsee, and Unami[2]
Religion
Christianity, Native American Church, traditional tribal religion
Related ethnic groups
Other Lenape and Algonquian peoples

The Lenape ( /ˈlɛnəpiː/ or /ləˈnɑːpi/) are Native American people in Canada and the United States. They are also called Delaware Indians.^[4] As a result of the American Revolutionary War and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, the main groups now live in Ontario (Canada), Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. In Canada, they are enrolled in the Munsee-Delaware Nation 1, the Moravian of the Thames First Nation, and the Delaware of Six Nations; in the United States, they are enrolled in three federally recognized tribes, that is, the Delaware Nation and the Delaware Tribe of Indians, both located in Oklahoma, and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, located in Wisconsin.

At the time of European contact in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Lenape inhabited a region on the North Atlantic coast in what anthropologists call the Northeastern Woodlands. Although never politically unified, it is frequently referred to as Lenapehoking ("Lenape country"). It roughly comprised the area around and between the Delaware and lower Hudson rivers.^[5] Lenapehoking hosted over two dozen Lenape polities. Some of their names, such as Manhattan, Raritan, and Tappan, remain inscribed on the landscape. Based on the historical record of the mid-seventeenth century, it has been estimated that most Lenape polities consisted of several hundred people.^[6] It is conceivable that some had been considerably larger prior to contact. Even regions at a distance from European settlement, such as Iroquoia, had been devastated by smallpox by the 1640s.^[7]

Most modern Lenape are native English speakers. In the seventeenth century, the Lenape spoke several closely related languages or dialects, such as Unami and Munsee, that are collectively known as the Delaware languages and have been classified by linguists as belonging to the Eastern Algonquian language group. The term "Algonquian" is occasionally used as a shorthand for people who spoke languages of this group, but they had otherwise little in common. Due to aggressive European expansion and the resulting migrations, population losses, and political reorganization, Lenape languages had converged by the mid-eighteenth century. Unami and Munsee were now the most dominant.^[8] Another hundred years of forced migrations left the languages vulnerable.^[9] They hardly survived the U.S. Indian policies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.^[10] Various people made efforts to revive or at least document Unami and Munsee in the late twentieth century.^[11]

Lenape society is organized into clans determined by matrilineal descent. That is, children belong to the mother's clan, where they gain their status and identity. The mother's eldest brother was more significant as a mentor to the boy children than was their father, who was of another clan. Hereditary leadership passed through the maternal line, and women elders could remove leaders of whom they disapproved. Traditionally, the Lenape had no concept of landed property. But clans had use rights. Agricultural land was managed by women and allotted according to the subsistence needs of their extended families. Matrilocal residence further enhanced the position of women in society. A young married couple would live with the woman's family, where her mother and sisters could also assist her with her growing family.

At the time of European contact, the Lenape practiced agriculture, mostly companion planting. The women cultivated many varieties of the "Three Sisters:" corn, beans and squash. The men also practiced hunting and the harvesting of seafood. They were primarily sedentary and moved to seasonal campsites for particular purposes such as fishing and hunting. After the arrival of settlers and traders to the seventeenth-century colonies of New Netherland and New Sweden, Lenapes provided agricultural products, mainly maize, in exchange for iron tools. Lenapes also arranged contacts between Minquas or Northern Iroquoians and the Dutch and Swedish West India companies to promote the fur trade. Lenapes were major producers of 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 Susquehannocks and other Minquas. They then exchanged these furs for Dutch and, from the late 1630s, also Swedish imports. Relations between some Lenape and Minqua polities briefly turned sore in the late 1620s and early 1630s, but were relatively peaceful most of the time.^[12]

Most Lenapes were pushed out of their homeland by expanding European colonies during the next century. Lenape polities were weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and European violence. Iroquoian polities occasionally contributed to the process. The surviving Lenapes reorganized their polities and moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. The American Revolutionary War and U.S. independence pushed them further west. In the 1860s, most Lenapes remaining in the eastern United States were sent to the Oklahoma Territory under Indian removal policy. In the 21st century, most Lenape now reside in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, with some communities living also in Kansas, Wisconsin, Ontario (Canada), and in their traditional homelands.

Name[link]

Lenni Lenape means "Human Beings" or the "Real People" in the Unami language.^[2] Their (autonym) is also spelled Lennape or Lenapi, meaning "the people." The term "Delaware" was used by the English, who named the people for their territory by the Delaware River. They named the river in honor of Lord De La Warr, the governor of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia.^[2] The English colonists used the exonym "Delaware" for almost all the Lenape people living along this river and its tributaries.

Society[link]

Map depicting Lenapehoking the historic homeland of the Lenape. In the north were the Munsee language group, the center the Unami and in the south the Unalichtigo, a subdivision of the Unami.^[13][14]

Susie Elkhair (d. 1926-age 77) of the Delaware Tribe of Indians (Lenape) based in Bartlesville, Oklahoma shown wearing traditional Lenape clothing.

The area of Lenape settlement, which they called Scheyichbi (see: Unami language), encompassed the lower Hudson River Valley and the Delaware Valley, with the area in between—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. Bands or tribes often identified themselves by their geographic locations. The Lenape spoke two related languages in the Algonquian subfamily, collectively known as the Delaware languages: Munsee in the northern areas and Unami and a variation in the southern areas.^[5]

Early Indian "tribes" are 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 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 Mahican. Among other Algonquian peoples on the East Coast, 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 foreign. As in the case of the Iroquois, the animosity of difference and competition spanned many generations, and different language tribes became traditional enemies. 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 bitter enemies since before recorded history, but intermarriage occurred. In addition, both tribes practiced adopting young captives from warfare into their tribes and assimilating them as full tribal members.

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, but women often had rights to traditional areas for cultivation.^[15] 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 territory.

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.^{[16][17][18][19][20][21]} They also harvested vast quantities of fish and shellfish from the bays of the area,^[22] and, in southern New Jersey, harvested clams year-round.^[23] 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.^[24] In 1524 Lenape in canoes met Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor.

The early European settlers, especially the Dutch and Swedes, were surprised at the Lenape's skill in fashioning beautiful articles of clothing from natural materials.^{[citation needed]} In hot weather both 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.^[25] Deer hair, dyed a deep scarlet, was a favorite component of headdresses and breast ornaments for males.^[26] 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.^[27] The winter cloaks of the women were striking, fashioned entirely from the iridescent body feathers of wild turkeys.^[28]

History[link]

European contact[link]