Lenni Lenape

Former residential areas on first contact with Europeans

As Lenni Lenape , rare in the German Delawares (short Lenape or Delaware ), are linguistically and culturally closely related Indians referred to at the beginning of the 17th century, the river valleys and adjacent areas along the Delaware River and the middle and lower Hudson River to the Atlantic coast inhabited in what is now the northeastern United States . Culturally, they belonged to the tribes of the northeastern woodlands .

Pushed westward by the white immigrants, they lived constantly on the settlement border , the so-called frontier , and were thus at the center of the action: the wars between the colonial powers England and France and later between the Americans and Indians, the countless victims both sides demanded. In 2005 about 13,500 descendants of the Lenni Lenape lived scattered in over seven states of the USA and one province in Canada .

language

The tribe of the Lenni Lenape said two closely related, as the Delaware languages or Lenape (Lixsëwakàn, Lunaapeew, Lenape) designated, Eastern Algonquian languages : the Unami (Lenape, Lënapei èlixsuwakàn) (three dialects) and the Munsee (Lunaapeew, Huluníixsuwaakan) ( which was apparently closely related to the language of the northern Mahican ). It was once assumed that the originally four main regional groups of the Lenni Lenape - the Unalimi ("people upstream", also "northern Unami", in the area of Trenton , capital of New Jersey ) and Unami ("people downstream", also "southern Unami ", In the area of Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ) in the middle, the Unalachtigo (" people who live near the ocean "- due to their proximity to Delaware Bay in southern New Jersey) in the south and the Munsee (" people of the stony ( mountainous ) Landes ", north of the Delaware Water Gap ) in the north - would only have spoken two dialects of a common language. However, since these differ significantly in their syntax, phonology and vocabulary despite their similarity and speakers of both dialects find them difficult or incomprehensible to one another, they have recently been treated as separate languages.

The Delaware-Pidgin was deliberately developed by Unami speakers to communicate with European settlers (Dutch, Swedes and later the English). This pidgin language is clearly a learned language, which also shows that it is also used as a lingua franca related Munsee speakers used and taken over. In English it was therefore also referred to as Trader's Jargon ( jargon / slang of the traders ) .

Most Lenni Lenape today are native speakers of English. Only a few elderly people still speak variants of the Delawar language (or language), which has long been considered a highly endangered language . At the end of the 20th century, attempts were made to revive the dying language, or at least to document it. From time to time there have been attempts to set up school lessons for children in the Munsee language.

Surname

Her proper name is Lenape / Lënape ("true, real person") or Lënapeyok ("true, real people"), later Lëni Lënape (in Unami) or Lunaapeew (in Munsee), in Unami is sometimes simply Lënuwàk ("several People "). In order to distinguish themselves from the Algonquin peoples living further inland in the west, they also called themselves Woapanachke (“people of the sunrise” or “people who live in the east”), a word equation with Wôbanakiak or Wâbŭna'ki , the name of the Abenaki , member of the powerful Wabanaki Confederation .

Other documented historical variants of the Unami names are: Renóáppi [1648], Lennappe [1760] and Lenóáúpaa [1824] for "Lenape / Lënape" and Lennappewak [1760], Lennappejook [1760] and Lenaupóáóáyuk [1824] for "Lënapeyok".

The English adopted the indigenous name as Lenape , while Lenni Lenape did not come into use until the late 18th century and could be called True People .

The Swedes used the term Lenappi (but mostly for the Unami speakers), while the Munsee (along with Mahican and Wappinger ), who also lived along the Hudson River , were often referred to simply as "River Indians" by the Dutch and English. The Indian allies of the French referred to both the Mahican and the Munsee as "the wolf people", as the clan - totem wolf dominated among both peoples , so the French also referred to them in their language as loups ("wolves"). The sign for the Lenni Lenape in the sign language of the Plains Indians was a downward stroke of the palm of the hand with closed fingers on the back of the head. This sign indicated the ribbon that the Lenape women wore as a hair ornament.

The name Delaware comes from the Delaware River, which was named after Sir Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr , the second governor of Virginia . The English in Maryland used the terms Delaware Bay Indians and Delaware Indians at the end of the 17th century , although the name did not come into use in Pennsylvania until after these Indians had moved west from Delaware. For many Algonquin people , the Lenape are the "grandfathers", a name full of respect based on the belief that the Lenape are the origin of all Algonquin-speaking peoples. This belief gave the Lenape the authority to mediate in disputes between rival tribes.

Original tribal areas

According to a common tradition, most of the Algonquians share the conviction that the Lenni Lenape (Unalimi, Unami, Unalachtigo and Munsee), Nanticoke (Unami: Wenètkok , Munsee: Unechtgo / Unalachtgo , both “people who live near the ocean”; often too known as Southern Delaware ), Powhatan (name: Renape ) and Shawnee ( Shawnuwàk - "the southerners") were once a single tribe and lived in the traditional Lenape area. This theory is supported by both linguistic features and migration patterns (although this is only certain for the Nanticoke - the Shawnee are often assigned to the group of the Meskwaki (Fox-Sauk) -speaking peoples as the fifth tribe ).

The settlement area Lënapehòkink ("Land of the Lenape"), which has been inhabited by the Lenni Lenape for several millennia, comprised at the beginning of the 17th century a wooded area characterized by low mountain ranges , hilly landscapes and river valleys , extending from the Atlantic coast in western Connecticut along the Delaware River ( Lena'pe Sipu / Lënapei Sipu - "River of the Lenape") and the middle and lower Hudson River (in Munsee and Mahican: Muhheakantuck / Muhheahkunnuk / Mohicanichtuck - "water that always flows", in Unami: Shatemuc ; both literally: " River that flows in both directions ”) extended westward inland to the north of what is now the state of Delaware . In addition, they inhabited the entire future US state of New Jersey , Upstate New York , the western end of Long Island , the islands of Staten Island and Manhattan, and areas in eastern Pennsylvania .

In addition to what is now New York City, there are other urban centers on former tribal territory: Newark , Atlantic City , Trenton , Princeton , Philadelphia and Wilmington (to name just the largest and most famous).

Regional dialect and main groups

Originally, a distinction was made between four main regional groups with two Delawar languages ​​- Munsee and Unami , whereby the Unami was again divided into three regional dialect variants :

• the Munsee differed somewhat more from the two (previously three) Unami dialect variants and was apparently closely related to the Mahican .
  • The Munsee (also: Muncie, Munsiiw, Minnesink, Minsi, Mansiwak ', Monsey, Minsiu , formerly Minassiniu - "people of the stony ( mountainous ) country", literally: "people scattered under rocks"; the Unami speakers therefore called them Monsi (Singular, plural: Monsiyok ) or Luwàneyunki Awènik - "people from the north"; own name: Lunaapeew ): lived along the upper reaches of the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers in northern New Jersey and on both sides of the Hudson River including the Catskill Mountains in New York and to the west of Long Island and south to the Lehigh River ( Lechewuekink - "where there are many divisions, junctions") and Conewago Creek in northeastern Pennsylvania. Also known as Northern Delaware due to the location of its tribal areas .

• the Unami was divided into three dialect variants - Northern Unami (Unalimi), Southern Unami, Unalachtigo (sometimes also referred to as Unalimi or Northern Unami) :
  • The Unalimi or Northern Unami ("people upriver", spoke Northern Unami or Unalimi): lived in the area of ​​the Delaware river bifurcation, therefore they were also known as The Forks Lenape .
  • The Unami or Southern Unami (own name: Wënami or W'namiu , in Munsee: Wə̆ná · mi · w - "people downstream", hence historically: Wunameewak [1760], Oonaomee / Woonaumee [1824] or Unámiwak , spoke southern Unami) lived along the Delaware River in northern New Jersey (including the Staten Islands ) and the adjacent areas in southeastern Pennsylvania to south of present-day Philadelphia .
  • The Unalachtigo (own name: Wënilaxtikuwàk or W'nalachtko , in Munsee: Unalactigo or Unechtgo / Unalachtgo - "people who live near the ocean" or "people who are separate from the place where there are waves", hence historical : Unalâchtigo [1818] and Wunalàchtigo [1798] , due to the proximity to Delaware Bay , derived from wunalawat - "going towards something / going in its direction" and t'kow / t'kou - "wave", spoke Unalachtigo) : lived on both sides of the lower reaches of the Delaware River south of Philadelphia including the area around the Delaware Bay in northern Delaware, southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey.

Due to their proximity to the sea, the Unalachtigo - sometimes together with the Nanticoke , who live directly south of the Lenni Lenape on the Atlantic coast - were referred to as "southern Delaware". The Nanticoke were also known as Unalachtigo , so that these two groups often cannot be distinguished. However, the latter are known as Wenètko (Sing.) Or Wenètkok (plural) among the Unami speakers and among the Munsee speakers as Unalactigo or Unechtgo / Unalachtgo ("people who live near the ocean"), which are both their own designation as Nentego ("people of the tides, of ebb and flow") reflects.

Around 1700 the Unalachtigo had already been absorbed into the Unami groups through expulsions and wars, and later the Unalimi speakers also joined the Unami, so that there were now only Munsee and Unami speakers.

These four (later three) main groups were divided in turn into a number of smaller, independent but with each other related groups (bands) that some of the few villages ( èlikhatink ) mostly along rivers existed and chiefs (Sakima; today Wojauwe) out were. The Lenni Lenape never formed a political unit or even a confederation (like neighboring peoples) and also knew no central leadership by a generally recognized Sachem as is customary in the chiefdom . In addition, there was the same maternal clan system within all groups , consisting of three clans:

• Turkey -Clan (Fowl / Turkey Clan) ( Pele - "he who does not chew"; members: Pëleyok ; associated with the Unalachtigo)
• Wolfs -Clan ( Tùkwsit , in Munsee: Ptuksi , both literally: "Rund-Fuß"; members: Tùkwsitàk ; associated with the Munsee)
  • Subgroup or subclan called Wisawhìtkuk (literally: "yellow trees")
  • Subgroup or subclan called Òlàmàni (literally: "red color"; other Lenni Lenape claimed members of this group were witchers )
• Turtle Clan (Turtle Clan) ( Pùkuwànku - "the creeping"; members: Pùkuwànkuwàk , Pùkuwànkuichik or Pùkuwànkoamimëns ; associated with the Unami)
  • Subgroup or subclan called Elipsite

The English name Delaware , which initially only referred to the Unami speakers along the central Delaware River, only included all groups when they had already left their eastern homeland. The western migration as a result of the white settlement in the 18th and 19th centuries finally led the Lenni Lenape to Kansas ( Kansësink ) and Oklahoma ( Oklahomink ). They had to move no less than twenty times in two centuries. During this migration there were repeated divisions and amalgamations of settlements and regional, political and linguistic groups.

Bands of Lenni Lenape

The Munsee-speaking groups lived in the northern part of the Lenni Lenape's residential area, that is, in northern New Jersey and southeastern New York. They included the Esopus, who inhabited the Hudson Divide west of the river between the Catskill Mountains and the West Point highlands. The Minisink lived further inland, above the Delaware Water Gap. The Haverstraw lived on Haverstraw Bay south of the highlands and west of the Hudson River. The Tappan was found at Tappan Zee in the Hudson and the Hackensack in the valleys of the Hackensack and Passaic Rivers. The Raritan lived on the Lower Raritan River until 1640, when they migrated inland because spring tides destroyed their corn stores. The Navasink lived in the highlands just south of Sandy Hook Bay. All of these groups were politically, culturally and linguistically closely linked.

Other Munsee-speaking groups lived east of the Hudson, although the exact boundaries of their residential areas are unknown. The northernmost tribe were the Wappinger, whose land stretched south of the Roeliff Jansen Kill River and included most of the Dutchess and Putnam Counties. Early reports indicate that a separate group of Indians inhabited the high-altitude areas of Putnam County , apparently the seldom-mentioned Nochpeem. South of it lived the Kichtawank in northern Westchester County , the Sinsink above the city of Ossining , the Wiechquaeskeck in the area of ​​the places Tarrytown and Dobbs Ferry and the Rechgawank in the area of ​​today's Yonkers , 3 km north of Manhattan.

The Nayack, Marechkawieck and Canarsee in Brooklyn, often all grouped under the name Canarsee, the Rockaway in modern-day Newton, the Massapequa on southern Oyster Bay and theirs belonged to the tribes in western Long Island, that is, in the urban area of ​​today's New York northern neighbors, the Matinecock. On Long Island, it is particularly difficult to distinguish between village names and larger local groups, and the eastward flow of the population in the 17th century made it increasingly difficult to pinpoint ethnic boundaries. It is entirely possible that the Massapequa and Matinecock weren't Munsee speakers at all, but the linguistic ancestors of the 18th century Unquachog.

Between Unami-speakers in the south and Munsee-speakers in the north and east, the Lenni Lenape spoke Unalachtigo, a Unami dialect confirmed by a 17th-century Sankhikan vocabulary. The Delaware Unalachtigo speakers, the Sankhikan and Atsayonk, were constant enemies of the Munsee speakers living around Manhattan. The Unalimi ('People Up the River'), Lenape groups in the area of ​​the Delaware river bifurcation, spoke Northern Unami (also called Unalimi ), a dialect spoken by the Moravian missionaries but now extinct. They were also known as The Forks Lenape.

South of the Delaware Water Gap and Raritan Valley in central Jersey lived the Unami-speaking Lenni Lenape. From the 17th century there are only written records about the tribes on the east bank of the Delaware. The Sewapois on the Cohansey River, the Little Siconese on the Salem, the Naraticonck on the Racoon Creek, the Mantaes on the Mantua Creek, the Armewamex on the Big and Little Timber Creek, the Remkoke on the Rancocas Creek, the Atsayonk on the Croswicks Creek and the Sankhikans lived here near the falls at Trenton . The Big Siconese at Lewes in southeastern Delaware were the only tribe on the west bank of the Delaware named in the same early sources. Apparently the reason for the depopulation of eastern Pennsylvania at the beginning of the 17th century was to be found in the numerous raids by the Susquehannock .

Munsee *

* from north to south and from west to east

group	Settlement area
Esopus	west of the Hudson, between the Catskill Mountains and the highlands of West Point .
Haverstraw (formerly Haverstroo , also Rumachenanck )	west of the Hudson, on Haverstraw Bay.
Tappan	at Tappan Zee in the Hudson, the widest part of the river.
Hoe sack	in the valleys of the Hackensack and Passaic Rivers.
Manhattan	on Manhattan Island , part of what is now New York City
Raritan	lived on the lower Raritan River
Minisink	on the upper reaches of the Delaware, above the Delaware Water Gap
Navasink	in the highlands just south of Sandy Hook Bay
Wappinger (also Waping or Wappani )	south of the Roeliff Jansen Kill River, in today's Dutchess and Putnam counties
Nochpeem	in the high altitude areas of Putnam County.
Kichtawank (also Kitchawong )	in northern Westchester County
Sinsink (also sintsink )	above the city of Ossining (New York)
Wiechquaeskeck ( Wechquaesgeek , Wecquaesgeek , Wickquaskeek )	in the area of Tarrytown and Dobbs Ferry
Reckgawawank (also Rechgawawanc , Recgawawanc )	in the area of ​​today's Yonkers , 3 km north of Manhattan
Canar lake	on western Long Island, in what is now Brooklyn
Rockaway	Peninsula on the southwest coast of Long Islands, today's district of Queens
Massapequa **	southwest Long Island on South Oyster Bay
Matinecock **	northwest Long Island

** Possibly no Munsee, but Unquachog speakers

However, it must be noted here that the tribes of the Lenni Lenape, Wappinger , Mahican , Mattabesic and the Western Metoac all belonged to the Eastern Algonquin and could therefore hardly be distinguished from outsiders culturally and linguistically.

Therefore some historians include Manhattan , Nochpeem , Kichtawank , Rechgawawanc , Sintsink , Wechquaesgeek and Wappinger to Wappinger , generally to the Wappinger counting Hammonasset , Massaco , Menunkatuck , Paugussett , Podunk , Poquonock , Quinnipiac (also Quiripi) , Sicaog and Tunxis be but often counted among the Mattabesic .

The Manhattan are also sometimes counted among the Wappingern, while the Paugussett and Mattabesic are often viewed as separate tribes or tribal groups. The Canar Sea , Massapequa , Matinecock and Rockaway, on the other hand, are sometimes included in the Munsee or Western Metoac .

Unalachtigo

group	Settlement area
Sankhikan	near the falls at what is now the city of Trenton on the Delaware River
Atsayonk	Atsayonk on Croswicks Creek, southeast of Trenton

Unami

group	Settlement area
Remkoke	on Rancocas Creek in southern New Jersey
Armewarmex	at Big and Little Timber Creek
Mantaes	at Mantua Creek
Naraticonck	at Racoon Creek
Little Siconese	on the Salem River
Sewapois	on the Cohansey River
Big Siconese	at Lewes in southeastern Delaware

Demographics

Mixed marriages with Indians from other tribes and whites have recently become so common in all groups that population figures are no longer meaningful. So here are just some estimated numbers from previous periods:

year	Munsee spokesman	Unami spokesman	total
1600	4,500	6,500	11,000
1779	1,200	2,000	3,200
1820	650	1,900	2,250
1845	500	1,300	1,800
1867	550	1,175	1,725
1900	625	850	1.475
1950	525	1,400	1.925

Culture in the 17th century

The way of life of the Lenni Lenape changed considerably between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. There is sufficient information about their culture before and after contact with Europeans, which can be seen as exemplary of the cultural change of many Indian tribes in northeast North America.

The villages of the Unami and Unalachtigo were generally not fortified, but the Munsee villages were due to their proximity to the warlike Mohawk . At the beginning of the 17th century, the Lenni Lenape lived in village communities of less than a hundred inhabitants. Cooperation between local groups in driven hunts, mutual defense and negotiations with Iroquois and Europeans is known. This amalgamation of jointly acting local groups, each with more than a thousand members, encouraged the development of tribes, although there was no permanent central leadership.

Political organization

Before the Lenape left their traditional residential area, they did not form a single tribe like the Shawnee, for example. After moving to Ohio around 1740 , the tribal leadership consisted of three sachems called captains . In their organization they followed the pattern of their traditional clans , namely the turtle, wolf and turkey clan, with the turtle clan always providing the chief chief.

The sachem or chief usually came from a particular lineage , as the first among equals of a chief line. He acted as a mediator and had ceremonial duties. He tried to convince his tribe members through arguments and acted as a spokesman in negotiations with opponents, other tribes or in business dealings with Europeans. During the 17th century some chiefs, such as Oratamin von den Hackensack and Tappan, became known as leaders of unified local groups. Chiefs led extensive hunts, for example, or oversaw the apprehension of murderers, although murder was usually atoned for by paying pain and suffering in the form of wampum . Important decisions were made by a general council, made up of the old and wise men of the people and counting up to 200 people.

A matter determined his successor, but generally this decision was not considered binding after his resignation or death. The succession was regulated matrilineally , but the election of a chief was always required.

A special priesthood is described for most eastern tribes, such as the powwow in eastern Long Island and southern New England, but the chief also acted as a religious leader for the Lenni Lenape. War chiefs achieved their position through excellence in war.

Livelihood

The course of the year was determined by a fixed sequence of activities, which mainly served to secure a livelihood. In the autumn, the undergrowth in the woods was burned down to make it easier to track and track the game. Fire driven hunts were a common method of catching and hunting. In winter the Lenape lived in scattered little huts in the woods, and only in wartime moved to hilltop fortresses made up of longhouses surrounded by palisades. In April, the forest in the vicinity of the village was cleared for new cornfields, which were often more than 200 acres (approx. 800,000 m²) in size. After sowing corn , beans , squash and sweet potatoes , some families moved to the nesting areas of the pigeon pigeons to collect pigeon chicks, which were considered a delicacy. Spring and early summer were also the times when marine fish and shellfish were caught. Gardens were often created at the fishing camps when the fishing season was long enough. After the harvest was brought in, people gathered in the villages where the most important celebrations and ceremonies of the year took place.

The hunting weapons consisted of bows and arrows, later of rifles and traps that were baited for beavers with beaver horns. At times, the game was driven into fences or in dead ends, for example against a river. A common practice was the all-round fire, which required hunting parties of around 100 to 200 people. Deer and roe deer were the most important game, but bears were also hunted, as were wolves, raccoons, martens, weasels, otters, turkeys and pigeons.

Of fish were herring , sturgeon , eels and many other species caught. The fishing gear consisted of large, stone-weighted nets, smaller nets attached between posts, fish traps, weirs, fishhooks and a bow and arrow. Fish and shellfish were usually dried and preserved on racks in the sun, the shellfish were sorted out. In the course of time, huge piles were created.

The most important food crop was maize, which was planted three to five grains each in earth walls. Various types of beans were planted along this, which could climb up the corn stalks. After the corn was harvested and dried, it was peeled, placed in large hemp containers, and stored in mat-covered pits, which the English called Indian barns. The early English colonists hated these pits because their free-range cattle would often fall in and break their legs. Like the Algonquin neighbors, the Lenape also grew tobacco and squash. They collected berries, nuts, peanuts, roots and wild vegetables from wild fruits.

The daily diet consisted of maize porridge, often together with meat or fish, both preserved by drying and ground into flour in a mortar. Often porridge was added or cooked separately. Fresh meat or fish was cooked or roasted on skewers stuck in the ground near the fire. Cornmeal was wrapped and baked into bread in the ashes. Special delicacies were beaver tails, fish heads and fatty meat with chestnuts and dried, finely ground corn, which was also carried as a standard ration by warriors and hunters. A quarter pound of cornmeal mixed with water was considered sufficient food for a day. Berries were used for sweetening, as maple sugar was not known, but corn stalks were also chewed as candy.

Raw materials, tools and weapons

Pumpkin skins were used as the material for bowls, plates, ladles and water bottles. The hollowed-out ends of pieces of tree were used as mortars, while the pestles were made of wood or stone. The Lenape used clay pots with round or conical bases for cooking.

Ropes were made from the fibers of Indian hemp, nettle plants and the inner bark of various trees by rolling them on the thigh. Baskets and mats were made of rushes and corn husks, and all woven or braided objects were decorated with painted fine spruce roots or bristles of the porcupine. The colors used by the Lenape consisted of vegetable or mineral raw materials that were dissolved in animal fats.

Tobacco pipes were made of clay, stone, horn or copper and were often decorated. Axes, hoes, and knives of various kinds had flint edges . The triangular arrowheads were made of the same material and were attached to the shaft with resin or isinglass, which was studded with one or two feathers. Arrowheads could also be made of bone, horn, or fish teeth. Bows, some of which were more than a man's height, were strung with braided sinews.

During the war, a wooden helmet was worn, a wooden war club hung on a leather strap, and a large rectangular shield made of wood or elk skin was carried to protect the body up to the shoulder.

Smaller, self-made objects included needles made of herringbones, animal bones or walnut and flutes made of reed. Wampum pearls, which were used for ceremonies and decorations, as well as a means of payment for trade, were obtained by breaking open and grinding sea shells. The red area of ​​the quahog shell provided the black pearls and the shell of the tubular sea slugs provided the white ones, which were only half the value.

Dugout canoes consisted mainly of cedar trunks that were hollowed out by fire and scraping. There were also smaller, easier-to-carry canoes made from elm bark or other tree bark.

Lenape woman with daughter in her traditional clothing around 1910

Clothing and jewelry

Lenni Lenape's clothing was light and inadequate by European standards. Even in winter the clothes consisted only of a leather loincloth for men and a wrapped, unsewn shirt for women. Belts were usually made of leather or snakeskin and adorned with wax beads. The animal fur outerwear replaced the Lenape soon after contact with Europeans through large ceiling that Matchcoat or Duffel were called. Usually these skins or blankets were worn over the right shoulder and the ends were loosely knotted on the left side below the knees. The appropriate clothing in cold weather consisted of bear, raccoon , beaver or other skins, which were worn with the fur side inward and in higher temperatures with the fur side outward. There were also cloaks made of painted turkey feathers tied with hemp. Moccasins were generally made from deer or elk leather, turned over at the ankles and tied with thin leather straps. Leather leggings and snowshoes were used in winter . Leather clothing was often adorned by painting and sewing on wampum beads, tassels and fringes made from porcupine spines . Necklaces and patterned headbands and sashes made of wampum were worn with clothing.

Copper jewelry and long fringes of red-dyed animal hair hung from the neck. Rings made of metal and short bands made of wampum served as earrings and bracelets. Men wore feather crowns, large feathers attached in a circle, on their heads, as well as combs made of red-dyed animal hair that were fastened with hemp. Tobacco pouches hanging around the neck were made from the leather of small animals and served as containers for pipes and tobacco. Warriors shaved all of their heads except for a scalp lock on the top of the head, which was smeared with fat and stood straight up. Although this hair fashion is attributed to the Mohawk, it applied to most of the eastern tribes. If the hair hung down loosely, pearl beads were woven into the jewelry. The sparsely growing whiskers were plucked out. The women painted their faces with red ocher. They braided their hair back in pigtails that were tied in a bun and covered with a square container. Many Lenape wore meticulous face-paints and tattoos on their bodies. Animal fat from bears or raccoons was generously distributed on the body and also in the hair to protect against the cold, sun rays and mosquitoes. The Lenape often used copper, which they obtained commercially from the western Great Lakes . Wrought copper was also found in pipes and arrowheads. Around 1770 the fashion of the Lenape changed, they wore silver nose rings and decorated their clothes with brightly colored scarves that they obtained from white traders.

Houses

Three different types of houses were known: round wigwams with a domed roof, long houses with a curved roof and long houses with a ridge. Longhouses, which could be over 20 feet (6.10 meters) wide and over 60 feet long (18.30 meters) and were inhabited by about 20 people or 7-8 families, are best described . The outer frame consisted of young hickory tree trunks that were rammed into the ground in pairs opposite one another , tied together in arches at the top and connected with horizontal poles. They were covered with chestnut bark, had a smoke outlet in the middle of the roof and a doorway on each narrow side.

For the families, each with a special place, there was a fire in the middle of the floor. Kettles hung from poles attached to forked posts alongside the house. Longhouses were built in the half-yearly inhabited winter settlements, sometimes crowded on hilltops behind palisades made of wood and tree trunks. The houses were furnished with woven thatched mats that were placed on the floor and hung on the walls. In the chiefs' houses, the mats were painted with faces and pictures as they were used for religious ceremonies of the tribe. Sweat lodges , big enough for three to four men lying next to each other, were built near running waters.

Life cycle

A child was born in a secluded hut specially built for this purpose. The mother washed it with cold water and tied it to a cradle board . Women carried their cradle boards on their backs with a shoulder strap around their foreheads. A child who grew too big for the cradle was carried by its mother in a fur tied around her shoulder or in a blanket. Infants were breastfed for one to two years, during which time the woman avoided pregnancy again. Once the child was able to do this, they were given gender-specific tasks to do. Boys were instructed to fish or shoot small animals and birds with bows, and in older years they were taken to hunt. Girls helped with household chores and the garden. The duties of the men included hunting, fishing, and trading; in old age, when these activities became too strenuous, they made tools and utensils from wood, stone and bone. Women did gardening, cooking, and housework, as well as working the fur and looking after the young children. With frequent moves, they were responsible for moving the household.

During the first menstruation , the girl withdrew to a special hut until after the second event. During this time he put a blanket over his head and avoided touching his hair, food and utensils, ate with a stick and drank by hand. After this initial isolation, a girl indicated her marriageability by adorning herself with a wampum and wearing special headgear. A young man willing to marry approached the girl or her parents with a wampum as a gift. The engagement period usually lasted a year, during which the girl wore special clothing, but premarital chastity was not expected from the couple. This period ended with a feast, but there was no further wedding ceremony. Divorces occurred and were consensual, but adultery was outlawed. A chief could have several wives, and it was customary to borrow one of his wives to a visitor for a night.

The dead were buried in a sitting position in a cave grave. In addition to a few tools and utensils, food and wampum were also placed in the grave and the body was covered with wood or twigs. The grave was filled with earth, stones were laid over it and a fence was built around it. Later the grave was visited annually by mourners, carefully cared for and kept free of grass. A stake was erected on a man's grave with a pictorial representation of his skills and achievements. The relatives of the dead turned their faces black and widows mourned for a year. Women in particular were expected to show their grief in public. They crawled over the man's grave, crying, or burned their hair every day when their husband was killed in war.

religion

At the age of 15, the young Lenni Lenape acquired a protective spirit. It could be a bird whose claw or beak he always carried with him from now on. A dream about this bird meant future success in hunting, and it was vociferously imitated at a certain ceremony in the sweat lodge. However, little is known about the Lenape religion from the early period because Europeans often misunderstood the meaning of the rituals they observed in their reports. The main ceremony was a dance performed by a number of people moving in a circle. The vocal accompaniment alternated between speaking and singing, interrupted by loud shouts. Two men sat in the middle and gave the beat with drums. Other participants sat on their sides, singing, and hitting the floor with short sticks. The dancers moved quickly, but always kept the beat with their jumps and step sequences. This ceremony usually took place in the autumn after the maize harvest.

Some colonists believed that the Lenni Lenape believed in the existence of an Almighty God. A creation story is known in which a pregnant woman falls from heaven. The souls of the dead were believed to move west or south to the happy hunting grounds , where they would have game in abundance and a carefree life.

Religious ceremonies took place in a consecrated Great House . Great attention has been paid to dreams. There were priests who could interpret dreams and foretell the future; others were trusted to cure illnesses. The Lenape believed in life after death, but the Christian concept of heaven and hell was unknown.

The Lenape were reluctant to give their real name, and nicknames were very common. For example, the name of Captain Pipe , Sachem of the Wolf Clan in 1775, was Konieschquanoheel , which means maker of daylight . His nickname, however, was Hopocan , which means tobacco pipe , hence its historical name Captain Pipe .

Warfare

During times of war, women, children and old people were brought to an island or a swamp and tried to lure the attackers into an ambush. The Lenni Lenape preferred a guerrilla tactic, according to which the fighting was only carried out in small groups and hardly more than seven or eight people involved were killed in a battle. The warriors painted their faces and wore snake skins as headbands, in which red-colored turkey feathers stuck. A fox or wolf tail was attached vertically to the head as a fetish . On the warpath, the Lenape used a secret language in which they exchanged common words for new terms. Enemies caught in combat were either adopted as replacements for relatives who had been killed or tortured and executed. If so, they would sing challenging death songs until they died. Scalps were taken both on the battlefield and from killed prisoners.

history

Constantine Rafinesque (1783-1840)

Oral records of several Algonquin tribes suggest that the Lenni Lenape, Nanticoke , Powhatan, and Shawnee were once a single tribe, a theory that can also be scientifically proven. In 1836 a book by Constantine Rafinesque was published under the title The American Nations , in which he deciphered the Lenni Lenape's red pictorial writing called Walam Olum , with which they had passed on their history for future generations. Accordingly, they moved from Siberia across North America to their traditional residential area on the Atlantic coast.

The Dutch

When Giovanni da Verrazzano drove along the east coast of North America in 1524, he could see from the gestures of the Indians that they had had contact with Europeans before. There are oral records of the Lenni Lenape that they first traded with the Spanish and Portuguese. However, certain information is only available about Henry Hudson's journey . On September 3, 1609, Captain Hudson drove with 18 crew members on his ship Half Moon (Eng .: half moon) in a natural harbor on the east coast of North America. Hudson was hired by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to find a faster route to the markets in East Asia and new colonies for the Netherlands. Hudson was anchored in Sandy Hook Bay south of Staten Island when he was attacked by two canoes manned by warriors, killing one of his men and wounding two others. Then he drove up the Hudson River to about today's Albany and met the Mahican there , who greeted him warmly. On the way back, downstream Indians attacked again, and the Dutch killed some of them with muskets and cannons. Hudson's clients were disappointed with the unsuccessful search for the shorter sea route, but they were impressed by the furs they had brought with them and promised a good deal. More Dutch ships set out on the voyage the next year, and around 1614 the first Dutch trading post, Fort Nassau , was built on Castle Island below what is now Albany.

Henry Hudson (1565-1611)

Within a few years the Dutch had expanded trade with Indian partners to the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers . In 1624 the first Dutch colonists settled on the Hudson River and on Burlington Island in the Delaware River. In 1626, the Dutch West India Company began building Fort Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan , which the Canar Sea had bought in the spring of the same year for goods worth 60 guilders .

The fur trade

The fur trade was the driving force behind the Dutch colonization and had a great influence on the economy and material culture of the Indians. It soon led to tensions and wars between the tribes as they invaded their neighbors' hunting grounds in the pursuit of fur animals . The population of beavers in the coastal area was soon exhausted from the constant hunt, and before the middle of the century they had to be looked for on long excursions far inland. In exchange for furs, the Lenape received many items of European manufacture, which quickly replaced most of the everyday objects of their own culture. European metal kettles and tools for cutting and stabbing were adopted, as were household items, bottles, jugs, glass beads and bells. Muskets , powder, lead and alcohol were in great demand . Woven fabrics replaced leather in the manufacture of loincloths , dresses, leggings and capes. A popular item of clothing adopted by the Europeans was the shirt, which men wore open and hanging down to their knees. Soon the Lenni Lenape began growing pumpkins, melons and watermelons, as well as raising pigs and chickens. In connection with the fur trade, a simplified language arose between Lenni Lenape and Europeans, which consisted mainly of Unami words and had a very simple sentence structure.

The wars between the tribes hampered trade, particularly the conflict between the Mohawk and Mahican in 1617 that led to the closure of Fort Nassau. After the war, the Mohawk became the most important trading partner of the Dutch on the Hudson River.

New Sweden and New Netherlands

The Sweden

Between 1630 and 1635, the Susquehannock Lenape Villages attacked in southeastern Pennsylvania, driving residents east or south across the Delaware River to what is now the state of Delaware. Lenni Lenape's losses were high, and European traders reported burned down, abandoned villages and many deaths. Around the same time, the first smallpox epidemic struck the Hudson and Delaware River valleys.

The Lenni Lenape lost almost half of their population, had to give up the villages west of the Delaware and became tributaries to the Susquehannock. In 1638, Sweden established the short-lived colony of New Sweden on the lower Delaware River and bought land from the Lenni Lenape, who had to ask the Susquehannock for permission beforehand. The Swedes got along well with their Indian neighbors, since the colony was completely dependent on the hospitality of the Lenape. Most of the settlers came from Finland, which was then a Swedish province. Like the Indians, the Swedes had a mixed form of economy consisting of agriculture, hunting and fishing. Lenape and Sweden shared their experiences. The Indians learned from the Swedes to build log huts and to weave chip baskets. In return, the Indians showed how to fish with nets and how to grow corn. Around 1640 there were no more beavers in the Delaware River valley, the Swedes now exchanged their goods for beaver skins from the Susquehannock.

Map of New Sweden around 1650

In the meantime, the Dutch watched the small Swedish colony on the lower reaches of the Delaware with concern. They feared competition in the fur trade and made their own claims on the territory occupied by Sweden. In addition, the founder of the Swedish colony, Peter Minuit , was a former governor of Nieuw Nederland. In the following years the Swedish colony grew to around 600 settlers and expanded upstream. Johan Printz became the first governor on January 1, 1643 . In the same year Fort Nya Elfsborg was established near what is now Salem in New Jersey. Other foundings were Nya Stockholm (now Bridgeport ) and Swedesboro. From 1645 there were conflicts with the Dutch, who in turn established a colony on the Delaware. Despite protests from the Swedish governor, the Dutch built Fort Casimir (now New Castle ) in Delaware. The Swedes then sent a warship to Fort Casimir and took it under fire. Since the defenders ran out of powder, the fort was captured without loss.

The Dutch governor Petrus Stuyvesant dispatched five warships to New Sweden and retook Fort Casimir on September 14, 1655. Thereupon he turned against the capital Tinicum. In the face of this hostile superiority, the Swedes gave up and most took the oath of Dutch sovereignty. They were granted local autonomy, kept their property and had their own armed forces for self-defense. Some Swedes who refused to take the oath were deported to Manhattan. That was the end of the Swedish colony in North America.

Wars in Nieuw Nederland

Compared to the English, the number of Dutch colonists in North America was few. At first there were only a few Dutch traders, until in 1624 thirty Dutch families arrived at what is now Albany . They built Fort Orange , a new trading post on the west bank of the Hudson. In 1639 Willem Kieft was appointed the new governor of the Dutch East India Company . Kieft had little feeling for dealing with the Indians. A series of murders and their retaliatory actions, combined with bad decisions by Governor Kieft, led to several conflicts in the early 1640s.

The so-called pig war (1640) broke out because the free-roaming pigs of the colonists devastated the fields of the Raritan. After several deaths on both sides, Kieft offered a bounty of 10 fathoms wampum for each Raritan head brought to him in Fort Amsterdam. Most of the tribes did not accept his offer. But there was an old enmity between the Metoac and Raritan, and some Metoac took the opportunity and brought a head to Kieft - but it is not certain whether it was really a Raritan's head.

In February 1643, a few hundred Wiechquaeskeck fled the attacking Mahican and sought refuge in Pavonia, now Jersey City . The Wiechquaeskeck had previously destroyed an 80-person punitive expedition of the Dutch, and they now saw an opportunity to take revenge. On February 25, 1643 they attacked the Indian village at dawn, killed all 120 Wiechquaeskecks and are said to have played soccer with their heads in Fort New Amsterdam . The action went down in history as the Pavonia massacre and led to the Wappinger War (1643–1645), in which around 20 tribes from what is now New Jersey, New York and Long Island united against the Dutch. Only with the support of the English could the Indians be defeated. Although little is known about it today, the Wappinger War was one of the bloodiest and cruelest wars of extermination against the Indians. Together with their allies, the Wappingers had more than 1,600 deaths.

In addition, there were several other conflicts with the colonists, including the Whiskey War (1642) and the Peach War (1655).

In September 1659 some Esopus were working in the fields for the Dutch. They converted their wages into alcohol, made noise and fired a musket. They were then attacked, killed or routed by Dutch settlers, and the First Esopus War (1659–1660) began. The Esopus destroyed farms in the Esopus Valley, prisoners were burned alive and the refugee settlers were besieged in the fort for three weeks before Stuyvesant arrived with 200 men. The Esopus fled west into the mountains, but continued the raids. In the spring of 1660, Stuyvesant launched an offensive and in March destroyed a fortified Esopus village. After two more skirmishes in April and May, the tide turned in favor of the Dutch. Now the Esopus were ready to make peace, and on July 15, 1660 they signed a peace treaty exchanging peace and food for land.

In June 1663 the Second Esopus War (1663–1664) broke out, the Esopus killed 24 settlers and took another 45 women and children prisoner in Wiltwijk. Governor Stuyvesant dispatched Dutch troops and 46 Massapequa warriors from Long Island. The Esopus fled again into the mountains and continued their raids on the colonists. Stuyvesant ordered Esopus children to be taken hostage to enforce peace, but the Esopus fled deeper into the land of the minisink. The next spring, Stuyvesant gave orders to exterminate the Esopus and sought help from the Mohawk. Together with the Seneca they destroyed the main town of the Minisink on the upper Delaware. Attacked from all sides, the Esopus finally signed a peace treaty with the Netherlands in May 1664 .

End of Nieuw Nederland

Without a declaration of war, a British expeditionary force with four ships under the command of Richard Nichols sailed into the port of New Amsterdam on August 29, 1664 . On August 30, the English called on Peter Stuyvesant to surrender . Stuyvesant did not want to surrender the colony without a fight, but found no support from the population and signed the surrender agreement. The commander of the English fleet was appointed by the city council to the governor, and the city was given in honor of the future king, the Duke of York , the new name New York . The former colony of Nieuw Nederland was divided, and the English colonies of New York and New Jersey emerged. With the exception of a brief episode in 1673 in which the Dutch retook New York, the Dutch colonial rule in North America ended.

Little changed for the Munsee in the Hudson Valley, the Dutch stayed, and the English soon signed a friendship treaty with the Mohawk and Mahican. For the Unami in New Jersey, however, the change was a turning point, because the English were far more numerous than the Dutch, and the conquest of New York opened up new settlement areas. In addition, the Dutch were at least formally obliged by law to acquire the Indian land by purchase, while the English claimed the right of the conqueror. In 1666, Connecticut Puritans established the city of Newark and settled New Jersey.

After the Lenape were driven east across the Delaware River by the Susquehannock, the Unalachtigo gradually went up into the Unami. When the areas west of the Delaware were released again in the 1660s, the Lenni Lenape only consisted of two departments, the Unami and the Munsee.

Lenape in Pennsylvania

In the course of the war, the Esopus moved with the Minisink to the upper Delaware River, and during this time they gradually merged with the groups living further west. In fact, by the end of the Dutch period, the Lenape was already being pushed out. The groups from the land east of the Hudson River withdrew inland, and west of the river local groups began to gather at remote meeting points. Relations with the Swedes and later with the British on the Delaware were more peaceful than those on the Hudson with the Dutch, but as a result of the continued sale of land, similar amalgamations of the former village groups could be observed.

This trend continued in the 18th century. The Minisink moved northwest to various locations on the northern arm of the Susquehanna River , and many Munsee-speaking Lenape from the Hudson Valley joined them. Over time, the name for this new group changed from Minisink to Munsee .

To make way for the English, the Unami moved west to the upper Schuylkill , Brandywine and Lehigh Rivers . By 1718 the Iroquois had gained complete control of the Lenni Lenape. This development was supported by Pennsylvania's governors, who wanted to prevent the Lenape from coming under French influence. The Covenant Chain obliged the Lenape to send warriors to war against France as vassals of the Iroquois. In King William's War (1689–1696) two thirds of the Lenape warriors were killed.

Relations between Lenni Lenape and the Iroquois in the 18th century were complex. According to the Lenape, the Iroquois had gained military dominance over them by the mid-17th century, and chiefs of the Southern Unami and Minisink were known to have had to make regular trips to the Onondaga to pay tribute in the form of wampum cords . Despite these tribute payments, the majority of the Lenape remained independent. However, things changed after 1740 when the Walking Purchase forced them to relocate to Iroquois territory. The Iroquois now claimed that the Lenni Lenape were women who had no right to own land or to fight in war . In fact, Iroquois representatives later repeatedly disregarded the agreements between Lenni Lenape and whites.

Territory that the Lenape lost to the Walking Purchase

Lenni Lenape reservoir

For many years the Lenape took in refugees from other Algonquin tribes, such as the Powhatan , who had to leave Virginia after the war against the English (1644–1646). They settled in Maryland for a while before moving further north on the east side of Chesapeake Bay . There were also New England Algonquians, who fled after the King Philip's War (1675–1676), and finally the Shawnee , whose first group joined them in 1692 at Pequa Creek near Lancaster. The Iroquois, traditional enemies of the Shawnee, had reservations until the Mahican emerged as advocates for the Shawnee. The Conoy came in 1711, the Saponi and Tutelo in 1722, the Nanticoke in 1743 and several hundred Mahicans between 1724 and 1742. At this time, the Munsee could almost be seen as a separate group, separate from the Lenape. Under the control of the Oneida and Cayuga , most of the Munsee were initially able to stay in their ancestral residential areas, which now belonged to the Iroquois. This fact protected the country from English colonization because the early colonists had no interest in challenging the powerful Iroquois. Wars and epidemics, however, had caused the Munsee and Wappinger population to collapse to around 10 percent of their former population by 1700. Since much of the area was uninhabited, the Iroquois allowed the Munsee in 1677 to sell land to the recently immigrated French Huguenots . The English pressure in the lower Hudson Valley grew and the Munsee therefore moved west into the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, where missionaries of the Moravian Brethren began their missionary work in 1740 .

Meanwhile, the southern Unami group left the land they had left and moved to the Tulpehocken Valley on the upper Schuylkill River and the upper Brandywine River. Around 1709 some of them were found in Paxtang on the Susquehanna River , where they mingled with the Shawnee and lost their identity as a tribe. Other Shawnee settled in the Minisink area of ​​Upper Delaware in 1694, and the history of Lenni Lenape and Shawnee has been closely linked ever since.

In the 1720s, the rest of the southern Unami moved up the Susquehanna to Shamokin and began to settle on the Allegheny River . After 1750, most of these southern Unami were found in the lower Allegheny and upper Ohio valleys , where they formed the core of what is now known as the Delaware tribe. From now on this group was organized in three phratria (clan associations), each of which had its own chief or captain and lived in a separate village. The groups or clans were called Turtle , Turkey and Wolf (tortoise, turkey and wolf). One of the three chiefs acted as spokesman for the entire tribe. In the 1760s, the northern and southern Unami of Upper Susquehanna also united with their western relatives. Most of the Munsee and North Unami remained on the northern arm of the Susquehanna River until the end of the French and Indian War , while others moved to the western arm and most of Munsee moved to Goschgosching on the middle Allegheny in 1765 . The northern Unami, who did not unite with the Delaware in the west, became one of the satellite tribes of the Iroquois.

Some groups initially stayed in the east. The Dutchess County's Wappingers also lost their land, and most went to the Mahican in Stockbridge , Massachusetts , where they lost their identity as Lenape. In New Jersey there were Lenape settlements in Crosswicks, Coaxen, and other places. In 1746 the mission city of Cranbury was founded. In 1758, all Native American claims to land in New Jersey were ceded at the Crosswicks and Easton Conferences, and those Lenape who wished to stay in the colony were given a reservation called Brotherton on Edgepillock Creek. The New England Indians who had converted to Christianity moved west with the Mahican from Stockbridge. All of these groups eventually reached Wisconsin .

Indian Wars in the Ohio Valley

In the French and Indian War (1754–1763), especially in the Battle of Monongahela on July 9, 1755, many warriors of the Lenni Lenape took part on the side of the French. The attacks by the Shawnee and Lenape on the border with Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia did not take place in support of the French, but were intended to hit the British alone. Around 1758 more than 2,500 colonists were killed. This hatred of the English can probably be explained by bad experiences with the long knives , as the border fighters (English: Frontiersmen) were called on the settlement border. Chief Shingas , now called Shingas the Terrible , raided settlements on the Susquehanna River and successfully urged the Lenape, who lived under the Iroquois rule, to join him. At Fort Pitt a new peace treaty was signed between the Lenape of Ohio and the British in July 1759. Fort Niagara fell to the British in the same month , and after the fall of Québec in September, the French and Indian War had been decided in favor of the British.

When the victorious British conquered the French forts on the Great Lakes and in the Ohio Valley, the English commander, Jeffrey Amherst , declared the former Indian allies of the French to be conquered peoples . As a first measure, annual gifts were no longer given to the chiefs, the prices of English goods were increased and the supplies of weapons, ammunition and rum reduced. There was unrest among the tribes and French hunters and traders encouraged the Indians with vague promises of French help. In 1762 an Indian prophet named Neolin (the enlightened one) proclaimed an alliance of all Indians against the British from the Lenni Lenape. From his village on the Ohio, he preached against alcohol and European trade goods and called for a return to Indian culture and traditional values. He soon had many supporters among the Lenape, but his most important follower was Pontiac , the Ottawa chief in Detroit. Pontiac was without a doubt one of the most important Native American figures. He was far-sighted enough to recognize the deadly threat to the way of life and culture of the Indians from the expansion of the British colonies to the west, and energetic enough to take up the struggle against their military superiority. With the far-reaching unification of the notoriously divided tribes, he achieved an astonishing achievement, and in battle he proved to be an excellent leader who was equal to the disciplined and well-armed British troops.

Pontiac succeeded in secretly organizing the uprising named after him (1763–1766) and kicking off completely surprisingly for the British. The revolt began in May 1763, and the insurgents quickly captured nine of the twelve British forts west of the Appalachians. Only Fort Detroit, which was attacking Pontiac itself, received a warning and was able to repel the attack. Gradually, however, Pontiac was abandoned by its allies, for whom the war lasted too long. In the summer of 1764 a conference was held at which these tribes made peace with the British. The final end of the uprising was achieved by a campaign by Colonel Henry Bouquet . With 1,500 soldiers he advanced into what is now Ohio and forced the tribes still allied with Pontiac near the present-day town of Tuscarawas to give up the fight and release all British prisoners, some of whom had been held since the French and Indian War. This ended the uprising, although Pontiac, who tried in vain to get support from the tribes in the west and south, did not give up the fight until July 25, 1766 and submitted to William Johnson at Fort Oswego . In April 1769, Pontiac was murdered in Cahokia , Illinois by an Indian of the Kaskaskia tribe, who received money for this from a British trader. Pontiac was buried near St. Louis , Missouri.

Battle for Ohio

The Ohio area and battles between Indians and Americans between 1775 and 1811

Around 1760, the Southern Unami reached what is now the state of Ohio. Here they consolidated as a tribe and became an important political and military force, finally liberated from the domination of the Iroquois.

In 1775 the American War of Independence (1775–1783) broke out. Only the tribes at the Great Lakes and the Seneca, Mingo and some Shawnee were on the British side initially. The Lenape initially remained neutral, and their Chief White Eyes even gave a speech to Congress in Philadelphia in 1776 .

In February 1778, General Edward Hand left Fort Pitt and led the Pennsylvania militia on a punitive expedition. He found no enemy warriors and instead attacked two peaceful Lenape villages, killing the brother of Captain Pipe , the chief of the Wolf Clan. The other chiefs were White Eyes of the Turtle Clan and Killbuck of the Turkey Clan, and all three signed the first treaty between the United States and the Indians in Fort Pitt in September 1778. In this treaty, the USA assured the Lenape that they would no longer colonize Indian land, protect them from the British and, if requested, send a representative to Congress. In return, the Lenape became American allies and allowed a fort to be built on their territory.

Many Lenape did not trust the Americans and a pro-British party formed around Captain Pipe. Killbuck sought neutrality in vain. In 1779 a Lenape delegation was killed en route to Congress in Philadelphia. Soon many Lenape left the Ohio area and fled to the supposedly safe Seneca villages in New York. Unfortunately, they were right on the march of Colonel Daniel Brodhead's troops to aid General John Sullivan in the fight against the Iroquois. Their villages were destroyed and they were forced to withdraw to southern Ontario . When the war was over, they stayed in Canada.

In the spring of 1780, the British launched an offensive to conquer the Ohio Valley, St. Louis, and New Orleans , a campaign that extended the war westward. In April, Captain Henry Bird left Detroit with 150 soldiers and 100 warriors to attack the Americans in Kentucky. By the time he reached the Ohio, his force had grown to nearly 500 men and was a source of fear and horror among settlers in Kentucky and western Pennsylvania. Most of the Lenape had allied themselves with Captain Pipe against the long knives at the same time. Only Chief Killbuck remained loyal to the Americans. In the spring of 1781, Killbuck led Colonel Brodhead's expedition from Fort Pitt to Coshocton. Before the attack, a chief wanted to negotiate with Brodhead about the surrender of the village without a fight, but was killed by a soldier with a tomahawk. Coshocton was burned to the ground, women and children were spared, but 15 men were executed.

In the summer of 1781 only the Lenape remained neutral in the Moravian missions. In the fall, the British ordered their internment and a force of Wyandot warriors escorted them to Captives Town on the upper Sandusky River . In winter they suffered from hunger and some returned to their mission village Gnadenhütten to harvest the corn that was still in the fields. In early March, Lenape warriors who returned from raids in Pennsylvania passed through sanctuary. On their heels were 160 Pennsylvania militia men under the command of Colonel David Williamsson. Williamson mistook the Mission Indians for the persecuted Lenape warriors, placed them under arrest, and ordered their execution for the next day. In the morning the soldiers took the prisoners to a hut in twos, made them kneel down and smashed their skulls with a cooper's mallet. Williamson's men killed 28 men, 29 women and 39 children. The dead were piled in piles in the huts and all the buildings burned down. This event went down in history as the Gnadenhütten massacre .

The news of the Gnadenhütten massacre quickly spread among the Lenape. In May 1782, Colonel William Crawford led a 500-strong volunteer force to the Sandusky River to destroy the Indian villages there. The Indians ambushed the Sandusky and trapped the Americans who fought for a day and then fled. Crawford and some of his men were captured. Almost all of them were killed in revenge for huts, and Colonel Crawford's execution was particularly cruel. The Lenape tied him to the stake and tormented him for over two hours before burning him alive. Following this incident, General George Washington warned his soldiers not to fall into the hands of living opposing Indians. Although the war ended shortly thereafter, Crawford's execution on the stake received extensive coverage in the US press, adding to the already poor relations between Americans and Indians.

George Rogers Clark based on a painting by Matthew Harris Jouett, 1825

In the course of the year 1782, there was another skirmish at the Blue Licks between the Kentucky Militia and the Shawnee, in which the Americans suffered a bitter defeat. At this point on August 19, 1782, the war in the east had been over for 10 months. In November, George Rogers Clark attacked the Shawnee villages on the Scioto River . The Treaty of Paris in 1783 ended the American War of Independence, but the war between the tribes of the Ohio and the long knives lasted with brief interruptions until 1795.

In the meantime, the Indian alliance slowly began to dissolve. The Kickapoo , Illinois , Piankashaw, and Potawatomi signed a separate peace treaty with the Americans in 1792, and the Fox and Sauk left the alliance because their warriors ran out of food.

In August 1795 the chiefs of the Alliance signed a peace treaty in Fort Greenville in which they ceded almost the entire Ohio area to the Americans, except for the northwestern part. A new binding boundary line for the white settlement was agreed. The Indians received goods worth $ 20,000 in return. In addition to the leaders of several Lenni-Lenape tribes, Wyandot, Shawnee, several Ottawa tribes , including Chippewa, Wea, Kickapoo, Kaskaskia and several tribes of the Potawatomi and Miami signed the Treaty of Fort Greenville .

Lenape in Indiana

The Lenape now had no land of their own, and with the exception of Captain Pipe's small group on the upper Sandusky River, they were relocated to the White River near the present-day town of Muncie (from Munsee) in central Indiana with the permission of Miami in 1796 , where they several Inhabited villages. The Lenape didn't feel at home in Indiana, but like illegitimate residents of a foreign country. There was social decline, they refused to work on the farm and they got alcohol problems. In 1801, Chief Blue Jacket tried unsuccessfully in Brownstown to revive the alliance. The Moravian missionaries were also unlucky, because the newly founded mission was closed again in 1806.

The chief of the Lenape was Tetepachksit of the turtle clan. As a peace chief he was responsible for negotiations with the Americans and was more than once in danger of being killed by his own people. In 1803, the Lenape sold part of the land in southern Indiana , but a conflict arose with the Miami, who still considered themselves the rightful owners of the entire land. A second contract had to be signed in 1796, replacing the first in favor of Miami. The white settlers pushed further west, disregarding the treaty boundaries, and the American government in Philadelphia did nothing about it.

Tecumseh in a British uniform

In 1805 a Shawnee shaman had a vision and then changed his name to Tenskwatawa (Open Door). His prophecy was similar to that of Neolin 30 years earlier. Tenskwatawa's brother was Tecumseh , a gifted speaker and respected Shawnee chief. Tecumseh's vision was to unite all Indian tribes against further expansion of the American settlers. In 1808, Tecumseh received a promise from the British that they would give him full support. The Lenape and Wyandot refused to join the alliance. Without these two tribes, Tecumseh was forced to form an alliance with the groups on the western Great Lakes, which could muster around 3,000 warriors in total. He turned south to win the Choctaw , Creek and Cherokee , but during his absence in November 1811, the Americans attacked the Indians at Prophetstown at the Battle of Tippecanoe and burned the village. When the British-American War broke out on June 18, 1812, most of the Lenape, Shawnee, and Wyandot remained neutral or supported the Americans. After Chief Little Turtle's death, the Miami met with Tecumseh and sent a war call to the Lenape, which was not followed. At the same time, the Lenape were transferred from Indiana to Piqua , Ohio for their own safety . Tecumseh was killed in the battle of the Thames River on October 5, 1813, and his Indian army subsequently disbanded. Only about 300 warriors followed the British into the region they occupied on Lake Ontario and their almost 2,000 wives and children had to keep themselves alive there by begging.

In 1814 the Lenape returned to Indiana from Piqua, where they were joined by a group of Stockbridge Indians from New York State. They signed a second Greenville Treaty in July, when the fighting between the Americans and Tecumseh's allies ended. Alliances with the Indians were no longer necessary, as the border disputes were now settled in a peaceful manner and the tribes were considerably weakened by the war, not least by the death of Tecumseh, and were only able to offer hesitant resistance to American expansion to the west.

Some Lenni Lenape had already accepted land near Cape Girardeau in Missouri in 1789 at the invitation of the Spanish governor . A couple of Munsee had moved up the Allegheny River and settled with the Seneca in 1791, where they kept their tribal identity throughout the 19th century.

Most of the Lenni Lenape stayed on the White River in Indiana for a quarter of a century, living in several villages scattered over an area of ​​40 miles (65 km) in diameter, but had to move again in 1818 because their land was owned by the government was used. Then they settled on the James Fork of the White River in southern Missouri, where the Lenape were officially relocated from Cape Girardeau at the same time. The newcomers went buffalo hunting , which caused a dispute with Osage and Pawnee who lived here . The situation came to a head that part of the Lenni Lenape moved on to the Red River in southwest Arkansas around 1817 . A decade later, some Lenape were even found among the supporters of Dutch, a Cherokee chief, in eastern Texas , and were later seen on the Sabine and Neches Rivers.

In Kansas and Oklahoma

The rest of the Lenni Lenape were dissatisfied with the hostility and the limited natural resources in Missouri and signed a new contract in 1829, which granted them land in northeastern Kansas and guaranteed access to the buffalo hunting grounds, which was called the Delaware Outlet . In late 1831 the main Lenni Lenape group had moved to a new reservation on the north bank of the Kansas River east of Lawrence and south of Leavenworth . They were joined by a small number of tribesmen who remained on the Sandusky River in Ohio. Another small group, led by Black Beaver, separated from them and settled in what is now south-central Oklahoma . There they met other Lenni Lenape, who had to leave Texas in 1839 and 1853. Some Canadian Munsee speakers from Moraviantown and Munceytown moved to Kansas in 1837, but some of them stayed apart from the other Lenni Lenape and eventually settled with some Chippewa in Franklin County .

The Lenape, who lived in northeast Kansas, played their part in the conquest of the west . Lenape scouts served in Colonel Henry Dodge's campaign against the Comanche in 1835 . In 1837, 87 Lenape took part as scouts in the US Army's campaign against the Seminoles . Lenape also served as scouts and buffalo hunters on the covered wagon treks that traveled west through the prairies in the 1840s and 1850s. They took part in all three expeditions of John Charles Fremont in 1842, 1843 and 1845 and in the Mexican War (1845-1848). They were also there for Stephen Watts Kearny's conquest of New Mexico and served in Alexander Doniphan's volunteer troop from Missouri.

1854 Congress Kansas and Nebraska opened for settlement with the Kansas-Nebraska Act (ger .: Kansas-Nebraska Act ). That law stipulated that Kansas and Nebraska should decide the slave question for themselves. The result was a rush into Kansas as southerners and northerners vied for control of the area. Shootings broke out and Bleeding Kansas became a harbinger of the Civil War . The Lenape, Wyandot and Shawnee sided with the abolitionists and volunteered to defend the city of Lawrence, Kansas, against possible attacks from Missouri. In 1860, the Lenape signed the Treaty of Sarcoxieville and agreed to sell their remaining land. Eighty acres of land was given to each member of the tribe, but the chief chieftain got 640 and the other chieftains 320 acres. The rest of the land was sold to Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad .

Although the Lenape had no civil rights, they nevertheless sided with the Union states when the civil war broke out. 170 of the 200 physically fit young Lenape served in the 6th and 15th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry in the Union Army. In 1862, Lenape and Shawnee of Kansas attacked the Wichita Agency in southern Oklahoma, which had been occupied by the Confederates. The agency was destroyed and the Tonkawa who lived there were sent back to Texas. But very few made it, as many of them were killed in the east of the Wichita Mountains by the Comanche, their enemies. During the course of the war, Lenape soldiers fought several skirmishes against units of the Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw on the Confederate side.}

In 1867, the majority of the Lenni Lenape traded their Kansas land holdings for an area assigned to them within the Cherokee Nation in northeastern Oklahoma. The Christianized Lenape settled in what is now Nowata, Rogers and Craig Counties, while the conservative tribesmen reluctantly and stayed east of Neosho for a few years. These so-called Neosho-Lenape took over their land allocation in 1873 and formed the core of traditionalists, who passed on their religious customs into the 20th century. The Indian Territory Lenni Lenape spent the Civil War in Kansas, and most returned to the Washita River afterwards. Finally, the reservation they shared with the Wichita and Caddo was opened to white settlement in 1901. The number of contacts between the western Delaware and the main group provides evidence that the tribe was still a unit.

Well-known Lenape leaders

Period	Surname	Event, office
1628-1698	Tamanend	signed the contract with William Penn
around 1760	Neolin	Lenape prophet
1700-1763	Teedyuscung	"King" of the Eastern Lenape
1740-1763	Shingas	Warchief from the Turkey Clan
around 1737	Lappawinsoe	Lenape peace chief, signed the Walking Purchase treaty
1730-1778	White eyes	Chief of peace from the turtle clan
1737-1811	Gelelemend or Killbuck	Chief of peace from the turtle clan
1720-1805	Buckongahelas	Warchief from the Wolf Clan
1740-1818	Captain Pipe	Warchief from the Wolf Clan

Cultural change and today's situation

During their migration to the west, the Lenni Lenape developed a lifestyle that can be seen as a cultural change from their traditional culture to that of whites. There were considerable differences between the different groups, but there is a general trend towards increasing adaptation to white cultural customs, a process that was almost completed during the 20th century.

The Lenni Lenape's livelihood activities changed considerably on the move west. Far from the coast, fishing was no longer important. However, corn remained the staple food. West of the Mississippi, buffalo hunting and trapping for fur animals in the Rocky Mountains provided the necessary meat. With their knowledge of the West, many Lenape men became scouts and interpreters in the US Army. In fact, Delaware could be found in large areas of the settlement boundary.

In the nineteenth century, the material culture of the Lenni Lenape became more and more similar to the culture of the whites on the border of the settlement, including many cooking utensils and tools made of iron, horse-drawn wagons and dishes, beds, chairs and other furniture. Through trade with other Indians, the Delaware goods came to clothing made of buffalo leather, stone pipes from the Cherokees and red pipes (catlinites) from the upper Mississippi.

Apart from the modernization of weapons, little changed in warfare. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the standard equipment of a warrior consisted of a blanket, extra moccasins, a strap to tie prisoners, a rifle, powder horn and bullet bag. Waging war was heavily ritualized, and Delaware scouts in the US Army even had the reputation of being equipped with special warrior medicine for sure success. In the battles with the western tribes, the coup baton was taken over.

By 1970 the Delawaren had adapted culturally almost completely to the lifestyle of their white neighbors. Traditional customs disappeared and the lenape were integrated into the local and national economies. In Oklahoma they lived dispersed among the rest of the population, with concentration in Washington and Caddo Counties. Only a few preserved the old customs and practices such as B. traditional funeral ceremonies, and some families were followers of the peyote cult . A pow wow has been held annually on the first weekend in June a few miles northeast of Copan in Washington County since the mid-1960s . Caddo County's Lenape generally participate in Caddo and Wichita pow wows. One event that had a particular impact on greater Lenape identification was the presentation of the Indian Claims Commissions Award , worth more than $ 12 million, to the descendants of Lenape in 1963, 1969, and 1971. Lots of litigation ensued, but that The Supreme Court ruled on January 23, 1977 that this capital, which had since grown to around $ 15 million through interest, should be paid out to Lenni Lenape in Oklahoma.

In 1979 the Bureau of Indian Affairs revoked the tribal status of the Cherokee Delaware in Oklahoma and considered them Cherokee members. However, this decision was reversed in 1996. The Cherokee Nation then sued in court to revoke tribal status to the Delaware. More than a dozen tribes claim a Delaware descent. Organizations in Colorado, Idaho, and Kansas applied to the US government for recognition.

In Canada, at the end of the twentieth century, most of the Lenni Lenape lived on three reservations - Moraviantown and Muncey on the Thames River and the Six Nations Reservation on the Grand River. Almost no traditional customs have survived here, with the exception of Moraviantown, where the old language is still spoken in some families.

Today's First Nations and Tribes (tribes) of the Lenni Lenape

Today there are three Lenni Lenape groups officially recognized as First Nations in Canada and three federally recognized tribes in the United States:

Canada - Ontario

Southern First Nations Secretariat

• Munsee-Delaware First Nation (also Muncie-Delaware First Nation , 1840 allowed today's Chippewas of the Thames First Nation , the Christian Munsee , also called Moravian Indians , who had fled here , to use a part of their reservation, from which their present 10.54 km² extensive reservation Munsee-Delaware Nation # 1 was created. It is located about 15 miles west of St. Thomas on the west bank of the Thames River . They were recognized as an independent First Nation in 1967, their administrative seat is Munceytown , population: 591 tribal members)

• Delaware Nation, Moravian of the Thames Band (also Moravian of the Thames First Nation or Moravian of the Thames Band / Delaware Nation , your reservation Moravian # 47 covers around 12.8 km² along the south bank of the Thames River and is about 35 miles southwest of Sarnia . The administrative seat is Thamesville in Chatham-Kent . They were also originally fleeing Christian Munsee, now call themselves in Munsee Lunaapeew , which is synonymous with the Unami-Delaware word Lenape . They identify themselves as Delaware , only consider them neighboring Munsee-Delaware from Munceytown as Munsee (or Munsiiw). They often refer to them as troublemakers because of their traditional, conservative attitude , population: 1,228 tribal members)

• Delaware of Six Nations of the Grand River (are Unami-Lenape, who fled to Canada to the Iroquois, share their reservations Glebe Farm # 40B on the north bank of the Grand River southeast of Brantford and Six Nations # 40 approx. 8 km southeast of Brantford , which cover approx. 183.20 km², with the various Iroquois First Nations, administrative seat is Ohsweken, Ontario, population: 662)

United States - Wisconsin

• Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians (also Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians , consisting of Stockbridge (mostly Mahican), immigrant Christian Munsee and Unami-speaking Brotherton Delaware from New Jersey (formerly also called Cranbury-Crosswicks bands ), which after Moved from New York State to Wisconsin in 1819. Today, however, the majority identify themselves as Mahican or Muh-he-con-neok (Eng. 'People by the water that always flows'), as they originally lived along the Hudson River ( Mahicannituck - The Stockbridge-Munsee Indian Reservation in Shawano County covers approximately 90 km² as well as the cities of Bartelme and Red Springs, administrative headquarters is Bowler , Wisconsin, and they successfully operate the North Star Mohican Casino Resort., Population : approx. 1,500 tribal members)

United States - Oklahoma

• Delaware Tribe of Indians (also The (Eastern Oklahoma) Delaware Tribe of Indians , formerly Cherokee Delaware , are Southern Unami and therefore identify themselves as Lenape or Delaware, the Canadian Lenape refer to as Munsee , some Nanticoke , which they call themselves on the train to the west joined, now their own tribal identity have lost the tribe living in eastern Oklahoma and was a part of until recently Cherokee nation considered in 1996 after a long legal dispute with the Cherokee nation and the Bureau of Indian Affairs again officially on the federal level ( federal recognition ) recognized as a tribe, but the United States Court of Appeals in 2004 again denied them their sovereignty, so that they were again under the jurisdiction of the Cherokee Nation from March 2005, but they were officially recognized as a tribe again on July 28, 2009, the administrative seat is Bartlesville , Oklahoma, population: approx.10,500 tribe members)
• Delaware Nation (also (Absentee) Delaware Nation of Western Oklahoma , Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma , Absentee or Western Delaware , originally also Southern Unami, are descendants of Unami-Delaware, who once settled in Missouri and Texas and finally settled in Oklahoma, The administrative seat is Anadarko , Oklahoma, population: approx. 1,000 tribal members)

In addition, it is in the US several State Recognized Tribes (tribes) , they are ie as the particular state in which they live Tribe (strain) recognized, but are not recognized at the federal level as a tribe.

United States - Delaware

• Nanticoke Indian Association (also Nanticoke Indian Tribe of Delaware , their tribal name derives from Nantaquak or Nentego ('Tidewater People' or 'People of the Tidewaters', dt. 'People of the tides, of ebb and flow'), were allies of the Powhatan and the Choptank , state recognized by the State of Delaware since 1922 , administrative seat is Millsboro in Sussex County , Delaware, population: approx. 1,550 tribal members) - member of the Confederation of Sovereign Nentego - Lenape Tribes
• Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware (descendants of Unami Lenape and Nanticoke families of the Delmarva Peninsula and southern New Jersey, tribal membership is on descendants of the Lenape in Kent County, Delaware and southern New Jersey and on Nanticoke of the Delmarva Peninsula, the administrative seat is Cheswold in Kent County , Delaware) - member of the Confederation of Sovereign Nentego - Lenape Tribes

United States - New Jersey

• Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Indian Tribe (also Nanticoke Lenape Indians , Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape People or Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation of New Jersey , descendants of Unami Lenape and Nanticoke, who are the Unami Lenape on the south bank of Delaware Bay in southern New Jersey joined as Cohansies (Lenape group along the Cohansey River), Bridgeton Indians , Indians of Cohansey Bridge , Alloways (Lenape group, named after Chief Alloway), Little Siconese , Narraticons ('Naraticonck'), Sewapois and other names are now the largest tribe in New Jersey, own tribal land known as Cohanzick in Fairfield Township, New Jersey, here is also their community center and ceremonial place, administrative seat is Bridgeton in Cumberland County , New Jersey, population: around 1600 tribal members) - member the Confederation of Sovereign Nentego - Lenape Tribes
• Ramapough Lenape Nation (also Ramapough Mountain Indians , also known as Ramapough Lunaape Munsee Delaware Nation , call themselves Ramapough Lunaape Nation , were recognized as a state recognized tribe by New Jersey in 1980 , but have been repeatedly denied recognition as a tribe at the federal level, live today in the Ramapo Mountains in Bergen County and Passaic County in northern New Jersey and Rockland County in southern New York , about 40 km from New York City , their tribal administration is in Mahwah , New Jersey.

The Ramapough Lenape consider themselves to be descendants of Munsee-speaking Lenape groups - the Hackensack, Tappan, Haverstraw (also Rumachenanck ), Minisink (also Munsee ) and Ramapo. They were also joined by people of Tuscarora , African, Dutch and European ancestry.

Together with the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation and the Powhatan Renape Nation , they merged in May 2011 to form the United State-Recognized Tribes of New Jersey . Today they number around 5,000 tribal members.)

Other groups from Lenni Lenape

Many groups claim to be descendants of the Lenni Lenape and to have retained their tribal identity as such, but are not recognized at the federal or state level and are regarded by the recognized tribes as so-called fake tribes . Often these are so-called heritage groups ( traditional groups ) who seek to preserve the most important ceremonial and cultural values ​​of Lenni Lenape, as well as family trees and language. Most now focus on powwows and other festivals to share social contacts and information with members. Some heritage groups support the protection of former tribal areas, buildings, facilities, documents, relics and spiritually relevant information. Often people join so-called heritage groups who cannot become members of the recognized tribes in order to still support the culture or to identify themselves externally as Lenni Lenape. However, since some heritage groups also try to be recognized as tribes at the state level ( state recognized ) or even at the federal level ( federally recognized ), the already recognized Lenni Lenape tribes are often critical of them.

United States - Colorado

• Delaware Tribe of Colorado
• Munsee Thames River Delaware (also Munsee-Thames River Delaware Indian Nation , Pueblo , Colorado, recognition as a strain was rejected by the BIA, Letter of Intent to Petition 07/22/1977; declined to Acknowledge 01/03/1983 47 FR 50109)

United States - Idaho

• The Delawares of Idaho, Inc ( state recognition was rejected in 1982, are also not federally recognized, originally claim to belong to the Turkey clan of the Unalachtigo, when they had to relocate to Wyoming and lived here mostly from the antelope hunt, they changed their clan membership and now call themselves Antelope Eaters , today the members live in the Treasure Valley in Idaho, the administrative seat is Boise , Idaho, population: approx. 300 tribal (?) members)

United States - Delaware

• Lenape Tribe of Delaware

United States - Kansas

• The Munsee of Kansas (also Delaware and Ojibwe Tribe, Swan Creek and Black River Band Chippewa , originally Christian Munsee, who bought a piece of land from the Swan Creek and Black River Chippewa and formed a tribe with them, live in Ottawa, Kansas, lost Around 1900 together with the Swan Creek and Black River bands of the Chippewa their status as Indians was dissolved as their reservation and the individual parcels were sold to the families)
• Delaware- Muncie Tribe (Letter of Intent to Petition 06/19/1978)

United States - New Jersey

• Brotherton Delaware Tribe of New Jersey (until 2009 Unalachtigo Band of the Nanticoke-Lenni Lenape Nation , until 1998 Nanticoke-Lenni Lenape Tribal Nation )
• Lightning Valley Lenape Tribe (a heritage group that tries to preserve the culture of the Lenni Lenape)
• New Jersey Sand Hill Band of Lenape and Cherokee Indians

United States - Ohio

• Munsee Delaware Indian Nation-USA (also Munsee Delaware Indian Nation of Ohio , formerly Munsee-Thames River Delaware Indian Nation-USA , administrative seat is Cambridge , Ohio)

United States - Pennsylvania

• Laurel Ridge Lenape Tribe (also Shabakashauweyek Lenape'wàk , is just a so-called heritage group that wants to convey Indian values)
• Thunder Mountain Lenapé Nation (administrative seat is Saltsburg , Pennsylvania)
• Eastern Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania (administrative seat is Mountville , Pennsylvania)

See also

• List of North American Indian tribes

literature

• John Bierhorst : Mythology of the Lenape. Guide and texts. University of Arizona Press, Tucson 1995, ISBN 0-8165-1523-9 .
• Edward G. Burrows, Mike Wallace: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1989. Oxford Univ. Press, 1999, ISBN 0-19-514049-4 .
• Kenneth T. Jackson (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of New York City. Yale University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-300-05536-6 .
• Alvin M. Josephy Jr.: 500 Nations. Frederking & Thaler, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-89405-356-9 .
• Alvin M. Josephy Jr.: The world of the Indians. Frederking & Thaler, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-89405-331-3 .
• Paul Otto: The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley. Berghahn Books, New York 2006, ISBN 1-57181-672-0 .
• Conrad Richter: The Light in the Forest. Knopf, New York 1953.
• Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Volume 15: Northeast. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1978, ISBN 0-16-004575-4 .
• Wilcomb E. Washburn (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 4: History of Indian-White Relations. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1988, ISBN 0-16-004583-5 .
• Clinton Alfred Weslager: The Delaware Indians: A history, Rutgers University Press. New Brunswick, NJ, 1972. (Reprinted 1990, ISBN 0-8135-1494-0 ).

Web links

Commons : Lenape  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Delaware goods
• Delaware Nation (Anadarko, Oklahoma)
• Delaware Tribe of Indians (Bartlesville, OK)
• Delaware Indians
• Short Directory of Lenape Websites ( Memento of July 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Lenape / English dictionary
• Lenape Nation
• Lenni Lenape Historical Society
• Indian languages ​​with mini-Lenape course ( Memento from May 27, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
• Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Indians of New Jersey

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 234.
2. ^ Search Results of "Indian" English to Lenape. In: Lenape Talking Dictionary. Retrieved November 16, 2019 (English, delaware). 
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 213.
4. ^ The Hudson River: Its Native American Name and Meaning: What and Why. ( Memento from March 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ Manahatta to Manhattan: Native Americans in Lower Manhattan ( Memento of the original from June 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ derived from: shëwanpi - "salt water, ocean, sea", since the lower reaches of the Hudson are subject to the influence of the tides . The tidal range is still noticeable over 225 kilometers upstream to the weir in Troy , north of Albany . This section is called Estuary (dt .: estuary called).
7. ^ Native Americans - Lenape Subdivisions
8. ^ Carl Waldmann: Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. ISBN 978-0-8160-6274-4 .
9. ↑ Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 214.Sources: Jefferson 1801, Lefroy 1853, Mooney 1911, 1928, Tax and Stanley 1960.
10. ↑ ^{a b c d} Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 216.
11. ↑ Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 215.
12. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 217.
13. ↑ ^{a b c d} Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 218 f.
14. ↑ ^{a b c d} Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 219.
15. ↑ ^{a b} Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 219 f.
16. ↑ Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 220.
17. ^ The Walam Olum Index
18. ↑ Dietmar Kuegler: Freedom in the wilderness - trappers, mountain men, fur traders - the American fur trade . Publisher for American Studies , Wyk 1989, ISBN 3-924696-33-0 .
19. ^ New Sweden Center
20. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Delaware History
21. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 222 f.
22. ↑ Goschgosching
23. ^ ^{A b} Paul O'Neil: The way to the west. (= The Wild West; Time-Life-Books). 2nd Edition. Time-Life Books, Amsterdam 1980, OCLC 801720056 , p. 88 f.
24. ^ ^{A b} Paul O'Neil: The way to the west. 1980, p. 93 f.
25. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 224 ff.
26. ↑ Paul O'Neil: The Way West. 1980, p. 97 f.
27. ^ Bleeding Kansas
28. ↑ ^{a b c d} Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15: Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, p. 226 f.
29. ^ Petitions for Recognition, accessed June 22, 2012
30. ^ Homepage of the Tribal Council Southern First Nations Secretariat
31. ^ Homepage of the Munsee-Delaware First Nation ( Memento from June 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
32. ↑ the common name of Munsee and Unami-Delaware is Lenape , but this is more used by Unami-Delaware, while the Munsee word for person today is Lunii and they therefore call themselves Lunaapew . In addition, Canadian Delaware consider themselves a mixed group of Munsee and Unami-Delaware, but identify themselves as Delaware.
33. ^ Homepage of the Delaware Nation, Moravian of the Thames Band ( Memento from August 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
34. ↑ The following First Nations inhabit the reserves together with the Delaware: Bay of Quinte Mohawk, Bearfoot Onondaga, Konadaha Seneca, Lower Cayuga, Lower Mohawk, Niharondasa Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga Clear Sky, Tuscarora, Upper Cayuga, Upper Mohawk, Walker Mohawk
35. ↑ Source: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada Registered Population as of July, 2012 ( Memento from August 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
36. ↑ The Stockbridge Indians got their name after a mission established for one of their tribes called Stockbridge in western Massachusetts, but had to move to New Stockbridge (now: Stockbridge) in New York to the Oneida in 1780 , along with the Munsee and Unami-speaking Brotherton In Delaware, they finally moved to Wisconsin between 1820 and 1829
37. ↑ Unalachtigo Band of the Nanticoke-Lenni-Lenape Nation vs. State of New Jersey and Stockbridge-Munsee Community, Band of Mohican Indians & Powhatan Indians of Delaware Valley (Powhatan Renape Nation) ( Memento from November 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 215 kB)
38. ↑ Homepage of the North Star Mohican Casino Resort
39. ^ Homepage of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians
40. ^ Homepage of the Delaware Tribe of Indians ( Memento from July 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
41. ^ Homepage of the Delaware Nation ( Memento from July 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
42. ^ Homepage of the Nanticoke Indian Association
43. ^ Homepage of the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware
44. ↑ Cohanzick - The Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Grounds (PDF; 59 kB)
45. ↑ Homepage of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Indian Tribe ( Memento from June 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
46. ↑ Homepage of the Ramapough Lunaape Nation (Ramapough Mountain Indians)
47. ↑ Reconsidered Final Determination Declining to Acknowledge that Ramapough Mountain Indians, Inc. - Exists as an Indian Tribe ( Memento from March 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.2 MB)
48. ^ New Jersey Tribe Member Dies After Police Shooting at a Back-Roads Party
49. ^ Homepage of the Delawares of Idaho ( Memento from July 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
50. ^ Homepage of the NJ Sand Hill Band of Lenape and Cherokee Indians ( Memento from January 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
51. ^ Homepage of the Munsee Delaware Indian Nation-USA
52. ↑ Homepage of the Laurel Ridge Lenape Tribe
53. ↑ website of the Thunder Mountain Lenape Nation
54. ↑ Census 2000 - American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes in the United States: 2000 (PDF; 145 kB)