The Real People: the Lenape/Delaware

This historic tribe boasted such leaders as Buckongahelas, Tamanend, White Eyes and Lapowinsa.  Their name, Lenape, comes from Algonquian words meaning the real people.  They were an Algonquian-speaking people who used two primary languages, Umani and Munsee.  Their range, known as Lenapehoking, spread through portions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Delaware, hence the name.  Delaware place names were common in this area, particularly New York, where designations such as Tappan and Raritan were thought to be individual tribes, but were really bands of Lenape people.  Like other Algonquian nations, the Lenape were a loose grouping of several different bands, rather than one large tribe, or several different tribes, as some early commentators believed.  As usual among Eastern Woodlands Natives, their society was matrilineal, with women controlling the property and resources of their families, and able to appoint or remove leaders whom they believed were not meeting the people's needs.  They were hunter-gatherers as well as agricultural, depending on maize, beans and squash.

Europeans first encountered the Lenape in 1524, when explorer Giovanni De Verrezzano entered lower New York Bay.  Later, the Lenape had a complicated relationship with the Dutch, who were both trading partners in the 17th century period of the Beaver Wars, and sometimes enemies when local colonial officials, such as Willem Klieft, ineptly handled relations with local bands and tribes.  It was the inability of the Dutch to strike a consistent, harmonious relationship with the Lenape and other tribes that eventually doomed their colonial efforts in New York.  Prior to contact, the Lenape were considered the founders or more senior of other coastal Algonquian-speaking tribes, were called the grandfathers and treated with respect in inter-tribal diplomacy.  The Beaver Wars resulted in significant population reduction, bringing them under the domination of the Susquehannock, who in turn were tributaries to the Iroquois Confederacy. 

The Lenape were also noted for their close association with William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania.  While there may have been an agreement between the Lenape, represented by Tamanend and other leaders, to allow Penn and his followers to settle on their land, sources differ as to whether there was a signed agreement in 1682 under the Treaty Elm of Shackamaxon, since no trace of a document appears to exist.  The Walking Purchase fiasco of the 1730's, where the Lenape were forced to cede thousands of acres through potentially forged documents by Penn's heirs put pressure on them to relocated into the Ohio Valley.  During the French and Indian War (1755-1763), some Lenape sided with the British, while other bands believed the best way was to be neutral in the conflict.  The Moravian missionaries found many Lenape receptive to Christianity.  This, unfortunately, proved to be their undoing when the mission station at Gnadenhutten was raided in 1781 by Pennsylvania militia retaliating for attacks on frontier settlements.  One hundred men, women and children were killed. 

The Lenape were fortunate in the leadership of men like Buckongahelas, who ranked along with Dragging Canoe of the Cherokee, Blue Jacket of the Shawnee, and Little Turtle of the Miami as leaders and able military tacticians, respected by their British and American enemies for their ability to protect their people through skill in battle.  White Eyes, the first elected Principal Chief of the Delaware, attempted diplomacy with the Americans, hoping for a Native buffer state in Ohio.  The Treaty of Fort Pitt of 1778 was supposed to accomplish this, but that treaty never saw the light of day and White Eyes was assassinated before he could present his people's case directly to the Continental Congress.  During the American Revolution, some Lenape joined the Iroquois, Wyandot and other Ohio tribes on the side of the British, while others favored the Americans.  Several Lenape served in a Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army, hence the name Stockbridge.  At the end of the War, many Munsee-speaking Lenape chose to go to Canada, where some also found refuge on the Grand River with the Iroquois.  Others went to New York, before eventually being pressured to move to Wisconsin.  Finally, in 1860, most of the American Lenape had no choice but to remove to Oklahoma and make the best of life there.  However, groups do remain in New Jersey, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and even in Texas. 

Today, three federally recognized tribes, the Delaware Nation of Andarko, Oklahoma, the Delaware Tribe of Indians of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and the Munsee-Stockbridge Community of Bowler, Wisconsin, are in the United States.  Canada also has First Nations communities of Delaware, the Munsee-Delaware Nation, Moravian on the Thames, and at Grand River of the Six Nations.