Cultural Appropriation: Tamanend of the Delaware/Lenape

Americans have had a long history of appropriating Native people, symbols and customs to embody various attributes, from peace and courage to a local sports team.  While most people are familiar with the appropriations that go on with sports teams and their mascots, few realize that cultural appropriation of Native people and symbols is as old as the Republic.  A case in point was a seventeenth century Delaware leader named Tamanend.

First, the real person:  Tamanend (c 1725-c 1801) or as Americans called him, Tammany, was a Delaware clan leader who met with Pennsylvania founder William Penn several times under a large pine tree at Shakamaxon to sign, or mark, treaties agreeing peace between the English settlers and the local Lenape tribe.  There were eight of these treaties, some promising peace between the two groups, "as long as water runs in the rivers and creeks, and the moon and stars endure."  This trophe, sometimes corrupted to, "as long as the grass grows and river flows", was an enduring theme in many treaties, not that it was ever as permanent as it sounded.  Other than these meetings with Penn, not much is known of Tamanend's life. 

Enter the legend: Even in his day, Tamanend was called a King, as were most high-ranking Native leaders.  Never mind that royalty, as such, was not a feature of North American tribes with the possible exception of the Natchez descendants of the Mississippians.  Because of the many treaties he signed with the Settlers, Tamanend became a symbol of peace and unity.  Philadelphia and other communities began celebrating St. Tammany Day, or King Tammany's day, a time for parades, picnics, speeches and civic pride.  Because Philadelphia was so prominent in Colonial affairs, the practice spread to other cities in other colonies and, later, to the Continental Army itself.  Tammany Societies, originally civic clubs were citizens could meet to discuss affairs of the day, sprang up in Philadelphia and throughout the colonies even before the Revolution.  Though he was never declared a saint by any religious domination, Tammany was declared by Benjamin Franklin and others to be the patron saint of America.

Iconography followed.  Benjamin West's painting, done in 1772, commemorates one of the meetings between William Penn and Tamarend.  Statues of Tamarend began appearing on civic buildings.  One of the last wooden sailing ships, the U.S.S. Delaware, featured a figurehead of Tamanend.  When the ship was burned in 1862, the wooden figurehead was rescued and presented to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis.  The dilapidating wood was replaced with a bronze replica in the 1930's.  The students decided that a patron saint of peace did not adequately represent the fighting spirit of Naval cadets, so they changed the statue's name to Tecumseh, with the surrounding area called Tecumseh Court, thus appropriating yet another Native leader's name and image.  Nor was this all.  A monument to a New York regiment on the battlefield at Gettysburg shows Tamanend standing before a tipi, something he, as an Eastern Woodlands Native, would never have lived in.