The Delaware or, as they call themselves, the Lenape, were the Native Americans who lived in and near what is now New York City and Philadelphia in the American north-east. They had lived there for at least a thousand years when the whites came and took their land away. George Washington once fought against them.
They called their country Lenapehoking. It lay along the Delaware and the lower Hudson rivers and the land in between, now called New Jersey. Two big American cities now stand there, New York on the Hudson and Philadelphia on the Delaware. In those days, though, it was a vast forest full of animals. About 24,000 Delawares lived there. Now a thousand times as many people do, almost none of them Delaware.
The Delaware lived off of the deer and bear and elk and grew maize, beans and squash and gathered strawberries. They lived in long houses.
When the whites came they brought things that the Delaware did not know how to make but grew to want, like metal pots and knives, guns, whisky and even glass beads.
It was for things like these that they sold Manhattan and other pieces of their land. But they did not have a Western idea of private property: you could no more sell the land than you could sell the air. All that you could sell was the right to use it.
The whites also brought with them terrible diseases that the Delawares had little defence against, like smallpox, cholera and measles. Many died.
They knew how to fight in the woods better than most white men did, and they even had guns. But one thing they did not have were numbers. More and more whites kept coming over the seas every year. And whatever land whites could not get by sale or the small print of a contract, they took by force.
An excuse to fight the Delaware could always be found. Once it was because one of them took a peach. Small things like that grew into years of war. Even those who had taken on Western ways were killed. Even those who had become peaceful Moravian Christians were killed. Even women and children were killed. It did not matter.
And so the Delaware, those who had lived through the white diseases and the white wars, were pushed west bit by bit - through Pennsylvania in the 1600s and 1700s, Ohio, Indiana and Kansas in the 1800s and so on till most of them came to Oklahoma by the 1860s, though some by then were in Wisconsin and Ontario. By 1990 there were about 13,000 left. Unlike other Native Americans, few married blacks.
Their language is still heard in prayers at funerals, prayers that few understand any more. It is also still heard in the names of places in their long lost homeland, names like Parsippany, Minisink, Massapequa, Hackensack, Raritan, the Poconos, Rockaway, Canarsie, Jamaica (in Queens) and Manhattan.
See also:
Wow this is a great post. I wonder if any local museums here have any of her work! Wow thanks for this post!
Go
Thanks. I am glad you like it! I do not know if any museums have any of their stuff.
When I first got out of college I worked for an archaeological firm doing contract stuff in Pennsylvania and Delaware. A lot of the sites we worked on were Lenape ones.
There was a huge site in Macungie or Emmaus, PA, a farm that sat on land which, a few thousand years ago, was adjacent to a jasper quarry. Lenape would come from all over, break off hunks of jasper and then walk into what eventually became the farm field and work the bigger hunks into more manageable sizes for travel or make a tool right there.
We screened the whole surface area of the farm, found some great stuff, lots of points (arrow and spear heads), an adze, some drills, and about a million flakes (pieces chipped off in the tool making process).
Your post brought back some cool memories of my “Indiana Jones” days.
So do you know of any good museums?
It’s been a while but I would check the Archaeology/Anthropology Museum over at UPENN, they might have a collection. Temple University (my alma mata) at one time had a good program as well. Maybe contacting their head would get you some leads.
Back in 1992 the authority on “contact period”, when Europeans and Native Americans first interacted was a professor named Jay Custer (yes, in one of life’s rich ironies he is a descendant of George Armstrong Custer who led the ill fated attack on Sitting Bull in the Black Hills of the Dakotas) down at the Univ. of Del. He has some books and papers out on the topic:
http://books.google.com/books?id=A6M5orOekt8C&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=Jay+Custer+Archaeologist&source=web&ots=Yg5-4ybLnj&sig=1TTuQJaoi76KtUjMlBSUNpupg94&hl=en&ei=gIqVSdL8KYGCtwe0r5WpCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result
If you’re in the area and see a plowed field near a water source (river, stream, etc.) it might be worth it to ask the farmer if you can walk his fields. Chances are you might find a point or tool or something.
Oh, cool. Thanks! U Penn is doable for me.
Where are you from?
hmmm i hadn’t heard of the delawares…its sad what happened to them. It just breaks my heart to see what has happened to native americans. cultures wiped out, numbers so low and then we don’t even really get to learn about their contributions in society. there are no native-american awarness clubs that promote awareness about native american issues in the MODERN day. just sad.
Have you ever heard of the matapeake tribe? they were native americans who inhabited the region of monoposon. they were in the chesapeake area and were hunter/gathers.
My ex-husband is a Delaware tribal member, so I learned a bit of their history. Read about the Walking Purchase– Wikipedia has a short article– it’s also in A Century of Dishonor by Helen Hunt Jackson, written in 1881.