Delaware Indian History
Homes
Delaware Indian living quarters were grass and bark covered longhouses.Each village contained a sweathouse for steam baths.Sweating in steam baths was the usual remedy for disease and melancholy. Following steam baths, men repainted their bodies, and women painted their faces with white,yellow and red dyes.Red was usually associated with war. Most men painted red designs on themselves prior to battle.
The Delaware River flowed through their lands.
The Delawares were divided into three major groups
Language Each group spoke a different dialect of language that belonged to the Algonquian family.The Lenape language (of the Algonquian family) is virtually extinct. Munsee:Means-people from Minisink(the stony country).It is also a dialect of the Delaware Indians. It was often spoken by Delaware Indians living in the lands of the lower Hudson River and upper Delaware River area.Munsee Indians were the Wolf clan of the Delaware Indian tribe.White settlers drove them from the Delaware River region around 1740.They moved on and set up bark covered longhouses along the Susquehanna River. Unami: Dialect of the Delaware people down river from the Delaware and Hudson Rivers. Unami dialect was spoken by Delaware people living on the flat plains of the Atlantic coast and Delaware bay area... lands now known as Southern New Jersey, Southeast Pennsylvania, and Northern Delaware. ______________________________________________________________________________ Residence Where did they Live? Delaware Indians lived on the lands that are now Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.The Delawares were one of the two most powerful Indian groups in North America that lived in the New York region prior to the white settlers arrival.The area around greater New York City was originally occupied by three tribal groups: Wappinger, Munsee and Unami Delaware, and Metoac. Since all of them spoke related languages and shared a common culture, there has never been a consensus as to which tribe belonged to which group. In the classification employed here, the Wappinger lived on the east side of the lower Hudson, the Delaware occupied the west side, and Manhattan and Long Island belonged to the Metoac. These distinctions would not be important if not for the question of which tribe sold Manhattan Island to the Dutch for only twenty-five dollars. Even Native Americans are not certain about this. The Delaware usually blame the Wappinger. However, if the Manhattan had purchased, rather than sold, their island for this price, they would probably be claimed as immediate family. For our purposes, the Manhattan - meaning "people of the island" - were Metoac. Two tribes of the Algonquian Indians lived in the Delaware region when white explorers arrived.The Delaware tribe lived along the banks of the Delaware River. The Nanticoke lived along the Nanticoke River. By the mid 1700's white settlers forced most of the Native Americans out of the region.Delawares lived in the Jersey City, New Jersey area before the Dutch set up a trading post there in the 1600's.The post grew into a settlement called Paulus Hook.The Delaware also lived in the Newark, New Jersey area prior to the whites arrival in 1666. In the late 1700's several tanners settled in Newark.Delawares lived in Philadelphia long before Europeans arrived. In 1640's Swedish families established settlements there. Dutch, English, and Swedes, fought over the area. England won control of it in 1674. Other Residences
The Trenton, New Jersey area before the British occupied it the 1660's.
The Wilmington, Delaware area prior to the whites arrival.In 1820 a small group of Delaware, and the George Pogue and John McCormick families were the only people living in Indianapolis, Indiana when it was chosen to be a state capital.
Where do they Live Today?
A majority of the Native American population reside in Oklahoma, the hub of their art and culture.
Delaware Indian Colors
Red and Black.
Jobs
They(Lenape) made items utilizing the natural materials around them. Until the Europeans arrival , their only tools were fashioned from shell, bone ,stone, and wood.They relied on farming for substinence. Both men and women had important responsibilities. Men were hunters, fisherman, warriors and healers.Women were farmers, cooks, seamstresses and reared their children.
Travel
For Delaware Indians living near the Great Lakes, their major mode of transportation was traveling by water. They were skilled craftsmen, and were known for their boatmaking.Their Umiak, kayak, and Birch bark canoes were of superior quality. Birch bark canoes were popular in northern United States. Delawares liked birch canoes because they were strong and lightweight enough to carry with ease. Canoe construction took place in spring. Delaware men cut the bark while Delaware women utilized their seamstress skills sewing the bark.The Pennsylvania Delaware made dugout canoes.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________Recreation
They admired strength and liked to compete with one another in contests and games. Running fast was an important skill, and races were often an important event. Boys tried their skill with the bow and arrow. Tossing a a pole through a rolling hoop was also an enjoyable game . Both men and women enjoyed team games...lacrosse was a favorite. In winter, people told stories to pass the time.
Pennsylvania Delaware Indians
Shortly after arriving in Pennsylvania In 1682 William Penn an English colonial leader signed a treaty of friendship with the Delaware. Penn paid them for most of the land King Charles gave him. According to legend, Penn and Tamemend,the chief of the Delaware Indians, exchanged wampum belts under the now famous Shackamaxon elm near Philadelphia, Pa. Despite the treaty with Penn, Europeans took the Delaware lands and gradually the tribes moved westward.
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Colonial Times
The early interaction between the Lenape and the Dutch was primarily through the fur trade, specifically the exchange of beaver pelts by the Lenape for European-made goods.
According to Dutch settler Isaac de Rasieres, who observed the Lenape in 1628, the Lenape's primary crop was maize, which they planted in March after breaking up the soil using metal tools acquired from the Europeans. In May, the Lenape planted kidney beans in the vicinity of the maize plants to serve as props. The summers were devoted to field work and the crops were harvested in August. Most of the field work was carried out by women, with the agricultural work of men limited to clearing the field and breaking the soil.
Hunting was the primary activity in the rest of the year. Dutch settler David de Vries, who stayed in the area from 1634 to 1644, described a Lenape hunt in the valley of the Achinigeu-hach (or "Ackingsah-sack," the Hackensack River), in which 100 or more men stood in a line many paces from each other, beating thigh bones on their palms to drive animals to the river. There thethe animals could be easily hunted. Other methods of hunting included lassoing and drowning deer, as well as forming a circle around prey and setting the brush on fire.
Dependance on European Goods
Delawares depended on European goods.Furs were traded with Europeans which eventually resulted in a disaster with an overharvesting of the beaver population in the lower Hudson area. When the fur source was exhausted, the Dutch shifted their operations to present-day Upstate New York. The Lenape population fell into disease and decline. Property rights between the Europeans and the Lenape resulted in widespread confusion among the Lenape and the loss of their lands.
After the Dutch arrival in the 1620s, the Lenape were successfully able to restrict Dutch settlement to present-day Jersey City along the Hudson until the 1660s.The Dutch did eventually establish a garrison at Fort Bergen, allowing settlement west of the Hudson.
The Treaty of Easton, signed between the Lenape and the English in 1766, removed the Delaware Indians westward, out of present-day New York and New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, then Ohio and beyond.
Nineteenth Century Delaware Indians
The Lenape were the first Native American tribe to enter into a treaty with the(future)United States government during the American Revolutionary War. The Lenape supplied the Revolutionary army with warriors and scouts in exchange for food supplies and the promise of a role at the head of a future native American state.
The Lenape were continually crowded out by European settlers and pressured to move in several stages over a period of about 175 years. The main body moved into the Northeast Oklahoma in the 1860s. Along the way many smaller groups split off in different directions to settle, to join established communities with other native peoples.Some remained where they were...hoping to survive when their brothers and sisters moved on. Today, from New Jersey to Oklahoma there are groups which retain a sense of identity with their ancestors that lived in the Delaware Valley in the 1600s.
The Largest Groups of Delaware Indians
The Delaware Tribe of Indians (Bartlesville, Oklahoma)
The Delaware Nation (Anadarko, Oklahoma) *The Delaware Tribe is separate from the Delaware Nation , also based in Oklahoma. The Delaware Nation filed a court case in Pennsylvania seeking land for a casino.
Most members of the Munsee branch of the Lenape live on three Indian reserves in Western Ontario, Canada, the largest being that at Moraviantown, Ontario where the Turtle clan settled in 1792.
Oklahoma branches were established in 1867, with the purchase of land by Delawares from the Cherokee nation; two payments totaling $438,000 were made. A court dispute then followed over whether the sale included rights for the Delaware within the Cherokee nation. In 1898 the Curtis Act dissolved tribal governments and ordered the allotment of tribal lands to individual members of tribes. The Lenape fought the act in the courts but lost. the courts ruled that in 1867 they had only purchased rights to the land for their lifetimes. The lands were allotted in 160 acre (650,000 m²) lots in 1907, with any land left over sold to Caucasians.
In 1979 the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs revoked the tribal status of the Delaware living among Cherokee in Oklahoma, and included the Delaware as Cherokee. This decision was finally overturned in 1996. The Cherokee nation then filed suit to overturn the recognition of the Delaware as a tribe.
____________________________________________________________________________________The Delaware Prophet
During the 1760's, a religious leader known as the Delaware prophet preached that Indians should abandon the use of firearms, and other European inventions.He advised them to return to tribal ways to expel the Europeans.The prophet influenced Pontiac, an Ottawa Native American leader to try and unite the Delaware and other Native Americans to attempt to drive out the intruders.Pontiac was defeated by the British in 1763.
In 1818 the Delaware surrendered their lands east of the Mississippi river to the government. Most of the Delaware moved to Missouri and then to Kansas.In the 1860's they moved to Oklahoma.
Sites pertaining the the Lenape, or Delaware Indians.Research them on your favorite search engine.
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Occasionally I use the word Indians in my report.Indians was the historical name for Native Americans, and not to confuse youth researching on this website.Most present day Delaware appreciate being called Native Americans.
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