Lenni Lenape

• CATEGORY: Tribe
• CULTURE AREA: Northeast
• LANGUAGE GROUP: Eastern Algonquian
• PRIMARY LOCATION: Oklahoma
• POPULATION SIZE: 5,664 Nanticoke Lenni Lenape, New Jersey; 599 Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware (2019-2023 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates); 1,180 Delaware Lenape (2021 Statistics Canada)

The Lenni Lenape were the first tribe encountered by the European explorers who landed in the area of what is now northern Delaware, New Jersey, and southeastern New York.

The name Lenape has been ascribed various meanings: “a male of our kind,” “our men,” “men of the same nation,” “common,” “ordinary,” or “real” people. “Lenni Lenape” is redundant, as if to say, “the common, ordinary people.” They are sometimes referred to as the Delawares, which is not an Indigenous American word at all; the early English settlers, who had difficulty pronouncing Indigenous American names, were responsible for this term. In August 1610, Sir Samuel Argall, captain of the ship Discovery, sailed into the bay, which he later named De la Warre Bay in honor of Sir Thomas West, third Lord De la Warre, who was governor of the Virginia colony. The Indigenous Americans who lived along the shore of the bay and the banks of the river which fed into it were called the De la Warres, later shortened to Delawares.

Subtribes

Before the arrival of the Europeans, the Lenape lived in small villages containing only twenty-five or thirty people. Scholars are not sure of the total Lenape population before the coming of the Europeans; the usual estimates range from eight to twelve thousand people.

The early Dutch, Swedish, and English explorers soon realized that the Lenape could not simply be lumped together as one unified group. There were separate groups or bands scattered along the major waterways. One main division was the Minsi (“men of the stony country”), which included the Esophus, Tappan, Haverstraw, Canarsee, and Hackensack, among others, who lived in the area of what is now northern New Jersey, Manhattan Island, and the lower Hudson River Valley. The Unami (“fishermen”), which included the Raritan, Navesink, and Mantaes, lived in central New Jersey and along the Atlantic coast. The Unalachtigo (“people living near the ocean”) were found along the coast in present-day Delaware and southern New Jersey. Along the upper Delaware River Valley lived the Minisinks and other small, unnamed Indigenous American bands. These groups differed greatly in their language, religious beliefs, and culture; in fact, the Unami dialect of the Delaware language was so different from the Minsi, sometimes called Munsee, they could barely understand each other. In southern New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, Unami was the primary language dialect, while those in northern New Jersey, western Long Island, and the lower Hudson Valley primarily spoke the Munsee dialect. In the twenty-first century, both languages were considered critically endangered, with only a few native Munsee speakers remaining and potentially no native Unami speakers. Efforts to preserve these languages, including the Lenape Talking Dictionary, emerged in the 2010s and 2020s.

Political Organization

The individual tribes did not form a single Indigenous American nation because the Lenape villages functioned as separate political units. Each village was governed by at least two chiefs, a council, and the residents of the village. One chief, who either inherited or was elected to the position, held authority in times of peace, and his power was limited by the council and the village at large. His main function was to preside over meetings and ceremonies, direct hunting drives, and mediate disputes. The chief was usually no wealthier than his neighbors, as the Lenape practiced a communal way of life in which all members of the tribe shared equally. The second chief was a war chief, who was appointed because of his skills in war. With a war’s end, the peace chief resumed his limited authority. This system of government gave all members of the tribe considerable personal liberty and great equality of wealth.

Methods of Subsistence

The early Lenapes were primarily hunters and fishermen, pursuing bear, elk, deer, beaver, and muskrat. Their weapons consisted of spears made of wood or bone with a stone point. Fish were caught with nets, lines, or spears. Later, as their life became more sedentary, they began to produce articles of clay pottery. Lenape women engaged in agriculture and food gathering as villages became more permanent. Corn was the primary crop, which was ground into corn meal. They also grew squash, beans, and tobacco, and learned how to preserve food for future use. Meat was dried and cured, and ground corn and beans were placed in earthen pits and covered with bark or leaves. Fish was either dried in the sun or smoked. Many of the Lenape agricultural practices and food preservation methods were later adopted by European colonists.

Village Life

The largest and most permanent villages were usually located along major rivers or other large bodies of water. They were moved from time to time when the soil was depleted, as the Lenape were unaware of methods of crop rotation. For shelter, they built simple, circular structures constructed of curved saplings lashed together with hickory twigs or hemp and covered with strips of bark. A hole was left in the center of the structure to allow smoke from the inside fire to exit. In the northern parts of New Jersey, they built longhouses in which several families would live.

The Lenape wore simple clothing made from deer, elk, beaver, bear, fox, and raccoon skins. Lenape children wore little or no clothing in summer. Both men and women wore jewelry fashioned from shark teeth, bear claws, or shells, and for warfare and festive occasions, they painted their bodies with paints made from minerals, berries, roots, and bark.

On land, they traveled on foot; for water transportation, they built dugout canoes fashioned from fallen trees. A fire was started in the middle of the log, and the charred pieces were slowly removed with stone axes.

European Contact

Beginning with the arrival of the explorer Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524, the Lenape had increasing contact with the Europeans. With the arrival of the Dutch and English, competition for trading with the settlers among tribes became fierce. The Lenape highly valued the articles brought from Europe, especially textiles, guns, metal tools, and jewelry.

An unanticipated consequence of contact and trade with the Europeans was the introduction of two deadly commodities: alcohol and disease. The Lenapes had never known any form of alcoholic beverage, and they quickly developed a craving for beer, rum, and brandy. Alcohol was frequently abused, and many European traders took advantage of the Indigenous peoples' weakness regarding alcohol, offering them strong drink during trading encounters and then cheating them out of their money.

The Europeans also unwittingly transmitted diseases for which the Lenape had no natural immunity: smallpox, typhus, influenza, venereal diseases, and malaria. These sicknesses were so severe among Indigenous people, that they sometimes eliminated whole communities. During the colonial period, epidemics of measles, chicken pox, and scarlet fever also dramatically reduced their numbers.

Social Life

The average Lenape family had from four to six children, but infant mortality was very high. Newborn children were wrapped in animal skins, which were fastened to a cradleboard by three braided strips; one went over the baby’s forehead, one went over the arms, and one secured the legs. While the mother was working in the fields, the cradleboard and the baby were hung on the branch of a tree. At an early age, boys were instructed in the techniques of hunting, war, and woodcraft, while girls were trained in planting and cultivating crops as well as housekeeping duties.

Because their life expectancy was not very long, boys were considered ready for marriage at seventeen or eighteen, once they had proved they possessed the necessary hunting skills to provide for a family. Girls were eligible for marriage once they became sexually mature, at around thirteen or fourteen years of age. Marriages were usually arranged by parents, with some consent of the couple allowed. There was little ceremony involved. In some cases, a man would simply ask a woman if she wanted to live with him, and if she agreed the tribe considered them to be married.

Death was considered to be caused by evil spirits. Burial rites were simple, the body being placed in a shallow pit lined with bark. Food, clothing, tobacco pipes, and clay pots were often placed with the corpse for use by the deceased in the next life.

Religious Beliefs

Like most Indigenous Americans, the Lenape were a deeply religious people. Unlike the European settlers, whose Christian beliefs taught them that God favored them over other creatures, the Lenape believed they were an integral part of the natural world. They also firmly believed in an afterlife. The soul, they thought, left the body at the time of death but remained nearby for several days, consuming the food left at the grave site. Then, it departed to the land of the spirits, a pleasant place where one met one’s deceased relatives and had plenty of food and good hunting.

The Lenape worshiped many gods, with a supreme being, Manito, at the head. Manito created the earth and everything on it. Lesser gods served as his agents; in addition, almost all plants and animals were considered to contain supernatural spirits. Communication with the gods was through prayers and offerings. Lenape tribes also had a shaman who specialized in curing illnesses or foretelling the future. Since illness was attributed to evil spirits entering the body, it was the job of the shaman to scare the spirits away. The shaman was considered a special member of the tribe, and his secrets were passed on only to a legal descendant or a close and trusted friend. There is some evidence that a special house was constructed in some villages for the exorcism of disease.

In the early years of contact with Europeans, Lenape religion was relatively unaffected. The settlers considered the Indigenous Americans to be godless, and some religious groups, most notably the Moravians, attempted to learn the Lenape language and convert them to Christianity. A few did convert, but they often quickly went back to their traditional beliefs; Christian sermons did not make sense within their worldview, and Christian practices did not fit into their way of life. Perhaps the only lasting effect of Christianity on Lenape religion was the emergence of an annual ceremony celebrating the harvest. A “big house,” a bark-covered structure about 40 feet (12 meters) long and 25 feet (7.5 meters) wide was constructed exclusively for this purpose. For twelve nights in mid-October, sacred fires were maintained at each entrance, and the interior was decorated with twelve posts with faces carved on them to represent the twelve gods who occupied the heavens. A cooking fire burned in the center, and deer meat was hung from a pole or tree before which prayers were said to aid the hunters. Other prayers gave thanks for a bountiful harvest.

Relocation

The Lenape were the dominant tribe in the East until about 1720. As the White settlers continued to arrive, the Indigenous American Nations were gradually crowded out. The settlers had cleared many of the forests for farming, thus driving away the deer, bear, and wild turkeys. They dammed the rivers to power their mills, disrupting the annual spawning runs of fish. With these drastic changes, the traditional Lenape way of life was destroyed. Those who remained began to sell their remaining lands to the eager colonists and move across the Delaware River to the west, never to return.

The Unalachtigo were the first to depart, around 1725, relocating to northern New York State. They were followed by the Minsi around 1742, who settled for a time in southeastern Pennsylvania and later in Ohio and Indiana. Some crossed Lake Erie into Canada, while others went to the area around the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. In 1867, many Lenapes moved into the Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma and were incorporated into the Cherokee Nation. A few went to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where they remained for many years. Some Lenape remained on their original ancestral land between the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware Bay as the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation, which exists under a constitutional government.

Bibliography

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"Interrelated Tribes." Nanticoke and Lenape Confederation, nanticokelenapemuseum.org/confederation. Accessed 20 Jan. 2025.

Kraft, Herbert C. The Lenape: Archaeology, History, and Ethnography. New Jersey Historical Society, 1986.

Kraft, Herbert C. The Lenape Indians of New Jersey. Seton Hall Museum, 1987.

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