History

Overview

Delaware Nation is a sovereign federally recognized Nation of Lenape people. The Lenape are the Indigenous peoples whose ancestral homelands encompassed eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and parts of New York, Connecticut, and Maryland since time immemorial. But the Lenape people also traveled, hunted, traded, and interacted with other Nations well beyond these artificial boundaries.

“Lenape” is the correct term by which we refer to ourselves, and it means “the people.” Lenape is also the name of our language, which is part of the broader Algonquian language family. The name “Delaware” is now used interchangeably with Lenape, but “Delaware” is a European term. The Lenape became collectively referred to as the Delaware by European colonists because of their proximity to the Delaware River, which Europeans had named after their first governor of the Province of Virginia: Thomas West, third Baron De La Warr. The Lenape people have over 15,000 years of history in the homelands before the arrival of Europeans to Lenape homelands.

Historically, there were many related Lenape communities living throughout our homeland region. Among these communities, there were at least two different dialects of the Lenape language spoken (Munsee in the north and Unami in the south), and at least three different family clans (Wolf, Turkey, and Turtle). Membership to a clan is determined by the mother’s family line, which is why the Lenape are a matrilineal culture. The Lenape are also matriarchal, which means that female leadership is significant to Lenape society. Lenape communities would typically have their own chiefs or sakima, selected democratically by elders and matriarchs. There was not necessarily one singular or centralized “Lenape Nation” in the way that Europeans conceptualized nationhood. Lenape society was more dispersed and egalitarian, and leadership would often convene together to discuss shared issues and negotiate treaties affecting all Lenape people. The Lenape were a significant sovereign force politically, socially, and economically in their homeland region both before and after contact with Europeans, and renowned as skilled diplomats in negotiations with other Tribal and European Nations.

As a result of fragmentation from a century of forced removals from their homelands, there is still not one singular Nation of Lenape people today. Rather, there are multiple federally recognized Tribal Nations or First Nations of Lenape people in the United States and Canada. In addition to Delaware Nation, they are Delaware Tribe of Indians (Bartlesville Oklahoma), Stockbridge Munsee Community (Bowler Wisconsin), and Munsee Delaware Nation and Eelūnaapèewii Lahkèewiit (Delaware Nation at Moraviantown) both in Ontario Canada. The tribal governments and largest populations of Lenape people today reside in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Canada, with some families and Citizens living across North America.

There are countless examples of settler colonial violence, unjust or fraudulent dispossessions, and broken treaties which contributed to the many forced removals of the Lenape people from their homelands. A few of the major ones are: Peter Minuit’s dubious “purchase” of Manahatta (Manhattan Island, New York); William Penn’s sons seizing much of eastern Pennsylvania through the fraudulent Walking Purchase of 1737; or the United States’ first made and first broken treaty with a Tribal Nation, the 1778 Treaty of Fort Pitt. The enduring Nations of Lenape people fought fiercely through settler colonial oppression to uphold their sovereignty and still be here today. Delaware Nation is proud to preserve and protect Lenape culture and sovereignty in perpetuity for future generations.

Oral History

The Lenape creation story tells us that one day the rain came and the People prayed to our Creator as the waters rose. The Creator directed the People to a large hill and told them to camp upon it. As the rain continued to fall the water began to pool and rise around them, so they moved to the very top of this hill. As the water crept up toward them wetting their feet, the hill began to tremble and shake. Rising up with the People upon its back was the great Tahkox, or turtle, who had been hiding beneath the hill for many years. Tahkox saved the Lenape people and they survived upon his back until the waters receded.

The Lenape origin story embodies the significance of water to Lenape life and society, which is abundant in Lenape homelands and sustained our travel, agricultural economy, and livelihood. The Lenape established villages all along the Delaware River, Hudson River, and others in the region, as well as along the Atlantic coast. Most families lived in domed tree bark covered houses called wigwams and communities also established bigger structures for gathering spaces. Fish and other aquatic species were crucial parts of the Lenape people’s diet, and skills such as fishing, canoeing, and making wampum beads from Quahog shells became important cultural traditions.

In our book Turtle Tales: Oral Traditions of the Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma, Martha Ellis tells another origin story of the Lenape arriving to this continent, Turtle Island, presumably by crossing the ancient land bridge that had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska:

“My mother used to say, we came from another island (I guess I will say), not in this . . . She said, ‘We crossed, we had to go way up in the North Pole, and the ocean was all frozen.’ They had to go that way. So, these Delawares did have plenty to eat on, but they ran out of food right in the middle.  So they started eating whatever, they were so hungry. Finally, they got on this side and that is all I know. My mother was telling us. That’s all.”

The Walum Olum book published by French naturalist Constantine Rafinesque in the 1830s also claims to tell a version of this Lenape origin story. Book Three of the Walum Olum verses fifteen through seventeen describes an event similar to Martha Ellis’s story:

“All of them said they would go together to the land there, all who were free . . . the Northerners were of one mind and the Easterners were of one mind; it would be good to live on the other side of the frozen water. Things turned out well for those who stayed at the shore of water frozen hard as rocks, and for those at the great hollow wells.”

Rafinesque claimed to have transcribed the Walum Olum from mnemonic glyphs, or picture writing, on tablets he collected from a Delaware person living in the Ohio Valley, which were later lost. The Walum Olum has a contentious history of scholars challenging its authenticity. Scholars today have concluded that it is a fraudulent document, arguing that its images were likely “copied from readily available published sources showing other cultures’ glyphic writings” (Townsend and Michael 25). However, it’s important to note that “there is evidence the Lenape did originally have their own glyphic writing,” which Moravian missionaries living among the Lenape noted in their journals (Townsend and Michael 25).

Among the northeastern region of Turtle Island, the Lenape were often referred to as the grandfathers, and often addressed other related Algonquian Tribes as their grandchildren. These kinship ties and cultural markers, in addition to oral tradition, suggest that the Lenape are among the oldest Indigenous peoples of the region identifying it as their homelands.

Early Contact

The Lenape were among the first Native peoples to meet with some of the earliest European explorers, traders, and colonizers that came to North America. One of the first Europeans that arrived in Lenape homelands was Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian sailing for France who landed in the New York Bay around 1524. In the early 1600s, Henry Hudson also made multiple trips to North America funded by the Dutch United East India Company to explore the Hudson River, which would be named after him as the region became colonized by the Dutch. Some of Hudson’s encounters with Lenape people were documented in his shipmate Robert Juet’s journal, and later in Moravian missionary John Heckewelder’s 1818 book History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations. In 1626 Peter Minuit, a Belgian employed by the Dutch West India Company, took over as governor for the New Netherland colony and is infamous for claiming to have purchased Manhattan from the Lenape for the equivalent of a mere $24 today (depending on which source you read). But the Lenape likely would not have intended or understood any such agreement to be a wholesale land “purchase” transaction. Rather, the Lenape more commonly made diplomatic land or resource sharing agreements with other Nations, which would have allowed Europeans to move through the area or share it for activities like hunting, but which often also required cyclical renewals or gift exchange to maintain. Events like this are a critical marker of the differences between European and Lenape conceptions of land ownership, and how the Lenape people’s considerate diplomacy and cultural/language barriers were often taken advantage of by colonizers in land grabs.

In 1667 the English claimed control of Lenape homelands after power struggles with previously established Dutch and Swedish colonies in the region. Quaker William Penn was granted a charter by King Charles II to found the English colony that would become Pennsylvania around 1682. Upon his arrival to Lenape homelands Penn allegedly made the Treaty of Shackamaxon in what would become Philadelphia, PA with Lenape Chief Tamanend to solidify peaceful relations. A famous wampum belt depicting two figures holding hands was passed down through the Penn family and is now held by City of Philadelphia, which is believed to have been produced for this original treaty. But there are no surviving paper documents from this agreement. Penn’s legacy of friendship with the Lenape was immortalized and often romanticized in the centuries after his death through popular culture, public history, and art. However, not all Lenape people agreed that Penn’s dealings were always friendly or fair. Pennsylvania’s historical records preserved multiple complaints and expressions of dissatisfaction from Lenape communities in response to instances that Penn failed to pay his debts or uphold certain treaty obligations. Furthermore, it would be remiss to ignore that Penn’s intention was ultimately still to dispossess the Lenape of large swaths of their homelands for his own profit or settlement, which warrants critical consideration regardless of whether his methods were less violent.

Jean R. Soderlund’s book Lenape Country made an important contribution to historical understanding about what happened in Lenape homelands in the decades leading up to Penn’s arrival, as the Lenape people defended their sovereignty against the Swedish and Dutch colonists grappling for power in the region. Her work importantly reminds us that “the hallmarks of Delaware Valley society—commitment to personal freedom, religious liberty, peaceful resolution of conflict, and opposition to hierarchical government—began…not with Quaker ideals or the leadership of William Penn, but with the Lenape” (University of Penn Press description of Lenape Country).

Since most histories and ethnographies about the Lenape (both historic and more recent) have been written by non-Lenape people and without consultation with Lenape people, it’s important to remember that while many such texts are still useful sources of information, they often exhibit varying degrees of inaccuracy and/or bias.

The Walking Purchase & Forced Removal

Any peace William Penn and Chief Tamanend might have secured between their peoples with their initial treaty was unfortunately short-lived. After William Penn’s death, his sons and other colonial Pennsylvania officials devised a land grab scheme to dispossess the Lenape of their homelands in eastern Pennsylvania, which became known as the Walking Purchase. In 1737 Penn’s sons met with the Lenape and presented an illegitimate treaty supposedly signed with William Penn decades earlier relinquishing lands between the forks of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers. In reality, these officials were intentionally deceiving Lenape leaders through manipulations of the written word to steal lands that still belonged to the Lenape, some of which the Penns had already begun illegally surveying and selling off to settlers.

Lenape leaders were reluctantly persuaded to agree to re-confirm the boundaries of the tract claimed by Pennsylvania officials, which was defined in the illegitimate treaty document as extending “as far as a man could go in a day and a half.” Pennsylvania officials took advantage of the vague terms of this agreement in numerous ways: hiring the fastest walkers/runners they could find, offering incentive prizes to whomever covered the most land, pre-clearing a path, among other exploitations, all of which the Lenape protested to no avail. Pennsylvania officials ultimately took significantly more land than the Lenape thought they would, a little over a million acres in total—an injustice instrumental in Lenape removal which continued to be protested through the present day.

As a result of the Walking Purchase and increasing settler occupation, dispossession, and violence, the Lenape are forced out of their homelands into Ohio territory. As the British and French fight over converging land claims, the French and Indian War eventually breaks out around 1754, immersing frontier settlements across Pennsylvania in conflict. Many Lenape ally themselves with the French against the British in retaliation for the Walking Purchase. Colonists place bounties on the heads of Lenape people, and multiple massacres occur throughout this time period.

At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War Lenape leaders tried to remain neutral, which was a difficult decision when most Tribal Nations around them were allying with the British. Lenape leader Koquethagechton, a.k.a. Chief or Captain White Eyes, diligently pursued means to secure the lands they now occupied in Ohio territory. White Eyes was instrumental in establishing the Fort Pitt Treaty, which he signed on September 17th, 1778 along with Lenape leaders Gelelemund, a.k.a. Captain John Killbuck Jr., and Captain Pipe. In return for supporting the United States, the Lenape were promised resources, protected lands to live on, a state in the new nation, and a seat in Congress. But the United States did not uphold their end of this treaty. Thus, the 1778 Fort Pitt Treaty was both the first U.S treaty signed with and broken with a Native Nation.

Just two months after the Fort Pitt Treaty was signed, Chief White Eyes was murdered by American militiamen. Lenape villages were attacked and burned by American Colonel Daniel Brodhead and his troops between 1779 and 1781. On March 8^th 1782, American militiamen slaughtered 96 Lenape elders, men, women, children, and infants at Gnadenhutten, Ohio—these were Christianized Moravian Lenape known for their neutrality and pacifism, murdered in cold blood. This is just a small fraction of the often violent and unjust legacy of settler colonialism that resulted in Euro-Americans living on Lenape homelands today, while the governing bodies of Lenape people were repeatedly persecuted and forced far away along a trail of broken treaties.

Arrival in Oklahoma

Over the course of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the Lenape were forced further and further from their homelands. Between 1778 and 1830 the Lenape governing bodies that would become known as Delaware Tribe of Indians and Delaware Nation were party to over 15 treaties with the United States that moved them from Ohio to Indiana, into Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, and eventually Oklahoma. Each treaty agreement was eventually broken or forced into renegotiation, as the United States proceeded with westward expansion. Lands the Lenape were promised became reclaimed by the United States again and again without fair compensation.

Around 1789, the main body of Lenape people split into two separate sovereign entities. One community began to move from Indiana to Missouri, and eventually into Kansas then eastern Oklahoma, which would become known as Delaware Tribe of Indians. The other community was deemed the “Absentee Delaware,” who in 1793 moved to a different land grant in Cape Girardeau, Missouri given to them by the Governor General of Louisiana, Bron de Carondelet, which they would share with the Shawnee. This is the governing body of Lenape that would eventually become known as Delaware Nation.

By 1815 the Absentee Delaware were ousted from their Missouri lands and moved toward the then Spanish territory of Texas, making settlements in Arkansas along the way. In 1854, after Texas had become an American state, the government established a reservation on the Brazos River for Tribal Nations in the area which included the Absentee Delaware. They would find themselves removed within Texas several more times before they are eventually moved for the last time to Wichita allotments in Anadarko, Oklahoma around 1873 (Hale Peacemakers 54, 87).

Affirming Tribal Sovereignty & Current Events

The Absentee Delaware spent much of the late 19^th and early 20^th century affirming their ongoing sovereignty as an enduring Nation separate from Delaware Tribe of Indians, and appealing the United States government to uphold treaty obligations with them. They ratified their first constitution in 1973 (Hale Peacemakers 155), and officially changed their name to Delaware Nation in 1999. Delaware Nation’s federal recognition status today is understood as acknowledgement of their longstanding and ongoing legacy of sovereignty, self-determination, and self-governance—which has been affirmed through government-to-government relations with the United States, but which also predates the United States through relations with other European and Tribal Nations before them.

In 2019 Delaware Nation became the first Tribal Nation on the western side of Oklahoma to remove BIA oversight from their constitution, strengthening their sovereignty and self-governance. In 2019 with a majority vote from Citizens, they also eliminated blood quantum as a requirement for enrollment in favor of lineal descendance, ensuring the longevity of the Nation.

Consultation & Education

Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation out there regarding Lenape culture, history, and who the Lenape people and Nations are today. This is why we always recommend speaking directly to the federally recognized Nations to learn their history from them. The Nations’ Historic or Cultural Preservation Offices are often the best places to initiate contact and make any requests about consultation, collaboration, or education efforts.

Furthermore, Delaware Nation and Lenape people as a whole are currently facing adversity from the increasing issue of fraudulent or misrepresentative claims to Lenape identity and nationhood. Individuals, nonprofit organizations, and “state recognized” groups making these claims have appropriated Lenape culture, language, homelands, and other resources as well as undermined our sovereignty and self-determination. This is why Delaware Nation has issued formal governmental resolutions that we do not acknowledge or work with any non-federally recognized groups that claim Lenape identity or nationhood, which includes “state recognized” groups as we do not agree with state recognition. Our offices will not engage in consultations or collaborations that involve any such groups in order to protect our sovereignty. Because of this issue as well as ongoing widespread misrepresentation, tribal consultation and improving education are priorities. But we must also be cautious about the public distribution of Lenape culture and history in order to ensure the protection of our traditional knowledge, intellectual and data sovereignty, and agency over our sacred sites and cultural resources.

Please contact Delaware Nation’s offices directly with any questions or consultation inquiries.

References

Camilla Townsend and Nicky Kay Michael, On the Turtle’s Back: Stories the Lenape Told their Grandchildren, Rutgers University Press, 2023.

Duane Hale, Turtle Tales: Oral Traditions of the Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma, Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma Press, 1984.

Duane Hale, Peacemakers on the Frontier: A History of the Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma, Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma Press, 1987.

Jean R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.

Delaware Nation Historic Preservation Office Contact Information

Carissa Speck, Director of Historic Preservation

cspeck@delawarenation-nsn.gov

405-901-1715 ext 1301

Katelyn Lucas, Historic Preservation Officer

klucas@delawarenation-nsn.gov

405-544-8115

Mailing Address

Delaware Nation
P.O. Box 825
Anadarko, OK  73005

PHONE:  (405) 247-2448
FAX:   (405) 247-9393