Pennsbury Arrowmen Lend A Hand At
Historic Treaty Signing
About a dozen Scouts and
Scouters lent a hand with parking at the Pennsbury Manor
on Saturday morning, August 24th. The occasion: an
historic signing of a treaty between the Lenni Lenape
Tribe and the Delaware River Greenway Partnership and other
organizations interested in preserving both the
Lenape culture and their homelands along the river's
shores.
After the parking was
taken care of, everyone went in to participate as
witnesses to the treaty's signing. Before the
ceremonies, the Itchy Dog Drum Group played, while some
tribe members danced and another "smudged" the
crowd, encouraging all to fan the smoke of smoldering
sage on themselves to
cleanse the mind and body.
The location was fitting
as the Lenape tribe first signed a treaty with
William Penn, who made is home on the estate, in a relationship of peace and harmony
that lasted a decade. With hopes to again enter an
agreement to preserve Lenape culture, language, and
traditional homelands, several hundred people gathered
to hear tribe spokesman Jim Beer explain the reasons for
the day's activities and thank everyone who made it
possible. Jim presented Jim McNutt, President of
the Delaware River Greenway Partnership, a gift of the
neck-piece he had worn during the trek down the
Delaware.
McNutt spoke next, and
described this partnership as one "made in Heaven"
for now his organization was "joined at the
heart" with the resources it has fights to
preserve. Afterwards Carrie Martin of Earth Rhythm
spoke, citing that perhaps Native Americans are the
"miner's canary" of society; what befalls them
will befall us. She then read the treaty, which
was carried down to a table and laid upon sacred wampum
to be signed.
Plenty of food and soft
drinks were ready for the crowd afterwards, which had
been enjoying water ice throughout the warm
afternoon. Entertainment was on the menu also,
with several Native American groups due to
perform, and an evening friendship dance in which all
were welcome to participate.
George Bruck, Jr
The Cry Of The River
August
25, 2002
Remaining members of the
Lenape tribe, which populated the banks of the
Delaware River before European colonization,
signed a "treaty of renewed
brotherhood" at Pennsbury Manor yesterday.
By JAMES
McGINNIS
Courier Times
The
Itchy Dog Drum Group performs as Bart
Standing Elk Cartwright dances during
the Treaty of Renewed Brotherhood
Signing and celebration at Pennsbury
Manor.
(Photo: Lori Ervin Oliveras/Courier
Times)
As the drum beat sent shock waves through their
hearts, the smell of burning sweet grass and
sage filled the air. Time and civilization fell
away as tribal dancing began on the banks of the
Delaware River at Pennsbury Manor yesterday.
When the tribal council spoke of the past and
read aloud a prayer in the Lenape tongue, crowds
of Native Americans and other respectful
participants stood as stone statues. Some raised
their open hands to the sky to catch droplets of
midday rain.
And when the treaty was signed, they looked
toward the river and thought not about the past
- a time three centuries ago when the Lenape
tribe was driven off the banks of the Delaware -
but about the future. They accepted the
challenge of saving the river and redeeming the
culture of the Lenape people, who'd lived along
its banks for thousands of years.
More than 400 people, many of them
indistinguishable as Lenape descendants and some
claiming not to bear any native blood, joined
representatives of the Delaware River Greenway
Partnership of Frenchtown, N.J., to sign a
treaty of renewed brotherhood.
The Delaware River Greenway Partnership - a
cooperative fellowship of more than 100
nonprofit and government organizations,
including the Pennsylvania and New Jersey
departments of environmental protection - is
seeking to create river access/recreation stops
along the Delaware.
The Lenape (pronounced "len-AW-pay")
are believed to be the original inhabitants of
lands along the Delaware. The tribe is seeking
land along the river where it hopes to build a
cultural center, but no exact location has been
specified.
Yesterday's treaty signing binds both groups
in an effort to reach two specific, perhaps
impossible, goals:
preserve the culture of the tribe, whose
numbers have declined from more than 250,000
to fewer than 17,000 in Pennsylvania today;
protect the river on which the Lenape once
lived.
The tribe signed a similar treaty of
brotherhood with William Penn soon after the
Englishman and Quakers came to the New World in
1683.
The current head of the Pennsbury estate,
director Doug Miller, stood before the Lenape
leaders yesterday. In a deliberate and symbolic
gesture, he called up the incense of sweet grass
and sage burning in a large seashell, wafting it
into his face and over his body before bowing to
the tribe.
For the first time, tribal leaders said, the
Lenape are ready to share their culture and
their history with the rest of America.
"This is the first time in over a
hundred years for our tribe to sign a treaty
befitting the people of the Lenape and for us to
commit ourselves to sharing our culture with
non-Native American members of our
community," Chief Bob Redhawk said.
History tells of how Penn's treaty and
countless others signed by English governors and
later American presidents were broken. Penn is
believed to have honored his treaty with the
Lenape, but later generations of Penn's family
did not.
What followed for the Lenape was a 130-year
journey - being shuffled by the government from
one territory to another, each time heading
farther West until ending up in Oklahoma,
according to the Delaware Tribal Headquarters
based in that state.
Some members of the tribe, like Sellersville
native Jim Beer, a member of the
Pennsylvania-based Lenape tribal council,
remained. Beer and about 40 others, some active
in the tribe and others merely dedicated to
preserving the river, began a month-long journey
kayaking down the river from Hancock, N.Y., to
Cape May, N.J., on Aug. 4.
Beer said his journey - from "kanshihaking"
("the place of elegant land") to
"siskuwihane" ("the muddy and
disturbed waters") - was like
"traveling down a timeline.
"It was very rough emotionally. As we
got down towards Trenton, the river changed from
this pristine place and you could see the
effects of civilization on the waters."
Richard McNutt, president of the Delaware
River Greenway Partnership, said the Lenape
would provide an invaluable source of
inspiration and information as work on
preserving and protecting the river continues.
"The Lenape people have an inherited
genius about this river and how it should be
treated," he said. "Traveling down the
Delaware, it becomes obvious that the quality of
the water is an example of the quality of the
people who live along it."
Many people often associate the name Delaware
with the name of a Native American tribe, but
the name is actually derived from that of
English Governor De La Warr.
Like many aspects of Native American history,
the truth has been replaced by Hollywood
mythology, Beer said. And as tribal elders die
and holy burial and other sacred sites are
destroyed by development, more and more of the
tribe's culture is lost.
Wayne Standing Wolf Posten of Southampton has
drafted an appeal on his way to Harrisburg this
fall that begs the state to recognize
Pennsylvania's first inhabitants.
"We not asking for anything more than to
be recognized," Posten said.
Asked why the state has not yet recognized
the tribe, Posten's face turned to the river
where he looked out to see two speedboats racing
southward toward Philadelphia.
"For 270 years we have been very
quiet," he said. "I don't know why
that is, but it is now going to change."
PHILADELPHIA -- Hundreds of years ago,
Jim Beer's forefathers canoed down the Delaware River to
hunt, fish and trade the fruits of their harvest.
Now, he is tracing their path in a
330-mile trek to raise awareness of the Lenape tribe's
historic past and its perilous future.
The American Indian tribe, which once
called home the fertile farms and woodlands of the East
Coast from upstate New York to the tip of Delaware, are
losing their sacred sites to neglect, their language and
customs to a lack of resources, Beer said.
He hopes the trek will mark an
important step toward getting local Lenapes and the
state to sustain the tribe's history.
"The only ancient history of
Pennsylvania is our people's history," said Beer,
who lives in northern Bucks County. "So preserving
Lenape history is preserving the ancient history of
Pennsylvania."
Beer has been joined by friends,
day-tripping canoeists and environmental groups along
the trip, which started Aug. 4 at the top of the
Delaware River in Hancock, N.Y.
About a half-dozen canoes arrived last
Sunday afternoon at Philadelphia's Penn Treaty Park,
where Pennsylvania's founder, William Penn, signed a
treaty with Lenape Chief Tamanend that Europeans and
Indians would live together in peace as long "as
the creeks and rivers run and while the sun, moon and
stars endure."
After a rest, the group was to travel
30 miles back north to Bucks County's Pennsbury Manor,
Penn's former estate, in Morrisville to sign a
"treaty of renewed brotherhood."
The treaty was to be signed between
the Lenape and the Delaware River Greenway Partnership,
a consortium of more than 100 government agencies and
nonprofit groups.
The journey will then head south again
and finishes with a celebration in Cape May, N.J., next
Sunday.
"Our goals are consistent with
theirs: preserving and protecting ecology, history,
culture," said partnership president Richard
McNutt, who has traveled the entire trek with Beer.
"For their culture to disappear
is almost a cruelty to humanity, and we are committed to
helping them keep their culture alive in every way we
can."
The journey and treaty is meant to
forge a new relationship between the Lenape and
communities along the Delaware River, inspired by the
brotherhood between the Lenape and Penn, that organizers
hope will bring grass-roots and government support for
reversing the Lenape's cultural crisis.
Only a small handful of elders
fluently speak Lenape, a version of the Algonquin
tongue.
The tribe also says its fading oral
history needs to be documented for posterity and many of
its sacred sites and burial grounds must be cataloged
and preserved.
The tribe also is hoping for donated
land for a Pennsylvania cultural center -- a home base
for preservation efforts and community activities.
"Every culture, wherever it is
you come from, has a land base. That's something we
don't have in Pennsylvania," Beer said.
The Lenape, also known as Lenni Lenape,
roughly translated as "real people," lived in
independent villages and bands and settled in large
numbers along the Delaware River, which led European
settlers to call them the Delaware tribe.
Their troubles began when English,
Swedish and Dutch settlers began to encroach upon Lenape
territory in the 17th century.
The Lenape also were forced to give up
much of their land in treaties, including the infamous
Walking Purchase of 1737, a swindle perpetrated by
Penn's sons that cheated the tribe out of 1,200 square
miles -- a plot the size of Rhode Island.
Many Lenape were pushed westward into
areas that are now Pennsylvania and Ohio, and wars and
epidemics dwindled their numbers from as many as 20,000
people in 1600 to about 2,000 by 1850.
People with Lenape ancestry are now
scattered throughout Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Ontario,
Canada; several hundred families remain in Pennsylvania.
Groups
pledge faith to Lenape Brotherhood Treaty is signed to
promote natives' culture.
By Christine Schiavo Of The Morning Call
In good faith and good
feelings, amid beating drums and burning sage, Lenape
Indians and Delaware River stewards renewed a
300-year-old commitment to friendship Saturday on the
historic spot where William Penn and Chief Tamenend made
the original promise.
About two dozen people signed a Treaty of Renewed
Brotherhood under an elm tree at Pennsbury Manor, Penn's
Bucks County estate in Falls Township, promising to
maintain and promote the Lenape culture.
''We're in a
new life with the Lenape people,'' said Richard McNutt,
president of the Delaware River Greenway Partnership, an
umbrella organization of more than 100 environmental
groups. ''We're going to go long and we're going to go
far. Wanishi
. Wanishi. Wanishi to everyone here.''
The signing occurred three weeks after a group of river
stewards started a monthlong canoe journey down the
Delaware in Hancock, N.Y., that will end next Sunday in
Cape May, N.J. Their history tied to the river, the
Lenape (also known as the Delaware Indians) have teamed
with environmental groups, churches, historical
societies and others to protect the river and its
watershed.
Representatives of such organizations were invited to
sign the treaty. Tricia Knafo of Allentown did so on
behalf of her parents, Ed and MaryAnn Kobble of
Phillipsburg, who have been active in preserving the
river.
Jeffrey Schmoyer, owner of Bachmann Publik House in
Easton, also signed. Schmoyer's wife, Cherie, is a
descendent of the Lenape. But Schmoyer's signing had
more to do with his business, which, he said, is the
only tavern still standing in Northampton County where
treaties were signed during the French and Indian War.
Valid until 2006, the Brotherhood Treaty requires a
periodic recommitment of its principles. Each generation
will get several chances to sign the document and to
remember its mission, McNutt said.
The treaty calls for recognition of the Lenape as the
original inhabitants of Pennsylvania, a designation the
tribe has been trying to get the state's General
Assembly to approve. It also calls for the creation of a
Lenape cultural center, the continuation of the Lenape
language and customs and a commitment to protect the
tribe's sacred land sites.
''We want to give our children something strong to grab
onto, instead of grabbing at threads to try to figure
out who they are,'' said Jim Beer, Lenape spokesman.
The treaty is a big first step for the tribe, which has
traditionally kept its practices private. Chief Robert
Redhawk of Norristown noted that popular culture has
chipped away at Lenape traditions, leaving fewer tribal
people who speak the language and understand the
symbols.
Wearing a bear-tooth necklace around his Ralph Lauren
Polo shirt, braided hair and sneakered feet, Redhawk
spoke of living in two societies: one traditional, the
other modern. With the treaty, the tribe has opened its
society to the non-Lenape in the hopes that they will
work together to keep the Lenape culture alive.
Some are skeptical. Tribal councilman Wayne Standing
Wolf Posten of Southampton noted that all of the 22
treaties signed by the Lenape have been broken.
In taking up the pen, Posten said, ''Today, with a
little skepticism, I hope that this treaty never gets
broken.''
The Lenape have a right to be cautious. Many would say
they were robbed in the so-called Walking Purchase of
1737, where the tribe lost nearly 1,200 square miles
through the scheming of Penn's son, Thomas. The loss
occurred when the Lenape reluctantly agreed to abide by
the terms of a suspiciously written treaty that had Penn
acquiring all the land that could be covered in a day
and a half's walk. Penn hired runners to cover the
territory, surprising the Indians, who had expected the
men to walk and stop for meals. The runners snatched
much of Pike, Carbon, Monroe, Northampton and Bucks
counties for Penn.
The event strained relations between whites and Indians
and splintered the Lenape tribe.
Putting the past behind them, those who renewed the
Brotherhood Treaty spoke of a new era of good feelings
between Lenape and non-Lenape.
McNutt vowed, ''I'll honor the treaty until my heart
stops beating.''
