Delaware people

Native North American tribe of the Algonquian linguistic family and of the Eastern Woodlands culture area, originally residing in what are now the states of New Jersey, New York (Staten Island, Manhattan, and western Long Island), Delaware, and eastern Pennsylvania.

The Delaware called themselves Lenape or Lenni Lenape, meaning "original people." Europeans named them Delaware because they lived along the Delaware River and its tributaries.

The Delaware confederacy included the Munsee, Unalachtigo, and Unami divisions. Members of other Algonquin tribes held the Delaware in esteem and respectfully addressed them as "grandfather."

The Delaware lived in peace with early European settlers and, according to legend, sold Manhattan Island to them in 1626. Growth of the European colonies on Delaware territory was rapid.

Native Americans sold much of their land to the Dutch and English. In 1682 they signed a treaty of friendship with Governor William Penn.

With less and less land, and under attack from the Iroquois, the Delaware began to move westward. One group was converted to Moravian Christianity in Pennsylvania and remained there.

By the mid-18th century, the main body of Delaware had abandoned their coastal villages and migrated to Ohio. Subsequent stops were in Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas.

By the 1860s, the Delaware reached Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma, where they settled with the Cherokee.

The Delaware lived in wigwams, one-room bark huts, originally arranged along the banks of their river and creeks.

A complete picture of their culture is difficult to reconstruct, but the Delaware were probably hunters and corn farmers.

Marriage was accomplished through an exchange of gifts, and it could be terminated easily by either party.

A Delaware chief, together with his advisers and the tribe's elders, selected the new chief among those who were eligible, based on matrilineal descent.

The Delaware addressed their prayers to Manito, their pantheistic god.

In 1990 Delaware descendants numbered 9,321. Many of them live on reservations and in towns in Oklahoma and in Ontario, Canada.

"Delaware (people)," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Delaware Indians/Lenape

The Delaware Indians, also called the Lenape, originally lived along the Delaware River in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They speak a form of the Algonquian Indian language and so are related to the Miami, Ottawa, and Shawnee Indians. The Delawares are called "Grandfathers" by the other Algonquin tribes because they believe them to be the oldest and original Algonquin nation.

The Delawares were driven from their homeland by colonists from Europe. They traveled west after about A.D. 1700 to get away from the European settlers. The Iroquois conquered the Delaware Indians and called them "women." This meant the Delawares did not have the right to sell land or wage war -- according to the Iroquois.

Some Delaware Indians came to live in eastern Ohio along the Muskingum River and some lived in northwestern Ohio along the Auglaize River. The Ohio Delawares became powerful and no longer feared the Iroquois.

Political alliances changed with the times. The Delawares were allies of the French until British traders moved into the Ohio country around A.D. 1740. The French pushed the British out of Ohio and the Delawares were forced to be allies of the French again until the British victory in the French and Indian War. But as French trading posts turned into British forts the Ohio Indians banded together to fight the British.

During the American Revolution the Delawares were allies of the Americans. The Amercans built Fort Laurens in the Tuscarawas valley to protect the Delaware Indian villages. Yet, even before the war was over, some frontiersmen hated the Delaware as bitterly as any other Indians. In 1782, a party of American militia killed ninety-six old men, women, and children at the Moravian Christian mission of Gnadenhutten. This became known as the Gnadenhutten Massacre. The brutality of the massacre turned many Delawares against the Americans. It seemed that no matter who won the whiteman's wars, the Indians lost.

General Anthony Wayne defeated the Delawares and other Ohio Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. They surrendered most of their lands in Ohio with the signing of the Treaty of Greenville.

In 1829 the United States forced the Delaware to give up their last reservation in Ohio. They were sent to live on a reservation in Kansas.

See also White Eyes

from the Ohio Historical Society Site, for more information please visit this site.

Delaware Tribe of Indians

The name DELAWARE was given to the natives who occupied the Delaware River Valley during the colonial occupation of English Governor Lord de la Warr. In their language they are LENAPE (len-ah'-pay) which means "The People" and belong to the Algonquian linguistic group. They were among the first Indians to come in contact with Europeans (Dutch, English, & Swedish) as early as 1600. They were considered a "Grandfather" tribe whose power, position, and spiritual presence served to settle disputes among rival tribes. Known also for their fierceness and tenacity as warriors they are recorded, however, as choosing a path of accommodation with the Europeans, treating William Penn for eastern Pennsylvania and signing the first Indian treaty with the United States (Sept. 17, 1778). Through war and peace the Lenape continued to give up their lands and moved westward (Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana). A small contingent of Delawares fled to Canada during a time of extreme persecution (1790) and today occupy two small reserves in Ontario province (Moraviantown and Munsee).

By 1820 they crossed the Mississippi River into Missouri and, during the next 40 years, produced 13 treaties which established a reservation in Kansas and ultimately a final move to the Indian Territory in 1866. Their 1867 agreement with the Cherokees allowed them to purchase a district to reside as Delawares within the Cherokee Nation. Since then they have primarily occupied modern-day Washington and Nowata Counties in Oklahoma and have continually maintained their cultural and governmental identity.

The Delaware of today number close to 10,000 and are headquartered in Bartlesville where the tribal government operates service programs. A small group of separately-organized Delawares (the Absentees) are located in Anadarko, Oklahoma on lands they jointly control with the Wichitas and Caddos. There has been a recent revival in cultural programs (language, song, and social dance) which has pleased the few remaining full-blood lders who feared cultural extinction.

Text & Graphic from the Delaware Tribe of Indians Site, for more info please visit this site.

West Virginia, History, Early Inhabitants

In about the 1640s the powerful Iroquois Confederacy drove the weaker groups out of much of the Ohio Valley, leaving West Virginia almost unpopulated. Advertisement The region became a hunting ground and a source of salt for tribes north of the Ohio.

When the first European settlers arrived about 1730, a few Tuscarora, Mingo, Shawnee, and Delaware (all members or subordinates of the Iroquois League) lived in the state, and their claims to the land delayed settlement. In 1744 the Iroquois relinquished their claims east of the Allegheny Mountains. In 1768 they gave up their remaining claims to West Virginia by the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. The Cherokee surrendered their claims by treaties in 1768 and 1770. The movement of pioneers into the region continued to be opposed, however, by other peoples, especially the Shawnee, until 1794.

The 18th Century, Native American Troubles

The great movement of settlers into trans-Allegheny Virginia began in 1769, after the signing of the treaties with the Iroquois and Cherokee. Pioneers streamed into the Greenbrier region, the Monongahela and upper Ohio valleys, and, after 1773, the Kanawha Valley. Many of them fell victim to the Shawnee, who still claimed western Virginia. Atrocities were committed on both sides. In 1774 Governor Dunmore undertook a retaliatory expedition after a raid by the Shawnee, which itself had been in retaliation for several brutal murders of Shawnee and Mingo by white settlers. The Shawnee were defeated in a day-long battle at Point Pleasant on October 10, 1774, and their chief, Cornstalk, signed a peace treaty. Later, in a meeting in Pittsburgh in September 1775, the Shawnee, Delaware, and five other important Native American nations promised to remain neutral in the war of the American Revolution (1775-1783), which had broken out that spring between Britain and its American colonies.

from: "West Virginia," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Delaware

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.

From the Wappinger article on the First Nations site, for much more information, please visit their site!