Northeast Wigwam | The Leni Lenape Delaware Indians

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The Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Indians of New Jersey

The Nanticoke Indian Tribe

Delaware Tribe of Indians

Lenape Museum of Indian Culture

The Delaware Nation

The Thunder Mountain Lenape Indians - Pennsylvania and Ohio

Delaware History - dickshovel (Lee Sultzman)

Lenape Indian Fact Sheet - lot’s of links here, both good and not so good

Lenape - Wikipedia.com

Delaware Indian.com - contains a discussion board

1978 Goddard, Ives "Delaware". Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 15, Northeast. Bruce G. Trigger, editor. Smithsonian Institution Press.

1998 Johnson, Anne Janette and Schrecengost, Lyndi “Delaware”. The Gale Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. Vol 1, Northeast Southeast Carribean. Sharon Malonowski, Anna Sheets, Jeffrey Lehman, Melissa Walsh Doig, editors. Gale Research, Inc.

Although they never formed as an organized group, there were originally 2 distinct groups of the Lenape who we now call the Delaware Indians. Each group was from a different geographical location and spoke different dialects of the eastern Algonquian language. They were the Munsee, and the Unami who were influenced by possibly a third group, the Unalachtigo.

The Munsee were located in northern New Jersey and New York along the Hudson River and spoke the Munsee dialect. Included in this group were the Minisink, Esopus, Haverstraw, Tappan, Hackensack, Raritan, Navasink, Wappinger, Canarsee, Matinecock, Massapequa, Rockaway, Staten Island Indians, Tappan and Highland Indians.

The Unami lived further south, in Pennsylvania, New jersey and Delaware and included natives living in the present day areas of Trenton, Chester and Delaware counties.

Called “grandfather” by other woodland tribes, the Lenape, were named “Delaware” after the river which was named for the 2nd governor of Virginia, Lord De La Warr.

Between 1630 and 1770 the Delaware signed at least 800 treaties giving most of their land to the colonists. The Unami moved to Ohio, then to Indiana, through Missouri with some settling in Texas. Others moved to a Kansas reservation in the early 1800s, and some of the remaining Unami and Munsee were eventually moved to western Oklahoma where they remained. Many joined the Cherokee in eastern Oklahoma and have become known as Cherokees. During the Great Depression, many Delaware natives moved to California.

Most of today’s Munsee natives reside in Ontario, Canada on the Grand River Reserve or Moraviantown and Munceytown communities. In the US, the Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma and the Stockbridge-Munsee Tribe in Wisconsin are federally recognized.

The Ramapo tribe of New Jersey with perhaps 5,000 members are seeking federal recognition.

Author’s comment:
For those of you who may be like myself and have wondered where did the original natives of New York City, New Jersey and its suburbs go, read about the Lenape or Delaware Indians; they did not totally die, they just moved away.

Deborah Champlain

Shinnecock

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