Lenape

Lenape: see Delaware, Native North Americans.

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Delaware

 or Lenape

Confederation of North American Indians living mostly in Oklahoma, U.S. Thousands more live in Wisconsin and Kansas, U.S., and in Ontario, Can. They speak a language of the Algonquian family. Before colonization, they occupied the Atlantic seaboard from southern Delaware to western Long Island, especially the Delaware River valley, for which the confederation was named. To other Algonquian divisions, the Lenape were the “grandfathers,” believed to be the original tribe from which all others sprang, and they were highly respected. They depended primarily on agriculture but also hunted and fished. They were grouped in three clans based on maternal descent; these were in turn divided into lineages, whose members lived together in a longhouse. They were governed by a council of lineage sachems (chiefs), who directed the public affairs of the community; the eldest woman of the lineage appointed the sachem. The Delaware were the indigenous people most friendly to William Penn; they were rewarded by the infamous Walking Purchase, a treaty that deprived them of their own lands and forced them to settle on lands assigned to the Iroquois. After 1690 they drifted westward. They sided with the French in the French and Indian War (1754–63) and helped defeat the British general Edward Braddock. In 1867 most of the remaining Delaware were removed to Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Delaware descendants numbered more than 16,300 in the early 21st century.