Lenape

“ Sherlock remained on the dock, where he had a full view of everyone. His head jerked back and forth as he tried to follow every move of the group of swimming boys, now grown to almost the full number of the camp. He caught sight of Jerry and Jake Utway, whose flying bodies curved through the air from the highest diving-platform and almost at the same instant cleft the rippling surface of Lake Lenape. ”

“ Assuming that the Creator of the Lenape is the God of Light, what is it that leads men to worship the source of light? Is it not the self-evident benefits connected with light? It seems to the writer that [24] goodness necessarily follows as an attribute of such a deity.
EVIL SPIRIT
The case is different with the Evil Spirit. The modern Lenape in Oklahoma make little mention of an Evil One, and James Wolf, my principal Minsi informant, did not speak of such a being at all, but there is some evidence, however, to show this belief to exist among the Lenape in more recent years. ”

“ Many wonderful things are told of this famous people. They are said to have been remarkably tall and stout, and there is a tradition that there were giants among them, people of a much larger size than the tallest of the Lenape. It is related that they had built to themselves regular fortifications or intrenchments, from whence they [Pg 41] would sally out, but were generally repulsed. [H] * * * When the Lenape arrived on the banks of the Mississippi, they sent a message to the Alligewi to request permission to settle themselves in their neighborhood. ”

“ White Eyes is the oldest chief of the Lenni-Lenape. His days are many; they are full; they draw near the evening of his life; he rejoices that wisdom is come before his sun is set.
"White Eyes believes the young White Father. The ways of the Great Spirit are many as the fluttering leaves; they are strange and secret as the flight of a loon; White Eyes believes the redman's happy hunting grounds need not be forgotten to love the palefaces' God. As a young brave pants and puzzles over his first trail, so the grown warrior feels in his understanding of his God. ”

“ The chief was very reluctant to say or do aught that might give pain to his young brother, whose future success as war–leader of the Lenapé had ever been the object of his fondest hopes; but in the urgent business in which they were now engaged, he felt that all other considerations must be secondary to the recovery of Olitipa, and revenge on Mahéga for the loss and disgrace inflicted on the Lenapé.
“My brother has eyes as sharp, and feet as light, as a panther,” he said in a kindly tone, “but a trail in this strange country may deceive a man who has been on the war–path for twenty summers. ”

“ It was undoubtedly a fragment of this legend that the Swedish engineer, Lindstrom heard among the Lenape, on the Delaware, about 1650. They told him, or rather he understood them, as follows:—
"Once, one of your women (i.e., a white woman) came among us, and she became pregnant, in consequence of drinking out of a creek; an Indian had connection with her, and she became pregnant, and brought forth a son, who, when he came to a certain size, was so sensible and clever, that there never was one who could be compared to him, so much and so well he spoke, which excited great wonder ”

“ He raised his arm to blow the whistle that would begin the swimming period, and Sherlock made sure that Wally Rawn, at least, had no tattooed eagle on his left arm. The dock was now crowded with campers, and the shrill call had no sooner sounded than the air was full of diving bodies and splashing spray as the boys of Lenape took to water. The life-saving boats were now at their posts, guarding the safety of the swimmers. ”

“ As they topped a rising knoll above the road, Jake Utway looked back. He could still see a few dancing lights, like will-o’-the-wisps over the camp.
“So long, Lenape!” he said softly, and headed up the road, on the first leg of their dash for Canoe Mountain. Something told him that he would pass through many hazardous passages before he again saw the familiar scenes of the camp by the lake. Their daring venture had taken them outside the pale of law, now; every man’s hand would be against them. ”

“ If a Lenape won great success on a war expedition or a hunting trip, he was sure the spirit had helped him; if unlucky, he believed that for some reason his guardian had become estranged, or had been overpowered by superior and malevolent forces. A man might become a sorcerer or a shaman at the behest of his guardian spirit, given in a dream or vision, or change his mode of life in other ways. ”

“ The Lenape now in Oklahoma believe that each of the twelve heavens, in the highest of which lives the Great Spirit, is presided over by a manĭʹto who serves as a messenger to repeat the prayers of men until they reach the ear of the Creator. They are represented by the carved faces upon the posts inside the temple, and are mentioned in the ritual of the Annual Ceremony. ”

“ Old Lenape say that, as the children of the tribe are reared nowadays in the same way as the whites, they can no longer be piʹlsŭn, and the Powers will speak to them no more. This is a sad matter, for it means the loss of their principal ancient ceremonies, at which only those blessed with a vision can take active part. The old people feel it keenly that there will be no one left to conduct the rites when the last of their generation has been laid away. ”

“ This, then, was the supernatural world which, to the mind of the Lenape, controlled all things—on which they must depend for health, for success in all their undertakings, even the daily task of deer-hunting or corn-raising. Benevolent beings must be pleased, and bad spirits combated and overcome, or at least placated. ”

“ The Lenni Lenape, or Delawares, are the head of a great family of Indian nations who are known among themselves by the generic name of Wapanachki, 383 or “Men of the East.” The same language is spread among them all in various dialects, of which I conceive the purest is that of the chief nation, the Lenape, at whose residence the grand national councils meet, and whom the others, by way of respect, style grandfather. The Algonkins are a branch of that family, but are not, in my opinion, entitled to the pre-eminence which the Baron La Hontan ascribes to them. ”

“ The Lenape as "Women". A unique peculiarity of the political condition of the Lenape was that for a certain time they occupied a recognized position as non-combatants—as "women," as they were called by the Iroquois.
Indian customs and phraseology attached a two-fold significance to this term.
The more honorable was that of peace-makers. Among the Five Nations and Susquehannocks, certain grave matrons of the tribe had the right to sit in the councils, and, among other privileges, had that of proposing a cessation of hostilities in time of war. ”

“ No doubt, both lenno, which in Delaware means man, and len, in Lenape, are from the pronominal radicle of the first person né, I, we, mine, our. As the native considered his tribe the oldest, as well as the most important of created beings, "ours" with him came to be synonymous with what was esteemed ancient, indigenous, primeval, as well as human, man-like, par excellence. "We" [Pg 35] and "men" were to him the same. The initial l is but a slight modification of the n sound, and is given by Campanius as an r, "rhenus, homo." ”

“ Eagle, Reginald, and their band had escaped the destruction which had overwhelmed the Lenapé village: when she concluded, he replied,
“It is enough; let my sister hope; let her speak fair words to Mahéga: Wingenund will find his brothers, they will follow the trail, my sister must not be afraid; many days and nights may pass, but the Lenapé will be near her, and Netis will be with them. Wingenund must go.”
How fain was Prairie–bird to ask him a thousand questions, to give him a thousand cautions, and to send as many messages by him to her lover! ”

“ Joey Fellowes, who with his brother Ted made up the Lenape bugle corps, sounded Reveille on his muted instrument. The curtains parted to reveal a morning scene in Tent Fifteen. A great fuss was made by Ollie Steffins, dressed in a scout uniform with many medals and much gold braid, who in the person of Mr. Colby himself, went about getting the snoring sleepers to waken for morning drill. ”

“ Only so noted a race of warriors could afford this magnanimity, the Mengwe argued. It might impair the prestige of a less high-couraged and powerful tribe. And with these specious wiles the cat was duly belled.
But alas for the Lenape! Magnanimity is the most dangerous of all the virtues—to its possessor! Presently the Mengwe claimed to have conquered the Lenape in battle, and cited the well-known fact that they had inaugurated peace proposals. As the Mengwe confederation grew more powerful they assumed all the arrogance of a protectorate. They sold the lands of their dependents. ”

“ In the case of the Shawnee, the Creator or Great Spirit is usually spoken of as a woman, “Our Grandmother Pabothʹkwe”—surely not a missionary idea!
Let us trace back the Great Spirit concept among the Lenape, and find what the early writers say about it. Perhaps the earliest is in Danker and Sluyter’s Journal [2] of about 1679, in which an old Indian living near Bergen, New Jersey, is quoted as saying: “The first and great beginning of all things, was Kickeron or Kickerom, who is the origin of all, who has not only once produced or made all things, but produces every day.... ”

“ He came to trade with us for a few knives and blankets—he was a great war–chief, and had killed more Black–feet than any man in his tribe.”
“Well, Pierre, his own turn has come now; he will kill no more Black–feet, nor white men either,” said Baptiste to his comrade.
“Did yonder Lenapé kill him, and in fair fight, man to man?”
“He was killed in fair fight, man to man; not by Attō, but by a young war–chief whom the Lenapé call Netis,” replied the guide. ”

“ Beatty describes the head chief's home as a long building of wood: "Over the door a turtle is drawn, which is the [Pg 69] ensign of this particular tribe. On each door post was cut the face of a grave old man." [139]
Occasionally, rude representations of the human head, chipped out of stone, are exhumed in those parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey once inhabited by the Lenape. ”

“ Is he not an enemy? have not his people shed Upsaroka blood? why, then, should they believe his words?”
“Wingenund is the son of a Lenapé chief. For a thousand summers his fathers have hunted over forest and plain beyond the Great River. Wingenund has heard of their deeds, and [497] he will not stain his lips with a lie. The Lenapé have taken Crow scalps in defence of their own, Wingenund will not deny it; but he came here to serve his white friends, not to hurt the Upsaroka.” ”

“ Dirk Van Horn wondered if he were going to like Camp Lenape. There seemed to be far too many uncomfortable rules that got in the way when a fellow wanted to have some fun. Then, too, outside of little Joey Fellowes, nobody had seemed duly impressed with his father’s wealth and his luxurious camping outfit. ”

“ On hearing this bold reply, White–bull bent his brow fiercely upon the speaker; but the youth met his eye with a look of bright untroubled confidence, while he quietly awaited the chief’s further interrogation.
“Let the son of the Lenapé speak, but let him beware,—if his tongue is forked, the Upsaroka knives will cut it out from his head.”
“Wingenund is not a woman, that he should be frightened with big words; when he speaks, the truth comes from his lips; and if he chooses to be silent, the Upsaroka knives cannot make him speak,” replied the youth, with a look of lofty scorn. ”

“ I agree with you that lenni, lenno, illenoh, illenou, illinois, appear to have all the same derivation, and to be connected with the idea of man, nation, or people. Lenno, in the Delaware language, signifies man, and so does Lenape, in a more extended sense. In the name of the Lenni Lenape, it signifies people; but the word lenni, which precedes it, has a different signification and means original, and sometimes common, plain, pure, unmixed. Under this general description the Indians comprehend all that they believe to have been first created in the origin of things. ”

“ Those who fall at sunrise, they say, are the ones who visited the sun in their visions. All sleep, or at least rest, until about noon, when a feast is served, after which everyone tells what he or she saw while “on the peyote road.”
The Lenape variant of this ceremony, as related above, differs somewhat from that of other tribes practising the Christian form of the Peyote rite, but in all essentials it is almost identical. ”

“ Adams.—From Heckewelder’s time to the present, I know of but one writer, besides myself, who describes, from his own observation, the Lenape belief in visions and guardian spirits. This is R. C. Adams, [44] himself of Delaware blood, whose notes may be found in the volume on Indians of the United States Census Report for 1890 (p. 298 et seq.) . He says:
“It is believed by the Delawares that every one has a guardian spirit which comes in the form of some bird, animal, or other thing, at times in dreams, and tells them what to do and what will happen. ”

“ Fig. 23.— (Natural size) Carved "Gorget" Found on the Hansell Farm, January 8, 1885.
The design consists of: (a) three waving lines representative of water; (b) three points between the perforations, referring probably to wigwams—possibly an allusion to the triple clanship of the Lenapes and their settlement by the Lenape whittuck or Delaware River; (c) a bow; (d) an arrow; and (e) a quiver.
The design on the reverse side, of which we here give a rough outline (fig. 24) consists mainly of a series of circular [Pg 95] waving lines, representative probably of water ”