New york city lenape

The area the Lenape occupied before the Europeans arrived was known to them as Lenapehoking , and it covered roughly the area between New York City and Philadelphia, including all of New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and part of the state of Delaware. There are only two federally recognized Delaware tribes in the U.

According to Zunigha, his people agreed to move out of Lenapehoking, giving up lands they were promised in treaties, and first migrated to Pennsylvania. From there, they settled in Ohio, then Indiana, then St. Louis, and then elsewhere in Missouri before purchasing a reservation in Kansas in using funds from previous treaties. After the Civil War, the U. They then purchased a reservation from the Cherokee in Oklahoma, where they reside today, in Bartlesville and Anadarko.

Smaller bands of Lenape still live in New England and the mid-Atlantic, but most are self-recognized, one exception being the Ramapough Lenape Nation, recognized by the state of New Jersey but not the U.

Margaret Boldeagle of Staten Island is one of them—her grandfather was a Lenape who married an Irish woman. When her grandfather gave her some traditional Lenape clothing, her grandmother took it away. As an adult, Boldeagle works to combat some of that stigma. Lenape population fell sharply, due to high fatalities from infectious diseases brought by Europeans, such as measles and smallpox, as they had no natural immunity.

Violent conflicts with Europeans and inter-tribal fighting also reduced their numbers. Other deceptive land treaties and forced migrations followed, and the Lenape were pushed further and further west.

In the s, the federal government sent most Lenape remaining in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory present-day Oklahoma under the Indian removal policy.

To learn more about the Lenape, check out the Lenape Center or listen to this podcast. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. The OpenLab is an open-source, digital platform designed to support teaching and learning at City Tech New York City College of Technology , and to promote student and faculty engagement in the intellectual and social life of the college community.

Learn more about accessibility on the OpenLab. Toggle navigation. The Masked Being first revealed himself to three abandoned boys in the woods. He showed them his faraway home in the mountains above the earth, and before returning he gave the boys courage and strength to endure.

The Big House religion emerged in the s as a spiritual revival among the Lenapes to sustain them during the diaspora, when they were forcibly removed from their traditional homeland.

His representative, clad in a bearskin robe, wore the mask, and shook a turtle shell rattle as he sang a vision song and danced. For twelve days, the people offered prayers and thanks in the Big House, burning cedar smoke for purification.

The Big House religion declined when the US government privatized tribal lands and abolished tribal government at the turn of the twentieth century. The last ceremony was held in However fragmented and dispersed the Lenapes became, their culture and identity persists. Today, the Delaware number about 10, A few speakers of the old language remain, but that may increase as there has been a recent revival of interest in the old tongue, as well as an attempt to restore religious songs, dances, and ceremonies.

New Haven: Yale, Grumet, Robert. Revised Edition. Norman: University of Oklahama Press, Place Names in New York City. New York: Interlaken Books, Kavasch, E. Alberto C. Washington, Ct. American Indian Healing Arts. Kraft, Herbert. The Lenape: Archaeology, History, and Ethnography. McCully, Betsy. Trigger, Bruce, ed. The Handbook of the North American Indian , vol. Washington, DC: The Smithsonian,