The Lenni-Lenape (which means “Men of Men” or “Original People” (The Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, 2007) or “the people”(Eden, D, 2015). They were also called “The Grandfathers or ancient ones” (Nanticote) by other native tribes. They are the oldest known nation in the Northern Hemisphere, heir oral history suggests that they crossed into Alaska across the frozen Bering Sea thousands of years ago and eventually made their way to the eastern shore of North America. Archeological evidence suggests that this may have been as long as 15,000 years ago (New Jersey History, no date). The Lenape are the first known settlers in the Philadelpha area and may have come here about 10,000 (Lenape Indians, The Original Philadelphians, 2008) to 15,000 (Eden) years ago .

“We were known as warriors and diplomats, often keeping the peace and mediating disputes between our neighboring Native Nations and were admired by European colonist for our hospitality and mediation skills.” (Nanticote)

Image below Lenape men preparing soil for cultivation. Reprinted from The Lenapes by R. S. Grumet and F. W. Porter, 1989, New York, Chelsea House.

Homelands

The Lenape homelands included eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and parts of New York, Connecticut, and Maryland.(Eden) It is estimated that there may have been about 15,000 Lenape in approximately 80 settlement sites living in the New Your City area in the early 1500s.(Nanticote). They were among the first native people to meet with early European explorers such as Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 and Henry Hudsom in the early c1600s.(Eden)

The Europeans called the Lenape the Delaware Indians due to their living in the Delaware River Valley and the European difficulty pronouncing “Lenape” (Nanticote) They are today federally recognized as the Delaware Nation although their preferred name is Lenape.(Eden) The Delaware River was named for the first governor of the Province of Virginia: Thomas West, third Baron De La Warr. Eden

The Lenape lived in the area we now call Horsham Township. Although we do not have specific stories or accounts or land records – they did not ‘own’ land (Eden) – we do have accounts of Lenape artifacts being found throughout the area including at Graeme Park and at the Penrose-Strawbridge farm, and many of our roads including Welsh Road and Limekiln Pike follow old Lenape trails.

Interrelated Communities

The Lenape were loosely organized into independent but interrelated communities. They were broken in to 3 clans by language dialect. The Munsee (People of the Stony Country) were in the north, the Unami (People Down River) and the Unalachtigo (People who lived near the ocean (Nanticote). William Penn is reported to have learned some of their language in order to communicate without interpreters.(Independence Hall Association, no date)

Conflicts with Europeans

The Lenape ran into conflicts with the Dutch and Swedish settlers and traders who arrived in the 1600s. (Eden)

In 1626 Peter Minuit, a Belgian employed by the Dutch West India Company, took over as governor for the New Netherland colony and is infamous for claiming to have purchased Manhattan from the Lenape for the equivalent of a mere $24 today (depending on which source you read). But the Lenape likely would not have intended or understood any such agreement to be a wholesale land “purchase” transaction. Rather, the Lenape more commonly made diplomatic land or resource sharing agreements with other Nations, which would have allowed Europeans to move through the area or share it for activities like hunting, but which often also required cyclical renewals or gift exchange to maintain. Events like this are a critical marker of the differences between European and Lenape conceptions of land ownership, and how the Lenape people’s considerate diplomacy and cultural/language barriers were often taken advantage of by colonizers in land grabs. (Eden)

By 1667 the English claimed control of the Lenape homelands. Eden

William Penn

William Penn acquired Pennsylvania in 1683 as repayment of a debt that King Charles II owed Penns’ father. The King named it Pennsylvania in honor of the senior Penn. At this time about 3000 people of European descent *Swedes, Dutch and Quakers) lived in what would become Pennsylvania. (Quinn, James – no date)

Penn is famous for having a friendly relationship with the Lenape and while they were not always treated as fairly as Penn may have wished there was peace between the Lenape and colonists in Pennsylvania much longer than in the other colonies. (Eden) Tradition has it that Penn entered into a treaty with the Lenape Chief Tamanend under a majestic elm at Shackamaxon (now Penn Treaty Park in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia). (Newman, no date)

Voltaire described this as “the only treaty between those people [the Indians] and the Christians that was not ratified by an oath, and was never infring’d.” (Newman)

The wampum belt shown below is said to have been given to Penn by Tamanend on this occasion.(Newman)

Governor Keith

Sir William Keith who was Deputy Governor of the colony was described as “In his dealings with the Indians Governor Keith was very successful, disputes that seemed likely to end in bloodshed were settled by him quietly, and when an Indian was killed by one of the whites in a brutal way Keith so softened the anger of the tribe that the chief asked him not to put the murderer to death, saying: ‘One life is enough to be lost; there should not two die.(citation needed – ben franklin?). (Keith has a direct relationship with Horsham Township having purchased 1200 acres from Samuel Carpenter for his estate Fountain Low, now Graeme Park)

The Walking Purchase

Penn, on his first trip to Pennsylvania, made another agreement with the Lenape called The Walking Purchase. This agreement became infamous due to Penn’s sons fleecing the natives with their Walking Purchase well after William Penn had died.

The first Walking Purchase was in 1683. The idea was that Penn would claim land based on how far he could walk in 3 days. He did so casually and travelled about 30 miles north to what is now the border of Bucks and Northamption counties. (Quinn

His sons, in 1737 long after William Sr’s death in 1718, resurrected the Walking Purchase and told the Lenape that William Sr had not completed it. The Penns hired fast runners and pre-cleared a path, eventually taking over a million acres from the Lenape. This began the removal of the natives from the land. (Eden)

Treaty of Fort Pitt and Forced Migration

During the Revolutionary War the Lenape tried to remain neutral while other tribal nations were siding with the British. Having already moved out of Pennsylvania into Ohio, Lenape Chief Koquethagechton, a.k.a. Chief or Captain White Eyes entered into the Treaty of Fort Pitt on September 17, 1778. In return for supporting the colonists they were promised land, a state in the union and a seat in Congress. Two months later, White Eyes was murdered. Caption Daniel Brodhead attacked and burned Lenape villages between 1779 amd 1781. On March 8, 1782 96 Lenape were slaughtered at Gnadenhutten, Ohio. These were people who had been converted to Christianity and convinced to remain pacifists by the Moravian missionaries.(Eden).

What had began as a peaceful relationship with William Penn resulted in forcing the Lenape off their homelands. The Lenape, now known as the Delaware Nation, live mostly in Oklahoma today (Eden)

References

1. Eden, D (2007) The History of the Delaware Nation Availabe at: https://www.delawarenation-nsn.gov/history/ (Accessed May 29, 2025)
2. New Jersey History Kids: The Lenape (no date) Available at: https://www.nj.gov/state/historykids/pdfs/lenape/lenape_teacher.pdf (Accessed May 29, 2025)
3. NPR Lenape Indians, The Original Philadelphians (July 25, 2008) https://www.npr.org/2008/07/25/92914200/lenape-indians-the-original-philadelphians (Accessed May 29, 2025)
4. The Nanticote Lenni-Lanape Our Tribal History (2007) Available at:https://nanticoke-lenape.info/history.htm (Accessed May 29, 2025)
5. Burrows, Edward G. and Mike. Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-19-514049-4.(per Wikipedia Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenape (Accessed May 29, 2025)
6. Newman, Andrew Treaty of Shackamaxon (no date) Available at:https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/treaty-of-shackamaxon-2/ (Accessed May 30 2025)
7. Independence Hall Association (no date) Brief History of William Penn Available at: https://www.ushistory.org/penn/bio.htm (Accessed May 30, 2025)
8. Grumet, RS and Porter, FW “The Lenapes”(1989), New York, Chelsea House.
9. Quinn, James (no date) “William Penn Timeline” Independence Hall Association Available at https://www.ushistory.org/penn/timeline.htm (Accessed: May 30, 2025)