Early Relations with Colonists

In the course of this long and complicated story of migration, in which the Lenape lived in at least 10 different states and signed 45 different treaties with the whites, the tribe made its mark on American history. They were involved in many key events.

One famous early incident is the selling of Manhattan Island, now the central borough of New York City. First, the Canarsee band from Brooklyn tried to sell the island to the Dutch. But it was really the Manhattan band who controlled this territory. In 1626, they made the deal with Peter Minuit for 60 guilders’ (24 dollars’) worth of trade goods—that is, beads, trinkets, and tools.

Some scholars believe that the Manhattan Indians were part of the Wappinger Confederacy and should be classified as WAPPINGER rather than as Lenape. In any case, the Lenape and Wappinger both spoke the Algon-quian language and were closely related. The Lenape generally lived west of the Hudson River and the Wap-pinger east of it.

The Manhattan did not really believe that they were selling the land forever. To them no one “owned” land; it belonged to all people. Rather, they thought they were selling the right to use the land, more like a lease. Lenape have a saying about the sale of Manhattan Island: “The great white man wanted only a little, little land, on which to raise greens for his soup, just as much as a bullock’s hide would cover. Here we first might have observed his deceitful spirit.”

Other important historical events involving the Lenape were the treaties of friendship signed in 1682—83 with William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, the first treaties Native Americans ever signed with Europeans. Of the early colonial leaders, William Penn was among the most fair in his dealings with Native Americans, protecting their rights to land as well as their freedom of religion. A famous Lenape chief at these meetings was Tamanend. Because he was so effective in his dealings with non-Indians, in 1786 his name was taken, in the form of Tammany, as the name of a political club important in New York history.

Penn’s example and the respect whites held for Tama-nend did not prevent others from massacring a band of Moravian Christian Lenape at Gnadenhutten, Ohio, in 1782, because of a stolen plate.

The Lenape are also famous as the first tribe to sign a treaty with the U. S. government—at Fort Pitt in 1778 during the American Revolution.