Description
The Lenni Lenape are a group of Indigenous peoples who originally lived in a large area around the Atlantic coast of the United States. They call themselves the Lenape (meaning “real people”), but they came to be known as the Delaware because that is what the English settlers called them. The Lenape's historical territory includes present-day northeastern Delaware, all of New Jersey, the eastern Pennsylvania regions of the Lehigh Valley and Northeastern Pennsylvania, and New York Bay, western Long Island, and the lower Hudson Valley in New York state. Today they are based in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario. The first recorded European contact with people presumed to have been the Lenape was in 1524. The explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano was greeted by local Lenape who came by canoe, after his ship entered what is now called Lower New York Bay.
Language
The Unami and Munsee languages belong to the Eastern Algonquian language group and are largely mutually intelligible.
Culture
The Lenni Lenape built dome-shaped houses called wigwams that they covered with tree bark and also built large structures made of wood and bark called longhouses. Men wore breechcloths during the summer and fur robes during the winter. Women wore wrap-around-skirts during the summer and fur robes with leggings during the winter. Both women and girls adorned their bodies with tribal jewelry made from shells, stones, beads, and animal teeth and claws. Women taught daughters how to gather edible plants and tend to the children. In late fall, the men left to hunt white-tailed deer, wild fowl, muskrat, rabbits, and foxes. Men did the heavy work around the village, making tools, weapons, mortars, frames for the wigwams, dugouts, and fishing spears.