The tribulations of the Delaware Indians

Cougar Face

   Perhaps no other Native American tribe was as disrespected and hated by both Native Americans and Whites east of the Mississippi than the poor Delaware Indians. The Lenni Lanape Natives were encountered by White invaders living along the Delaware River and its tributaries in New Jersey, Delaware, Southeastern New York, and Eastern Pennsylvania  and at the beginning the Delaware were passive Indians long submitted by the powerful Iroquois nation to the North. The Delaware put little initial resistance to land-hungry white settlers who poured into their nation and pushed them further and further west through the seventeenth century. finding good historical reading material of this ingenious and adaptable tribe proved very difficult but one called "The Delaware Indians" by professor C.A. Weslager. This mans book covers the full spectrum of Delaware history from their beginnings as a separate identity to the coming of the Europeans. Both Delaware and Europeans had a totally different concept of land ownership and sale and the idea of individuals owning the soils and rights on it was totally alien to all Native Americans.

From the coming of the Dutch and their insistence to selling natives alcohol despite its debauchery  effects  it had upon Delaware life. the book make sit clear that tis tribe was not war-like before the coming of the Europeans and were able to move about frequently being mobile because of frequent attacks form more warrior cultures such as the Minquas. The contact with European missionaries and the Moravian church further reduced this tribe to passivity and following the Easton Treaty as  more pressure to make this tribe move into western Pennsylvania and this is where Delaware Indians basically started to be more war like after moving to the Wyoming Valley in 1758. The movement of this indigenous group through the centuries is atypical and the book covers all the forced movement of the Lenni Lanape from out of Pennsylvania into Ohio and then into Kansas and Oklahoma. it was especially in Ohio where once again Indian-White turmoil boiled over and these natives found themselves in a precarious position often divided among themselves best how to handle the situation of seeing their hunting and agricultural lands taken over so quickly. this is a tribe that wanted to be left alone and in peace but the surrounding hostility of all its neighbors red and white made this peace unattainable for much of its recent history.