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Retrospect

They called themselves Lenape

John Conway
Posted 4/1/22

On May 1, 1777, while attending the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia as the Revolutionary War raged around him, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail in Massachusetts, that the city was …

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Retrospect

They called themselves Lenape

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On May 1, 1777, while attending the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia as the Revolutionary War raged around him, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail in Massachusetts, that the city was celebrating one of its most festive holidays.

“This is King Tammany’s Day,” the future president wrote. “Tammany was an Indian King, of this part of the Continent, when Mr. Penn first came here. His court was in this town. He was friendly to Mr. Penn and very serviceable to him. He lived here among the first settlers for some time and until old age…The people here have sainted him and keep his day.”

Tammany, more properly known as Tamanend—the name is typically translated as “Affable One”-- was a Lenape chieftain, a member of the Unami or Turtle Clan, and his lifelong devotion to peace and amity led the colonists of Revolutionary War-era America to call him “the patron saint of America.”

The Lenape, of course, were the Native American tribe that for centuries spent the warm weather months in the Upper Delaware region and in the area that later would become Sullivan County. In that heavily forested part of what they termed Lenapehoking—”Land of the Lenape”—they hunted and fished and later farmed, growing corn, squash and beans.

While Tammany was a member of the Unami, or Turtle Clan, the Lenape who spent their time in the mountainous regions were the Munsee, or Wolf tribe. And it was the Munsee who populated this region when the Europeans began to arrive in the 17th and 18th centuries.

In addition to being devoted to peace and friendship, the Munsee were great stewards of the environment, believing that land was something borrowed from their descendants, as opposed to the European notion that land was inherited from ancestors. Ironically, although they believed in walking on the earth without leaving a footprint, they often farmed land until it became untillable and then moved on, reinforcing the notion that they were a nomadic tribe.

All of the Lenape utilized herbal based medicine, and most plants had a medicinal purpose. The bark of the willow tree for instance, later found to be abundant in salicin, which Is very similar to aspirin, was used to treat fevers, aches and pains. Conifer needles, now known to be high in Vitamin C, was made into a tea to ward off the disease the Europeans would later call scurvy. Sumac bark was made into a gargle and used for sore throats. And on and on.

The Europeans—first the Dutch, and then the Swedes, and finally the English—were amazed by the efficacy of the Lenape remedies and the Swedish observer Peter Lindstrom, author of the 1656 work, “Geographia Americae,” was moved to describe them as “splendid and miraculous.”

“The Indians know how to cure very dangerous and perilous wounds and sores by roots, leaves and other little things… as we are not skilled in those things, we cannot say much about them,” wrote another European observer, the Dutchman Adriaen van der Donck, in 1650.

When a group of Connecticut farmers calling themselves the Delaware Company arrived in the Upper Delaware region in the 1750s, they negotiated the purchase of a 30-mile long stretch of land along both sides of the river, and the deeds were signed by the Lenape representatives Nutimus, Allamaaseeit, Montellend, and several others. The settlers called their new community Cushetunk, which was a close approximation of the Lenape word for the region. The word survives today in the slightly altered form, Cochecton. Many other Lenape place names also remain in common use in the area to this day.

The Lenape’s culture, language, and legacy make for fascinating stories, and this columnist, your Sullivan County Historian, will delve into many of those stories on Sunday, April 3 when he presents a program at the Time and the Valleys Museum in Grahamsville beginning at 2 p.m.

The program will also be offered by the Museum via ZOOM. It is free to Museum members, and costs $5 for non-members. Those interested in attending should contact the Museum to register, by phone at (845) 985-7700 or by email at info@timeandthevalleysmuseum.org.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. He will present “The Lenape: Their Culture, Their Language, Their Legacy” at Time and the Valleys Museum, 332 Main Street, Grahamsville at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 3. Email him at jconway52@hotmail.com.

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