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 Drawing of Lenape family published in 1880 book. Image: NewJerseyAlmanac.com
The area now making up the state of New Jersey was first inhabited by Native American tribes for more than ten thousand years prior to the exploration of the New World by Europeans. The principal Native American tribe was the Lenni Lenape, translated either as "original people" or "true men" and considered to be part of the larger Algonquin tribe. Later, they also became called by the new settlers, along with other tribes, as the "Delaware," the name adopted in 1610 by the English for the Delaware Bay and the Delaware River in honor of Sir Thomas West, Lord De La Warr, the governor of Virginia.
Occupying the area from the Delaware Bay north to the headwaters of the Delaware River, the Lenape, estimated to number perhaps 20,000 around the beginning of the 1600s, had no central political authority; within the tribe there were smaller groups with differing names usually distinguished by varying dialects they used of the parent Munsee language, such as the "Unami" along the Delaware River and the "Unalachtigo" spoken by tribes to the east and north in what is today Salem, Cumberland, and Cape May counties. |
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Although the Lenape were known as relatively peaceful tribes who were sometimes called upon by other tribes to mediate or judge disputes, they nonetheless occasionally resorted to violence. Most of these conflicts were provoked by incursions into Lenape territory by other tribes, such as the Mohawk to their north and the Susquehannock to the west. Between 1630 and 1635, the Susquehannock, for example, attacked Lenape villages in southeastern Pennsylvania, forcing many Lenape to escape across the Delaware River into New Jersey. As European explorers and settlers increasingly entered their traditional lands, the Lenape would face a series of new challenges.
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 "Massacre of Indians at Hoboken" Image: New York Public Library Digital Collections
The Dutch fought two limited wars again the Lenape in the land that would become New Jersey: the Governor Kieft’s War (1643 to 1645) and the so-called Peach Tree War in 1655. Although the Dutch were primarily interested in trade with the Lenape, they soon began to establish patroonships on Native lands and under the Dutch Governor of New Netherland Willem Kieft attempted to assess taxes on the in return for protecting them from the hostile Mohawk and Mohegans to the north. The Lenape, however, resented the tax. since they claimed that they had never sought protection from the other tribes.
In 1638, Kieft attacked a Raritan village killing several Raritan and their sachem. The Raritan retaliated by burning down a Dutch settler's farm and killing four of workers. Then in 1643 a group of Tappan and Wappinger refugees from attacks by the Mohawks and Mohegans gathered at Pavonia in present-day Jersey City, which resulted in the "Pavonia Massacre" on February 25, 1643, when the Dutch under Kieft made a surprise night attack on the sleeping Wecquaesgeek villages, killing 80, with Dutch soldiers reportedly bringing the heads of their victims back to Fort Amsterdam for use in a kickball game. |
 Drawing of David Brainerd
Apart from armed conflicts, a more devastating blow to the Lenape population came through the rapid spread of contagious disease, particularly smallpox, resulting from their contacts with Europeans. As their numbers fell, the remaining Lenape gradually developed accommodations with the new white settlers over land claims, and attempted to create trading relationships to maintain their traditional pursuit of trapping. The Lenape sold some of their northern New Jersey lands to the English in 1673 and 1681, but the English also often took land without paying. The Lenapes also had no concept of the ownership of land, and often believed that the transactions they entered simply allowed concurrent use of the land, thus leading to confusion and misunderstandings. In 1758, at the urging of the Reverend John Brainerd, a minister and missionary who had established a school for Lenape children and sought to convert them to Christianity, New Jersey became the first colony to establish an Indian reservation at Brotherton in Burlington County, but there were only a few hundred Indians remaining and only 200 came to live at the reservation. Brainerd organized the reservation and helped the residents to set up grist and sawmills, which led to naming of the nearby village as Indian Mills. But conditions steadily deteriorated after Brainerd became ill and left Brotherton in 1777 to return to his native Connecticut where he died in 1781. In 1796, the Oneida tribe in New Stockbridge in New York State invited the Brotherton tribe to come live with them--an invitation later accepted by the remaining 85 tribe members, who received partial payment in 1801 from the New Jersey Assembly for the sale of the reservation. In 1802, the last Brotherton chief, Elisha Ahhataina (Lashar Tamar), led twelve rented wagons conveying the tribe and their possessions to join the Oneidas in New York. A few of the tribe chose to stay in New Jersey, residing in local communities of South Jersey and some moving north o the hills of North Jersey and Pennsylvania. Chief Tamar stayed for a time with the Oneidas in New York, but eventually returned to New Jersey and settled on the Woolman farm near the town of Rancocas. In 1832, the New Jersey Legislature appropriated $3,551.23 to pay the remaining Brotherton Indians for the balance of the money from the sale of the Brotherton Reservation; some 40 members of the tribe who had moved to New York then resettled in Statesburg, Wisconsin. Later, some of the tribe moved on to join with the Cherokees and Osages, west of the Mississippi. Some later went to "Indian territory," now Oklahoma, and others emigrated to Canada. A continuing controversy exists over the status of the so-called Ramapough Mountain Indians in the area of Bergen and Passaic counties. Members of this group petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for federal recognition as a Native American tribe in 1979, a petition which the BIA rejected in 1996. In justifying the rejection, the BIA stated that this community had neither been "viewed as American Indian" nor were its members "descendants of an Indian tribe which historically inhabited a specific area" and that none of the documentation submitted connected the earliest documented ancestors with any of the tribes that once resided in New York or New Jersey. Other historians have argued that those claiming Ramapough heritage are more likely descendants of members of a community of free blacks who were culturally Dutch living on the outskirts of New York City in the 1670s. Despite the federal rejection, in 1980 the New Jersey legislature approved a resolution that "...the Ramapough Mountain People of the Ramapough Mountains of Bergen and Passaic counties, descendants of the Iroquois and Algonquin nations, are hereby designated by the State of New Jersey as the Ramapough Indians." In August 2006, after a state park ranger shot and killed a member of the Ramapough group in a confrontation in Ringwood State Park, Governor Jon Corzine formed what has evolved under the name of the New Jersey Commission on American Indian Affairs to investigate issues of civil rights, education, employment, fair housing, environmental protection, health care, infrastructure and equal opportunity confronting members of New Jersey's three indigenous Native American tribes and other New Jersey residents of Native American descent. The group's report delivered in December 2007 cited "lingering discrimination, ignorance of state history and culture, and cynicism in the treatment of Indian people". The Commission continues to operate as a liaison among the tribes and the State and Federal governments and to develop educational and other programs of interest to the community. * Introduction to the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware Indians, PennTreatyMuseum.org * The Nanticoke Lenni Lenape * New Jersey Commission on American Indian Affairs * The Ramapo Mountain People, David Steven Cohen |