Lenape History Timeline

The first recorded European contact with people presumed to have been Lenape occurred in 1524, establishing the beginning of sustained historical documentation of Lenape-European relations.

During the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, the Lenape were a powerful Native American nation inhabiting the mid-Atlantic coast from southern Massachusetts to the southern extent of Delaware, within the Northeastern Woodlands.

In the seventeenth century, Lenape communities practiced slash-and-burn agriculture as part of their food-production system.

Dutch settler Isaac de Rasieres observed that the Lenape planted maize, their primary crop, in March.

David de Vries described a Lenape communal hunt in the Hackensack River valley. One hundred or more men formed a line, drove animals toward the river, and killed them there.

In 1648, the Axion band of Lenape was recorded as the largest tribe on the Delaware River, with approximately 200 warriors.

At the end of the seventeenth century, the Lenape had three clans, each of which historically contained twelve sub-clans.

In the early nineteenth century, amateur anthropologist Silas Wood published a book claiming that several distinct American Indian tribes had inhabited Long Island, New York.

Beginning in the eighteenth century, the Moravian Church established missions in Lenape settlements, creating new religious communities and written records.

Image source: Moravian Church

Through the eighteenth century, many Lenape moved west into the relatively depopulated upper Ohio River basin, while some communities also launched raids on distant settler communities.

The New Jersey Association for Helping the Indians wrote a constitution intended to expel native Munsee Lenape from settlements around present-day Washington Valley in Morris County.

The Treaty of Easton was signed in 1758 between the Lenape and European colonists, addressing territorial and political relations during the colonial wars.

Image source: Treaty of Easton

The Lenape believed the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which restricted Anglo-American settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, might help preserve an Indigenous territory.

Image source: Royal Proclamation of 1763

During the American Revolutionary War and its aftermath, European settlers and military pressures displaced most Lenape from their eastern homelands and pushed them north and west.

Reverend John Brainerd abandoned the reservation in 1777, reflecting the disruption of Lenape communities and missionary settlements during the Revolutionary era.

Image source: David Brainerd

Lenape leaders sympathetic to the United States signed the Treaty of Fort Pitt with American officials. The agreement allowed American forces to traverse Lenape territory and contemplated an alliance.

Munsee-speaking Lenape leaders displaced from Washington Valley to Brotherton wrote a community treaty opposing the renting, leasing, or sale of additional Indian lands without collective consent.

Following the war, the Turtle Phratry settled at Moraviantown in 1792. The community later became the site of the largest Lenape reserve.

The 1795 Treaty of Greenville resulted in the cession of additional Indigenous lands to the United States government.

Image source: Treaty of Greenville

In 1796, the Oneidas of New Stockbridge invited the Munsee Lenape to join their reservation.

Lenape leaders Bartholomew Calvin, Jason Skekit, and eighteen others publicly refused the invitation to leave their homeland, declaring their attachment to their fine place in Jersey.

By 1802, the Brotherton Indians of New Jersey and the Stockbridge-Munsee had migrated to Oneida County, New York.

Under the Treaty of St. Mary's, signed in Ohio, the Lenape ceded their Indiana lands in exchange for territory west of the Mississippi and an annuity of $4,000.

Elements of the Lenape migrated from Missouri into Texas around 1820, settling near the Red River and Sabine River.

After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, peaceful relations continued and Lenape communities remained in eastern Mexican Texas.

Munsee Lenape from Washington Valley who had moved to Stockbridge were forcibly displaced again in 1822, traveling more than 900 miles to Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Mexican General Manuel de Mier y Terán estimated that eastern Mexican Texas contained between 150 and 200 Lenape families.

The Treaty of the James Fork, signed on September 24, 1829, and ratified in 1830, forced the Lenape to move farther west.

The Texas Revolution began in 1835 and changed the relatively peaceful relationship between the Lenape and authorities in Texas.

Image source: Texas Revolution

A treaty agreed upon in February 1836 mapped the boundaries of Indian lands, but the Texas government never officially ratified it.

Image source: Republic of Texas

Sam Houston sought the services of friendly Lenape and, in 1837, enlisted several to protect the Texas frontier from hostile western tribes.

After Sam Houston was reelected president of the Republic of Texas in 1841, his peaceful Indian policy was reinstated.

Image source: Sam Houston

A treaty with the remaining Lenape and other tribes was negotiated at Fort Bird in 1843. The Lenape were enlisted to help establish peace with the Comanche.

The peace initiative succeeded, and Lenape representatives helped bring the Comanche to a treaty council in 1844.

Image source: Comanche

In 1845, the Republic of Texas agreed to annexation by the United States and became an American state, changing the political setting for Lenape communities in Texas.

Image source: Texas annexation

Jim Shaw, a Lenape, assisted John Meusebach in settling German communities in the Texas Hill Country.

John Conner, a Lenape guide, led the Chihuahua-El Paso Expedition in 1848. A special act of the Texas legislature later granted him a league of land in 1853.

Lenape guide Black Beaver accompanied map maker Randolph B. Marcy on expeditions through West Texas in 1849, 1852, and 1854.

Image source: Black Beaver

The Kansas–Nebraska Act created the Territory of Kansas and opened it to white settlement, increasing pressure on Lenape lands.

Image source: Kansas–Nebraska Act

Despite a history of peaceful relations, the last Texas Lenape were moved by the United States government to the Brazos Indian Reservation near Graham, Texas.

Indian Agent Major B. F. Robinson could not control the hundreds of white trespassers who stole stock, cut timber, built houses, and squatted on Lenape lands.

In 1859, the United States forced the remaining Lenape in Texas to move to the Washita River area near present-day Anadarko, Oklahoma.

By 1860, Lenape communities had reached a consensus to leave Kansas, aligning with the United States government's broader Indian removal policy.

The Curtis Act of 1898 dissolved tribal governments and ordered the allotment of communal tribal lands to individual households.

Image source: Curtis Act of 1898

After Lenape lands were allotted in 160-acre lots to tribal members in 1907, the government sold surplus land to non-Indians.

In 1979, the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs revoked the tribal status of Lenape living among the Cherokee in Oklahoma.

The Lenape overturned the 1979 decision in 1996, when the federal government recognized them as a separate tribal nation.

In September 2000, the Delaware Nation of Oklahoma received 11.5 acres in Thornbury Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

The Delaware Tribe of Indians received grant money in 2002 to fund the Lenape Talking Dictionary, preserving and digitizing the Southern Unami dialect.

The Delaware Nation filed suit against Pennsylvania in federal court in 2004, seeking to reclaim 315 acres included in the 1737 Walking Purchase for a proposed casino.

Image source: Walking Purchase

A 2004 court ruling in favor of the Cherokee Nation caused the tribe to lose federal recognition.

Members approved a constitution and bylaws in a May 26, 2009, vote, establishing a governing framework for the tribe.

The Delaware Tribe regained federal recognition on July 28, 2009, after losing it in the 2004 court ruling.

Image source: Delaware Tribe of Indians

As of 2023, only a few Delaware First Nation elders in Moraviantown, Ontario, fluently spoke Munsee, highlighting the language's endangered status.