Lehigh River & Canal at Jim Thorpe, PA

Chapter 2 - The Native Americans

When William Penn arrived in 1682, the colony of Pennsylvania (Penn's Forest) was home to the native American nation of the Lenni Lenapi. The name Lenni Lenapi, in their language of Algonquin, meant "Original People." The settlers first observed the Lenni Lenapi along the banks of the Delaware River (named after the Governor of Virginia Thomas West, Baron De La Warr) and called them the Delaware Indians.

How did the first people come to the Lehigh?

There is evidence over 18 thousand years of human inhabitation in the Lehigh region. Thus, the Lenni Lenapi can be considered a recent arrival, having lived in eastern Pennsylvania for about two thousand years.

During the Ice Ages, ocean water froze into glaciers causing the levels of the oceans to decrease and a land bridge to form. The receding level of the oceans and the layering of ice and snow, created a fifty mile long land bridge across the Berring Straight connecting Siberia with Alaska.

Anthropologists believe that ancestors of the American Indians were probably nomadic hunters who followed migrating herds of reindeer or caribou across the land bridge from Siberia into Alaska. Over thousands of years, their offspring spread east into Canada, south into the United States and into South America as far south as Tierra del Fuego.

About 8 thousand years ago, ancestors of the Lenni Lenapi settled on the Pacific coast of what is now the United States. Lenapi legends tell of a lengthy period of famine about 2,000 years ago. Their story describes a migration, in search of a reliable food supply, from the Pacific coast across the Mississippi River to the Atlantic coast. The Lenapi battled and defeated the indigious peoples, the Alligewi, and took control over the areas that are now lower New York, Long Island, eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

Describe the appearance of the Lenni Lenape.

When William Penn arrived in 1682, there were about 8,000 Lenni Lenapi. There were three main branches of the Lenape nation: the Minsi (Wolf) to the north, the Unami (Turtle) in the center and the Unalachtigo (Turkey) in the south. William Penn met with members of the Unami branch.

William Penn described the Lenapi as "tall, straight, well built with a lofty walk. They had a light frame, were broad shouldered and slender waisted. Their skin being light brown in complexion with small black eyes, straight black hair, broad cheekbones and a Roman nose."

Lenape men removed facial hair with shell tweezers and painted their faces for decoration. Some men used flint or fish bones to tattoo their bodies. Each color in a tattoo had a meaning, for instance: white meant peace, black meant war. The Lenape used bear grease on their skin as an ointment and sunscreen.

Some Lenape men wore a scalp lock. All hair was removed from their scalp except for a 2 inch circular area. Their scalp lock was decorated with a single, small eagle feather.

Men wore a breechcloth held up with a deerskin belt. On their feet, they wore deerskin moccasins. In winter, they added a fur robe draped over their left shoulder or a deerskin jacket and buckskin leggings. Women wore knee length deerskin skirts. They wore ornaments of deer antlers and wampum shells. Babies were swaddled in skins wrapped to boards. Children went about unclothed. Describe the Lenape lifestyle .

The Lenape lived in a wigwam (long house). The wigwam was made of support poles which were placed in the ground and bent and tied into shape. Additional poles were tied lengthwise to the support poles. The support poles were covered inside and out with chestnut bark. The houses were about 25 feet wide by 30 to 100 feet long, had a peaked roof and were only about five feet high to reduce damage from wind gusts. A single multi-generational family lived in each house and up to six houses formed a village. The Lenape slept on balsam boughs with fur coverings.

Their diet consisted of maze (Indian corn), beans, pumpkin, sweet potato, peas, wild vegetation and game. Maze was fire roasted, boiled or made into cakes. Where available, maple sugar was harvested and used in cooking. They had no domestic animals other than a now extinct non-barking dog.

Describe the Lenape technology.

The Lenni Lenape lived in a stone age culture at the time of European settlement. They knew how to fish, hunt and garden. Their technology included the spear, bow and arrow, fire and pottery. They organized themselves for hunting and warfare. A favorite technique of the hunting parties was to build a fire, either in a circle or at the entrance to a mountain gap, and force the animals toward waiting hunters. This hunting method was somewhat responsible for the loss of virgin forest in the Lehigh Valley even before European settlement.

A favorite material for spear points and scrapping tools was jasper. Jasper is a hard, brittle, translucent yellow stone found in the Vera Cruz area of southern Lehigh. The Lenape traveled over a hundred miles to mine the Jasper. Mining the Jasper required building a fire to heat the Jasper and then, quenching it with water. This caused the Jasper to crack into small sharp pieces. Traces of Jasper have helped to locate former sites of Lenape villages.

Describe the Lenape culture.

The Lenape enjoyed music, dance and sports. They would sing to the beat of a deerskin drum and used a tortoise shell with dried corn as a rattle.

They danced in a counter clockwise direction with men and women in separate groups. Two important dances were the Calumet (peace pipe) Dance and the War Dance. In the War Dance, warriors would depict the victories of their ancestors, and make threatening gestures as they illustrated their power by smashing a post to pieces.

The Lenape enjoyed sports and games. They practiced wrestling, lacrosse, archery and foot racing. They had several gambling games that resembled modern cards and dice and a game that required hiding a stone under one of three moccasins.

What happened to the Lenape?

William Penn was given a charter by Charles II of England to the lands that now form Pennsylvania. Penn founded his colony in Philadelphia. Penn sought to understand the Lenapi and deal with them justly. During Penn's govenorship, all settlements were required to be on land purchased from the Lenapi. The Lenape bartered land and furs in exchange for guns, metal tools and liquor.

After William Penn's death, his sons governed the colony. They cheated the Lenapi in the Walking Purchase of 1737. The sons produced a copy of a document that had the signatures of three dead Lenape chiefs. It stated that the Lenapi had agreed to sell a parcel of land up to the Blue Mountains or, as they agreed, equal to the distance a man could walk in one day. Penn's sons hired trained athletes to run the distance. They covered about 50% more land than the Lenapi were prepared to give up.

As a result of this incident, the Lenapi declared war on the settlements. There was bloodshed on both sides. Through battles and treaties, the Lenapi continued to lose land. After the thirteen colonies became the United States, a treaty was written on September 19, 1778 to establish an Indian Territory in the Ohio area and make it the fourteenth state. However, congress did not ratify this treaty and the Indian leader, White Eyes, who signed the treaty, was believed to be murdered by the militia on November 10, 1778.

By 1778, most Native American tribes had been forced out of Pennsylvania. Some moved north into New York and finally settled in Canada. Others moved into the Ohio area and over time moved to Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Mexico. Many died due to starvation and European diseases. Some were converted to Christianity and lived with the Moravians in Bethlehem.

Continued: Lehigh River & Canal - Chapter 3 - Growth Along the Lehigh River