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153-612: The Lenape ( English: / l ə ˈ n ɑː p i / , /- p eɪ / , / ˈ l ɛ n ə p i / ; Lenape languages : [lənaːpe] ), also called the Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands , who live in the United States and Canada . The Lenape's historical territory includes present-day northeastern Delaware , all of New Jersey ,

306-592: A Norman lieu-dit La Guerre . This toponymic likely derived from Latin ager , the Breton gwern or from the Late Latin varectum ( fallow ). The toponyms Gara, Gare, Gaire, (the sound [ä] often mutated in [æ] ) also appear in historical texts cited by Lucien Musset , where the word ga(i)ra means gore . It could also be linked with a patronymic from the Old Norse verr . Before Delaware

459-740: A tribal jurisdictional area in Caddo County, Oklahoma , that they share with the Caddo Nation and Wichita and Affiliated Tribes . The Unami and Munsee languages belong to the Eastern Algonquian language group and are largely mutually intelligible . Moravian missionary John Heckewelder wrote that Munsee and Unami "came out of one parent language." Only a few Delaware First Nation elders in Moraviantown, Ontario , fluently speak Munsee. William Penn , who first met

612-496: A Declaration of Independence. Only the dramatic overnight ride of Caesar Rodney gave the delegation the votes needed to cast Delaware's vote for independence. Initially led by John Haslet , Delaware provided one of the premier regiments in the Continental Army , known as the "Delaware Blues" and nicknamed the " Blue Hen's Chicks ". In August 1777 General Sir William Howe led a British army through Delaware on his way to

765-559: A ball through the other team's goal posts. Men could not carry and pass the ball, only use their feet, while the women could carry, pass, or kick. If the ball was picked up by a woman, she could not be tackled by the men, although men could attempt to dislodge the ball. Women were free to tackle the men. Another common activity was that of dance, and yet again, gender differences appear: men would dance and leap loudly, often with bear claw accessories, while women, wearing little thimbles or bells, would dance more modestly, stepping "one foot after

918-866: A common source language, Proto-Algonquian , which was descended from Algic. The Algonquian languages are spoken across Canada from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic coast; on the American Plains; south of the Great Lakes; and on the Atlantic coast. Many of the Algonquian languages are now sleeping. The Eastern Algonquian languages , spoken on the Atlantic coast from what are now called the Canadian Maritime provinces to what

1071-470: A distance, they reminded Dutch settlers of fine European lace. The winter cloaks of the women were striking, fashioned from the iridescent body feathers of wild turkeys. One of the more common activities of leisure for the Lenni Lenape would be the game of pahsaheman : a football-like hybrid, split on gender lines. Over a hundred players were grouped into gendered teams (male and female) to try getting

1224-785: A divided people during the 1770s, including in Killbuck's family. Killbuck resented his grandfather for allowing the Moravians to remain in the Ohio country. The Moravians believed in pacifism, and Killbuck believed that every convert to the Moravians deprived the Lenape of a warrior to stop further white settlement of their land. In the beginning of the American Revolutionary War , Killbuck and many Lenape claimed to be neutral. Other neighboring Indian communities, particularly

1377-460: A few hundred persons per group. Estimates for the early contact period vary considerably, with a range of 8,000 – 12,000 given. Other estimates for approximately 1600 AD suggest 6,500 Unami and 4,500 Munsee, with data lacking for Long Island Munsee. These groups were never united politically or linguistically, and the names Delaware, Munsee, and Unami postdate the period of consolidation of these local groups. The earliest use of

1530-511: A garrison at Bergen , which allowed settlement west of the Hudson within the province of New Netherland . This land was purchased from the Lenape after the fact. New Amsterdam was founded in 1624 by the Dutch in what would later become New York City . Dutch settlers also founded a colony at present-day Lewes, Delaware , on June 3, 1631, and named it Zwaanendael (Swan Valley). The colony had

1683-538: A man's maternal uncle (his mother's brother), and not his father, was usually considered to be his closest male relative, since his uncle belonged to his mother's clan and his father belonged to a different one. The maternal uncle played a more prominent role in the lives of his sister's children than did the father—for example likely being the one responsible for educating a young man in weapons craft, martial arts, hunting, and other life skills. Lenape practiced companion planting , in which women cultivated many varieties of

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1836-672: A period of more than two hundred years. This is also referred to as The Long Walk. It was due to the new United States breaking the first treaty it had ever signed. The currently used names were gradually applied to the larger groups resulting from the genocidal forced relocation policy of the United States. The ultimate result was the displacement of virtually all Lenape-speaking people from the region to present-day Oklahoma , Kansas , Wisconsin , Upstate New York , and Canada . Two distinct Unami-speaking groups emerged in Oklahoma in

1989-529: A rivalry with the Du Ponts until the passage of the 17th Amendment . The allegiance of industries with the Republican party allowed them to gain control of the state's governorship throughout most of the 20th century. The GOP ensured black people could vote because of their general support for Republicans and thus undid restrictions on Black suffrage. Delaware benefited greatly from World War I because of

2142-903: A self-designation in English. The Unamis residing in Oklahoma are sometimes referred to as Oklahoma Delaware , while the Munsees in Ontario are sometimes referred to as Ontario Delaware or Canadian Delaware. Munsee-speaking residents of Moraviantown use the English term Munsee to refer to residents of Munceytown, approximately 50 km (31 mi) to the east and refer to themselves in English as "Delaware", and in Munsee as /lənáːpeːw/ 'Delaware person, Indian'. Oklahoma Delawares refer to Ontario Delaware as /mwə́nsi/ or /mɔ́nsi/ , terms that are also used for people of Munsee ancestry in their own communities. Some Delawares at Moraviantown also use

2295-409: A short life, as in 1632 a local band of Lenape killed the 32 Dutch settlers after a misunderstanding escalated over Lenape defacement of the insignia of the governing Dutch West India Company . The Lenape's quick adoption of trade goods, and their desire to trap furs to meet high European demand, resulted in over-harvesting the beaver population in the lower Hudson Valley. With the fur sources exhausted,

2448-480: A significant number of phonological rules in common. For example, both languages share the same basic rules for assigning syllable weight and stress. However, Unami has innovated by regularizing the assignment of stress in some verb forms so that the penultimate syllable is stressed even when the stress assignment rule would predict stress on the antepenultimate syllable. As well, Unami has innovated relative to Munsee by adding phonological rules that significantly change

2601-605: A slave society and cultivated tobacco as a cash crop, although English immigrants continued to arrive. Like the other middle colonies, the Lower Counties on the Delaware initially showed little enthusiasm for a break with Britain . The citizenry had a good relationship with the Proprietary government, and generally were allowed more independence of action in their Colonial Assembly than in other colonies. Merchants at

2754-489: A small "round crest, of about 2 inches in diameter". Deer hair, dyed a deep scarlet, as well as plumes of feathers, were favorite components of headdresses and breast ornaments for males. The Lenape also adorned themselves with various ornaments made of stone, shell, animal teeth, and claws. The women often wore headbands of dyed deer hair or wampum. They painted their skin skirts or decorated them with porcupine quills. These skirts were so elaborately appointed that, when seen from

2907-663: A small, 13-square-mile (34 km) reserve in Chatham-Kent , Ontario. The Delaware of Six Nations shares the Glebe Farm 40B in Brantford, Ontario , and Six Nations Indian Reserve No. 40 , shared with six Haudenosaunee peoples in Ontario. The Stockbridge-Munsee Community has a 22,139-acre (89.59 km) Indian reservation in Wisconsin, with 16,255 acres (65.78 km) held in federal trust. The Delaware Nation has

3060-528: A total area of 2,489 square miles (6,450 km ), making it the second-smallest state by either metric in the United States after Rhode Island . Delaware is bounded to the north by Pennsylvania ; to the east by the Delaware River , Delaware Bay , New Jersey , and the Atlantic Ocean; and to the west and south by Maryland . Small portions of Delaware are also situated on the eastern side of

3213-628: A victory at the Battle of Brandywine and capture of the city of Philadelphia. The only real engagement on Delaware soil was the Battle of Cooch's Bridge , fought on September 3, 1777, at Cooch's Bridge in New Castle County, although there was a minor Loyalist rebellion in 1778. Following the Battle of Brandywine, Wilmington was occupied by the British, and State President John McKinly

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3366-851: A woman's power in the hierarchical structure. As in the case of the Iroquois and Susquehannocks , the animosity of differences and competitions spanned many generations, and in general tribes with each of the different language groups became traditional enemies in the areas they'd meet. On the other hand, The New American Book of Indians points out that competition, trade, and wary relations were far more common than outright warfare—but both larger societies had traditions of 'proving' (blooding) new (or young) warriors by ' counting coup ' on raids into another tribes territories. The two groups were sometimes bitter enemies since before recorded history, but intermarriage occurred — and both groups have an oral history suggesting they jointly came east together and displaced

3519-547: A writing system with conventional phonetic symbols. The table below presents a sample of Unami words, written first in a linguistically oriented transcription, followed by the same words written in a practical system. The linguistic system uses the acute accent to indicate predictable stress and a raised dot (·) to indicate vowel and consonant length. The practical system interprets the contrast between long and corresponding short vowels as one of quality, using acute and grave accents to indicate vowel quality. Stress, which as noted

3672-619: Is in New Castle County, in the town of Townsend . According to HUD 's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report , there were an estimated 2,369 homeless people in Delaware. According to the 2010 United States census, the racial composition of the state was 68.9% White American (65.3% Non-Hispanic White , 3.6% White Hispanic ), 21.4% Black or African American, 0.5% American Indian and Alaska Native , 3.2% Asian American, 0.0% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander , 3.4% some other race, and 2.7% of multiracial origin . People of Hispanic or Latino origin, of any race, made up 8.2% of

3825-619: Is more urbanized and is considered part of the Delaware Valley metropolitan statistical area that surrounds Philadelphia . Delaware is considered part of the Southern United States by the U.S. Census Bureau , but the state's geography, culture, and history are a hybrid of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the country. Before the Delaware coastline was explored and developed by Europeans in

3978-654: Is now called North Carolina ; many of the languages are now sleeping, and some are known only from very fragmentary records. Eastern Algonquian is considered a genetic subgroup within the Algonquian family , that is, the Eastern Algonquian languages share a sufficient number of common innovations to suggest that they descend from a common intermediate source, Proto-Eastern Algonquian. The linguistic closeness of Munsee and Unami entails that they share an immediate common ancestor which may be called Common Delaware;

4131-401: Is predictable, and consonant length are not indicated in the practical system. The table below presents a sample of Munsee words, written first in a linguistically oriented transcription, followed by the same words written in a practical system. The linguistic system uses a raised dot ⟨·⟩ to indicate vowel length. Although stress is mostly predictable, the linguistic system uses

4284-464: Is reflected in the following borrowed words. More recent borrowings tend to be from English such as the following Munsee loan words: ahtamó·mpi·l 'automobile'; kátəl 'cutter'; nfó·təw 's/he votes'. There is one known Swedish loan word in Unami: típa·s 'chicken', from Swedish tippa , 'a call to chickens'. There is no standard writing system for either Munsee or Unami. However,

4437-453: Is significant variation in mean temperature and amount of snowfall between Sussex County and New Castle County. Moderated by the Atlantic Ocean and Delaware Bay , the southern portion of the state has a milder climate and a longer growing season than the northern portion of the state. Summers are long, hot, and humid in Delaware, often with intense (but brief) late day thundershowers. Delaware averages 2,300 hrs of sunshine annually (higher than

4590-525: Is the name Unami speakers also use for their own language in English, whereas Munsee speakers call their language in English Lunaapeew . Uniquely among scholars, Kraft uses Lenape as a cover term to refer to all Delaware-speaking groups. Munsee speakers refer to their language as /hə̀lə̆ni·xsəwá·kan/ , meaning "speaking the Delaware language". Munsee and Unami have similar but not identical inventories of consonants and vowels, and have

4743-585: Is therefore Proto-Algonquian > Proto-Eastern Algonquian > Delawarean > Common Delaware + Mahican, with Common Delaware splitting into Munsee and Unami. Lenni Lenape means 'Human Beings' or the 'Real People' in the Unami language. Their autonym is also spelled Lennape or Lenapi , in Unami Lënape and in Munsee Lunaapeew meaning 'the people.' The term Delaware was used by

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4896-504: Is underway by the Delaware Tribe of Indians. Equally affected by consolidation and dispersal, Munsee groups moved to several locations in southern Ontario as early as the late 18th century, to Moraviantown , Munceytown , and Six Nations . Several different patterns of migration led to groups of Munsee speakers moving to Stockbridge in present-day Wisconsin , Cattaraugus in present-day New York state, and Kansas . In 1892

5049-792: Is used to indicate length of a preceding consonant or vowel. A full analysis and description of the status of the long consonants is not available, and more than one analysis of Delaware consonants has been proposed. Some analyses only recognize long stops and fricatives as predictable, i.e. as arising by rule. The contrastive long consonants are described as having low functional yield, that is, they differentiate relatively few pairs of words, but nonetheless do occur in contrasting environments. Both languages have rules that lengthen consonants in certain environments. Several additional consonants occur in Munsee loan words: /f/ in e.g. nə̀fó·ti 'I vote'; /r/ in ntáyrəm . A number of alternate analyses of Munsee and Unami vowels have been proposed. In one,

5202-526: The A.U.M.P. Church . In 1814, Spencer called for the first annual gathering, known as the Big August Quarterly , which continues to draw members of this denomination and their descendants together in a religious and cultural festival. Delaware voted against secession on January 3, 1861, and so remained in the Union. While most Delaware citizens who fought in the war served in the regiments of

5355-628: The Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state's name derives from the adjacent Delaware Bay , which in turn was named after Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr , an English nobleman and the Colony of Virginia 's first colonial-era governor. Delaware occupies the northeastern portion of the Delmarva Peninsula , and some islands and territory within the Delaware River . It is the second-smallest and sixth-least populous state, but also

5508-508: The Brown ruling was that Delaware became fully integrated, albeit with time and much effort. In October 1954, the city of Milford became the scene of one of the country's first pro-segregation boycotts after eleven Black students were enrolled in the previously all-white Milford High School . Mass protests continued in Milford; the school board eventually ceded to the protestors, expelling

5661-832: The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal embody a Southern culture , while densely-populated Northern Delaware above the canal—particularly Wilmington, a part of the Philadelphia metropolitan area —has more in common with that of the Northeast and the North . The U.S. Census Bureau designates Delaware as one of the South Atlantic States , but it is commonly associated with the Mid-Atlantic States or northeastern United States by other federal agencies,

5814-531: The Delaware Water Gap and the Raritan Valley . Three dialects of Unami are distinguished: Northern Unami, Southern Unami, and Unalachtigo. Northern Unami, now extinct, is recorded in large amounts of materials collected by Moravian missionaries but is not reflected in the speech of any modern groups. The Northern Unami groups were south of the Munsee groups, with the southern boundary of

5967-601: The French and Indian War . The Moravians' insistence on Christian Lenape's abandoning traditional warfare practices alienated mission populations from other Lenape and Native American groups, who revered warriors. The Lenape initially sided with France , since they hoped to prevent further European colonial encroachment in their settlements. Their chiefs Teedyuscung in the east and Tamaqua near present-day Pittsburgh shifted to building alliances with British colonial authorities. Lenape leader Killbuck ( also Bemino) assisted

6120-873: The Lower Hudson Valley in New York to the lower Catskills and a sliver of the upper edge of the North Branch Susquehanna River . On the west side, the Lenape lived in several small towns along the rivers and streams that fed the waterways, and likely shared the hunting territory of the Schuylkill River watershed with the rival Iroquoian Susquehannock . Today, the Munsee-Delaware Nation has its own Indian reserve , Munsee-Delaware Nation 1, in southwest Ontario. The Delaware Nation at Moraviantown has

6273-539: The Northeastern Woodlands . Although never politically unified, the confederation of the Lenape roughly encompassed the area around and between the Delaware and lower Hudson rivers, and included the western part of Long Island in present-day New York. Some of their place names, such as Manhattan ("the island of many hills"), Raritan, and Tappan were adopted by Dutch and English colonists to identify

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6426-523: The Three Sisters : maize, beans, and squash. Men hunted, fished, and otherwise harvested seafood . In the 17th century, the Lenape practiced slash and burn agriculture. They used fire to manage land. Controlled use of fire extended farmlands' productivity. According to Dutch settler Isaac de Rasieres, who observed the Lenape in 1628, the Lenape planted their primary crop, maize , in March. Over time,

6579-610: The Twelve-Mile Circle . The border follows the Circle for a short distance and then continues in a straight line due north until reaching the southern border of Pennsylvania. The Wedge of land between the northwest part of the arc and the Maryland border was claimed by both Delaware and Pennsylvania until 1921, when Delaware's claim was confirmed. Delaware is on a level plain, with the lowest mean elevation of any state in

6732-851: The Wyandot , the Mingo , the Shawnee , and the Wolf Clan of the Lenape , favored the British. They believed that by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 , restricting Anglo-American settlement to east of the Appalachian Mountains, the British would help them preserve a Native American territory . As the Revolutionary War intensified, the Lenape in present-day Ohio were deeply divided over which side, if any, to take in

6885-424: The clean-up of property "lightly contaminated" by hazardous waste , the proceeds for which come from a tax on wholesale petroleum sales. Wilmington is the state's most populous city (70,635) and its economic hub. It is located within commuting distance of both Philadelphia and Baltimore. Dover is the state capital and the second most populous city (38,079). The table below lists the ten largest municipalities in

7038-591: The cupola of the courthouse in the city of New Castle . This boundary is often referred to as the Twelve-Mile Circle . Although the Twelve-Mile Circle is often claimed to be the only territorial boundary in the U.S. that is a true arc , the Mexican boundary with Texas includes several arcs, and many cities in the South (such as Plains, Georgia ) also have circular boundaries. This border extends all

7191-435: The mound builders culture. In addition, both tribes practiced adopting young captives from warfare into their tribes and assimilating them as full tribal members. Iroquoians adopting Lenape (or other peoples) were known to be part of their religious beliefs, the adopted one taking the place in the clan of one killed in warfare. Early European observers may have misinterpreted matrilineal Lenape cultural practices. For example,

7344-495: The sixth-most densely populated . Delaware's most populous city is Wilmington , and the state's capital is Dover , the second-most populous city in Delaware . The state is divided into three counties , the fewest number of counties of any of the 50 U.S. states; from north to south, the three counties are: New Castle County , Kent County , and Sussex County . The southern two counties, Kent and Sussex counties, historically have been predominantly agrarian economies. New Castle

7497-481: The windmill palm , needle palm , and dwarf palmetto . Delaware's all-time record high of 110 °F (43 °C) was recorded at Millsboro on July 21, 1930. The all-time record low of −17 °F (−27 °C) was also recorded at Millsboro, on January 17, 1893. The hardiness zones are 7B and 8A at the Delaware Beaches . The transitional climate of Delaware supports a wide variety of vegetation. In

7650-653: The 16th century, the state was inhabited by several Native American tribes, including the Lenape in the north and Nanticoke in the south. The state was first colonized by Dutch traders at Zwaanendael , near present-day Lewes, Delaware , in 1631. Delaware was one of the Thirteen Colonies that participated in the American Revolution against Great Britain , which established the United States as an independent nation. On December 7, 1787, Delaware

7803-692: The 1860s, under the Indian removal policy, the U.S. federal government relocated most Lenape remaining in the Eastern United States to the Indian Territory and surrounding regions. Lenape people currently belong to the Delaware Nation and Delaware Tribe of Indians in Oklahoma , the Stockbridge–Munsee Community in Wisconsin , and the Munsee-Delaware Nation , Moravian of the Thames First Nation , and Delaware of Six Nations in Ontario . The name Lenni Lenape originates from two autonyms, Lenni , which means "genuine, pure, real, original", and Lenape , meaning "real person" or "original person". Lënu may be translated as "man". Adam DePaul,

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7956-401: The 1910s and 1920s. This included primary and secondary schools for Black people and women. Delaware suffered less during the Great Depression than other states, but the depression spurred further migration from the rural south to urban areas. Like in World War I, the state enjoyed a big stimulus to its gunpowder and shipyard industries in World War II. New job opportunities during and after

8109-500: The 1940s and 1950s, Delaware attempted to integrate its schools, although the last segregated school in the state did not close until 1970. The University of Delaware admitted its first black student in 1948, and local courts ruled that primary schools had to be integrated. Delaware's integration efforts partially inspired the US Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education , which found racial segregation in United States public schools to be unconstitutional. The result of

8262-443: The Black students. The ensuing unrest, which included cross burnings , rallies, and pro-segregation demonstrations, contributed to desegregation in most of Southern Delaware being delayed for another ten years. Sussex County did not start closing or integrating its segregated schools until 1965, 11 years after the Brown ruling. Throughout the state, integration only encouraged more white flight, and poor economic conditions for

8415-433: The British against the French and their Indian allies. In 1761, Killbuck led a British supply train from Fort Pitt to Fort Sandusky . In 1763, Bill Hickman, a Lenape, warned English colonists in the Juniata River region of present-day Pennsylvania of an impending attack. After the end of the French and Indian War, European settlers continued to attack the Lenape, often to such an extent that, as historian Amy Schutt writes,

8568-430: The Confederation until 1753, shortly before the outbreak of the French and Indian War (a part of the Seven Years' War in Europe). The historical record of the mid-17th century suggests that most Lenape polities each consisted of several hundred people but it is conceivable that some had been considerably larger prior to close contact, given the wars between the Susquehannocks and the Iroquois, both of whom were armed by

8721-439: The Delaware River sharing land boundaries with New Jersey. The state of Delaware, together with the Eastern Shore counties of Maryland and two counties of Virginia , form the Delmarva Peninsula , which stretches down the Mid-Atlantic Coast. The definition of the northern boundary of the state is unusual. Most of the boundary between Delaware and Pennsylvania was originally defined by an arc extending 12 miles (19.3 km) from

8874-413: The Delaware Tribe of Indians received grant money to fund The Lenape Talking Dictionary , preserving and digitizing the Southern Unami dialect. At the time of European settlement in North America , a Lenape would have identified primarily with their immediate family and clan, friends, and village unit and, after that, with surrounding and familiar village units followed by more distant neighbors who spoke

9027-539: The Delaware were Dutch explorers and traders, and loan words from Dutch are particularly common. Dutch is the primary source of loan words in Munsee and Unami. Because many of the early encounters between Delaware speakers and Dutch explorers and settlers occurred in Munsee territory, Dutch loanwords are particularly common in Munsee, although there are also a number in Unami as well. Many Delaware borrowings from Dutch are nouns that name items of material culture that were presumably salient or novel for Delaware speakers, as

9180-414: The Dutch and Swedes, were surprised at the Lenape's skill in fashioning clothing from natural materials. In hot weather men and women wore only loin cloth and skirt respectively, while they used beaver pelts or bear skins to serve as winter mantles. Additionally, both sexes might wear buckskin leggings and moccasins in cold weather. Women would wear their hair long, usually below the hip, while men kept only

9333-410: The Dutch arrival, they began to exchange wampum for beaver furs provided by Iroquoian -speaking Susquehannock and other Minquas. They exchanged these furs for Dutch and, from the late 1630s, also Swedish imports. Relations between some Lenape and Minqua polities briefly turned sour in the late 1620s and early 1630s, but were relatively peaceful most of the time. The early European settlers, especially

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9486-560: The Dutch fur traders, while the Lenape were at odds with the Dutch and so lost that particular arms race. In 1648, the Axion band of Lenape were the largest tribe on the Delaware River, with 200 warriors. Epidemics of newly introduced European infectious diseases , such as smallpox , measles, cholera, influenza, and dysentery, reduced the populations of Lenape. They and other Native peoples had no natural immunity . Recurrent violent conflicts with Europeans also devastated Lenape people. In 1682, William Penn and Quaker colonists created

9639-403: The Dutch shifted their operations to present-day upstate New York . The Lenape who produced wampum in the vicinity of Manhattan Island temporarily forestalled the negative effects of the decline in trade. During the resulting Beaver Wars in the first half of the 17th century, European colonists were careful to keep firearms from the coastally located Lenape, while rival Iroquoian peoples in

9792-550: The English colony of Pennsylvania beginning at the lower Delaware River . A peace treaty was negotiated between the newly arriving colonists and Lenape at what is now known as Penn Treaty Park . In the decades immediately following, some 20,000 new colonists arrived in the region, putting pressure on Lenape settlements and hunting grounds. Penn expected his authority and that of the colonial Province of Pennsylvania government to take precedence. William Penn died in 1718. His heirs, John and Thomas Penn, and their agents were ruling

9945-507: The English colonists had arrived as indentured servants (contracted for a fixed period to pay for their passage), and in the early years the line between servant and slave was fluid. Most of the free African-American families in Delaware before the Revolution had migrated from Maryland to find more affordable land. They were descendants chiefly of relationships or marriages between white servant women and enslaved, servant or free African or African-American men. Under slavery law, children took

10098-452: The English, who named the people for their territory by the Delaware River . They named the river in honor of Lord De La Warr , the governor of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia . The English colonists used the exonym Delaware for almost all the Lenape people living along this river and its tributaries. It is estimated that as late as the 17th century there were approximately forty Lenape local village bands with populations of possibly

10251-477: The Lenape adapted to European methods of hunting and farming with metal tools. The men limited their agricultural labor to clearing the field and breaking the soil. They primarily hunted and fished during the rest of the year: from September to January and from June to July, they mainly hunted deer, but from the month of January to the spring planting in May, they hunted anything from bears and beavers to raccoons and foxes. Dutch settler David de Vries , who stayed in

10404-399: The Lenape for agricultural products, mainly maize, in exchange for iron tools. The Lenape also arranged contacts between the Minquas or Susquehannocks and the Dutch West India Company and Swedish South Company to promote the fur trade . The Lenape were major producers of labor intensive wampum , or shell beads, which they traditionally used for ritual purposes and as ornaments. After

10557-469: The Lenape historical territory, which spanned what is now eastern Pennsylvania , New Jersey , Lower New York Bay , and eastern Delaware . The tribe's common name Delaware comes from the French language . English colonists named the Delaware River for the first governor of the Province of Virginia , Lord De La Warr . The British colonists began to call the Lenape the Delaware Indians because of where they lived. Swedish colonists also settled in

10710-413: The Lenape in 1682, said the Unami used the following words: "mother" was anna , "brother" was isseemus and "friend" was netap . He instructed his fellow English colonists: "If one asks them for anything they have not, they will answer, mattá ne hattá , which to translate is, 'not I have,' instead of 'I have not'." The Lenape languages were once exclusively spoken languages. In 2002,

10863-401: The Lenape people that lived there. The Lenape had a culture in which the clan and family controlled property. Europeans often tried to contract for land with the tribal chiefs, confusing their culture with that of neighboring tribes such as the Iroquois . As a further complication in communication and understanding, kinship terms commonly used by European settlers had very different meanings to

11016-549: The Lenape: "fathers" did not have the same direct parental control as in Europe, "brothers" could be a symbol of equality but could also be interpreted as one's parallel cousins, "cousins" were interpreted as only cross-cousins, etc. All of these added complexities in kinship terms made agreements with Europeans all the more difficult. The Lenape would petition for grievances on the basis that not all their families had been recognized in

11169-475: The Lower Counties. The fact that Delaware and Pennsylvania shared the same governor was not unique; from 1703 to 1738, New York and New Jersey shared a governor. Massachusetts and New Hampshire also shared a governor for some time. Dependent in early years on indentured labor, Delaware imported more slaves as the number of English immigrants decreased with better economic conditions in England. The colony became

11322-890: The Munsee dialect. In Aboriginal teaching materials used by provincial governments this newest standard for Munsee is used in order to teach Muncy to children in the school system. Linguists have tended to use common phonetic transcription symbols of the type found in the International Phonetic Alphabet or similar Americanist symbols in order to represent sounds that are not consistently represented in conventional standard writing systems. Europeans writing down Delaware words and sentences have tended to use adaptations of European alphabets and associated conventions. The quality of such renditions have varied widely, as Europeans attempted to record sounds and sound combinations they were not familiar with. Practical orthographies for both Munsee and Unami have been created in

11475-720: The Munsee-Delaware and Moraviantown children were sent to Mount Elgin Residential School where only English language was permitted to be spoken. The Lenape language began its disappearance along the Grand River in Six Nations and to rapidly vanish in Munsee-Delaware Nation. Only in Moraviantown the Lenape language was used on a daily basis from a majority of the nation and help on the preservation of

11628-612: The Northern Unami area being at Tohickon Creek on the west bank of the Delaware River and between Burlington and Trenton on the east bank. The poorly known Unalachtigo dialect is described as having been spoken in the area between Northern and Southern Unami, with only a small amount of evidence from one group. Southern Unami, to the south of the Northern Unami-Unalachtigo area, is reflected in

11781-552: The Pennsylvania government that is commonly known as the Walking Purchase". In the end, all Lenape who still lived on the Delaware were driven off the remnants of their homeland under threats of violence. Some Lenape polities eventually retaliated by attacking Pennsylvania settlements. When they resisted European colonial expansion at the height of the French and Indian War , British colonial authorities investigated

11934-639: The Storykeeper of the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania , calls the name "an anglicized grammatical error that basically translates as the 'original people people.'" While acknowledging that some Lenape do identify as Lenni Lenape or Delaware, DePaul says "the best word to use when referring to us is simply 'Lenape.'" When first encountered by European settlers, the Lenape were a loose association of closely related peoples who spoke similar languages and shared familial bonds in an area known as Lenapehoking ,

12087-517: The Turtle or Wolf clans. His children would not belong to the Turkey Clan, but to the mother's clan. As such, a person's mother's brothers (the person's matrilineal uncles) played a large role in his or her life as they shared the same clan lineage. Within a marriage itself, men and women had relatively separate and equal rights, each controlling their own property and debts, showing further signs of

12240-625: The USA average). Winters are modestly cool to cold in northern Delaware, and cool to mild in southern Delaware. The normal seasonal snowfall ranges from about 20.0 inches in Wilmington to only 10.0 inches in Lewes. In many winters no snow will fall in coastal Delaware. Northern Delaware falls into USDA Garden Zone 7a, while southern and coastal areas fall into USDA zone 7b and 8a. The milder climate in southern Delaware allows for subtropical flora such as

12393-530: The Unami Delaware spoken by Delawares in Oklahoma. Names for the speakers of Munsee and Unami are used in complex ways in both English and the Lenape language. The Unami dialect (called a language by non-native speaker students of Lenape) is sometimes called Delaware or Delaware proper, reflecting the original application of the term Delaware to Unami speakers. Both Munsee and Unami speakers use Delaware if enrolled and Lenape if not enrolled as

12546-543: The acute accent to indicate predictable main stress. As well, predictable voiceless or murmured /ă/ is indicated with the breve accent ⟨˘⟩ . Similarly, the breve accent is used to indicate an ultra-short [ə] that typically occurs before a single voiced consonant followed by a vowel. The practical system indicates vowel length by doubling the vowel letter, and maintains the linɡuistic system's practices for marking stress and voiceless/ultra-short vowels. The practical system uses orthographic ⟨sh⟩ for

12699-478: The agriculture economy from tobacco to mixed farming resulted in less need for slaves' labor. In addition local Methodists and Quakers encouraged slaveholders to free their slaves following the American Revolution, and many did so in a surge of individual manumissions for idealistic reasons. By 1810, three-quarters of all blacks in Delaware were free. When John Dickinson freed his slaves in 1777, he

12852-549: The area from 1634 to 1644, described a Lenape hunt in the valley of the Achinigeu-hach (or Ackingsah-sack, the Hackensack River ), in which 100 or more men stood in a line many paces from each other, beating thigh bones on their palms to drive animals to the river, where they could be killed easily. Other methods of hunting included lassoing and drowning deer, as well as forming a circle around prey and setting

13005-548: The area of Fort Detroit across the river in present-day Michigan . Lenape languages The Lenape language is part of the Algonquian branch of the Algic language family, and is part of the Eastern Algonquian language grouping which is considered to be a genetically related sub-grouping of Algonquian . The languages of the Algonquian family constitute a group of historically related languages descended from

13158-570: The area of present-day Washington Valley in Morris County, New Jersey . Led by Reverend John Brainerd, colonists forcefully relocated 200 people to Indian Mills, then known as Brotherton , an industrial town with gristills and sawmills, that was the first Native American reservation in New Jersey . Reverend John Brainerd abandoned the reservation in 1777. In 1758, the Treaty of Easton

13311-638: The area, and Swedish sources called the Lenape the Renappi . The historical Lenape country, Lenapehoking ( Lënapehòkink ), was a large territory that encompassed the Delaware and Lehigh Valley regions of eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey from the north bank of the Lehigh River along the west bank of the Delaware River into Delaware and the Delaware Bay . Their lands also extended west from western Long Island and New York Bay , across

13464-607: The area. Beginning in the 18th century, the Moravian Church established missions in Lenape settlements. The Moravians required the Christian converts to share Moravian pacifism and live in a structured and European-style mission village. Moravian pacifism and unwillingness to take loyalty oaths caused conflicts with British colonial authorities, who were seeking aid against the French and their Native American allies in

13617-652: The black population led to some violence during the 1960s. Riots broke out in Wilmington in 1967 and again in 1968 in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr , after which the National Guard occupied the city for nine months to prevent further violence. Since WWII, the state has been generally economically prosperous and enjoyed relatively high per capita income because of its location between major cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, DC. Its population grew rapidly, particularly in

13770-491: The brush on fire. They also harvested vast quantities of fish and shellfish from the bays of the area, and, in southern New Jersey, harvested clams year-round. One technique used while fishing was to add ground chestnuts to stream water to make fish dizzy and easier to catch. The success of these methods allowed the tribe to maintain a larger population than other, nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples in North America at

13923-701: The causes of Lenape resentment. The British asked Sir William Johnson , Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to lead the investigation. Johnson had become wealthy as a trader and acquired thousands of acres of land in the Mohawk River region from the Iroquois Mohawk of New York. In 1757, an organization known as the New Jersey Association for Helping the Indians wrote a constitution to expel native Munsee Lenape from their settlements in

14076-399: The city grew from $ 5.5 million in 1860 to $ 44 million in 1900. The most notable manufacturer in the state was the chemical company DuPont , which to this day is heavily credited with making the state what it is today in many ways. Because of Wilmington's growth, local politicians from the city and New Castle County pressured the state government to adopt a new constitution providing

14229-493: The colony, and had abandoned many of William Penn 's practices. In an attempt to raise money, they contemplated ways to sell Lenape land to colonial settlers, which culminated in the Walking Purchase . In the mid-1730s, colonial administrators produced a draft of a land deed dating to the 1680s. William Penn had approached several leaders of Lenape polities in the lower Delaware to discuss land sales further north. Since

14382-445: The context of various language preservation and documentation projects. A recent bilingual dictionary of Munsee uses a practical orthography derived from a linguistic transcription system for Munsee. The same system is also used in a recent word book produced locally at Moraviantown. The online Unami Lenape Talking Dictionary uses a practical system distinct from that for Munsee. However, other practically oriented Unami materials use

14535-654: The dead since the wars outnumbered those killed during the war. In April 1763, Teedyuscung was killed during the burning of his home. His son Captain Bull responded by attacking settlers, sponsored by the Susquehanna Company, in the present-day Wyoming Valley region of Pennsylvania.. Many Lenape joined in Pontiac's War and were among the Native Americans who besieged present-day Pittsburgh. During

14688-570: The direction of James, the Duke of York . Fighting off a prior claim by Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore , Proprietor of Maryland , the Duke passed his somewhat dubious ownership on to William Penn in 1682. Penn strongly desired access to the sea for his Pennsylvania province and leased what then came to be known as the "Lower Counties on the Delaware" from the Duke. Penn established representative government and briefly combined his two possessions under one General Assembly in 1682. However, by 1704

14841-700: The early 1770s, missionaries, including David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder , arrived in the Ohio Country near the Lenape villages. The Moravian Church sent these men to convert the Indigenous peoples to Christianity. The missionaries established several missions, including Gnadenhutten , Lichtenau , and Schoenbrunn . The missionaries pressured Indigenous people to abandon their traditional customs , beliefs, and ways of life, and to replace them with European and Christian ways. Many Lenape did adopt Christianity, but others refused to do so. The Lenape became

14994-560: The eastern Pennsylvania regions of the Lehigh Valley and Northeastern Pennsylvania , and New York Bay , western Long Island , and the lower Hudson Valley in New York state . Today they are based in Oklahoma , Wisconsin , and Ontario . During the last decades of the 18th century, European settlers and the effects of the American Revolutionary War displaced most Lenape from their homelands and pushed them north and west. In

15147-425: The end of the 17th century, each of which historically had twelve sub-clans: The Lenape have a matrilineal clan system and historically were matrilocal . Children belong to their mother's clan, from which they gain social status and identity. The mother's eldest brother was more significant as a mentor to the male children than was their father, who was generally of another clan. Hereditary leadership passed through

15300-553: The exception of /ə/ . In cells with two vowels, the first is long. Similarly, Unami vowels have also been analysed as organized into contrasting long-short pairs. One asymmetry is that high short /u/ is paired with long /o·/ , and the pairing of long and short /ə/ is noteworthy. In cells with two vowels, the first is long. Both Munsee and Unami have loan words from European languages, reflecting early patterns of contact between Delaware speakers and European traders and settlers. The first Europeans to have sustained contact with

15453-478: The former slave states. The Delaware legislature declared Black people to be second-class citizens in 1866, and restricted their voting rights despite the 15th Amendment, ensuring continued Democratic success in the state throughout most of the 19th century. Fearful that the 1875 Civil Rights Act passed by Congress might establish racial equality, Delaware legislators passed Jim Crow laws that mandated segregation in public facilities. The state's educational system

15606-553: The head of a group of Swedes, Finns and Dutch. The colony of New Sweden lasted 17 years. In 1651, the Dutch, reinvigorated by the leadership of Peter Stuyvesant , established a fort at present-day New Castle and, in 1655, they conquered the New Sweden colony, annexing it into the Dutch New Netherland . Only nine years later, in 1664, the Dutch were conquered by a fleet of English ships by Sir Robert Carr under

15759-520: The history and culture of the Lenape people. Books used in the class included Conversations in Lenape Language and Advanced Supplements (both written by De Paul). Munsee and Unami are linguistically very similar. They are both dialects of one language by Lenape speakers, and together are referred to as the language of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians, as can be seen in the Grammar of

15912-445: The land in question did not belong to their polities, the talks did not lead to an agreement. But colonial administrators prepared the draft that resurfaced in the 1730s. The Penns and their supporters presented this draft as a legitimate deed, but Lenape leaders in the lower Delaware refused to accept it. According to historian Steven C. Harper , what followed was a "convoluted sequence of deception, fraud, and extortion orchestrated by

16065-406: The land, the houses, and the families, the clan fathers provided the meat, cleared the fields, built the houses, and protected the clan. Upon reaching adulthood, a Lenape male would marry outside of his clan . The practice effectively prevented inbreeding, even among individuals whose kinship was obscure or unknown. This means that a male from the Turkey Clan was expected to marry a female from either

16218-694: The language of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians , written by the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger and published in a translation from German into English by Peter Stephen du Ponceau in 1827. Zeisberger does not even mention the "dialect" names when describing varying grammatical features, while the translator refers to them in two annotations. Despite their relative closeness the two are sufficiently distinguished by features of syntax, phonology, and vocabulary that speakers of both consider them not mutually intelligible so that, more recently, linguists have treated them as separate languages. Munsee Delaware

16371-657: The language. Today Munsee survives only at Moraviantown, where there are two fluent first language speakers aged 77 and 90 as of 2018. There are no fluent speakers left in the Munsee-Delaware nation of the Lenape people living in Canada; however, there are members that are working to revitalize the language within the community. From 2009 through at least 2014, a Lenape language class was taught at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania . The class focused on beginner phrases and grammar, but also included information about

16524-598: The late 19th century, the Registered (Cherokee) Delaware in Washington, Nowata, and Craig Counties, and the Absentee Delaware of Caddo County. Until recently there were a small number of Unami speakers in Oklahoma; the language is now extinct there as a first language, but is spoken fluently as a learned language by enrolled members of the two Delaware tribes in Oklahoma. Some language revitalization work

16677-418: The leading proponents of a strong central United States with equal representation for each state. Many colonial settlers came to Delaware from Maryland and Virginia , where the population had been increasing rapidly. The economies of these colonies were chiefly based on labor-intensive tobacco and increasingly dependent on African slaves because of a decline in working class immigrants from England. Most of

16830-646: The loss of their lands on the Delaware River and the destruction of the Minqua by the Iroquois of the Five Nations in the 1670s, the remnants of the Lenape who wished to remain identified as such left the region and moved over the Allegheny Mountains by the mid-18th century. Generally, those who did not relocate out of the state of Delaware were baptized, became Christian and were grouped together with other persons of color in official records and in

16983-457: The maternal line, and women elders could remove leaders of whom they disapproved. Agricultural land was managed by women and allotted according to the subsistence needs of their extended families. Newlywed couples would live with the bride's family, where her mother and sisters could also assist her with her growing family. By 1682, when William Penn arrived to his American commonwealth, the Lenape had been so reduced by disease, famine, and war that

17136-445: The media, and some residents. Delaware is the sixth most densely populated state, with a population density of 442.6 people per square mile, 356.4 per square mile more than the national average, and ranking 45th in population. Delaware is one of five U.S. states ( Maine , Vermont , West Virginia , Wyoming ) that do not have a single city with a population over 100,000 as of the 2010 census. The center of population of Delaware

17289-532: The minds of their non-Native American neighbors. The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle in present-day Delaware in the middle region by establishing a trading post at Zwaanendael , near the site of Lewes in 1631. Within a year, all the settlers were killed in a dispute with Native American tribes living in the area. In 1638, New Sweden , a Swedish trading post and colony, was established at Fort Christina (now in Wilmington ) by Peter Minuit at

17442-756: The nation. Its highest elevation, located at Ebright Azimuth , near Concord High School , is less than 450 feet (140 m) above sea level. The northernmost part of the state is part of the Piedmont Plateau with hills and rolling surfaces. The Atlantic Seaboard fall line approximately follows the Robert Kirkwood Highway between Newark and Wilmington ; south of this road is the Atlantic Coastal Plain with flat, sandy, and, in some parts, swampy ground. A ridge about 75 to 80 feet (23 to 24 m) high extends along

17595-663: The north and west such as the Susquehannocks and Confederation of the Iroquois became comparatively well-armed. They defeated the Lenape, and some scholars believe that the Lenape may have become tributaries to the Susquehannock. After the warfare, the Lenape referred to the Susquehannock as "uncles". The Iroquois Confederacy added the Lenape to the Covenant Chain in 1676 and the Lenape were tributary to

17748-415: The north with more representation. However, the subsequent 1897 constitution did not proportionally represent the north and continued to give the southern counties disproportionate influence. As manufacturing expanded, businesses became major players in state affairs and funders of politicians through families such as the Du Ponts. Republican John Addicks attempted to buy a US Senate seat multiple times in

17901-440: The northern third of the state are found Northeastern coastal forests and mixed oak forests typical of the northeastern United States. In the southern two-thirds of the state are found Middle Atlantic coastal forests . Trap Pond State Park , along with areas in other parts of Sussex County, for example, support the northernmost stands of bald cypress trees in North America. Delaware provides government subsidy support for

18054-420: The nuts of Aesculus glabra in the pocket for rheumatism , and an infusion of ground nuts mixed with sweet oil or mutton tallow for earaches. They also grind the nuts and use them to poison fish in streams. They also apply a poultice of pulverized nuts with sweet oil for earache. The first recorded European contact with people presumed to have been the Lenape was in 1524. The explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano

18207-672: The other slightly forwards then backwards, yet so as to advance gradually". A number of linear measures were used. Small units of measure were the distance from the thumb and first finger, and the distance from first finger to pit of elbow. Travel distance was measured in the distance one could comfortably travel from sun-up to sun-down. Lenape herbalists , who have been primarily women, use their extensive knowledge of plant life to help heal their community's ailments, sometimes through ceremony. The Lenape found uses in trees like black walnut which were used to cure ringworm and with persimmons which were used to cure ear problems. The Lenape carry

18360-603: The people who are enrolled in the Delaware Tribe of Indians have developed a spelling system that is the most recent standard for writing in the Unami dialect. Out of respect to this intellectual property of The Delaware Tribe of Indians their standard for writing in the Unami dialect should be used. As well, the Muncy at the Six Nations Reserve in what is now called Canada have done the same standardization for

18513-490: The phonetic symbol /š/ , and ⟨ch⟩ for the phonetic symbol /č/ . Delaware This is an accepted version of this page Delaware ( / ˈ d ɛ l ə w ɛər / DEL -ə-wair ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states region of the United States. It borders Maryland to its south and west, Pennsylvania to its north, New Jersey to its northeast, and

18666-777: The port of Wilmington had trading ties with the British. New Castle lawyer Thomas McKean denounced the Stamp Act in the strongest terms, and Kent County native John Dickinson became the "Penman of the Revolution". Anticipating the Declaration of Independence, Patriot leaders Thomas McKean and Caesar Rodney convinced the Colonial Assembly to declare itself separated from British and Pennsylvania rule on June 15, 1776. The person best representing Delaware's majority, George Read , could not bring himself to vote for

18819-543: The pronunciation of many Unami words relative to the corresponding Munsee words. This section focuses upon presenting general information about Munsee and Unami sounds and phonology, with detailed discussion reserved for entries for each language. Munsee and Unami have the same basic inventories of consonants, as in the following chart. In addition, Unami is analysed as having contrastive long voiceless stops: p· , t· , č· , k· ; and long voiceless fricatives: s· , š· , and x· . The raised dot /·/

18972-406: The province of Pennsylvania had grown so large their representatives wanted to make decisions without the assent of the Lower Counties, and the two groups of representatives began meeting on their own, one at Philadelphia , and the other at New Castle. Penn and his heirs remained proprietors of both and always appointed the same person Governor for their province of Pennsylvania and their territory of

19125-538: The same dialect, and finally, with those in the surrounding area who spoke mutually comprehensible languages, including the Nanticoke people who lived to their south and west in present western Delaware and eastern Maryland . Among many Algonquian peoples along the East Coast , the Lenape were considered the grandfathers from whom other Algonquian -speaking peoples originated. The Lenape had three clans at

19278-452: The social status of their mothers, so children born to white women were free, regardless of their paternity, just as children born to enslaved women were born into slavery. As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in England, more slaves were imported for labor and the caste lines hardened. By the end of the colonial period, the number of enslaved people in Delaware began to decline. Shifts in

19431-555: The state based on the 2020 United States census . The United States Census Bureau determined that the population of Delaware was 989,948 on April 1, 2020, an increase from the 2010 census figure of 897,934. Delaware's history as a border state has led it to exhibit characteristics of both the Northern and the Southern regions of the United States. Generally, the rural Southern (or "Slower Lower") regions of Delaware below

19584-517: The state's large gunpowder industry. DuPont, the most dominant business in the state by WWI, produced an estimated 40% of all gunpowder used by the Allies during the war. It produced nylon in the state after the war and began investments into General Motors . Additionally, the company invested heavily in the expansion of public schools in the state and colleges such as the University of Delaware in

19737-646: The state, some served in companies on the Confederate side in Maryland and Virginia Regiments. Delaware is notable for being the only slave state from which no Confederate regiments or militia groups were assembled. Delaware essentially freed the few slaves who were still in bondage shortly after the Civil War but rejected the 13th , 14th , and 15th Amendments to the Constitution; the 13th Amendment

19890-410: The sub-clan mothers had reluctantly resolved to consolidate their families into the main clan family. This is why William Penn and all those after him believed that the Lenape clans had always only had three divisions (Turtle, Turkey, and Wolf) when, in fact, they had over thirty on the eve of European contact. Members of each clan were found throughout Lenape territory, and while clan mothers controlled

20043-508: The suburbs in the north where New Castle county became an extension of the Philadelphia metropolitan area . Americans, including migrants from Puerto Rico, and immigrants from Latin America flocked to the state. By 1990, only 50% of Delaware's population consisted of natives to the state. Delaware is 96 miles (154 km) long and ranges from 9 to 35 miles (14 to 56 km) across, with a land area of 1,982 square miles (5,130 km ) and

20196-460: The term Christian Indian as a preferred self-designation in English. The equivalent Munsee term is ké·ntə̆we·s , meaning "one who prays, Moravian convert". Munsee speakers refer to Oklahoma Delawares as Unami in English or /wə̆ná·mi·w/ in Munsee. The Oklahoma Delawares refer to themselves in English as Delaware and in Unami as /ləná·p·e/ . The name Lenape , which is sometimes used in English for both Delaware languages together,

20349-513: The term Munsee was recorded in 1727, and Unami in 1757. At the time of first contact of Europeans colonizers in the 17th century, the Lenape resided in relatively small communities consisting of a few hundred people. The intensity of contact with European settlers resulted in the gradual displacement of some of the Lenape people from their aboriginal homeland, in a series of population movements of genocidal intent involving forced relocation and consolidation of small local groups, extending over

20502-446: The time, could support. Scholars have estimated that at the time of European settlement, around much of the current New York City area alone, there may have been about 15,000 Lenape in approximately 80 settlement sites. In 1524, Lenape in canoes met Giovanni da Verrazzano , the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor . European settlers and traders from the 17th-century colonies of New Netherland and New Sweden traded with

20655-401: The transaction (not that they wanted to "share" the land). After the Dutch arrival and brief establishment of Fort Nassau (along the bank of the Delaware River in present day Gloucester City, New Jersey ) in the 1620s, the Lenape were successful in restricting Dutch settlement until the 1660s to no further than Pavonia in present-day Jersey City along the Hudson. The Dutch finally established

20808-411: The two languages are analysed as having the same basic vowel system, consisting of four long vowels /i· o· e· a·/ , and two short vowels /ə a/ . This vowel system is equivalent to the vowel system reconstructed for Proto-Eastern-Algonquian. Alternative analyses reflect several differences between the two languages. In this analysis Munsee is analysed as having contrasting length in all positions, with

20961-428: The two languages have diverged in distinct ways from Common Delaware. Several shared phonological innovations support a genetic subgroup consisting of the Delaware languages and Mahican , sometimes referred to as Delawaran . Nonetheless Unami and Munsee are more closely related to each other than to Mahican. Some historical evidence suggests commonalities between Mahican and Munsee. The line of historical descent

21114-404: The war in the Wilmington area coaxed Black people from the southern counties to move to the city. The proportion of blacks constituting the city's population rose from 15% in 1950 to over 50% by 1980. The surge of Black migrants to the north sparked white flight , in which middle class whites moved from the city to suburban areas, leading to de facto segregation of Northern Delaware's society. In

21267-635: The war. When the war began, Killbuck found the Lenape caught between the British and their Indian allies in the West and the Americans in the East. The Lenape were living in numerous villages around their main village of Coshocton , between the western frontier strongholds of the British and the Patriots. The Americans had Fort Pitt (present-day Pittsburgh) and the British, along with Indian allies, controlled

21420-604: The way east to the low-tide mark on the New Jersey shore, then continues south along the shoreline until it again reaches the 12-mile (19 km) arc in the south; then the boundary continues in a more conventional way in the middle of the main channel ( thalweg ) of the Delaware River. On the west, Delaware and Maryland are mostly separated by a line running from the midpoint of the Transpeninsular Line , going slightly west of due north up to its tangent point on

21573-511: The western boundary of the state and separates the watersheds that feed Delaware River and Bay to the east and the Chesapeake Bay to the west. Since almost all of Delaware is a part of the Atlantic coastal plain , the effects of the ocean moderate its climate. The state lies in the humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa ) zone. Despite its small size (roughly 100 miles (160 km) from its northernmost to southernmost points), there

21726-428: The western part of the state before migrating across the Chesapeake Bay. The Kuskarawocks were most likely the Tuscarora . The Unami Lenape in the Delaware Valley were closely related to Munsee Lenape tribes along the Hudson River . They had a settled hunting and agricultural society, and they rapidly became middlemen in an increasingly frantic fur trade with their ancient enemy, the Minqua or Susquehannock . With

21879-443: Was Delaware's largest slave owner with 37 slaves. By 1860, the largest slaveholder owned 16 slaves. Although attempts to abolish slavery failed by narrow margins in the legislature, in practical terms the state had mostly ended the practice. By the 1860 census on the verge of the Civil War , 91.7% of the black population were free; 1,798 were slaves, as compared to 19,829 "free colored persons". An independent black denomination

22032-452: Was chartered in 1813 by freed slave Peter Spencer as the " Union Church of Africans ". This followed the 1793 establishment in Philadelphia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church by Richard Allen , which had ties to the Methodist Episcopal Church until 1816. Spencer built a church in Wilmington for the new denomination. This was renamed as the African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church and Connection , more commonly known as

22185-408: Was greeted by local Lenape who came by canoe, after his ship entered what is now called Lower New York Bay . At the time of sustained European contact in the 17th through the 19th centuries, the Lenape were a powerful Native American nation who inhabited a region on the mid-Atlantic coast spanning the latitudes of southern Massachusetts to the southern extent of Delaware in what anthropologists call

22338-439: Was named after its location on the Delaware Bay , which in turn derived its name from Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr (1577–1618), the first governor of the Colony of Virginia . The Delaware people, a name used by Europeans for Lenape people Indigenous to the Delaware Valley, also derive their name from the same source. The name de La Warr was derived from Sussex and is of Anglo -French origin. It came probably from

22491-456: Was rejected on February 8, 1865, the 14th Amendment was rejected on February 8, 1867, and the 15th Amendment was rejected on March 18, 1869. Delaware officially ratified the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments on February 12, 1901. During the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War , Democratic Redeemer governments led by the South's Bourbon aristocracy continued to dominate the region and imposed explicitly white supremacist regimes in

22644-434: Was segregated by operation of law. Delaware's segregation was written into the state constitution, which, while providing at Article X, Section 2, that "no distinction shall be made on account of race or color", nonetheless required that "separate schools for white and colored children shall be maintained." Beginning in the late 19th century, the Wilmington area grew into a manufacturing center. Investment in manufacturing in

22797-403: Was settled by European colonists, the present-day state was home to the Eastern Algonquian tribes known as the Unami Lenape , or Delaware, who lived mostly along the coast, and the Nanticoke who occupied much of the southern Delmarva Peninsula . John Smith also shows two Iroquoian tribes, the Kuskarawock and Tockwogh , living north of the Nanticoke—they may have held small portions of land in

22950-402: Was signed between the Lenape and European colonists. In it, the Lenape were required to move westward out of present-day New York and New Jersey, progressing into Pennsylvania and then to present-day Ohio and beyond. Through the 18th century, many Lenape moved west into the relatively depopulated upper Ohio River basin, but they also sporadically launched violent raids on settlers far outside

23103-415: Was spoken in the central and lower Hudson River Valley , western Long Island , the upper Delaware River Valley , and the northern third of New Jersey in present-day North Jersey . While dialect variation in Munsee was likely there is no information about possible dialectal subgroupings. Unami Delaware was spoken in the area south of Munsee speakers in the Delaware River Valley and New Jersey, south of

23256-439: Was taken prisoner. The British remained in control of the Delaware River for much of the rest of the war, disrupting commerce and providing encouragement to an active Loyalist portion of the population, particularly in Sussex County. Because the British promised slaves of rebels freedom for fighting with them, escaped slaves flocked north to join their lines. Following the American Revolution , statesmen from Delaware were among

23409-522: Was the first state to ratify the Constitution of the United States , earning it the nickname "The First State". Since the turn of the 20th century, Delaware has become an onshore corporate haven whose corporate laws are deemed appealing to corporations; over half of all New York Stock Exchange -listed corporations and over three-fifths of the Fortune 500 are legally incorporated in Delaware. Over 90% of all U.S. based companies that went public in 2021 incorporated themselves in Delaware. Delaware

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