Tag: Delaware Tribe

One of Philadelphia’s salient features is the grid pattern of our streets as originally laid out by William Penn and Thomas Holme. There are, though, some major thoroughfares that deviate from the norm. Ridge Avenue, Germantown Avenue, and Passyunk Avenue interrupt the orderly Philly lattice. Each of these roads share something in common: they were originally Indian trails that had been established long before William Penn or any other Europeans had come to this land. Although Philadelphia’s population today is only .36 percent Native American, our land was once home to a flourishing and expansive Indian community.

In January 2020, the Museum of Indian Culture in Allentown opened a Historic Preservation Office to help members of the Delaware Nation connect to their ancestral homeland. To celebrate this event, a map of the Delaware Valley prior to European settlement was driven from Pennsylvania to the Delaware Nation, now based in Oklahoma. Photos of the map intrigued me, so I set out to learn more about its origins and purpose.

The Coaquannock Map

The Works Progress Administration published the little-known Coaquannock map in 1934. | Image courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania

The full title of the map recently gifted to the Delaware Nation is Philadelphia Region when known as Coaquannock “Grove of Tall Pines” AND AS FIRST SEEN BY THE WHITE MEN. WITH INDIAN VILLAGES, ABORIGINAL NAMES OF LOCALITIES, STREAMS AND ISLANDS AND THEIR INTERPRETATION. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has three original copies of the map, and I recently visited their reading room to take a closer look. 

An inscription below the map indicates that it was published in 1934 and had been prepared using funds from the Works Progress Administration (WPA),…

Continue reading

East Stroudsburg University  |  Special to Pocono Record

An East Stroudsburg University honors program student is using modern technology to educate others about an ancient culture in a new exhibit.

Emily Serpico, a senior history and communication double major who is also pursuing a business writing certificate, utilized 3D technology to replicate several artifacts from Greene Dreher Historical Society for her honors thesis project, currently on display in Stroud Hall. The exhibit, Living Legacies: Community Connections, is the result of several months of work in which Serpico teamed up with Susan Bachor, Delaware Tribe Historic Preservation Office and ESU instructor of history and geography; Darlene Farris-LaBar, ESU professor and chair of art + design; and students such as art + design major, James Holloway, by lending various areas of expertise, including 3D scanning and 3D printing.

The exhibit allowed Serpico to apply her various skill sets and take a hands-on approach to her studies. She honed her cataloguing and researching skills during her internship with Bachor last summer, and she currently works at the Schisler Museum of Wildlife and Natural History and McMunn Planetarium. Her supervisor at the museum, Cathy Klingler, did some consulting work on the project. “It came together pretty naturally,” Serpico said.

The exhibit timeline was aggressive, according to Bachor: “The initial brainchild happened in the spring. We wanted to have what Emily was already doing incorporated into her thesis so it wasn’t overwhelming. She ended up designing this project and exhibit. It took about 8-9 months, which is a short time for an exhibit. That’s a very demanding timeline that Emily held to. November is Indigenous People’s Month and we had the Assistant Chief visit us on campus, and this helped us stick to the timeline.”

Serpico’s exhibit includes replicated projectile points, a Delaware blanket, buckskin pelts, a map, and a collection of minerals. Many of…

Continue reading

Joe Malinconico  |  Paterson Press

{ // query dom only after user click if (!vdContainer) { vdContainer = document.getElementById(‘videoDetailsContainer’); vdShow = document.getElementById(‘vdt_show’), vdHide = document.getElementById(‘vdt_hide’); } vdContainer.hidden = !(vdContainer.hidden); // show/hide elements if (vdContainer.hidden) { vdShow.hidden = false; vdHide.hidden = true; } else { if (!flagCaption) { flagCaption = true; fireCaptionAnalytics() } vdShow.hidden = true; vdHide.hidden = false; } }); function fireCaptionAnalytics () { let analytics = document.getElementById(“pageAnalytics”); try { if (analytics) { analytics.fireEvent(`${ga_data.route.basePageType}|${section}|${subsection}|streamline|expandCaption`); } else { if (window.newrelic) window.newrelic.noticeError(‘page analytics tag not found’); } } catch (e) { if (window.newrelic) window.newrelic.noticeError(e); } } }()); ]]>

Paterson NJ Great Falls during a rainfall

The Great Falls, in Paterson, is shown as it rains, Sunday, April 11, 2021.

Kevin R. Wexler, NorthJersey.com

PATERSON — An archeologist will monitor the construction of a new $26 million affordable housing complex at the Argus Mill site near the Great Falls as part of a tentative agreement designed to prevent the destruction of 19th century artifacts.

At present, most of the location in question is covered by an asphalt parking lot at the corner of Van Houten and Mill streets.

But experts say that beneath the surface of that parking lot loom the remains of mill workers’ homes from the start of the city’s Dublin neighborhood in the 1830s.

The foundation of a house where the Colt family lived almost 200 years ago as their Paterson gun mill produced legendary Colt .45 revolvers may also lay buried beneath the asphalt.

At one point, state historic preservation officials were also concerned about the new development’s impact on Native American artifacts and required the builder to seek the blessings of the Delaware and Shawnee tribes before proceeding. The Delaware tribe had no objections, while the Shawnee declined to comment on the issue, according to public documents

City and state officials this week…

Continue reading

{ // query dom only after user click if (!vdContainer) { vdContainer = document.getElementById(‘videoDetailsContainer’); vdShow = document.getElementById(‘vdt_show’), vdHide = document.getElementById(‘vdt_hide’); } vdContainer.hidden = !(vdContainer.hidden); // show/hide elements if (vdContainer.hidden) { vdShow.hidden = false; vdHide.hidden = true; } else { if (!flagCaption) { flagCaption = true; fireCaptionAnalytics() } vdShow.hidden = true; vdHide.hidden = false; } }); function fireCaptionAnalytics () { let analytics = document.getElementById(“pageAnalytics”); try { if (analytics) { analytics.fireEvent(`${ga_data.route.basePageType}|${section}|${subsection}|streamline|expandCaption`); } else { if (window.newrelic) window.newrelic.noticeError(‘page analytics tag not found’); } } catch (e) { if (window.newrelic) window.newrelic.noticeError(e); } } }()); ]]>

Biden protects Native American site, boost safety

President Joe Biden signs a “long overdue” order improving public safety and offering justice to Native Americans, along with seeking a 20-year ban on oil and gas drilling on Chaco Canyon, in northwestern New Mexico. (Nov. 15)

AP

An Oklahoma tribe will require employees to become vaccinated against COVID-19 “without exception,” its chairman announced in a terse, one-page letter to employees. 

“The Citizen Potawatomi Nation no longer chooses to allow unvaccinated employees to touch and breathe on our children in the daycare, prepare food and serve it to our elders or cough and sneeze infected mucus and snot at work,” longtime Chairman John “Rocky” Barrett wrote. 

The tribe operates several businesses near its home base in Shawnee, east of Oklahoma City, including the Grand Casino Hotel and Resort and Firelake Discount Foods. It also has extensive government offices and two clinics.

Land vote:After decades of tension, Citizen Potawatomi, city of Shawnee pledge new start 

In his letter sent Tuesday, Barrett said workers at the tribe’s health care facilities must become vaccinated by Dec. 4. Other employees have until Dec. 31. Those who opt not to get the shots will “face termination,” he said. 

Barrett said in a statement that it was his responsibility “to make decisions…

Continue reading

[]Oklahoma tribes to receive over $7 million from HUD for COVID relief | KOKHPlease ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes ofwebsite accessibility Continue reading

November is Native American Heritage Month, a time for appreciating, recognizing and paying tribute to the Indigenous people whose land this country was wrongfully founded on.

The history of the relationship between Native Americans and the European settlers who landed on their shores has been notoriously white-washed. Over time, many attempts have been made to erase not only their plight at the hands of the settlers but also their contributions to America’s progress.

Despite the inextricable relevance of Indigenous presences in America, many people know next to nothing about the history of the specific tribes who live in their region.

The Lenape people, also known as the Delaware Tribe, lived and still do live in the area that now encompasses New Jersey, Delaware and parts of Pennsylvania and New York. But when colonists began to arrive in the early 17th century, the Lenape were tricked out of their land by white settlers and forced to leave their homes, ending up displaced thousands of miles away in an allocated area of Kansas. Despite this, almost all of the eligible Delaware men voluntarily enlisted in the Union effort during the Civil War, even as white trespassers stole from them and unlawfully occupied their land.

This is obviously admirable, but Native Americans should not need to be heroes to be celebrated and acknowledged. It is enough that they were here first, as sovereign nations, and still they have not been given the attention or respect they deserve.

Montclair State University has a somewhat turbulent history when it comes to its relationship with Native American heritage and culture. During the 1930s, Montclair State’s athletic logo was changed from a simple red “M” to a stereotypical profile of a Native American chief, and the team name was changed in…

Continue reading

Longform

The Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania is fighting for governmental recognition — despite pushback from other Lenape tribes — raising big questions about who gets to call themselves Native and how the state views its history.

Get a compelling long read and must-have lifestyle tips in your inbox every Sunday morning — great with coffee!

Lenape tribal member Rick Quiet Hawk Welker, photographed at a powwow at Mauch Chunk Lake. Photograph by Kevin York

It’s a muggy mid-September Sunday, and kayakers and vacationing families are taking in the calm waters of Mauch Chunk Lake, a small reservoir in the southern Poconos. While beachgoers lounge on the sand and watch eagles cruise above the trees, another group is gathered a few hundred yards up the shore for an even more traditional lakeside activity: a Native American powwow. The reverberation of drumbeats, along with the smell of burning sage and barbecue, hangs in the humid air, floating across the parking lot between the powwow and the beach.

Many of the people dancing, chatting and celebrating at the powwow claim ancestral connections to the Lenape (leh-NAH-pay), the Indigenous people of the Delaware Valley. Some are dressed in full regalia, wearing head-to-toe beads and painted feathers, attracting stares from those who came to Mauch Chunk Lake for swimming or a hike. They gawk, open-mouthed. Some take pictures. It’s as if the last thing they expected to see on their weekend trip to the Poconos was the people who lived here first.

It’s a common belief that there are no longer any Lenape (sometimes called Delaware Indians, the name given to them by European colonists) in Pennsylvania. It is widely presumed that every single Lenape person was forcibly relocated to…

Continue reading

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State student organizations and units at campuses across the commonwealth will be holding events in honor of National Native American Heritage Month, celebrated during the month of November. Here’s a look at some of the events taking place at the University’s campuses. Please check back, as additional events may be added throughout the month.

According to the Library of Congress Native American Heritage Month website, Native American Heritage Month, also known as American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month, celebrates the rich and diverse cultures, traditions and histories of the Native people and recognizes the significant contributions of the first Americans. 

This recognition began as American Indian Day on the second Saturday of each May. The day was established through a proclamation by the Congress of the American Indian Association’s president on September 28, 1915, and was the first formal appeal for recognition of Indians as citizens. In 1990, then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating November 1990 “National American Indian Heritage Month.”

Acknowledgement of Land

This past summer, in collaboration with the Indigenous Peoples Student Association (IPSA) and the Indigenous Faculty and Staff Alliance (IFSA), Penn State’s Office of Educational Equity and Office of the President developed a land acknowledgement, a formal, institutional statement that recognizes and respects Indigenous peoples as the original stewards of this land and the enduring relationship between Indigenous peoples and their historic territories, which reads:

The Pennsylvania State University campuses are located on the original homelands of the Erie, Haudenosaunee (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora), Lenape (Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe, Stockbridge-Munsee), Shawnee (Absentee, Eastern, and Oklahoma), Susquehannock, and Wahzhazhe (Osage) Nations. As a land grant institution, we acknowledge and honor the traditional caretakers of these lands and strive to understand and model their responsible stewardship….

Continue reading

An opportunity to learn more about the Lenape people through the eyes of cultural experts and members of the Delaware Tribe is coming soon during a live, free Facebook event @BartlesvilleAreaHistoryMuseum. 

Special guests including Delaware Chief Brad Killscrow and Delaware Tribal Princess Morgan Messimore will be on hand as Curtis Zunigha, Delaware Cultural Center director, Anita Mathis, archivist, and Jim Rementer, language program director, will take guests on a virtual tour of the “Delaware: The Faces of Lenape” exhibit in Pioneer Gallery at 7 p.m. on Nov. 16. 

Museum coordinator Delaney Williams said that tribal members will add nuance to the experience and more information than already exists in the exhibit. On display since September, the exhibit has attracted a lot of interest and visitors have made a special trip up to the 5th floor of City Hall at 401 S. Johnston Ave.  

“It’s been a lot of fun to get to talk to people,” Williams said. “We’ve actually had a lot of people who are descendants to some of these people who have bios on the panel.”  

The exhibit was a collaboration between museum staff and Delaware Cultural Center with items on loan from the cultural center and Woolaroc. It includes 21 panels of carefully researched information that highlights key points in the history of the Delaware Tribe from the 1500s to today. 

More than 70 objects are on display including musical instruments, traditional clothing and the original Charles Journeycake stained glass from the Journeycake Memorial Baptist Church (now First Baptist Church Dewey).  

Debbie Neece, collections manager, said the exhibit is a “must see” cultural experience for all ages. 

“Washington County has a rich and diverse history,” she said. “This exhibit will show you the world of the Lenape tribe as they left their Pennsylvania homeland, transitioned to Indian Territory and their cultural foothold as experienced today.” 

The live event will stay on the museum’s Facebook page so anyone who does not have an opportunity to see it in person will be able to experience the virtual tour.  

Williams said they will be taking down the exhibit the last week in November so visitors who want to see it…

Continue reading

“Our ancestors are still here, their footsteps are still here, their voices are still here, and I want to thank you for being here for us and for them.”

During a reception to mark the opening of a new permanent exhibit at the Pike County Historical Society, Larry Heady of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, based in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, addressed local residents gathered on the steps of the Columns Museum on the evening of Oct. 6.

The exhibit, “The Lënape, Original People Reconciling The Past, Embracing The Future,” tells the story of the Indians native to our region and the diaspora that took them far from their homelands in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It includes the obelisk for Tom Quick that once stood in Milford Borough and explains the story and controversy behind it.

Bonney Hartley, of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community based in Bowler, Wisconsin, began her remarks in the Lenape language to honor and acknowledge her ancestors. She spoke of the importance of the exhibit, especially for the school children that will come through, and who “will be able to learn about our history and who we are today, and know that the Lenape people are still here and still engaged in our homeland.”

She continued, “It really respects what our ancestors have painfully endured but also celebrates our continued existence and resiliency.”

Daniel StrongWalker Thomas, the Traditional Chief of the Delaware Nation based in Anadarko, Oklahoma, said he appreciated the friendship that has been forged. Referring to the land Pike County residents enjoy today, he said, “As you admire this beauty, remember us and keep us in your hearts.”

Lenape and Quicks meet in friendship

The exhibit was created from a partnership between three Lenape tribes, the Quick family, Milford Borough and the Pike County Historical Society. The Columns…

Continue reading