The Delaware Indians
The LenniLenape, the Real or Original people, inhabited the middle Atlantic seaboarduntil the early 1900s. Their lands included the Atlantic coast from the Delaware Bay to Manhattan Island, territory along the Delaware river and its tributaries, the west bank of the Hudson River to Kingston New York, interior Pennsylvania east of the Susquehanna, the Coast of Delaware north of Cape Henlopen, all of New Jersey, and Southwestern New York. The Lenape were not considered as one political group. Various communities had their own dialect and cultural eccentricities, mainly due to the variety of economic environments in which they lived. However, the Lenape did consider themselves as a common group. Known as the Delaware Indians to the white men, they were a peaceful and harmonious people, surround and protected by spirits from the land and from above.
