PREFACE
The following paper is intended to be the first of a series concerning different phases of the culture of the Lenape or Delaware Indians, once a numerous people forming a confederacy of three closely related tribes, the Unami, the Minsi or Muncey, and the Unala‛ʹtko or Unalachtigo, first encountered by the whites in what is now New Jersey, Delaware, eastern Pennsylvania, and southeastern New York, but at last accounts[1] reduced to some 1900 souls scattered in Oklahoma and the Province of Ontario, Canada, with a few in Wisconsin and Kansas. Of these the Lenape of Oklahoma seem to be mainly of Unami extraction, the rest largely Minsi, while the Unala‛ʹtko appear to have merged with the others and to have lost their identity.
The writer has gathered most of his data for the whole series from the Oklahoma bands, with such informants as Chief Charley Elkhair (Kokŭlŭpoʹw‛ʹe), Julius Fox, or Fouts (Petaʹnĭhink), Minnie Fox (Wemĕĕleʹxkwĕ) his wife, and William Brown; but much valuable information came from Canada where his principal informants were Chief James Wolf (‛Tayenoʹxwan), Chief Nellis F. Timothy, (Tomapemihiʹlat), Isaac Monture (Kaʹpyŭ‛hŭm), Chief Nellis Monture, Michael Anthony (Na‛nkŭmaʹoxa), and Monroe Pheasant. Of these especial credit is due to Julius Fox and Chief Timothy, both of whom manifested great interest in the work and exerted every effort to make it complete, and to Ernest Spybuck, a Shawnee, whose paintings, carefully made of Delaware ceremonies at the writer’s request, form a valuable adjunct to the text.
The works of previous writers have been utilized where available, and much has been learned from archeological discoveries in the ancient territory of the Lenape, not so much, of course, with regard to the subject matter of the present paper, as of others in preparation.
Most of the information was gathered while the writer was collecting ethnological specimens for the Heye Museum of New York, now the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, during the years 1907 to 1910; but some of the Canadian data were procured earlier while in the field for Mr E. T. Tefft of New York, whose collection is now in the American Museum of Natural History.
Without knowledge of the Delaware language in its divergent dialects, and without any pretension of being a philologist, the writer has endeavored to record the Lenape words as he heard them, depending for translation on his interpreter pro tem. Hence some inaccuracies at least are inevitable. The alphabet used is as follows:
It was intended at first to publish the mass of material thus obtained in the form of a monograph on the ethnology of the Lenape; but later it was seen that while some phases of their culture could be described in considerable detail, there were others not so well represented in our notes. It was therefore finally decided to publish at once such parts as were ready, in the form of separate papers, and to leave the others until more detailed information could be obtained.
No extended comparisons of the religion and ceremonies of the Lenape with those of other tribes will be attempted in this paper, these being reserved for a projected article to embody the results of a comparative study of Lenape culture.
M. R. Harrington