http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-03132006-625586.html
Anthropologist clears up myths about Lenape
By BARBARA J. ISENBERG
Bucks County Courier Times
...
“The Delaware Indians did not call themselves Delaware,
of course, so I set out to find out what they called
themselves,” Becker said. “I found out that there were
four completely different cultures there, all called
Delaware by amateur historians.”
Those four tribes are the Lenape, the Munsee to the
north, the Ciconicon to the south and the Lenopi in New
Jersey. The Lenape, Becker explained, were fishers.
“Their survival depended on the andronomous fish like
shad and herring that come from the ocean to spawn in
fresh water streams,” he said. “You could really live
well nine to 10 months of the year doing nothing but
fishing.”
The Lenape tribe is one of the easiest tribes to
identify and study because of William Penn's land
purchases from the tribe, but the Lenape had been doing
business with foreign settlers before Penn came along.
The Swedes and the Dutch were buying land from the
Lenape in bits and pieces in the mid-17th century.
That changed when William Penn started buying large
tracts of land from the Lenape....
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March 13, 2006 4:42 AM
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