Unit 2: The Ice Age Transition, Climate Change, and Native Americans in Pennsylvania [School]

The Susquehannocks were the dominant Native American group in the lower Susquehanna River basin at the end of the Late Woodland Period 450 years ago. East of the Susquehanna basin, the Lenape people emerged as the dominant native group. The Lenape inhabited a large swath of territory known as “Lenapehoking,” which covered the Delaware River watershed in eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware, all of New Jersey, and portions of southern New York including the lower Hudson River Valley and Manhattan Island, where New York City is located.

The term Lenape will be used here to represent groups or bands of native people living in Lenapehoking near the end of the Late Woodland Period. Information you’ll learn about the Lenape is largely based on historical records from European observers and interpretations of the archaeological record.

Lenape people of Lenapehoking can be placed into two related but distinct groups. Each group was associated with a territorial landscape zone where a distinct dialect of the Delawarean language was spoken. (The Delawarean language was a branch of the Eastern Algonquian language family.) The physical boundaries of Lenapehoking’s dialect-based territories includes property extending from the coastline of the Atlantic Ocean west through New Jersey to the Delaware River watershed in Pennsylvania. Landscape features at points along the length of the Delaware River can be used to demarcate dialect territory boundaries. (See Lenapehoking-Lenape territories map.

• The Munsee dialect was spoken in the Upper Delaware River zone, from the Kittatinny Ridge and Delaware Water
Gap (DWG) north to the headwaters of the Delaware River in New York.

• People living in the Delaware River zone south of the DWG to Cape Henlopen, Delaware, spoke the Unami dialect.

• A variation of Unami dialect, known as the Northern Unami or Unalachtigo dialect, was spoken in the Middle
Delaware River portion, from the DWG to the Fall Line on the Delaware River.

• In the Lower Delaware River portion – Fall Line to Cape Henlopen – people spoke a southern Unami dialect variation.

The Lenape (pronounced Len-nah-pay in the Unami dialect and Len-nah-pew in the Munsee dialect) were descendants of earlier Algonquian-speaking ancestral or “proto” groups who occupied the region by the start of the Late Woodland Period 1,000 years ago. During the following 600-year period, these proto groups evolved into the Munsee- and Unami-speaking people who made first contact with various European groups who arrived in Lenapehoking ˜400 years ago.

The appearance of these proto groups and their time frame of existence are marked by distinct pottery styles (complexes) presumably manufactured by members of the groups. Proto-Munsee people have been associated with pottery of the Pahaquarra Somplex that was made from 1,000 to 700 years ago. Proto-Munsee and Munsee people also likely made Minisink Complex pottery from 600 to 400 years ago. Proto-Unami and Unami people of the mid-Delaware River zone have been connected with Overpeck Complex pottery made from 1,000 to 400 years ago.  Proto-Unami and Unami of the Lower Delaware zone are thought to have produced Minguannan Complex pottery from 1,000 to 400 years ago.

Over time, these ancestral proto-groups who evolved culturally into Munsee- and Unami-speaking people, developed kinship groups. People speaking Munsee and Unami dialects may be viewed as being part of the Lenape “tribe.” Specifically they might be seen as being more closely connected by kinship as clan members within larger band groups who spoke similar, localized versions of either Munsee or Unami dialects.

Clans were associated with a phratry, which is an ancestral or kinship group affiliation. Based on historical accounts, Munsee and Unami phratry descent lines were matrilineal and traced through the mother’s side of a family. Phratries united clan members through a mythical belief that they had a distant common ancestor.

There were three main clan phratries in Munsee and Unami societies: the wolf, turtle, and turkey clan phratries. Within these three clans were 10 to 12 sub-clans, designated by a variety of names. Members of each clan were found throughout Lenapehoking, with a person’s clan membership being matrilineal and therefore the same as their mother’s clan. For example, if a mother belonged to the turtle clan, then each of her children also belonged to that clan and were considered related to every other person of the turtle phratry clan.

Lenape (Munsee and Unami) men were required to marry women from outside their own clan, a social practice known as exogamy. For example, if a male was a member of the turkey clan, he was expected to marry a female from either the turtle or wolf clans. His children would belong to their mother’s clan. Exogamy effectively prevented inbreeding within social groups.

Lenape families also practiced matrilocal residence, in which a married couple resided with the wife’s family. That meant daughters and sisters remained living near or in their mother’s dwelling. Sons left to marry and live with their wife’s clan while retaining a connection with their own clan membership. Matrilocal residence allowed for the formation of extended clan families, possibly with three or four generations living in the same place.

Clan mothers controlled their houses, families, child care, and education, as well as the distribution of inherited property and land territory rights. When formal leadership was needed, a female matriarch (grandmother or eldest woman) in consultation with other women clan elders, would appoint a sachem (chief or leader). Considered a wise person and good negotiator, the sachem (usually a man of the matriarch’s lineage) was advised by an informal council of elders when
making decisions. Archaeological evidence suggests that few Native Americans at this time lived beyond 35 years of age, so those able (and lucky enough) to reach an old age were greatly respected.

A generalized Lenape lifestyle: Lenape women of all ages were an important part of their culture’s overall economy and were depended upon for gathering the majority of wild foods, cultivating domesticated crops, and making pottery. Economic importance may have been a contributing factor in the Lenape culture’s adoption of a matrilineal kinship system. (In contrast, some Native American cultures in which men, through hunting, provided the majority of food in their subsistence economy, often had a patrilineal kinship system. In these systems, kinship and residence are tied to the father’s side of family, as seen in patrilineal northern Algonquian groups where hunting was predominant.)Lenape women were involved in the production of a large portion of their community’s subsistence needs. They were in charge of planting and harvesting domesticated crops, gathering wild berries, roots and nuts, and processing and drying fish. They processed food by pounding and grinding seeds into flour, crushing and pressing nuts to squeeze out cooking oils, and drying crops or wild plant foods and fish for use in winter.

Women and children gathered firewood daily. Fire was critical for cooking, providing heat during winter, and hardening fired-clay pots women had skillfully made. Pottery was important for the cooking and storage of food. Women used plant materials to weave mats and baskets, construct containers, and braid cord to make rope and fish nets.  Women gathered freshwater mussels from rivers, and oysters and clams from saltwater areas. They used bone and stone tools to scrape hair from animal hides, and then cut the hides into smaller sections and sewed them into clothes, moccasins, and shelter coverings using bone needles and animal sinew.

The average height for Lenape adults may have been about 5’8″ for men, and 5’3″ for women (based on skeletal remains of Woodland people living in southern Lenapehoking). Clothes worn on the body were made of soft hides from deer or beaver. In warmer weather, women wore short wrap-around skirts that often were painted with plant dyes and decorated with animal parts such as porcupine quills. Men wore loin cloths. In colder weather, both sexes might have worn deerskin moccasins and buckskin leggings tied with a belt. Other winter clothing may have included a heavy hide shirt, a fur robe made of beaver pelts or bearskin, fur mittens, and a cap. Women’s cloaks often were fashioned with iridescent wild turkey feathers.

Women wore their hair long, with headbands made from snakeskin, threaded shells, or strips of animal hide. Red paint made from the juice of plants such as bloodroot and pokeberry was mixed with bear grease and used for round decorative dots that were placed on womens’ cheeks. Men cut their hair or pulled it out, leaving only a small round clump on the top of the head, which they adorned with a feather or two. Both sexes applied bear grease (made from fat) to their heads, hair, and skin to make their bodies shine and protect themselves from biting insects. Lenape wore ornaments made from animal teeth and claws, shells, stone, feathers, and clay. Men tattooed themselves with images of birds, snakes and other animals, and geometric designs.  They used bloodroot to dye deer hair red for headdresses and breast ornaments, and for painting chests and faces. Lenape people kept themselves clean by bathing in a stream or lake, or using a steam bath in a sweat lodge

Lenape men shared the work load with women. They used fire and axes to clear land for fields, and then broke up the soil for planting. They cut saplings with stone axes and used them to make framework posts for houses.  Larger trees were selected for dugout canoes. Smaller, pliable saplings and branches were cut to construct weirs and large baskets to catch fish. Fishing was a very important source of food for the Lenape. They used techniques passed along by generations of people who lived along the Delaware River, Delaware Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean coastline. (See L7, Sidebar 1: Fishing, on page 172.)

Some men were skilled craftsmen who made bows and arrows, which were used extensively (along with distinctive triangular-shaped arrowheads) during the Late Woodland Period. (Note: As mentioned in Lesson 6, the bow and arrow may have been used by earlier, different cultures during the Archaic Period.)

Hunting and fishing were primarily responsibilities of Lenape men, but skilled women occasionally took part. Deer were often hunted by people who formed a large circle, and then used fire and loud noises to drive the animals into pens or rivers, where they could be killed easily.  Traps, rope snares, and nets caught mammals such as raccoons, minks, beavers, otters, muskrats, and bobcats, as well as birds such as turkeys, passenger pigeons, ducks, and geese. Many of these animals also were
shot with arrows.

Lenape men were good warriors, and at times needed to defend their territories against outside groups such as the Iroquois to the north and the Susquehannocks to the west. Skirmishes among different rival Lenape groups in Lenapehoking probably occurred to a limited extent despite the Lenapes’ generally peaceful nature.  According to historical accounts, numerous separate band groups with distinct identities occupied specific geographical territories in Lenapehoking prior to, and just after European arrival. A band group assigned parcels of land to particular clans for hunting, fishing, and cultivation, within the band’s overall territory. Private ownership of land was an unknown concept to the Lenape; land parcels belonged collectively to clans while they occupied it. Women had rights to certain family plots for gardening, or to sections of a waterway for fishing.

Clans lived at base settlements, which for much of the year were occupied mostly by women, children and elderly people who managed crops in surrounding fields, gathered wild plant foods, cooked and processed food, and made pottery and clothing. Men and skilled adolescents moved to seasonal campsites in surrounding communal areas to carry out specific tasks such as hunting and fishing, occasionally returning to their main (base) residential settlements with procured resources.  In winter, some families may have resided in more sheltered upland sites.  In spring, annual migrations of saltwater fish species into the Delaware River and its tributaries brought members of different bands together at places where fish concentrated and were plentiful.

The pre-existing cultural practices of gardening and managing native wild plants may have allowed for easier acceptance of corn. Native Americans in the upper Delaware already had been altering and managing mast and native plants on upland and lowland sites long before nonnative corn, squash, and beans arrived. Pre-existing subsistence practices were already in place, possibly making the addition of new plants easier. Changes to existing methods may have been needed to add new plants to the list of native plants already being used. These changes probably happened as the new plants gained economic and social importance. Since the life cycle of non-native corn is different than the life cycles of native food plants of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, the integration and use of corn likely required some time before it could be used extensively. This may explain corn’s initially low levels of production. Reliance on a new plant probably was contingent on how easily it fit in with existing gardening and landscape management practices, and how well it grew in its new environment.

Initially, corn may have been grown as a curiosity or luxury food. Consumption may have been associated with special feasts and rituals that marked socially distinct events, or perhaps as memorials to past events. (Think of our use of pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce to commemorate Thanksgiving.) Corn may have been grown and traded by only a few groups.

By ˜1,100 to 1,000 years ago, corn was found all across the region, perhaps spreading from the upper Delaware into portions of the Susquehanna River Valley. An increase in the production and use of corn, along with other domesticated and wild plant foods in the upper Delaware, appears to have begun at the start of the Late Woodland Period. Archaeological studies of floodplain sediment layers in the upper Delaware River zone north of Delaware Water Gap reveal an increase in field soil sediment and corn plant ecofacts from ˜900 to 400 years ago. This suggests that bands of Munsee-speaking people living in the upper Delaware were clearing more forest for their settlements and fields in order to intensify their production of corn. Pottery fragments also were discovered in the sediments. The presence of pottery and corn together
suggests that Munsee people were occupying floodplains and farming on a semi-permanent or permanent basis.

The earliest and only date for squash’s appearance in Lenapehoking, again in the upper Delaware, is from ˜900 years ago, although squash has been dated much earlier in other areas of Pennsylvania. Domesticated beans appear to be in use ˜700 years ago, meaning that the traditional and nutritionally beneficial “Three Sisters” form of native farming wasn’t in place in Lenapehoking until then.

The arrival of Three Sisters agriculture in Lenapehoking also may have come from the north, where Munsee-speaking Lenape and Iroquoian-speaking cultures who utilized the practice, appear to have interacted. Similarities between Owasco pottery and proto-Munsee Pahaquarra pottery suggest some acculturation between the two groups took place. In Lenapehoking, Munsee speakers living in dispersed hamlets and villages in the upper Delaware River zone appear to have implemented more of a small-scale agriculturalist (AG) strategy (along with some hunting and collecting of fish and wild plants) than Unamispeaking groups in the middle and lower Delaware River zones.