Indians of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley The extensive drainage basin of the Delaware River is popularly called the "Delaware Valley." In different parts of my life I've lived in each of the three states surrounding it -- Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. As a boy, I was always curious about the mysterious Indians who were nowhere to be seen, but whose language surrounded us in place names like Conestoga, Susquehanna, Passaic, and Hoboken, just to name a few. Even the name Manhattan comes from the language of the "Delaware" Indians. I am glad to have finally learned, much later in life, about the people who really "settled" this land and blazed its trails. Here in Pennsylvania, many early contacts were honorable, and Indians were well-treated. Unfortunately, much of that honor died with William Penn. The links below will shed light on the history and culture of this region's first inhabitants, and the activities of Indians who live here now. (*See below for photo information)

Tribal websites

Introduction: Numerous native populations occupied what is now Pennsylvania before the first Europeans arrived here. Perhaps the best known were the "Delaware" Indians, a somewhat broad term used by colonists, that included the Lenni Lenape and related groups which spoke similar languages. Through a long history of land purchases, wars, emigration, and forced relocation by state and federal governments, many or most surviving descendants of the Delawares ended up in Oklahoma. Because they arrived there by different routes at different times, two separate groups formed, and remain there today, one in the eastern part of the state and one in the western part. The eastern group claims to be the larger of the two, with 10,500 members. As you'll see below, those are not the only groups claiming to be descended from the indigenous population of this region.
Webmaster's Comment: The information on this page changes faster than virtually any other page on the entire Online Communicator website. In the version you're reading now, over half the sites linked here had disappeared, or the links required some type of updating, since the previous page revision. Tracking down the new information is difficult from a research standpoint, not to mention politically sensitive! So please help out and let me know if you find anything missing. Thanks.

• The Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma had an attractive website that had disappeared the last time this page was revised. Since then, the group has undergone a name change and set up a new site, with the simpler name The Delaware Nation.
• Still at the same site is The Delaware Tribe of Indians, another population of Lenape/Delaware descendants, who live in eastern Oklahoma. They are recognized by the U.S. government as a sovereign Native American nation, after a ruling in 1996.
• The Ramapough Mountain Indians were a group in New Jersey whose Native American lineage has been disputed by some parties. Despite the controversy, they achieved official recognition by the state of New Jersey. This is another group that has changed its name since this page was first published. Now they are the Ramapough Lenape Nation. The information on the new site is distributed via a discussion board structure, linked from the home page.
• The Powhatan Renape Nation - Rankokus American Indian Reservation is recognized by the state of New Jersey. Among its goals are "to educate the non-Indian community about our traditional ways, beliefs, traditions, and culture."
• The Lenape Nation is a group in eastern Pennsylvania that seeks to preserve cultural traditions and tribal identity, and hopes for state recognition.
• The Thunder Mountain Lenape Nation [Revised URL] includes members of the United Lenape Nation who live primarily in Western Pennsylvania. They have various informational links, and report on their cultural activities and other news.
• The Kansas Delaware [Revised URL] tribe views itself as another distinct branch, and although it is currently incorporated in the state of Oklahoma, it is seeking recognition in Kansas.
• The Delawares of Idaho [Revised URL] are also separated from the "main" branches of the tribe, but are organizing and working toward recognition, while they preserve their culture with the help of their website, powwows, and other activities.

Research and History

• The Lenni Lenape Historical Society in Allentown, PA provides a museum, an annual schedule of educational and cultural events, and more.
• Historical and other information on the Delaware [Revised URL] Indians, as well as the Susquehannock, the Erie, and much more, can be found on First Nations/First Peoples Issues, a large website that has stirred a bit of controversy within the ranks of Native American activists.
• Lenape Delaware History Net is essentially a labor of love that was long maintained by Thomas Swiftwater Hahn and Chris Hahn. Tom Hahn passed away since this link was first added here, but Chris is keeping things going. The site disclaims any official link with specific tribal groups, but still provides lots of links and other information.
• The Delaware State Historic Preservation Office offers an illustrated, multi-section overview [Revised URL] of Indian history in that state based on archaeological findings, going back 12,000 years and up to the time of contact with Europeans.
• With all the digging it does, the Delaware Department of Transportation keeps track of Archaeological Exploration and Historic Preservation in Delaware [Revised URL]. They used to have an overview page of all their prehistoric findings, but that seems to have gone. Instead, they publish findings of prehistoric artifacts and information for each project individually, which can take some time to locate. An example is the Hares Corner interchange, for which they produced a summary of Regional Prehistory pertinent to that project.
• The Indian King Tavern Museum, Haddonfield, NJ hosts a page with interesting anecdotes describing local Indian activities in early New Jersey history.
• Pennsylvania on the eve of colonization [Revised URL] part of the PA State Historical Museum site, this page describes the indigenous people who lived here before Europeans arrived. Also at that site: Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: "North America's Forgotten Conflict at Bushy Run Battlefield" -- a very detailed description of a large battle among Indians and Europeans that marked a turning point in the westward expansion of the state, and the nation.
• The Pennsylvania State Data Center has analyzed 1990 U.S. Census data and offers a Research Brief analyzing Native American population in Pennsylvania [Revised URL], along with a data chart and county-by-county map. For your convenience I've posted a reduced-size version of the statewide map right here. Visit the source to see the original. The Center also offers a 1998 article commemorating Native American History Month [Revised URL] in Pennsylvania.
• Larry Smith's huge site devoted to Bedford County, in West-Central Pennsylvania, contains extensive information about The Indian Occupation Of Mother Bedford, with particular emphasis on the Susquehannocks and their Iroquois relatives.
• Not to be outdone, Rick Nicholson's Delaware County site features his laborious presentation of the History of Delaware County, Pennsylvania written by Henry Graham Ashmead in 1884. Ashmead's text provides numerous references to Indian activities and influences in the southeastern part of the state, going back to the 17th century -- and to top it off, the entire site is searchable by keyword. Thanks, Rick!
• The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends has maintained an Indian Committee continuously for well over 200 years. Many of the records it accumulated from 1745 to 1983 are housed within the Special Collections of the Haverford and Swarthmore College Libraries. You can get some idea of the collection's breadth by exploring its Finding Aids online.
• Mohican Press operates a tribute site to the film Last of the Mohicans. Their The Mohicans: Children of the Delaware touches on the relationships among these tribes.
• Unfortunately, Marist College has apparently cut back its web pages on Native Americans. Other sources report on some of the same topics, including Indians of the Lower Hudson Valley and Native American Tribes of the Hudson River.
• As they migrated out of Pennsylvania, some members of the various tribes known as Delawares settled for a while in Ohio, where they made enough of an impression to merit a page on Ohio History Central [Revised URL].

Culture

• The Library of Congress offers a look the infamous boarding schools where authorities tried to quash Indian culture and language, under the guise of "helping" Indian children through mainstream education away from their families and tribes. A search of the collection yields photographs from the Indian school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. For a deeper and well-documented exploration of the school's history and context, visit the Carlisle Indian School Research Pages. Stephanie Anderson's thoughtful article "On Sacred Ground" attempts to put the Carlisle experience into perspective from a modern viewpoint.
• As a graduate student at the University of Virginia, Tuomi J. Forrest created an incisive look at the interaction of culture, politics, history, and art in Penn in the Capitol, which examines various marble panels within the U.S. Capitol building. * The panel shown here depicts William Penn making a treaty with the Indians. The Virginia site has better versions of the original photograph, other Indian-related images from the Capitol, references to the sources, and an informative and interesting commentary.
• The Schuylkill Heritage Ecosystem Discoveries Project developed several pages of information about the Lenni Lenape and related topics, now hosted by Web-Savvy Productions.
• United American Indians of the Delaware Valley [Revised URL] is a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization providing numerous support services and cultural activities for Indians of all backgrounds. UAIDV seems to have had its share of organizational difficulties over the years. The website URL has changed several times since this page was first published, and as of this writing, the site is still rather bare. The group has sponsored some large pow-wows in the city over the years, but an interested visitor might have to search elsewhere for information about new ones, unless the group decides to start updating the website.
• Hope Farm Press publishes a particularly large and eclectic selection of books on Native American history, culture, and related topics, especially about this region.
• The Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College offers archives for visiting scholars, including specialized microfilm collections. Most such collections provide summaries or "finding aids." Sometimes the "finding aid" is useful all by itself, such as this Historical Background of the Moravian Missions Among American Indians. If you want more detail, however, you'll have to go look at the microfilm in person.

Genealogy

Ever since I launched this page, people have written to me asking me if I could help them identify their long-lost Indian ancestors, and similar questions. Folks, I am not a psychic, nor am I a free research service. I just run a free website on my own time, and I provide links that you could find yourself, except that I make it easier to find things all in one place. In that spirit, here are some links that are just meant to get you started if you have a question about Native American family links. If they don't meet your needs, just learn to use the search tools that are available on the web. I simply can't answer personal questions about your family tree. Thanks.

• The Reading (Pennsylvania) Moravian Church used to host a lot of genealogy links on its site, but now it links to this separately-maintained list of Moravian Church Genealogy Links.
• Betty and Ray Terry's Mitsawokett site focuses on the history and genealogy of "Native American Isolate Communities" primarily in the Delmarva Peninsula area. Unfortunately, a bit too much Java and loose coding slows the site down. However, they host some unique materials. One, a series of papers by consultants Ned and Louise Heite under the title Delaware's Invisible Indians arose from research into the Bloomsbury archaeological site in Delaware, with extensive followup research into the geneaology of people nearby.
• A site called "Access Genealogy" provides a page specific to Pennsylvania Native American Genealogy.
• To get an idea of just how hard it is to get access to the information stored in some early records, take a look at "The Records Of The Moravian Indian Mission: A List of Published Transcriptions and Translations" which puts the records in historical perspective, and describes how much of the original data still has not even been microfilmed yet, much less transcribed and then translated from the original German.