Families were important to the Lenape Indians.  There were strong ties between parents and children, and among all the related families that made up the clan.  The Lenape had three clans - wolf, turtle and turkey, which traced their descent through the female line.  This meant that a clan was made up of a matron, her sisters and brothers, all her sons and daughters, and the daughter's children.  The sons had to marry women from other clans, and their children then belonged to their mother's clan.

Many of the groups of Indians inhabiting Lenapehoking had well-organized ways of governing their clans and their villages.  The chiefs were chosen for their behavior, skill in speaking, honesty, and ability to make wise decisions.  The chiefs also had to know about religion, so that they could lead the people in rituals and ceremonies.

War leaders were different.  They gained power through proven bravery and success in battle.  They were able to gather young men together and go off on a raid - without the approval of the chief.

Within their own groups the Indians were kind to one another.  They felt a sense of responsibility towards everyone in their community.  They did not steal from anyone in their own village, for there was no reason to do so.  The land belonged to the whole community, shelters were shared, and no one hoarded valuable possessions.

Everyone worked, but men and women were expected to do different tasks.  By starting at an early age, small children began to learn the skills they would need when they grew up.

The Lenape made the things they needed by utilizing the natural materials around them.  Until the Europeans came, they had only tools fashioned from shell, stone, bone and wood.

Women were responsible for the planting and harvesting of crops and gathering of wild foods, and for preparing meals and caring for the children.  They were skilled at making clay pots, weaving rush mats and bags, and making baskets.  They wove cornhusks for slippers, mats and dolls, and made containers from elm and birch bark.  With fibers from the inside of plants, they spun and braided cords for binding and carrying bundles.  Women were also responsible for preparing the hides for clothes and shelters.  With bone tools, they scraped the hair from the hides and cleaned them.  Then they smoked them, cut them into pieces and sewed the pieces with bone needles.

Men prepared land for gardening.  They hunted and fished, traded with other groups, and made tools.  They were good woodworkers, and made bows, arrows, fishing equipment, canoes, bowls, and ladles.  Some warriors used their woodworking skills to make ball-headed clubs.

Many of the Lenape Indians lived in villages for most of the year and grew much of their food.  The three most important crops were corn, beans, and squash, known as "the three sisters".  The gardening tools were very simple - hoes, and sticks for digging and planting.  Some of the crop was eaten as soon as it was harvested, but much of it was preserved for use in winter when food was scarce.  What was kept for later use was dried and stored in underground pits lined with bark.

Lenape Indians fished and hunted in all seasons.  Using bows and arrows, traps, snares, and spears, they hunted deer, bear, elk and beaver.  They also hunted the ducks and other birds that lived in their area.  Sometimes hunting and fishing trips took men away from their villages for several weeks.  Wild foods were also used.  Berries were eaten fresh, baked into bread made from corn flour, or dried for winter use.  Nuts were ground up and baked, or were pressed to squeeze out their oil, which was used in cooking.  Maple syrup was made by collecting sap from maple trees in early spring.

History

Those of a different language stock — such as the Iroquois (or, in the Lenape language, the Minqua) — were regarded as foreigners, often, as in the case of the Iroquois, with animosity spanning many generations. (Ethnicity seems to have mattered little to the Lenape and many other "tribes," as illustrated by archaeological discoveries of Munsee burials that included identifiably ethnic Iroquois remains carefully interred along with those of ethnic-Algonquian Munsee. The two groups were bitter enemies since before recorded history, although intermarriage, perhaps through captive-taking, clearly occurred).

Overlaying these relationships was a phratry system, a division into clans. Clan membership was matrilineal, that is, children inherited membership in a clan from their mother. On reaching adulthood, a Lenape traditionally married outside of the clan, a practice known by ethnographers as, "exogamy", which effectively served to prevent inbreeding, even among individuals whose kinship was obscure or unknown.

Early Europeans who first wrote about Indians found matrilineal social organization to be unfamiliar and perplexing. Because of this, Europeans often tried to interpret Lenape society through more familiar European arrangements. As a result the early records are full of clues about early Lenape society, but were usually written by observers who did not fully understand what they were seeing. For example, a man's closest male ancestor was usually considered to be his maternal uncle (his mother's brother) and not his father, since his father belonged to a different clan. Such a concept was often unfathomable to early European chroniclers.

Land was assigned to a particular clan for hunting, fishing, and cultivation. Individual private ownership of land was unknown, but rather the land belonged to the clan collectively while they inhabited it. Clans lived in fixed settlements, using the surrounding areas for communal hunting and planting until the land was exhausted, at which point the group moved on to find a new settlement within their territories.

European Contact

The early interaction between the Lenape and the Dutch was primarily through the fur trade, specifically the exchange of beaver pelts by the Lenape for European-made goods.

According to Dutch settler Isaac de Rasieres, who observed the Lenape in 1628, the Lenape's primary crop was maize, which they planted in March. The metal tools of the Europeans were adopted quickly for this task. In May, the Lenape planted kidney beans in the vicinity of the maize plants which would serve as props for the climbing vines. The summers were devoted to field work and the crops were harvested in August. Most of the field work was carried out by women, with the agricultural work of men limited to clearing the field and breaking the soil. Hunting was the primary activity during the rest of the year. Dutch settler David de Vries, who stayed in the area from 1634 to 1644, described a Lenape hunt in the valley of the Achinigeu-hach (or "Ackingsah-sack," the Hackensack River), in which one hundred or more men stood in a line many paces from each other, beating thigh bones on their palms to drive animals to the river, where they could be killed easily. Other methods of hunting included lassoing and drowning deer, as well as forming a circle around prey and setting the brush on fire.

The Susquehannocks went to war with the Lenape over access to trade with the Dutch at Manhattan. The Lenape were defeated.

The quick dependence of the Lenape on European goods, and the need for fur to trade with the Europeans, eventually resulted in a disaster with an over-harvesting of the beaver population in the lower Hudson. The fur source thus exhausted, the Dutch shifted their operations to present-day Upstate New York. The Lenape population fell into disease and decline. Likewise, the differences in conceptions of property rights between the Europeans and the Lenape resulted in widespread confusion among the Lenape and the loss of their lands. After the Dutch arrival in the 1620s, the Lenape were successful in their efforts to restrict Dutch settlement to Pavonia in present-day Jersey City along the Hudson until the 1660s, when the Dutch finally established a garrison at Bergen, allowing settlement west of the Hudson within the province of New Netherlands.

The Treaty of Easton, signed between the Lenape and the English in 1766, removed them westward, out of present-day New York and New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, then Ohio and beyond — although sporadic raids on English settlers continued, staged from far outside the area.

The Lenape were the first Indian tribe ever to enter into a treaty with the United States government, with the Treaty of Fort Pitt signed during the American Revolutionary War. The Lenape supplied the Continental Army with warriors and scouts in exchange for food supplies, and may have been misled by an undocumented promise of a role at the head of a future native American state.