Leni lenape games

It is also why beaver fur was considered so valuable. Clothes, Body Painting, and Jewelry : The women sewed fur into clothes. They also used tanned hides leather and decorated the hides with intricate and colorful beadwork.

The Lenape loved color. They would paint their faces with different colors for different festivals and occasions. Both men and women wore earrings and moccasins. They wore beaded headbands. The women wore their hair long in braids. The men shaved their heads, or left just one piece of hair. They might add a couple feathers to their headbands.

The women wore skirts that came to their knees. The men wore breechcloths and leggings. Both men and women and children wore deerskin capes in the winter. Spirits : The Lenape believed that spirits lived in everything around them - in a flower, a tree, a stream.

It was important to treat nature kindly because mostly likely a spirit would be hiding inside to help or hinder you. They believed in a great spirit that created the world, and a bunch of evil little spirits that were responsible for illness and everything bad. To gain a spirit's favor, they would leave a small offering near a brook or a tree or a big rock, someplace a spirit could find it.

They had many rituals to honor the good spirits and drive away the bad ones. They knew which plants would cure what. This knowledge was passed down and improved generation after generation. But there were also special men, medicine men or shamans. The medicine men had special powers over the spirits. Since the Lenape believed many illnesses were caused by evil spirits, it took the shaman to get rid of the evil spirits. Simple things could be cured by plants.

But big ones took help to fight the evil spirits. The medicine man was not considered a spirit himself, but he was a very important person in the village. Plans were run by the shaman for final approval, even by chiefs, although they might meet the shaman in private. They bathed daily. They also believed that sweating would rid the body of evil spirits. One of the most important places in the village was the sweat hut. The sweat hut was used to cure sickness.

Inside the hut, red hot stones were gathered. Water was poured on the stones. That produced steam. That made anyone inside the hut sweat. After a while, the person being cured would be douses with cold water and then dumped into a stream. Then they were wrapped in blankets and left to dry and rest. It was an exhausting process for those tending the fire and for the person who was steamed. This had to be done very carefully so you did not injure your patient with the hot steam.

It also made breathing difficult. The Lenape knew it was dangerous, but if you were really sick, they believed a visit to the sweat hut might save your life. Dogs: Dogs were considered spirit guardians. They worked hard, like all the Lenape, but dogs were treated kindly, with gratitude. When dogs died, they were buried in a decorated grave. Wampum: For money, the Lenape used wampum.

They also used fur. Wampum was made by dying shells purple and white. Then shells were drilled to they could be strung on a thread. Some threads were woven together to make a wampum belt. Wampum was difficult to make.

It took a great deal of time. It was difficult to drill holes in shells without breaking them. Wampum makers often told a story in the design of the belts. It took talent to make wampum. Wampum was more than money. It was art. The Lenape did not get along with the Iroquois. They traded, and also fought battles. Some young Lenape men, feeling very brave, paddled out to take a closer look. The monster turned out to be a ship, a very big wooden ship.

The ship was the Half Moon , and its captain was Henry Hudson. The crew of the Half Moon traded beads and metal tools for fresh food, tobacco, and furs, especially beaver fur. Beaver had been hunted almost to extinction in Europe. Henry Hudson knew that beaver furs would make his trip important to the Dutch, who were paying for his voyage. Beaver furs were riches. The Lenape sell their land: Sure enough, Henry Hudson's discovery of a land rich in beaver furs caused a sensation back in Europe.

The Dutch claimed all the land Henry Hudson had discovered for themselves. They called it "New Netherland". Important tribes within this language group also included the Ojibwa, Blackfoot, and Shawnee. The Lenape resided in bands along various rivers and creeks. They lived on hunting and growing foodstuffs and depended on the fertility of the land. Due to their heavy tillage of the land, the soils they farmed gradually lost their productivity.

As a result, Lenape frequently relocated. Thus, the native people constantly set up, abandoned, and resettled communities throughout Pennsylvania. Archeological evidence indicates that the Lenape inhabited the area centuries before the Europeans arrived. They established various villages along the Schuylkill River and its tributaries. During the excavation, numerous prehistoric artifacts were found, providing evidence of a fairly large and stable indigenous community occupying the area during the late archaic and early woodland periods, six thousand years ago.

The Lenape utilized natural resources to build their homes. They lived in single doorway wooden huts called wigwams, which were situated along rivers and creeks. The size of their wigwams depended on the region they inhabited. The smaller version characterized the Lenape encampments in the Philadelphia region.

The Lenape had distinctly different physical features and appearances than that of the Europeans. For clothing, men wore breechcloths during the summer and fur robes during the winter. Likewise, women wore wrap-around-skirts during the summer and fur robes with leggings during the winter. Due to their short life expectancy, men and women married young.

For some marriage lasted a lifetime, but for others this union ended in divorce. A woman wishing to divorce her husband placed all of his personal possessions outside of the wigwam.

A man wishing to divorce his wife left the home. Once couples had children, fathers with the help of other male elders bore responsibility for teaching male children to hunt for wild game.

Women taught daughters how to gather edible plants and tend to the children. In late fall, the men left their homes to hunt white-tailed deer, wild fowl, muskrat, rabbits, and foxes. Men were responsible for the heavy work around the village, making tools, weapons, mortars, frames for the wigwams, dugouts, and fishing spears. Birds such as herons, pigeons, eagles, hawks, and turkeys were hunted. Once a bird was captured, it would either be prepared for direct consumption or dried. When the weather was favorable, men would use spears, harpoons, nets, and dams to catch fish.

The women would clean and prepare the fish, which were either eaten raw or dried and saved for later. As they grew older, young girls learned how to garden, care for the children, and cook. In , the Company bought a tract of land from the Lenape near present-day Wilmington, Delaware. Swedish and Finnish settlers who engaged in fur trading followed. Further fur trading posts were established along the west bank of the Delaware River.

Dutch officials still had ambitions on the Delaware River and established new trading posts. The Swedes remained and established a community in West Philadelphia along the west bank of the Schuylkill River bearing the Lenape name, Chinssessing, "a place where there is a meadow" which grew to be the district of Kingsessing.

The Dutch and Swedes had episodic relations with the Lenape. The English Quaker William Penn would have more enduring and impactful interactions. The men and women players would jump up to knock it toward their own goal-post. The men may not carry the ball, nor may they pass it. A man should not tackle or grab a woman who has the ball, but must feign to prevent the woman from passing.

He may also knock the ball from her hands. The women players may pass, run with, or even kick the ball. Dean later added that the women would kick at it if it was on the ground, but no high kicks. The women may throw the ball through the goal-posts, or carry it through. The Scoring is done by some selected old man or old woman. A pile of twelve sticks about 2 inches long each is used to keep score. The sticks are put into two rows one for men and one for women , one stick each time a goal is made, until all twelve sticks are used up, then whichever group has the most sticks is the winner.

For example, if the women have seven sticks and the men five, then the women are the winners; or, if the women have eleven sticks and the men one, the women are the winners.

If the score is tied, 6 to 6, a play-off takes place until one more goal is made. The Playing Season begins in the Spring when the weather is nice enough. This can be March or April.

The season ends in mid-June, and the older people considered it wrong to play this ball game at other times of the year. The Other Rules are few. It is customary, before the first game in the Spring, to have some selected old person make a prayer, much to thank the Creator for having let the people live to play again, and to ask that he might let them live to play in future seasons.

At the end of the last game in mid-June, some old lady takes the ball and makes a prayer, following which she opens the ball letting the deerhair fall to the ground. The hide is given to someone to be kept and made into another ball for the next Spring if it is in good enough condition. Although this is not a rule it may be of interest.

No set number of games is played, just until the people are tired. Usually the games begin in the afternoon. A bet-string is passed around the camps or among the people.

This is a long string on which people who wish to bet tie something such as a head scarf, handkerchief, or even a ribbon. If the team on which the person bets wins, the person can go and get anything off this bet-string that has not been spoken for. This concludes the account by Mrs. The Lenape Football Game continues into the present day.

One account was possibly about the football game among the Lenape. First and foremost I would like to say how thankful I am that Mrs. Dean wrote out the rules of the game. This represents just a small part of her work of many years in trying to preserve the knowledge of the ways of her Lenape people.

I would also like to thank Lucy Blalock for her further information on some of the other details of Lenape football. Blalock also been worked to preserve Lenape ways, and taught classes in the Lenape Language teaching classes at the tribal headquarters in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The purpose was to reconstruct a Lenape village as it would have been prior to for educational purposes. She was unfortunately unable to fulfill her dream mainly due to the cost of acquiring a suitable land base in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

It should be noted that someone in Pennsylvania has reprinted Mrs. Lucy Blalock, a Lenape elder, added the comment that a woman who is menstruating should not take part in the game. This author discovered as did Frank Speck , in researching the rules of the game, that the Lenape people are rather evenly divided on the time of year to stop playing the game. Some Lenape, such as Mrs. Blalock, say that the game can be played throughout the summer and fall. The Lenape who say the game can be played throughout the year say that the ball is not torn up at the end of the playing season as long as it remains in good condition.

This was done in order to keep the teams more evenly balanced. The selected man played by the same rules as the women; that is, he could run with the ball or pass it. Arber, Edward. Travel and Works of Captain John Smith. Bradley edition, 2 vols. Burnet, Jacob. Appleton, New York. Culin, Stewart. Games of the North American Indians. Bureau of American Ethnology, no.