Swarthmore and the Lenape (SC)

This research guide is meant to serve as a starting point for students and researchers interested in exploring the history of the Lenape people. This guide is by no means a comprehensive resource, but instead serves to highlight the resources available at the Swarthmore College Libraries, particularly archival collections in the Friends Historical Library and circulating materials within the TriCo. In response to the available materials, the guide focuses on the history of Lenape land dispossession and displacement; Lenape language revitalization; oral histories, intergenerational storytelling and folktales; Lenape interactions and relationships with Quakers; and institutional accountability of Swarthmore College for its harm towards and lack of relationality with Lenape communities. 

This guide was written by Friends Historical Library student worker Julia Stern '26 in fall 2025 under the supervision of Celia Caust-Ellenbogen, Associate Curator, Friends Historical Library. Our gratitude goes out to Christopher T. Green, Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Art History, for editing the guide.

The indigenous communities who lived in present-day New Jersey, between the Delaware River and the Atlantic Ocean, up into New York City, western Pennsylvania and Delaware, referred to themselves as Lenape, or “common people.” Lenape history within the region is thousands of years old. Immediately prior to contact with Europeans, the Lenape practiced a subsistence lifestyle that included farming the three sisters (corn, beans, squash) and seasonal migrations to hunting, gathering, and fishing grounds. After colonial interactions began in the seventeenth century, disease, war with other Indigenous tribes and resistance to European settlers profoundly impacted Lenape communities. Their commitment to maintaining cultural continuity and community have endured  repeated forced removals by the U.S. government beginning in the eighteenth century, which pushed the Lenape further and further away from their ancestral homelands. 

There are three federally recognized Lenape tribal nations in the United States: Delaware Tribe of Indians (Bartlesville, Oklahoma), Delaware Nation (Anadarko, Oklahoma), and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community (Wisconsin). There are three additional Lenape tribes recognized by the Canadian government (Munsee-Delaware Nation, Moravian of the Thames First Nation in Ontario, and Delaware of Six Nations). 

There are other organizations and communities around the country seeking state and federal recognition as Lenape nations, including several who have received state recognition such as the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation, Ramapough Lenape Nation, Powhatan Renape Nation, and Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware. The claims of these and other unrecognized communities to Lenape heritage are contested, and the federally recognized tribes see such claims as a threat to Lenape sovereignty and their right to self-representation.

Historians and other researchers should be aware of the tensions between these two types of organizations. They should be attuned to notice the affiliation(s) of a Lenape person, and acknowledge that choosing to work or not work particular communities may be viewed as a political decision. The affiliation of Lenape and other Indigenous authors will be noted in the description of this guide.

The federally recognized tribes have resources and contacts responsible for promoting Lenape cultural heritage and responding to questions.