Enduring Invasion, Surviving History: Perseverance of the Lenape and Nanticoke Peoples

Dr. Cara Lee Blume, Archaeological and Historical Consultant, will explore the imminent disappearance of the Lenape and Nanticoke people from Delaware and New Jersey by the end of the first century of European invasion.  
 
 Throughout the eighteenth century and into the first half of the nineteenth century, there were reports of the death of the “last Delaware (Lenape)” or the “last speaker of the Nanticoke language.”  Large numbers of Delawares and Nanticokes did die in smallpox epidemics or left the home of their ancestors, winding up in distant places like Oklahoma and western Ontario, Canada.  Public officials and historians have promulgated this story of disappearance for at least 200 years.  And yet—today thousands of Indian people remain in this same homeland, connected by ties of kinship and residence to three tribal communities that still exist.