Monday, October 12 was Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a holiday observed on the second Monday of October. It is intended to be time to honor the Indigenous people across the United States and educate residents about the Indigenous people and tribes whose histories pre-date Christopher Columbus.
The holiday falls on the same day as Columbus Day, a holiday that honors when Columbus arrived to the Americas in 1492. The decision to have Indigenous Peoples’ Day on the same day as Columbus’ discovery is to offer the context that there were people already existing on the land far before Columbus’ arrival. Both days are widely recognized in the country and state.
According to the State of New Jersey, “the land now known as New Jersey has been inhabited by Indigenous peoples for over 10,000 years.” The land of New Jersey is home to the Lenape, a group of people also referred to as the Delaware. The Lenape Nations occupied the areas now known as New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York. The State of New Jersey also reported that in the 1600s, there was a population of approximately 8,000 Indigenous people.
Today, there are still active Lenape Nations and communities across New Jersey.
On October 8, Ewing Township, Mercer County author and researcher Rick Durham gave a presentation titled “The Lenape Delaware People and their influence on the American Revolution” at the Mullica Hill Branch of the Gloucester County Library System.
Durham, who also is part of the Ewing Township Historical Society, has spent decades of his life researching Indigenous nations and tribes. He used to live in New England, and he became interested in the Wampanoag Nation, Indigenous peoples in Massachuttes and Rhode Island. This led him to learn more about them and all of the Algonquian peoples, which are Indigenous peoples who speak Algonquian languages and who are widespread across Northeast America.
Durham became friends with some of the active members and chiefs in New England. He began giving lectures on the different Algonquians. When he and his wife moved down to New Jersey, he quickly became involved with the historical society and geared his research towards the Lenape in the state and tri-state area.
“I’m going to talk about a history of a people, where they came from, where they went, how they were victimized, how they triumphed. So I’m going to tell you a story-a story of defeat, submission, a story of betrayal and enslavement. It’s a story of victory and triumph,” Duram said at the start of his hour-long presentation.
“They called themselves the Lenape, which means original people, or simply people of my own group or country,” he said, stating that the Lenape are more than just the Delaware, and their name suggests they are the original people of the land. “The Lenape were a loose confederation of Algonquin Indian peoples…They were of related culture that had tens of thousands of tribes related, scattered all over North America.”
Throughout the presentation, Durham hit on historical points about the Lenape, their interactions and battles with people of other lands and cultures, their involvement in the Revolutionary War and where they stand today, after dispersing from their homeland to across the county.
“The important thing is that the Lenape, as Delawares, they survived. The important thing is they survived. They migrated. They re-identified themselves. They came out as a conquered people,” Durham said. “They were disregarded as anything important. They were humiliated, and yet they came out fighting, literally fighting, and they established an identity for themselves.”
The Mullica Hill Branch’s next historical lecture will be held on Thursday, October 22 at 7 p.m. It will feature author and historian Dr. Emily Sneff, and she will discuss her book “When the Declaration of Independence was News,” which focuses on the creation of the Declaration and how it was first shared to the public.
Rick Durham gave a lecture on the Lenape Delaware People at the Mullica Hill Branch of the Gloucester County Library System on October 8.
