Lenapehoking

Map showing the Lenapehoking region.

Lenapehoking is a term for the lands historically inhabited by the Native American people known as the Lenape (named Delaware by early European settlers) in what is now the Northeastern United States. Though it is sometimes said to be a word in the Delaware languages for this area, like much of the toponymy involving languages in the Algonquian linguistic group, there is some confusion about the meaning and history of the name. Much of this land is now heavily urbanized and suburbanized.

At the time of the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th and 17th century, the Lenape homeland generally encompassed the territory adjacent to the Delaware and lower Hudson river valleys, as well the territory between them. It stretched from modern-day Delaware to western Connecticut and Long Island and included parts of eastern Pennsylvania all of present day New Jersey, and the southern counties of New York State, including Nassau County, and the five boroughs of New York City. Along with New York City, Newark, Trenton, Princeton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Delaware, Atlantic City, and numerous other urban and suburban areas are in Lenapehoking today, as are the Jersey Shore, Pine Barrens, the Sourland Mountains, the Delaware Valley, and perhaps some parts of the Catskills, Poconos, and the Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

There is no universal agreement among scholars regarding the autonym of Lenape territory. Some believe the area the Lenape inhabited was called Scheyischbi, or 'the place bordering the ocean'. According to some people, the Lenape called this territory "Lenapehoking" (lənape haki-nk), meaning 'in the land of the Lenape'. This assertion has gained widespread acceptance and is found widely in recent literature on the Lenape, including in the websites of purported Lenape people. Ray Whritenour, a philologist, says that the term does not appear in any sources from the 18th century, but is a modern name coined by Nora Thompson Dean (Touching Leaves Woman) in 1984, in order to provide the archaeologist/author, Herbert C. Kraft, with a convenient term for the area once inhabited by ancestors of the Lenape people.

Today, some Native Americans not limited to the Lenape or Delaware tribes live in the Northeast Corridor or Eastern Seaboard. Many of them arrived in the 1920's to 1960s from the Iroquois Confederacy employed as skyscraper construction workers, where they been nicknamed the "Mohawks" and they played an important rule in building the skyline of Philadelphia and New York City. In the University City section of West Philadelphia, there has been some political activity by Urban Indian residents of the area, who adapted the namesake Lenapehoking to where they live. However, only only a small number are American Indians, and some of their protests and near-riots occurred there in the late 2000s and 2010.

Lenape place names

Lenape place names within the region included:

• Manhattan
  • Manhattan is derived from Manna-hata, a Dutch version of a Lenape place-name.

The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson's yacht Halve Maen (Half Moon). A 1610 map depicts the name Manahata twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River (later named the North River, and now called the Hudson River). The word "Manhattan" has been translated as "island of many hills" from the Lenape language. The Encyclopedia of New York City offers other derivations, including from the Munsee dialect of Lenape: manahachtanienk ("place of general inebriation"), manahatouh ("place where timber is procured for bows and arrows"), or menatay ("island").

• • Sapokanikan - habitation site and cultivated area by the cove on the Hudson River at present day Gansevoort Street, Greenwich Village.
  • Nechtanc - habitation site along the East River site of Jacob Van Corlaer's plantation at Corlaer's Hook, near the present location of the Manhattan Bridge, in the part of the Lower East Side that is now Chinatown.

• Staten Island
  • Aquehonga - name for Staten Island
  • Manacknong - name for Staten Island
  • Shawkopoke - habitation site and cultivated area along Great Kills Harbor

• Brooklyn
  • Nayack or Wichquawanck - habitation in Bay Ridge near the present location of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge
  • Gowanus Canal - originally named by early settlers as "Gowanes Creek" after Gouwane, sachem of the local Lenape tribe called the Canarsee, who lived and farmed along the shores of the creek.
  • Sassian - habitation site in present Red Hook

• Queens
  • Rockaway originally known as Reckowacky after a small band of the Canarsee who lived on the peninsula.
  • Maspeth originally Mas-pet were a part of the Rockaway band that lived along Maspeth Creek.

• Rockland County, New York
  • Monsey - from the name of the Munsees, northern branch of the Lenapes

• New Jersey
  • Absecon - meaning: "place of swans"
  • Assunpink Creek - meaning: "Stony Creek"
  • Communipaw (in downtown Jersey City) - "riverside landing place"
  • Hackensack - "stream flowing into another on a plain/ in a swamp/ in a lowland"
  • Hoboken - "where pipes are traded"
  • Hohokus - "red cedars"
  • Hopatcong - "pipe stone" (NOT "honey waters of many coves" as early 20th-century boosters would have it)
  • Mahwah - "meeting place"
  • Manahawkin - "place where there is good land"
  • Manalapan - municipality's name is said to have come from Lenape and is said to mean "land of good bread"
  • Mantoloking - said to be either "frog ground", "sandy place" or "land of sunsets"
  • Mantua - said to have come from the "Munsees", North Jersey Lenapes, but the township is in South Jersey.
  • Matawan - "hill on either side"
  • Metuchen - "dry firewood"
  • Minisink - "from the rocky land", is the old name for the Munsee, and the name of an ancient Lenape trade route that ran along a good part of what is now US Highway 46 in Northern New Jersey
  • Musconetcong
  • Netcong - Abbreviation of "Musconetcong".
  • Passaic - "valley" or "river flowing through a valley"
  • Peapack - "place of water roots"
  • Raritan - original form was Naraticong - may have meant "river behind the island" or "forked river".
  • Scheyichbi. Meaning of name varies. notes two possible meanings: the land that the Lenapes called their country, or "land of the shell money (wampum)".
  • Secaucus - "black snakes".
  • Weehawken - "place of gulls".

• Pennsylvania
  • Catasauqua - "thirsty ground"
  • Conshohocken - original form "Gueno-sheiki-hacking", meaning pleasant valley.
  • Macungie - derived from "Maguntsche", meaning "bear swamp" or "feeding place of the Bears."
  • Manayunk - "place where we go to drink"
  • Passyunk - a Philadelphia neighborhood and former township named for a Lenape village (compare to Passaic, New Jersey)
  • Pennypack Creek - "downward-flowing water" - a creek in and near Philadelphia.
  • Perkiomen Creek - "muddy waters" or "where the cranberries grow" - a creek in central Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
  • Shackamaxon - on the site of Penn Treaty Park in Philadelphia.
  • Tulpehocken - "land of turtles", the name of a creek and a SEPTA train station and street in Philadelphia
  • Wissahickon - "yellow stream" or "catfish stream" - a creek in and near Philadelphia.

See also

Sticker

• History of New York City
• History of New Jersey
• History of Philadelphia
• History of Pennsylvania
• History of New York
• History of Delaware
• New Amsterdam
• New Netherland
• Bergen, New Netherland
• New York metropolitan area
• Philadelphia metropolitan area