#20 - Lenape Country Part I - Way, Way Before William Penn

 Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn

Written by Jean R. Soderlund, a professor emeritus from Leheigh University in Pennsylvania and published in 2015, Lenape Country discusses the world around the Delaware Valley and Bay with particular emphasis on the native perspective as well as the Europeans’. 

I chose to read this because of my suspicions around the role of the Lenapes in the purchasing of the land at Lewes and the true story about the destruction of Swanendael. This was also, hopefully, meant to help me better understand the socio-political environment between the English and Dutch to begin to find out what happened during the Lord Baltimore Raids.

I plan to discuss the book over the next few posts, I want to get into the Pre- Raids time, the Raids themselves and the direct aftermath, and then Post-Raids until William Penn. Since this book is recent, and since it was written by a professor emeritus, I should be able to trust that it is an accurate view of the history of the Delaware area using the known primary and secondary sources.

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Delaware’s history began in 1681 according to the Pennsylvanian Quaker settlers. This caused its earlier colonial history to be buried alongside the native american one. It erased the Lenape’s history and 65 years of European (non Penn) colonization and their myriad interactions. This was passed along to later historians and writers, as well as into popular cultural memory. Recently, as in the 1960s-80s, this belief was upheld by folks such as esteemed writer and historian Bernard Bailyn, a sort of grandfather to the Founders version of the American Revolution; he described them as creative thinkers entranced by the ideas of personal freedom away from a sovereign's control. Very, very paraphrased bio based on his obituaries, he passed in early 2020. I have not myself read his books, but I can understand the critiques challenging him on his de-emphasis on racial tensions between the English founding fathers and others, especially enslaved Africans and Native Americans. Jean R. Soderland violently disagrees with Bailyn. She says his bias perpetuated the lack of historical work done on the Delaware Valley since so much of its original colonial shaping was done during the Dutch period; I would add this could explain why so little was also written about the tensions between Maryland and New York.

Soderlund begins her book appropriately with a brief overview of Lenape Country. Since my blog is meant to discuss the origins of Lewes to better understand the Ryves Holt House, I will intentionally skip over some of this important history to fast forward to their interactions with Europeans. Lenape towns were separate from Swedish, Dutch, English villages. They imposed strict settlement rules, mostly allowing the establishment of trading posts and forts, but not farming communities. The Lenapes who lived along the Delaware side of the Bay were called the Sickoneysincks and they were the ones who negotiated with the Dutch, allowing them to built a trading post in their hunting lands around Cape Henlopen. Since the early 1600s, the Lenapes, Susquehannocks and others were accustomed to dealing with Dutch and Swedish traders, but they also had connections to their neighbors around the Chesapeake and up into New York. They very well knew how contentious and aggressive the relationships were between their neighbors and the new European colonizers. 

Soderlund takes this context to explain why the settlement at Swanendael was destroyed in 1631. The Dutch settlement was to be not just a whaling station and trading post, but an agricultural settlement. This broke the agreement between the Sickoneysincks and the Dutch Knowing what had happened near Fort Orange, New Amsterdam, at Jamestown and other European settlements, they could have seen Swanendael as an invasion and decided to make a statement. By destroying Swanendael and massacring the colonists, the Sickoneysincks were perhaps trying to show the Dutch that they would not stand to see their lands taken over. They were showing the Dutch what happens when they broke their deals. If Soderlund is right, this would explain why no other settlements on the Delaware Bay are known to have been destroyed like Swanendael, but it could also explain why it took until the late 18th century before any real settlements were established on the bay. That would coincide with the decline in native power in the area, when they started to retreat up the Delaware River and away from Cape Henlopen and the Bay.

So, as Soderlund posits, the violence at Swanendael is consistent with European and Indigenous relationships up and down the Mid-Atlantic and New England seaboard in areas outside the Delaware River and Bay. This makes the relationships that existed on the Delaware in the early 17th century an exception that deserves more attention from scholars. The way all these communities and interests interacted, shared knowledge, and displayed power creates a much more vibrant and nuanced environment than is usually discussed. Especially for the study of the history of Lewes/Whorekill, when the discussions of the settling of the area rarely extend beyond those terrible natives massacring the good people of Zwaanendael. 

As for data collection for where in the world Swanendael was actually located, Lenape Country, may have helped with the confusion. Swanendael was perhaps simply the name of the patroonship for the southern side of the Delaware Bay. It is the colony name and perhaps the name for the settlement, too. The area purchased by Samuel Godijin, Samuel Blomaert, and the other investors was extended from Cape Henlopen to the ‘1st narrow’ of the river, perhaps about 35 miles. This is shown on a map a referenced a few weeks ago - "Caert Vande Svydt Rivier in Niew Nederland" by Jan Vinckeboons circa 1639. It shows Swanendael marked more like a regional name, tied to the green highlight along the coast. Cape Henlopen is noted at the bottom margin, but there isn’t a name for a settlement near Lewes/Whorekill. However, if this map is indeed from 1639, then Swanendael the settlement would have been destroyed 8 years before and there shouldn’t be much in the area until the 1650s. It does stand to reason though, that the region would still be known as Swanedael if only to continue to claim the land for New Netherland and the Dutch. 

On June 7th, 1659, the Dutch ‘repurchased’ the land from Bombay Hook down to Cape Henlopen for the purposes of agriculture. They established a small fort at the Whorekill (Probably the site of the DeVries monument and palisade), but settlement remained sparse. Soderlund claims that since the settlement here was small and that the Dutch continued to allow Lenape and Sickoneysincks activity in the area that then the purchase was meant as a political move against English encroachment from Maryland. The Dutch needed to continue to control the Delaware Bay area to protect their investments further up the river. In December of 1663, control of the area was officially passed off to the city of Amsterdam and by this time, if not from the building of the 1659 fort, the memory of Swanedael would certainly have faded to some significant degree. It would have further disappeared because in the fall of the following year the Duke of York’s forces took control of the region; in October of 1664, Sir Robert Carr took military possession of New Amstel, Whorekill and the rest of the Dutch settlements in the new Delaware Colony. Robert was succeeded by Captain John Carr in February 1665, no relation, I presume. 

And here, with the transfer from Dutch to York, I will stop for the week. Next up, we’ll talk about the 1660s and 1670s at the Whorekill, address Soderlund’s narrative for the Lord Baltimore Raids, and the immediate aftermath at the close of the 17th century. 

*a note on naming conventions. Technically, I would try to use the contemporary names for places and peoples. I would prefer to call things by the names people called themselves and their own places. But for clarity’s sake in these short blog posts, I will try to use mostly common and modern terms to avoid confusion. Eventually, if this ever becomes something official, I’ll be defining names and using them as appropriate to context.