The Lenape Epic (1025 years old)
Myron Paine Ph.D.
USA
Summary: The Lenape descended from Norse Vikings. Their name means "Abide with the pure" because Christ's ethics came from them in Greenland about 1000. Then for three and a half centuries they were relatively isolated in Greenland. Roman Catholic Bishops came about a century after Christ's ethics.
When the little Ice Age came, the Lenape walked on the ice from Greenland to America. That walk was the beginning of a 4.000 mile, 150 year migration of several thousands of Lenape from James Bay, Canada to the Nelson River, up the Red River of Minnesota, south to the Missouri River, east across the Mississippi River, up the Ohio River, across the Alleghenis to New Jersey. Then they spread 1200 miles along the Atlantic coast from northern New York to the Carolinas.
The Lenape spawned about 25 tribes. The better known tribes are the Blackfeet, the Arapahoe, the Cheyenne, the Miami, the Shawnee, and the Delaware. The Lenape language is the source of most "Algonquin" Indian languages.
The Lenape fed the people of Jamestown. They dealt with the Dutch. They intermarried with the Finn Landers. They gave the Quakers a place to live, when the Puritans were hanging Mary Dwyer and other Quakers. Their chiefs gave a good bye speech to the assembly of New Jersey, thanking New Jersey for honoring all the treaties made between the Lenape and the state of New Jersey.
The Lenape taught the Iroquois how to meet in council. They lived in the "land of the free and home of the brave". The Lenape had a history memory system, the Maalan Aarum, which covered 455 years. The histoy stopped when the English invaded.