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Chapter One The Power of Life: Gender and Organization in Lenape Society In 1624, in perhaps the earliest European account of encounters with Lenapes, Nicolaes van Wassenaer related with awe that the people followed closely the movements of the celestial bodies. The first full moon following the end of winter occasioned special celebration. After that, “the women, who in that land provide the food, as respects both planting and gathering, begin to make preparations, and carry their seed into the field.” A few years later another Dutchman, David de Vries, traveled up the Delaware River to trade. His arrival followed a disastrous Indian attack on the Dutch settlement of Swanendael, in which all settlers had been killed, and it coincided with a period of conflict between Lenapes and Susquehannocks. As the vessel neared a small tributary to the river a woman approached them and “cautioned us not to go entirely into the kill, as she knew that they intended to make an attack on us.” Some months later, when de Vries’s company became stuck in the ice, lacked food, and lived in fear of Indians, they saw a single canoe “in which sat an old Indian with a squaw, who brought with them some maize and beans, of which we bought a quantity.” From the start, Lenape women as well as men met with European colonists, traded with them, and came to their aid.1 First encounters were marked by physical necessities. Without Indian maize, beans, and meat early colonists would have perished. Establishing a foothold on the shores of the Delaware River, a requirement for successful trade, meant that Europeans had to negotiate with Lenapes for land. Lenape men and women grappled with the challenge of these new arrivals, and their basic need for land and nourishment contained gender dimensions that would have a lasting impact on Lenape societies and future encounters with colonists. Managing these challenges meant that practices as well as perceptions had to change, with profound consequences for Lenapes and their descendants. Upon what foundations were Lenape power, authority, and hierarchy based? How did Lenape material practices create different 16 Chapter One responsibilities and restrictions on each sex? How did these transform during contact with Europeans? This chapter follows the Lenapes in their contacts with white colonization up until the early eighteenth century when a majority of the people had left the Delaware riverside and moved farther west into Pennsylvania and Ohio, attempting to evade the ever-increasing onslaught of white settlement. The Importance of Food Food and land formed two fundamental material conditions of first encounters between Indians and whites. Food provision and stewardship over land involved both men and women in Lenape society. Women held the overall responsibility for planting and caring for the maize, the cornerstone of the Lenape food economy. Corn as staple of the Lenape diet, along with other vegetables such as beans, squashes, melons, and peas, is described generously in colonial sources. “The food supplies are various. The principal one is maize, which is their corn. . . . They pound it in a hollow tree. . . . They make flat cakes of the meal mixed with water . . . and bake them in ashes, first wrapping a vine-leaf or maize-leaf around them. When they are suf- ficiently baked in ashes, they make good palatable bread. The Indians also make use of French beans of different colors, which they plant among their maize.”2 Women labored together in work teams, organized by the most influential women of the lineages, planting and caring for corn and other vegetables grown on village plots. They hailed the first full moon at the end of “the time when the frogs begin to croak” (late February) as the sign that planting should commence. They then prepared the seeds, broke up earth in fields that men had helped clear, and planted kernels of corn, 5–7 grains in each hill. Seeds were placed three or four feet apart to allow room for thorough weeding. In mid-May when plants had grown to two or three feet high, women planted beans in the hills to allow them to crawl up the corn stalks. In addition squash and melons were cultivated, as well as tobacco. Children and old men stayed around the fields much of the time to assist with weeding and to fend off rats and other marauders. Corn came in several varieties and colors. Peter Lindeström, a Swedish fortification engineer who spent two years in the...

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