Long Journey Home: Oral Histories of Contemporary Delaware Indians (review)

These voices share unexpected optimism. "I think that what my parents did was observe this huge void within our people," reports Kala Ketchum Thomas, a former European fashion model who returned to family and tribal life in Oklahoma. "We didn't know how our forefathers did things, traditions, and when my dad got involved, and he had this hunger to know more about how they did things. He wanted it to be authentic and true, not just some made-up thing that one of the elders had vaguely remembered" (317).

Most of the speakers in this massive collection of interviews and extraordinary portrait photographs echo this theme of searching for authentic traditions. What was an East Coast tribe, the Delaware people, also known as the Lenape, gradually were forced west, starting in 1737 when descendants of William Penn swindled 1200 square miles of land from the tribe. The infamous "Walking Purchase" resulted in the first of several removals which eventually led much of the tribe to settle in Oklahoma. For most tribal members, this search for a homeland has been a multilevel struggle. The reader senses that due to so many seeking their historic traditions, the tribe managed to create a rich community by the late twentieth century. This book is more a celebration of what the group has become rather than an angst-ridden account of difficulties, though many of the interviews suggest that finding and developing a tribal identity has not been easy.

Striking color images by Brown initially attracted me to the book. The more than four pound heft of the volume gives the subject additional appeal and weight. The publisher acknowledges the ConocoPhillips Company and nearly twenty other donors, so production qualities are extraordinarily high throughout. Also, a few miles downstream from my home in the Ozarks on the Jacks Fork River, now part of a national park, is the old community of Delaware. I hoped this study would tell about the tribe's history in this valley and the Midwest.

Altogether, the 370 pages present four groups of interview transcripts: ten from the 1930s, three interviews completed in 1968, two from 1995, and thirty-one from the early 2000s. This last group covers nearly 300 pages and focuses on the White River Delaware, a large band of the tribe which resided in Indiana until the 1818 Treaty of St. Mary's forced them further west. In reading over so many interviews, one feels emotions which inspire growing frustration because much material is repeated. Seemingly trivial events obscure the bigger picture. But, by the end, the book left a strong sense of this tribe, a community that remains dispersed despite having a hearth and homeland located near Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

As might be expected, the interviews cover a range of topics, though most center on what it means to be Delaware going into twenty-first century America. For many Natives, contact with their tribe comes through family lore, tribal gatherings, pow-wows, dancing, colorful traditional clothes, and efforts to retain language. Several members of tribal government also speak in this book, but few discuss the tribe's relation to state and national government. Many members have deep roots in Indiana and some participate in reenactments at the Conner Prairie Living History Museum, in Fishers, Indiana. The few references to the Midwest suggest that it was a region tribal groups were glad to leave behind.

Interviewers' questions have been edited out of most transcripts, which make the texts easier to read. However, those who want a more detailed understanding of the tribe may appreciate knowing where to access full texts. The location of each interview's archive is not made clear, though the date and place of each is noted at the end of each transcript. The Acknowledgement lists a number of cooperating scholarly institutions and a Web site for the book is mentioned.

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