Lenapehoking

Lenapehoking (Lënapehòkink) is widely translated as 'homelands of the Lenape', which in the 16th and 17th centuries, ranged along the Eastern seaboard from western Connecticut to Delaware, and encompassed the territory adjacent to the Delaware and lower Hudson river valleys, and the territory between them. Beginning in the 17th century, European colonists started settling on traditional Lenape lands. Combined with the concurrent introduction of Eurasian infectious diseases and encroachment from the colonists, the Lenape were severely depopulated and lost control over large portions of Lenapehoking. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the United States government forcibly removed the Lenape to the American Midwest, including the state of Oklahoma. Lenape nations today control lands within Oklahoma (Delaware Nation and Delaware Tribe of Indians), Wisconsin (Stockbridge-Munsee Community), and Ontario (Munsee-Delaware Nation, Moravian of the Thames First Nation, and Delaware of Six Nations). Lenape speakers in Oklahoma called their northeastern homelands Lenapehoking translating to: in the land of the Lenape. It was popularized when Nora Thompson Dean shared the term with Theodore Cornu in 1970, and later with Herbert C. Kraft. This term has gained widespread acceptance and is found widely in recent literature on the Lenape and in New York institutions today. Another historical Lenape term for much of the same region is Scheyischbi or Scheyichbi, although this is also often cited as referring specifically to New Jersey. At the time of the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Lenape homeland ranged along the Atlantic's coast from western Connecticut to Delaware, which generally encompassed the territory adjacent to the Delaware and lower Hudson river valleys, as well the hill-and-ridge dominated territory between them.