Our Delaware is a monthly series that will explore the history of communities and the institutions that serve them around the state. To suggest a potential topic for an upcoming feature, email Editor-In-Chief Jacob Owens.
Why Should Delaware Care?
The Lenape Tribe were among the first residents of Delaware, dating back at least 500 years to when European settlers first made contact. After colonization, the community of local Lenape has dwindled though, and now number just a few hundred. A new effort is seeking to highlight their culture and community.
Chief Dennis “White Otter” Coker — principal chief of the official Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware — answered the door.
Coker’s greeting can be heard from his office, just inside the suite, as the entryway to the tribe’s formal meeting place swings shut. Plastic tables line the length of the suite that’s nestled on the first floor of an office park off U.S. Route 13 in Dover.
The center looks out toward an auto glass shop as a tattoo parlor sits a couple suites away. The office space has housed tribal happenings and history for over 20 years, largely representing the tribe’s brick-and-mortar presence in the state.
The Lenape tribe is one of two state-recognized tribes in the state — the other being the Nanticoke Indian Tribe — who have inhabited the land for thousands of years. The community is largely centered around the town of Cheswold, just north of Dover, and had a population of 666 people in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The tribe is now rehabilitating acres of contaminated land that have been returned to them, while envisioning an expansive cultural center for the future generations. The center aims to serve as a physical testament to the tribe’s sovereignty and resilience through centuries of forced relocations and outside efforts to assimilate.
“[The center] will exemplify a culture rising from the ashes, because we were written off in history,” Coker said.
So far, 12 acres of land have been returned to the Lenape tribe near the Fork Branch Nature Preserve near Dover. The land, however, has been returned mostly contaminated and blighted with trash and invasive plant species.
Tribal members are working to heal the polluted land while they work to raise money and build a $10 million cultural and environmental education center to honor the tribe’s heritage dating back to at least the 16th century. Tribal leadership hopes the center will bring the community together and steward the future of the tribe.
“We might not be here, but what we build will be,” said Sara Miller Fuller, a Lenape tribal council member.
‘Hidden in plain sight’
The Lenape tribe once had between 4,000 to 5,000 members in the 1600s spread across New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, according to Coker. The Lenape who remain in Delaware are descendants of the Siconese people of the Unalachtigo Clan of the larger Lenape diaspora.
A nomadic community that lived in bands along rivers and creeks in small one-room wigwams, the Lenape are considered the “grandfathers” of the Algonquin language tree that binds many East Coast Indigenous tribes.
Historically known as “the Moors,” the Lenape were among the first to come into contact with Dutch, Swedes and British settlers. Smallpox, war and encroaching colonizers all led to the decimation of the tribes’ populations, including a 90% decrease among the Lenape, Coker said.
In the 1700s, hundreds of Lenape people forcibly migrated westward as colonizers moved closer and closer into their land. Many settled in Oklahoma and Canada.
The people who stayed behind came to be known as the “keepers of the land” as they maintained the ancestral connection to their home. The ones who left, in order to remove culture and tradition away from colonizing influences, were known as the “keepers of the culture.”
When the Lenape Christianized, they were denied access to their culture for roughly 200 years. Nationwide, Indigenous people were barred and punished for practicing tribal ceremonies and other customs.
It wasn’t until the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act that Indigenous peoples were allowed to freely practice their customs again.
Following years of colonization, forced relocations and diseases stemming from first contact with European settlers, the tribe now has just roughly 200 enrolled members. It has a 25% blood quantum requirement, meaning at least one grandparent must be fully Lenape, to be able to become a tribal member.
The Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware was officially recognized by the state through legislation in 2016 by then-Gov. Jack Markell. At the time of recognition, many people asked why the tribe’s culture, including traditional songs and dances, was not on display, Coker said.
“It’s been 200 years that that’s been denied to us,” Coker said. “It may take us 200 years to get back to where we were, and probably we’ll never get back there.”
But the community in Delaware has been shrinking as new developments arise, people move away and the elders of the community get older, according to Marian Coker, assistant chief of the official Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware.
“The community today is a lot different than it was even 20 years ago,” Marian Coker said.
The pandemic took its toll on the community as many elders passed away and interest in tribal business waned. There are potentially 1,000 people who may be eligible for tribal membership, but only a fraction are enrolled, Coker estimated.
Keepers of the land
Coker pointed to a broken gravestone on a recent morning.
The headstone was cracked horizontally across the middle and laid in Fork Branch Cemetery off of Denneys Road near Dover. The headstone belonged to Coker’s great-grandmother, Sarah Coker.
Sarah is the person who owned the 2-acre plot of land upon which the Fork Branch School, a one-room Native American school, was built, according to Coker. Sarah donated the land for the school that dated back to the 1800s.
The plot is now delineated by a rusty metal fence that stands a few feet from the cemetery and Sarah’s gravestone. For 40 years, the fenced-off site was used as a firing range for Delaware State Police, contaminating the land with lead bullets mere feet from the final resting place of many Lenape people.
“It’s very disrespectful, in my opinion, to have a military establishment right next to a sacred space for our native peoples,” Coker said.
The Lenape tribe is still waiting to have the 2-acre sliver returned to them by the state, despite conversations and cleanup efforts starting in 2018.
Across the road, the tribe owns a half-acre piece of land, which abuts the site of a former church that burned down in 2018, where tribal members used to worship.
Coker estimates that he has pulled out 200 tires and a gas station island from the piece of land. There was even a car that someone had pushed over the bank, he said.
“We’re cleaning up a mess that was not our doing,” Fuller said. “But we’re that passionate about the land, so we do it with joy.”
The tribe also owns 11.5 acres of returned land, known as the Deerfield Property, on the opposite side of the fenced-off plot. The contaminated site was identified as a historical fill area in a brownfield investigation report from the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC).
Tribal leadership has worked to eradicate the land of invasive plants and species, including the spotted lanternfly. Still, the site would not be a suitable place for the potential community center, given the restrictions on drilling a well and accessing groundwater due to previous contamination.
“You feel grateful, but you also feel sadness,” Fuller said. “I still feel like we don’t measure up in their eyes to deserve more than what they’ve given.”
In 2021, the Lenape tribe and the University of Delaware drew up plans for a new cultural center. The center is estimated to be 13 acres and was designed to reflect Lenape culture, history and traditions.
The center is envisioned to have vegetative green roofs, solar panel parking lots and geothermal heating and cooling. An amphitheater, ceremony spaces and outdoor classrooms are all planned for the center.
The raising of the money and building of the center will take time. In the meantime, the keepers will heal the returned land and steward it toward a hopeful future for their tribe.
Learn More
To learn more about the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware or to support the development of the Lenape Cultural Center, visit www.lenapeindiantribeofdelaware.com.
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