Fresco of William Penn and Tamanend and other Lenape Sachems (chiefs), as portrayed in the rotunda of the U.S. Capital, in Washington, D.C., by Constantino Brumidi
Interested Residents are cordially invited to come together in the Gathering Room on Friday, May 9, from 1:30-2:30 pm, for the organizational meeting of a new Resident’s Committee. [Questions: Nick Robinson, KoH 4015]
Established by the Residents’ Council on this past Earth Day, April 22, this new Committee has the following mission:
“The purpose of the Committee on the Lenape is to foster friendship between Kendal on Hudson residents and the Lenape, whose ancestral lands include the region where Kendal on Hudson is located. The Committee will build and sustain a continual engagement with the culture, history, and well-being of the Lenape through educational and other activities, and will coordinate activities with other Residents’ Committees where relevant.”
LENAPE Heritage and Kendal on Hudson
Kendal on Hudson dates back 20 years. Lenape lived in Lenapehoking for some 8000 years. The Munsee Lenape were driven out by Dutch colonial governments, and then the British, and then the Americans. We live and work on the ancestral lands of the Lenape, near the Pocantico river was the Lenape community of Alipoonok (also referred to as Aneebikong, a place of trees). Oaks at Rockwood Hall State Park harken back to these times. Lenapehoking’s tribal communities extended from the Hudson River (Manhattan to the Catskills), across New Jersey and Delaware to the Delaware River (Philadelphia to the Water Gap).
The Delaware Lenape and William Penn agreed the historic Treaty of Shackamaxon in 1682, based on Quaker values: equal respect and love for each individual, peace, fairness, consulting one another as friends, in perpetuity. In the American Revolution, the Continental Congress sought the 1778 Treaty with the Delaware (Fort Pitt). Lenape were allies to fight the British on the western frontier. This was the very first US treaty with any Indian Tribe, only America’s second treaty ever (the first being with France). Throughout, the Lenape have honored their pledge of friendship, serving in the Union Army in the Civil War and guiding the Frémont expedition as it explored the west.
Greed for Lenape lands, and warfare along the western frontier of the USA, forced the Lenape repeatedly to move westward, across the Mississippi. From perhaps 100,000 Lenape in Penn’s day, today only 15,000 remain in three federally recognized tribes in Oklahoma and Wisconsin and in three First Nations recognized by Canada in Ontario. None remain in the Hudson Valley, where Kendal on Hudson is situated today. We would welcome the Lenape as friends.
We at Kendal on Hudson have been honored to receive a Lenape Chief, Curtis Zunigha (Delaware Tribe of Indians), in 2023, to learn from a Monday evening lecture in 2024 by Hadrien Coumans (a co-founder of the Lenape Center and adopted member of the Delaware Tribe) and to welcome the distinguished composer Brent Michael Davids, (Stockbridge-Munsee Tribe), during his residency at Coplan House in 2025. We admire how Lenape culture and values have persisted, evidence of a resilient and wise People. Ours is a special relationship.
Sources: Joe Baker, et al., Lenapehoking: An Anthology (Brooklyn Library, 2023) in the KoH Library; and J.W. Brown and R.T Kohn, eds, LONG JOURNEY HOME – Oral Histories of Contemporary Delaware Indians, (Indiana Univ. Press 2008); Robert S. Grumet, The Lenapes (1989); H.C. Kraft, The Lenape (N.J. Hist. Soc., 1986); C.A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians (Rutgers Univ. Press 1972), and Anne Dalton, The Lenape (2005).