Long Journey Home
My new book "Long Journey Home: Oral Histories of Contemporary Delaware Indians"
Mike Pace, a former assistant chief said, "The stories contained in these pages have many things to tell, the pride of a people, their personal histories, their determination to remain who they were and are as a people. . . . Sometimes we as individuals take our heritage for granted and do not learn the lessons of history. The study of our heritage can truly tell us why we are who we are today."
Through first-person accounts, Long Journey Home presents the stories of the Lenape, also known as the Delaware Tribe. These oral histories, which span the post—Civil War era to the present, are gathered into four sections and tell of personal and tribal events as they unfold over time and place. The history of the Lenape is one of forced displacement, from their original tribal home along the eastern seaboard into Pennsylvania, continuing with a series of displacements in Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, and the Indian Territory. For the group of Lenape interviewed for this book, home is now the area around Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The stories of their long journey have been handed down and remain part of the tribe's collective memory and bring an unforgettable immediacy to the tale of the Lenape. Above all they make clear that the history of seven generations remains very much alive.
Leonard Thompson was the last living Delaware speaker at the time of his passing in 2002. You may hear him singing in Delaware.
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1. Long Journey Home grew out of another oral history project on the pan-Great Lakes Woodland Indians called Always a People, which was published in 1997 by IU Press. Explain how reader feedback on the Lenape Indians featured in Always a People influenced you to dedicate a work solely to their history.
Members of the Delaware Tribe of Bartlesville, Oklahoma felt the need to relate their White River Indiana connections. Many members of the Bartlesville tribe of Delaware are direct descendants from Chief William Anderson whose Delaware name was Kik-tha-we-nund. The Delaware influence remains with place names such as Anderson, Muncie, and Strawtown and is a living presence at Conner Prairie Living History Museum.
2. The Lenape Indians were forced from their original home on the east coast, and were pushed further west in a series of forced displacements through Ohio, Indiana. Missouri, Kansas, and the Indian Territory. How do the Lenapes define “home” given that they were constantly uprooted from wherever they were living?
Doug Donnell, who is the main singer and drum keeper of the Bartlesville, Oklahoma Delawares, said, “ Growing up I didn’t hear much of those stories about removal from ancestral places. I had my own thoughts about it. I don’t think a lot of those things were talked about. It was probably a bad time in their lives so it was not talked about. Now I have heard people say that where we used to be, or we have been there, and they felt good that we got to go back and visit some of those places. When they arrived here in Oklahoma they stayed and didn’t get to go back. Nora Dean went back and told me stories of when she went back with her ancestors.”
For the Delawares there is a circular feeling toward ancestral connections. Removal from place does not mean severing relationship from people who lived 300 years before.
Doug Donnell describes how Nora Dean had some kind of feeling of that’s where she belonged. “It was like home being in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana. And I’ve had that, when you’re there you know the history. That bloodline is in my veins, and I know that some of my ancestors had been there, that spirit is still there. It’s peaceful. When you’re there by yourself, and no one is around in the woods, you have that feeling. But things change. We moved, we blended in with society. Our tribe is Woodlands. When I went back and saw how huge the trees were, I was in awe. I loved it. If there is anything that I could have I’d want those huge trees down here in Oklahoma.”
These feelings are reflected in the oral histories of Annette Ketchum, Dee Ketchum, Michael Pace, Don Secondine, and Jack Tatum.
3. In this book, you’ve chosen to let the Lenape tell their own story without including any of your own explication on their history. Why did you decide to present their stories in this manner? What advantages does it provide for the reader?
The Delawares have historically been denied a voice. Here we experience how eloquently they speak and show the Lenape place in U.S. history as well as sharing their own tribal story.
The reader becomes acquainted with real people not merely references embedded within an historians point of view.
4. Each person who was interviewed for this book has a unique story, but what common themes do you see running throughout these oral histories?
Common themes are remembrance, connections with ancestral traditions, loss and striving to retain culture despite U.S. policy to undermine tribal culture; the need to retain language and above all the sense of being the Grandfather People with an abiding destiny to bring people together in harmony with the land and each other.
5. Some of the interviewees (for example, Dan Arnold and Beverly McLaughlin) discuss how their parents didn’t teach them about their Lenape heritage when they were growing up. Later in life, both Dan and Beverly began researching their Lenape roots and eventually became active members of the tribe. Why is it important for the Lenape (and all of us in general) to study our heritage, and what can we learn from it?
If we do not know from whence we came, we do not know fully who we are and how our lives can impact the present of the future in meaningful ways. This need to know is embedded in popular culture for example Alex Haley’s “Roots” and the current trend toward memoir even in fiction, for example Amy Tan’s books. And certainly now with Presidential candidate Barak Obama in his book “Dreams From My Father.”