The tragedy of the Lenape, like many other Native Americans, is that they’re so often misrepresented in American media and professional sports. Their traditional regalia, practices, and culture are insensitively manipulated in television shows and sports team names. As a result, many misinformed Americans develop faulty understandings of the natives’ way of life.[i]
A few reminders of the Lenape legacy in Brooklyn remain. There is a Lenape Playground along Avenue U in Marine Park, not far from the creek where the Lenape Indians fished.
Name of playground on Avenue U near East 38th Street is a reminder that Native Americans once fished the nearby creek.
The Gowanus Canal derives its name from a sachem of the Canarsie tribe, Gouwane, who lived and fished along the creek.[ii] In addition, Manhattan is a word from the Delaware language. Flatbush Avenue was part of major Native American trail, whose name is derived from the open geography of the area when the Native Americans lived there. Other neighborhood names derived from Lenape tribes are Massapequa near Oyster Bay in southeastern Nassau County, New York; Hackensack, New Jersey and Rockaway.[iii]
[i] Interview by author with Cliff Matias, February 2, 2015.
[ii] The Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, “Gowanus Canal History,” http://www.gowanuscanal.org/history.html (Accessed April 22, 2015).
[iii] Anne-Marie Cantwelland Diana diZerega Wal, Unearthing Gotham (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).
