As I read through this week’s reading titled, “Land of the Lenapes,” I began to compare and contrast the Lenape society and lifestyle to our modern day society in North America.

One of the first things that struck me about the Lenape tribes was the fact that they were the first group of people I’ve learnt about of who have made an active effort to change their habits and way of life in order to be more environmentally conscious. In the Lenape legend which prefaces the chapter, the Lenape chiefs interact with the animals and promise to respect and honor nature; as a result, it is said that from then on the Lenapes have always shown the “utmost respect when hunting or upon killing an animal for food.” Overall, the Lenapes were very resourceful people, only taking from nature exactly what they needed to survive. When hunting, they tried to use as much of the animal remains as they could in order to minimize the amount of waste created; from animal hides, to tusks, bones -and even organs – it is clear that the Lenapes truly made an effort to respect the earth around them.

In addition, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that the Lenapes led was, generally speaking, a more environmentally friendly way of life whether they recognized it or not. While they may have made many active efforts to become more ecological, the fact that Lenapes were hunter-gatherers indirectly caused them lead more sustainable lives as well. The nomadic lifestyle itself is one that entails traveling and resettling frequently. Hence, because the Lenapes were constantly moving around, they were never settled in one place long enough to really disturb the environment permanently. There was no overhunting or worry that a certain animal or plant would become extinct. Similarly, the soil was never completely stripped and depleted of its nutrients, nor was the ground ever overworked.

The Lenapes attempt and push towards a more eco-friendly way of living immediately reminded me of the current push in awareness of greater environmental issues. In today’s day and age, the lifestyle we live as Americans is drastically different than the Lenapes. People generally do not pay attention to how much waste they are creating; we are not as resourceful and conscious as the Lenapes and we tend to overindulge and overuse our resources. At the same time, as the prospect of global warming has become a matter of importance in the past few years, so has the prospect of leading a more eco-friendly and sustainable lifestyle.There have been many groundbreaking efforts to promote a “greener” lifestyle, eco-friendly product and an education in topics such as global warming, I don’t believe there has been enough of a fundamental change in our lifestyles.

As a result, there is a lot that can be learned from the Lenape lifestyle.Whether we are hunter-gatherers or nomads isn’t important. However, the fundamental lesson of respecting nature is eternal, and instead of exploiting and taking advtage of our natural resources, we should learn to preserve them, like the Lenapes, and protect them for years to come.

Reading through the chapter on the Lenape people of pre-colonial North America, one of the aspects of their lifestyle that struck me was the deeply symbiotic nature of the relationship that the Lenape shared with their natural environment.  As the Lenape cultivated, protected and sustained their surroundings, the plants they lived with gave back in an equal manner in terms of both sustenance and reparation.  The reparation I mention came in the form of healing processes that the Lenape contrived from their knowledge of various herbs and plants, which they were intimately familiar with.

This idea of “green medicine” was a sacred one to the Lenape.  One who was considered talented and intelligent enough to have knowledge of the properties of every native plant was placed on the level of a prophet and could only achieve the level of a “medicine person” by having a spirit dream and being infused with a personally binding understanding of the flora and fauna.  Since there was an almost religious aspect attached to the medicinal characteristics, the healer was required to retrieve the plants with a great amount of respect and ceremony – lest the remedy not succeed.

Much of the attitude of the Lenape towards plant life and the environment in general stems from their belief in karmic renderings affecting their lives.  While respect for plant life and “Mother Earth” might not have been inherent to their culture as an absolute and considered necessary for the reasons we consider today when debating whether to recycle that milk container or not, the Lenape still treated their surroundings in a way that they believed would help them live a sustainable lifestyle.  However different their lifestyle might be from ours, I think it is an important lesson that can be learned from these ancient Native Americans.

We live in a society that loves to pronounce itself as the most advanced, even the most superior, in all of human history. One thing that is often mentioned to support this argument is the advancement of medicine and technology. However, let us for a moment concern ourselves with the broader picture: the physical wellbeing of the individuals living in a society. Let’s take a look at what has occurred throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Little by little, we as a society—specifically those of the U.S. and other “first-world” countries—have been distancing ourselves more and more from the way our ancestors used to live. Not only have we seen vast changes in our daily labor, which includes an immense expansion of the service sector, but we have also seen a tremendous alteration in the type of food we eat, the medicine that we use, and the diseases we need to treat.

Nowadays, a typical day at work is sitting at a desk all day in front of a computer screen, hardly breaking a sweat or feeling the warmth of the sun stimulate our skin cells. Studies show that not only has the quality of our food dramatically decreased, but also the amount of adulteration to our food by laboratory-made additives and artificial preservatives has strikingly increased. What has been the result of these drastic lifestyle changes? Well, the statistics speak again. In the past few decades, we have seen an appalling increase in chronic disease. The prevalence of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease has skyrocketed, and the use of prescription drugs has multiplied greatly. Tellingly, studies have increasingly shown that many overweight people in the U.S. are actually malnourished. How is this possible? Well, this is the result of most Americans adopting a diet extremely high in calories but very low in nutrients. Most unnerving, however, is the stubborn tendency of medical practitioners to turn away from nature and a holistic approach in favor of a contrived, pharmaceutical one. Let us now consider the way a population of Native Americans known as the Lenapes interacted with the natural environment.

The Lenapes lived in an agriculturally centered society. This meant that every able member of society was to contribute to the cultivation of crop, which benefitted the individuals and the society in numerous ways. For one thing, the people lived physically active lives. They were out in the sun every day, working the earth and feeling the sun and smelling the plants. A great number of studies have shown the benefits of daily physical exercise and the therapeutic value of connecting with nature. The Lenapes consumed crop of the utmost nutritional value, as it didn’t have to travel long distances and was never sprayed with carcinogenic pesticides or herbicides. They also ate seasonally, letting nature provide them with a variety of nutrients year round. Everything they consumed was wholesome and unrefined—even the meats, which were wild caught.

Of course, the medicinal practice of the Lenapes is also well documented. Every family had an extensive knowledge of various plants and herbs, which they used to treat ordinary sicknesses and injuries, and they treated the sick person according to the specific needs of his or her body. These sorts of treatments have been proved to be effective century after century in various cultures. In fact, despite our early indoctrination in the modern health practices, many in the 21st century have increasingly turned to herbal remedies and holistic measures. In the end, the question we must all ask ourselves is: Are we really better off as a society?

We live in a time in which food is down the block at the grocery store or perhaps only a phone call away. Because of this, it may be difficult to fully wrap our heads around the idea that at one point in history, food had to be fought for. While local Chinese restaurants may have to get competitive in order to pay the best price for meats and vegetables, it is safe to say that they do not have to hunt before delivering food to your doorstep.  The Lenape culture however, had no such luck. Instead, the Lenape people had to use various methods of hunting and gathering in order to provide enough food for their families. Many times, the natural environment had to be disturbed in order to obtain enough food to sustain their families and tribe.

Although the Lenape people were surrounded by and came into contact with many tribes who used sophisticated methods of agriculture, they stuck primarily to hunting and gathering. While they were less advanced compared to the people around them, it was enough for sustenance.  The Lenape quickly proved that they were able to “exploit the rich natural resources of the region.” Using bone and bird claw hooks as well as nets on sticks, the Lenape were able to fish in the lakes and rivers close by. Fishing usually yielded striped bass, sturgeon and herring. If there was a surplus of food, the seafood could be steamed which helped preserve the food until wintertime, when fresh game may be lacking. The Lenape people also survived on hunting small animals such as swans, pigeons, geese, turkeys and partridges.  While deer and bear were continuously hunted despite seasons, autumn was an especially popular time to hunt. During this season, two to three hundred Lenape people would perform “deer drives,” in which the forest was lit on fire in order to lure deer into premade traps and snares. These deer drives provided the Lenape with enough meat to last them through the winter.

These practices beg the question of how much harm the Lenape caused the natural environment in order to hunt. At first I thought that burning the forest immensely destroyed the environment. After doing some more research I learned that controlled fire can actually help the natural environment rather than harm it, like I had originally thought. The Lenape used fire for many different purposes. Fire was used to clear fields, control weeds and burn woodland undergrowth. This actually helped to “prevent growth of underbrush, encourage growth of grasses and improved the soil.”  While the Lenape people may not have understood the scientific benefits of burning the land, their actions proved to promote the growth of the natural environment.

Examining and understanding the cosmology of the Lenape tribe particularly lends itself to their great bond with and emphasis on the natural world. The belief that the origins and governing laws of the universe are firmly vested in the physical land shows how much reverence they had for nature, and this is particularly evident in the Lenape creation myth.

As the story goes, Tantaque, a tribe elder, first told the story by picking up a piece of coal from a fire and began to sketch on the ground: “He first drew a circle, a little oval, to which he made four paws or feet, a head and a tail.” This was representative of a tortoise, particularly resonant considering that the salt marsh is the natural habitat of the terrapin. The back of the tortoise was to be considered the earth and the circle around it the water. Two trees grew out of the middle of the earth, creating the first man and woman. Again, the idea of a land mass surrounded by water is indicative of the Lenapes’ environment; they were indigenous to Manhattan Island.

To extend on that idea, there is another Lenape legend of a time when the game animals disappeared from their land. This was of course concerning to the tribe and thus led to a form of diplomacy between Chief Elk and the War Chief; Chief Elk told him, “Honor and respect our lives, our beings, in life and death. Do what you have failed to do before. Stop doing what offends our Spirits.” And thus, the first conservation efforts were born.

This reverence for nature allowed to the Lenapes to adopt and maintain a hunter-gatherer lifestyle for much longer than neighboring tribes. They migrated according to season, following the food, so to speak, and lived very egalitarian lives. The few crops they did have were very small-scale and consisted of native plants. In the so-called “Contact-era,” however, the Lenapes shifted into an agricultural system, albeit, still small-scaled. They began to grow the “three sister” crops of maize, beans, and squash. Despite becoming “managers of the land,” they still integrated elements of nature-oriented cosmology. For instance, there was a corn spirit, known as Kahesana Xaskwim, or Mother Corn, that was held in high esteem.

Despite the adoption of an agriculturalist system, the idea of elements of nature possessing a spirit is not a novel idea in Lenape cosmology. Disregarding the dichotomy of living and nonliving, they found a maneto, or indwelling spirit, in everything. In the most practical example of this, plants were seen to possess a spirit, leading to a healer’s function in society: through the use of healing botanicals, they could reestablish the natural balance. The manito’wak, amongst them Earth Mother, Corn Mother, and Keeper of the Game, were created by the Lenape Creator God in order to govern the universe, and thus create a harmonious balance. This was essentially the Lenape form of divine intervention: when offended a maneto could cause “mischief,” and this several rituals were performed to appease the spirits.

How I love the smell of herbs! There is nothing that smells quite like thyme seasoned on grilled tomatoes, or the freshness of mint tea.  Herbs, which grow in the natural environment, can beautifully flavor and enhance foods.  However, herbs can also have medicinal purposes.  The Lenapes, a Native American tribe, had extensive knowledge of herbs and their power to heal diseases.  In fact, the Lenapes made medicines out of herbs, roots, plants, and bark.  For example, they would brew a special tea called catnip tea, which is a plant that is related to the mint family, for a sick member of the tribe, or strengthen the infirm by covering them with strawberry leaves.  There are two fascinating things about these natural or organic cures.  The first is that the herbs worked effectively to alleviate their ailments.    This can be assumed because the history of using herbs  as medicine is long and well intwined in the Lenape society.  The second is that the herbs healed diseases we still have today, such as rheumatism.  Therefore, it is not surprising that some of the organic cures have been passed down to our society.   Many medicines now contain at least one ingredient derived from plants.

Through this picture, it is clear that the Lenapes were dependent on the natural environment in order to maintain their health.  There may have been hundreds of herbs that had medicinal purposes, but  the Lenapes tended to move from site to site, based on the seasons.  What did they do if they needed the herb that cured cold symptoms but there was non growing nearby? There was no pharmacy for them to pick some up.  It is possible that they carried certain herbs with them from place to place, or that many herbs cured the same thing.  If this were the case, the Lenapes had a vital and continuous relationship with the natural environment, as they were always bringing the parts of nature they deemed important, the healing herbs, with them.

The Lenapes also respected the natural environment.  Not only did they understand the medicinal effect of herbs, and how something so small could have such a large impact on their health, but they also respected the environment that the plants grew in.  The Lenapes did not run through nature cutting down every catnip plant they saw.  They treated the plants with dignity, as would be appropriate to something with such great powers.  There was a procedure for collecting plants that had to be followed with respect to proper rituals, otherwise the cures did not work.  This included dropping a tobacco offering at the first plant the collector found and then picking the next plant of the same kind.  In addition, bark was only peeled from healthy trees.  The Lenapes took their rituals seriously.  They believed in the curative effects of the herbs, and while being dependent on the natural environment to provide the plants, the Lenapes respected the natural environment from where the herbs grew.  The Lenapes were in a constant, dependable, but respectable relationship with the natural environment.

When my refrigerator is running low on food, I drive over to my nearest supermarket. I load up my shopping cart with fruits, vegetables, meat, and dairy. Then I proceed to checkout and return home with relatively little effort exerted. Drastically different, the Paleoindians were not able to shop for food this way instead they were hunter-gatherers. When the Paleoindians needed to feed their family, they had to go out and kill an animal, which would then be their source of food. A single mammoth kill was enough to feed around twenty to forty people. Some of the meat would be eaten right away, while the rest of the animal would be preserved for more long-term use. The Paleoindians were adept at using the entirety of a kill for food, clothing, and tools. This practice is something that today’s New York City dwellers should try and keep in mind. Garbage overflows in landfills and some of that garbage probably can be reused!

One specific tribe, the Lenape, was also hunter-gatherers. The Lenape men hunted deer and bear all year long. In autumn, they created large hunting groups, which included women that would go out and kill many deer. They used a technique called a “fire surround” in which they essentially trapped deer in a ring of fire and then forced them into traps or snares. They also pursued geese, swans, pigeons, and turkeys by using nets or arrows. Fish was also part of their diet; the fish were caught using lances and long drag nets. Estuaries were a great source of food because they provided oysters, clams, mussels, and crabs.

The Lenape’s relationship with their environment was one of necessity. The Lenape relied on the animals living around them for sustenance. By virtue of being hunter-gatherers, they were dependent on the land because they needed somewhere to hunt. The earth is diverse and therefore supplied the Lenape with a varying diet that included mammals, fowl, fish, and seafood. I’m sure the Lenape truly appreciated the land that they owed their life to much more than today’s urban population. Mostly everyone, including myself, repeats the supermarket shopping experience on a regular basis in order to have food. Imagine if that wasn’t an option. We would all have to take a page from the Lenape’s and learn to appreciate the goodness that Earth provides straight from the ground and through its natural animal dwellers.

The Lenape peoples’ spiritual relationship with their environment is, I believe, rooted in their physical closeness and dependence on natural resources. Spiritual and religious beliefs arise out of a yearning towards a higher power as a driving force behind the universe. The Lenape, in their utterly nature-dependent lives, had no choice but to trust in nature as the ultimate source of power. Yet they were the ones who managed nature and learned to adapt and control it, and therefore they themselves became a part of the process.

Therefore, the idea of a total interlinking between man, animals, plants, and all other naturally existing elements, formed. Such spiritual beliefs would later be adopted by the American Transcendentalist poets like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Robert Frost, but they originated in Native American tribes and in this case, the Lenape. The idea of maneto, the “spiritual indwelling of all things” ties the people together with the land and the animals. Humans are no more powerful than a rock. Rather, the maneto does not favor one entity over another. By linking themselves spiritually with nature, the Lenape acknowledge their subservience and solidarity with nature despite their ability to cultivate and manipulate resources.

The spirituality of the Lenape sharply contrasts what New York and modern America would become. In most modern societies, nature exists entirely apart from daily life. People live in the age of concrete and technology, and nature becomes “an escape”. Resources are cultivated and processed by specialists for broader society to enjoy. We do not live in constant contact with naturally existing resources, and therefore there is no spiritual connection to the land. In a weird way, we develop religious tendencies towards the entities that are most poignant in our lives. The current generation has an attachment to technology that uncannily reflects the Lenape attitude towards nature. The Lenape had a need to be constantly favoring the spirits that surrounded them in all natural things. They brought sacrifices and attributed and fixed all problems likewise. The current generation does not entrust its well-being in crops, but in phones and and other gadgets. While we may think that the Lenape relationship to the cosmos is a foreign concept in modern, intellectually leaning (and atheism prone) society, this sort of total subservience still exists, it is just manifested differently

This isn’t to say that I think that the Lenape’s focus on spirituality with regard to nature is necessarily superior and our generation is lost and such and such. They held “fluid boundaries” with their natural surroundings, and our smartphones are pretty much limbs at this point. Does that make us any worse off? Unclear, I think. But at the very least we have a basis of comparison that we can relate to so that we can better understand the Lenape’s spiritual connection to the cosmos.

America nowadays is known, sometimes notoriously, for its excess. From the flashy homes to the overabundance of goods in the market, it is a wonder that many years ago, people were forced to lead modest lifestyles simply because they did not have the means to survive otherwise. A clear case in American history of a people creatively stretching the little they had was the hunting and gathering of the Lenape Indians. Through this lifestyle, the Lenape tribe was entirely dependent on nature, exploiting, yet without an ounce of prodigality, all of the resources available in the great outdoors.

Despite what the title connotes, “hunting” is a term that is broad in scope; for the Lenapes, this process described catching various animals that provide protein and sustenance.  A major component of hunting involved game, but it is important to note that the Lenape also fished and hunted fowl; thus, they did not exclusively use one resource, which could have quickly led to extinction of many large, meaty species. In order to hunt game, the Lenape did not run after them with spears, as cartoons often inaccurately depict. Rather, they would first set fire to a portion of the forest, which would cause the animals to flee into traps. This method was efficient in capturing the game because it did not require too much energy to catch them. ‘Fire surround’ could have easily had a detrimental effect to the natural environment. However, the Lenape spread the ashes of the trees on the ground to ensure that the soil was rejuvenated and would remain fertile. In doing so, they consequently found a way to utilize the ashes that resulted from the fire and protected one of the most precious resources they had which would be vital for growing agriculture in the future: earth.

The ground is where the gatherers found the food that supplemented the protein. Done by women, gathering involved collecting various agricultural items that were found in the wilderness, ranging from fruits, vegetables, berries, and nuts. Proper gathering, however, took a great deal of getting in touch with nature. To ensure that you lived another day after eating a day’s gatherings entailed a keen knowledge as to what was nutritious and what was poisonous.  Over time, women became adept at knowing the difference. In fact, when picking, they would pluck out bothersome weeds so as to clear the way for other things that were growing. In that way, the Lenapes promoted the growth of plants that were beneficial to humans.

While hunting and gathering required a close interaction with nature because of food, this lifestyle also extended to other aspects of life. For example, the Lenape moved seasonally. They changed their setting depending on the season, which, in turn, caused them to eat different food. By switching locations, local game population had a chance to replenish itself; otherwise, there would have been overhunted. Additionally, the temperature inevitably affected the Lenapes’ comfort level, for they chose to live in wigwams during the summer. Wigwams, furnished by portable, impermanent things, were therefore a tangible reminder of Lenapes’ semi-nomadic way of life. Even many tools, often made from shells, were considered “disposable”. The origin of other instruments, on the other hand, traced back to roots in hunting or gathering: needles were created from bones of game, while paint and decorations on various items was from the dye of berries.

The hunter-gatherer lifestyle had a profound impact on the Lenape tribe as a whole. They were not dependent on other nations for food, but rather on nature itself. Finding out just how much nature had to offer, the Lenape took advantage of all the resources they had, in a way that did not harm nature. Hunting and gathering proved itself to be a means of enabling the Lenapes to become a more progressive tribe because it fostered creativity which consequently lead to major advances, such as growing agriculture.

Today, medicine is an exact science.  Without precision and caution the effects of pharmaceuticals can easily turn from positive to negative.  What could possibly soothe a sore throat or cure strep throat can cause pain if made with one wrong chemical, or even taken with the wrong liquid.  As medicine becomes more and more complex, there is one thing that will stay the same.  The reason we have medicine today is because, many generations before, man found a way to use plants as a healing agent.  For example, Indian sage was used to cure “break-bone fever”, which is now known as the flu, and can now be used to remedy the common cold and rheumatism.  They created a way to cooperate with nature in order to survive.

The Lenapes had a special relationship with nature.  They respected and tried to mimic the ways of nature in order to use plants for their own purposes.  In City at the Water’s Edge, they state that American Indians “experienced and evolved with the indigenous native flora.”  Because of the relationship they developed with their environment, they knew almost everything there was to know about the indigenous herbs.  Those who knew the special properties of every single native plant had what was known as “green medicine.”  Especially skillful men and women had dreams or visions from the spirit world and became “medicine people,” which were basically healers and meditators who used herbs and medicinal brews to redeem others’ health.  They made medicine from plants, toots, bark, and herbs that they found around in their surroundings.  However, the Lenapes did not just take away from nature, they found a way to give back.

In order to live in peace with nature, the Lenapes performed many rituals before gathering certain herbs and plants.  If these rituals were not done correctly, or at all, the remedies made from these plants would not be effective.  They would first stop at the first type of plant that they needed and drop a tobacco offering in a hole that was dug east of it.  Only after they have given the offering would they pick the next plant of the same kind.  When taking bark from a tree, they would only strip bark from healthy trees and from the side facing the sun.  Although this procedure was probably more for their benefit, they used what they knew about the health of the wildlife around them to help their own health.  When herbalists were preparing a medicinal brew, they stir it counterclockwise “to simulate the direction the sun travels.”  Using patterns of nature to enhance their quality of well-being shows that the Lenapes respected it enough to learn from it.