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.