In 1631, when the Dutch tried to develop plantation agriculture in the
Delaware Valley, the Lenape Indians destroyed the colony of Swanendael
and killed its residents. The Natives and Dutch quickly negotiated
peace, avoiding an extended war through diplomacy and trade. The Lenapes
preserved their political sovereignty for the next fifty years as Dutch,
Swedish, Finnish, and English colonists settled the Delaware Valley. The
European outposts did not approach the size and strength of those in
Virginia, New England, and New Netherland. Even after thousands of
Quakers arrived in West New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the late 1670s
and '80s, the region successfully avoided war for another seventy-five
years.
Lenape Country is a sweeping narrative history of the multiethnic
society of the Delaware Valley in the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries. After Swanendael, the Natives, Swedes, and Finns avoided war
by focusing on trade and forging strategic alliances in such events as
the Dutch conquest, the Mercurius affair, the Long Swede conspiracy, and
English attempts to seize land. Drawing on a wide range of sources,
author Jean R. Soderlund demonstrates that the hallmarks of Delaware
Valley society--commitment to personal freedom, religious liberty,
peaceful resolution of conflict, and opposition to hierarchical
government--began in the Delaware Valley not with Quaker ideals or the
leadership of William Penn but with the Lenape Indians, whose culture
played a key role in shaping Delaware Valley society. The first
comprehensive account of the Lenape Indians and their encounters with
European settlers before Pennsylvania's founding, Lenape Country
places Native culture at the center of this part of North America.
