🍂🌽🍁Recognizing Native American Heritage Month!! 🍂🌽🍁

November is Native American heritage month - a tribe native to New Jersey is the Lenape tribe. 

Lenape history: The Lenape means ‘common people’ in their language, but others also thought of it as ‘people of the East.’ The Lenape mainly lived in New Jersey but lived as nomads who hunted animals and fish and collected fruit. 

Fun facts about a Lenape child’s life: 

• Children’s names came from dreams. If someone close to the family had a dream with a name in it, that name was given to the child. 

• Children would throw their teeth eastward and throw charcoal westward before the sun came up. This was to make the children’s teeth come in quick and strong.

🐢Lenape stories 🐢: Lenape stories preserve the Lenape culture and have been passed down for generations. They are not from a singular person but from the ethnic group as a whole. Old tales tell that Lenape people came about on the back of a giant turtle, whose shell would rise from the sea. Stories about the same topic vary but all share similar elements, showing the ties between Native American cultures. 

🌽 Story: The Disappearance of Corn 🌽

• Lenape had farmed corn for a long time

• Corn and agriculture were part of the female role in society, as the females did most of the farming.

• The story is an explanation of why the earth is not able to grow crops for several months a year.

• The Lenape believed that sacrificing shells would bring Mother Corn back to Earth each year.

• You can read the full story in On the Turtle’s Back by Camilla Townsend and Nicky Kay Michael