The Western Delaware Indian Nation, 1730-1795

The diaspora of the Delaware Indians, from their historical homelands in the watershed of the Delaware River to western Pennsylvania and Ohio, is a story of dispossession, war, and chaos. It is also a chronicle of adaptation, resilience, and transformation that cannot be told simply. Richard S. Grimes offers an interesting interpretation suggesting that the Delaware experienced an ethnogenesis between 1730 and 1795, transforming themselves into a nascent nation with a unified identity built on militarism and rejection of Iroquois hegemony. The emergence of the newly unified Delaware nation in western Pennsylvania, according to the author, was fueled by Iroquois and Pennsylvania political strategies, subversion of long-held gendered authority, and an altered economy prioritizing hunting and trade over farming.Central to this study is the diplomacy between colonial Pennsylvania’s leadership and the Iroquois confederacy. The Iroquois’ territorial mobility and their unified diplomatic front allowed them to establish dominance over the Delaware in their own homelands. Diplomatically, the Iroquois and Pennsylvania leadership disenfranchised the Delaware by designating them as “women.” This terminology, as scholars previously understood it, referred to their diplomatic strength as peacemakers and negotiators. However, according to Grimes, labeling the Delaware as “women” and wearers of “petticoats” was distorted and came to signify their diplomatic emasculation in all negotiations after 1742. Ultimately, the author argues, it is this marginalization of Delaware authority that proved the catalyst for their struggle for unification and the masculinization of their sociopolitical structure in their western diaspora.Grimes’s research is at its best when discussing the military and diplomatic entanglements during a period that included rapid colonial expansion, the French and Indian War, and the American Revolution. His research teases out the identities of Delaware leaders, who are rarely identified in similar military and political analyses of this era. There are extensive endnotes and a bibliography that establishes the pedigree of his research. However, there are fundamental problems that cannot be overlooked.While the argument for the unification of cultural identity and the emergence of a Delaware nation during this period is not challenged or new, the suggestion that these changes indicate the complete inversion of gendered authority in Delaware society is not adequately supported by the evidence. Building on the changing meanings of the gendered diplomatic language used specifically in reference to the Delaware, Grimes argues that the matrilineal system fell apart and was replaced by a warrior-based patriarchy. The author also points to changes in the Delaware subsistence economy as further evidence that women lost power and authority in their society. As the Delaware moved west, according to this account, the “masculine” activities of hunting, diplomacy, warfare, and trade relegated women to marginalized roles in their own societies. Their role as agriculturalists appears to vanish in their new homelands. The declension of indigenous women’s power and authority in the face of colonial systems is an old argument that has been repeatedly challenged in a generation of scholarship. While the author stands on firm evidence and sound interpretation in the analysis of diplomatic exchanges and wartime alliances and activities, there is little to substantiate the claims made regarding the status of women in Delaware society from 1730 to 1795. Until more scholars do the challenging work of un-silencing the histories of Delaware and other American Indian women during this period of political, spiritual, and social upheaval, we cannot presume anything

Ancient history · Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History