Description:
Lenape Country is a sweeping narrative history of Lenape Indian encounters with European settlers in the Delaware Valley in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Brief description: Jean R. Soderlund is Professor Emerita of History at Lehigh University and editor of William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania: A Documentary History, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Review Quotes: "A commonly held idea is that Quaker settlers led by William Penn established Delaware Valley society's emphases on freedom, tolerance, and peaceful conflict. In Lenape Country, however, Jean R. Soderlund demonstrates that these Delaware Valley hallmarks originated with the Lenape Indians and were the bases of Lenape economic and political dominance through successive waves of European colonization in the region. . . . Lenape Country is meticulously researched and cautiously analyzed, qualities that strengthen Soderlund's assertions for the primacy of Lenape influence in the formation of Delaware Valley identity. It is a much needed study of this pivotal time in American history and a valuable contribution to Native American and colonial-era scholarship."-- "American Studies"