Concurrent Sovereignties on the Lenapewihittuck: 1615–1638

In 1615, a Dutch ship sailed up Godyns Bay into a river that was the heart of the Lenape’s homeland. The river’s name was Lenapewihittuck, but the Dutch would soon come to know it as the South River. The Lenape and the Dutch shared mutual interests in developing a trade relationship. While the diplomacy of trade was initially successful, it was disrupted when Lenape sovereignty was challenged by two distinct threats. In 1629, the directors of the Dutch West India Company decided to allow private investors to buy plantation colonies and Dutch colonists began expanding their territory. The second threat came from the Susquehannock, an Iroquoian-speaking people whose objective was to displace the Lenape on the South River to obtain direct access to the Dutch trade. The Lenape subsequently destroyed the Dutch settlement and engaged the Susquehannock in war, but through diplomacy and limited acts of aggression, the Lenape were able to retain sovereignty over their homelands for most of the seventeenth century.