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Skillful Healers

Indians throughout Lenapehoking were skilled in using wild plants to treat illness.  They also used rituals, which may have been just as important.  Indians believed that the medicine men could cure them - that their songs, rattles, and dances would drive the evil spirits from their bodies.

The healers were those men and women who had more supernatural power than most people.  Some had visions that told them early on that they would be healers.

 
Beliefs and Rituals

The Lenape believed that there were spirits all around them.  They believed that a great spirit created the world and that evil spirits were responsible for sickness and death.  They felt there was a spirit in every wild storm and in each new bud on the trees in spring.

Spirits could be helpful or harmful and they had to be treated with respect.  To gain a spirit's favor, people left small offerings in the place where they thought it lived - near a huge tree, a waterfall, or a strange and lonely rock.  The gifts might be a handful of leaves or flowers, carved stick, or some pipe smoke.  The Indians were careful not to offend the spirits.

Sometimes a man dressed from head to foot in a bearskin costume with a red and black painted mask and would impersonate one of the spirits called the "Mesingw".  He would not talk but used a turtle shell rattle and stick to communicate his thoughts.

At different times of the year the Indians held ceremonies and rituals to honor the good spirits or drive out the evil ones.  The celebrated the rising of the maple sap and the planting of the corn.  They had a ritual for the first green corm of each year and a celebration of the corn harvest.  And there were other good things to celebrate - a birth, a marriage, or a successful hunt.

 

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Tobacco Ceremonies

Smoking was important to many Indians.  Both the tobacco and the pipes for smoking it were thought to be sacred.  They had to be treated with respect and used according to the proper rituals.  Tobacco smoke could be an offering to the spirits.  Sometimes tobacco was burned as incense or tossed onto the fire as a person called on a spirit for help.  And sometime shamans used to smoke to drive disease from a sick person's body.  Chiefs and councilors smoked before making important decisions, before trading, and before declaring war or agreeing to peace.

Tobacco is a Native American plant that was unknown to the rest of the world until the Indians introduced it to the Europeans.
Vision Quests

The Indians believed that certain rituals, such as fasting, gave them special power to influence spirits.  It was the custom for boys - and sometimes girls - to mark the time when they became adults by going away alone for many days to fast and dream.  The special power they received at this time might enable them to have visions.  And some of them might find a guardian spirit.

People known as shamans were thought to have more special power over spirits.  They could use their power for the good of others by becoming medicine men or religious leaders.

 

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Burial Customs


Despite their best efforts, death often came at an early age, and from uncontrollable conditions.  Infant mortality was especially high.  Graves were shallow and bodies were usually placed in a flexed position with knees drawn up and arms folded.  Grave offerings sometimes accompanied the dead.

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  (For additional information see The Lenape or Delaware Indians, or The Indians of Lenapehoking.)

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Revised: February 15, 2007 .