c.1872 steel engraving of the Delaware Water Gap, the passage of the river through the Appalachian Mountains between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Image of groups of people in boats on and along the shore of the Delaware River with the gap in the mountains in the background.
13 January 2022
Delaware is the name of a bay, a river, a state of the United States, and an Indigenous people. The use as a name for an Indigenous people is an oddity in that the name comes from that of an Englishman. The name Delaware comes from Thomas West (1577–1618), Baron De La Warr, and the governor of Virginia (1609–15).* The Lenape people were called the Delaware Indians by settler-colonists because they originally resided in the Delaware River valley; the name stuck and has been adopted by some Lenape tribes and communities as their official name.
First European settlement in what is now the state was in 1638 by the Swedes and was dubbed New Sweden. The Dutch took it from the Swedes in 1655 and the English from the Dutch in 1664. Originally part of Pennsylvania, the area formed its own assembly in 1704 and was administered separately from the rest of that colony, although the governor of Pennsylvania was also the governor of Delaware. The colony did not achieve full autonomy from Pennsylvania until independence from Britain in 1776.
The bay was the first thing to be named for West. The name appears by 1635 in a description of the colony of Maryland:
On the Easterne shore of the Country, which lieth upon the maine Ocean, are sundry small Creekes, and one likely to proove a very commodious harbour, called Matsopongue; neere the mouth whereof, lieth an Iland of about 20 miles in length, and thence about 6 leagues more Northerly, another Iland called Chingoto; and about seaven leagues beyond that, to the North, opens another very large faire Bay, called Delaware Bay. This Bay is about 8 leagues wide at the entrance, and into it, there falls a very faire navigable River.
Subsequently, the river that feeds into the bay was also given that name.
The application of the name to Indigenous people is in place by 1694, as can be seen in an exchange between Benjamin Fletcher, captain-general and governor of New York, and Sadekanacktie, an Onandaga chief. Note here the name is not designating a tribal affiliation, but rather to the fact that they live along the Delaware River, although it is likely the people referred to here as Delaware Indians were all or mostly Lenape:
His Excellency,
The Senekes of late have sent a Belt of Wampum to the Indians of Delaware River, requiring them to take up the Hatchet of War, and fight along with them, which frightened those peaceable Indians, that live among a peaceable People, who are no Warriours. And since they are in my Government of Pennsilvania, I charge the Senekes not to frighten them, but to let them alone.Sadekanacktie,
We know nothing of any such Belt sent by us, probably those Indians that are fled from us, and live upon the Snsquahannah [sic] River may have sent such a Message.His Excellency,
I injoyn you, in renewing the Peace with those Indians, to let them know, that they must not disturb the Delaware Indians, nor the Inhabitants of the Province of Pennsilvania.
By 1709 we see groups of Lenape people explicitly referred to as Delawares. Note that by this point, most of the people being called Delaware no longer lived in the Delaware River valley, but at the time were mostly resident along the Susquehanna River, the first stage in a relocation that would take them to what is now Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario, although some Lenape communities remain in their original homeland to this day. From a list of attendees at a council held at Philadelphia on 25 July 1709:
The Chiefs of Several nations of the Indians living on Susquehannagh, viz: Andaggy-junquagh, Woshtachary, —— Chiefs of the Mingoes, Owechela, Passakassy, Sassoonan & Skalitchy, Chiefs of the Delaware Indians, settled at Peshtang above Conestogoe & other adjacent places, [...]
The use of Delaware to refer to the state comes rather late. Throughout its colonial history, the territory was referred to as the Lower Counties on the Delaware, reflecting its status as relating to, but distinct from, the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland, which disputed ownership of the territory. The territory was not officially referred to as Delaware until after independence. The proceedings for the Continental Congress of 24 January 1777 read, in part:
A letter of the 17th instant from John McKinley, esquire, speaker of the assembly of the state of Delaware with sundry resolves of that assembly, was read.
Delaware would become the first state to ratify the Constitution.
*The nomenclature and numbering of Thomas West’s title are confused in many sources. The title Baron De La Warr was created in 1299, lapsed in 1554, and then recreated in 1572, so this Thomas West is either the twelfth or third baron, depending upon how one counts. Some sources also confuse him with his father, also Thomas West, the eleventh or second baron. Furthermore, while West was technically the first governor of Virginia, he was preceded by a governing council, so some sources credit him as the second governor.
Sources:
An Account of the Treaty Between His Excellency Benjamin Fletcher, Captain General and Governour in Chief of the Province of New-York, &c. and the Indians of the Five Nations. New York: William Bradford, 1694, 27. Early English Books Online.
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Grumet, Robert S. Manhattan to Minisink: American Indian Place Names in Greater New York and Vicinity. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2013.
Journals of Congress, vol. 3, Philadelphia: John Dunlap, 1778, 34. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, vol. 2 of 16. Philadelphia, Joseph Severns, 1852, 469. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Delaware, n.
A Relation of Maryland. London: 1635, 15–16. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image Credit: Robert Hinshelwood, c.1872, published by D.Appleton and Co. of New York. Library of Congress.