Hi Karen,

Precontact Lenape life was hard work. They made their clothes from plant fibers, but mostly animal skins. What they wore was simple and functional.

Pre-colonial Delaware was a stopping point for several different tribes that lived in present day Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey. The area known as New Castle County in the state of Delaware was home to the Lenape, also known as the Delaware. Their clothing was simple yet functional, and was primarily animal skins and plant fibers. In this society, women were the seamstresses for the village for big articles of clothing, such as shirts, leggings, skirts, and full dresses. The summer time brought readily made clothing with enough to cover for modesty, and children were usually naked.

To Obtain a Skin One Must First Go Hunting

After a hunt, men would bring back the animals to the village. The animals were distributed to their families and the women started the arduous task of peeling the skin off. These skins would first need to be tanned, which is to treat the skins and preserve them for the making of clothes. The first stage to do this was to take a stone or bone scraper and scrape the meat and fat from the skin side of the animal hide. If the finished product was to be hairless, the skin was soaked in water to loosen the hair then scraped off; but if the hair was to remain, the hide didn’t need soaking.

The animal hide, skin side, would next be smeared with the brain of the animal and stored for a few days. Then it was taken out, and the brain matter was scraped off. If the animal hide was for a dress, or a breech cloth, or pants or a shirt, the hair had to be removed. The soaking was done, the braining was done, and when the brain was scraped off, the hair was scraped off as well. The skin was then washed and dried. To soften the skin, the women rubbed it with a bone, or they pulled the skin back and forth across a taut robe.

The women used many different types of threading to sew depending on what they were making. Thread could be split thin animal skin, muscle, hair, or even tough grass. To make sewing easier, women used antler or bone to punch holes into the leather.

Lenape Men and Clothing

Men knew how to sew and to clothe themselves, but they concentrated their talents on mending, making nets, and building the structures and tools that the village needed. The summer brought easy made clothing. A belt, which could be decorated with wampum, and/or dyed porcupine quills or feathers, was either done by a woman in their family or by them, and was the mechanism to keep the loin cloth in place.

HI Myrna I I know exactly what you mean. I found my way back to God through them.

I Also love the way they worship The Creator how they use the earth and how they do not destroy it, all the things they do are for a reason, a purpose. No waste, they enjoy the natural things that we were meant to enjoy. The love they show for the earth, how they use the four directions, wind, water and the meaning they have, it is really holy to me. It really comes from the heart.

The Indian way makes more sense to me than the Catholic and Protestent churches ever did. I fell away from them in my late teens.

I found my way back to God through the Indian way.

Love and big hugs.
Barb :)

Quote:
HI Myrna I I know exactly what you mean. I found my way back to God through them.

I Also love the way they worship The Creator how they use the earth and how they do not destroy it, all the things they do are for a reason, a purpose. No waste, they enjoy the natural things that we were meant to enjoy. The love they show for the earth, how they use the four directions, wind, water and the meaning they have, it is really holy to me. It really comes from the heart.

The Indian way makes more sense to me than the Catholic and Protestent churches ever did. I fell away from them in my late teens.

I found my way back to God through the Indian way.

Love and big hugs.
Barb :)

Dear Barb, Myrna and Karen,

All this is so fascinating. I agree with the three of you on true religiosity being that of the native peoples, so far indeed from our "civilized" concept of what a religion must be, yet so real and powerful that it has come down to our days intact and more real and powerful than ever before. It's what I call a cosmic religion.

Cosmic Religion is actually timeless and out of this world and yet, it is even today the religion of the world's most "primitive" peoples. Everything in this world is sacred for them, since the mere idea of something being profane is alien to their minds. They not only adore the Earth as their Mother with all that she contains, but also the Sky as their Father with all the stars and the luminaries. In their universe everything exits in unlimited quantities, yet they would never waste anything since all belongs to their Father and Mother and we, as their children, must respect it as sacred. In addition, even though all exists in unlimited quantities, all is the inheritance of the Earth creatures, including the animals, whom we must treat as we would our own family and neighbors. And they would never harm the Earth anymore than they would their own mothers.

They strongly use symbolism as the highest science, which encompasses all other sciences of both the Skies and the Earth and is the language of all metaphysical truth, otherwise impenetrable. That is why they worship the four directions, which are symbolically ascribed to the four natural elements. Of all things, numbers are most sacred to them, since they not only have power in as much as quantities but also as qualities. And of all numbers, four is most sacred to them, as it is the number of the Earth and, in general, of the material plane where in fact, there are four directions, four elements, for seasons, and so on.

What I most love of native peoples is they are scattered everywhere on this Earth, not only in North and South America and the Arctic, but also in Asia and Africa and Oceania. Only in Europe there are no native peoples anymore short of a few tribes beyond the "civilized" countries, far to the North and near the Arctic circle. They were eradicated long, long ago by our own degraded "civilization."

I could talk for hours on end about this topic as in a way, it has become my subject matter for a good while now. But I don't want to strain your patience and would rather like to invite you to visit my new forum (you may look at my signature below for the link).

Thank you,

Luis Miguel Goitizolo

Hi Barb,

Thank you for coming in an posting your thoughts. I think a lot of us are on the same path.
The Indians did not have a Bible, but they had the heavens, earth, the great Spirit,, the animals as their guides. I believe that is why they were so mistreated, they knew to much they were free, they needed to be stopped, enter fear into them, then you can control them. And you know what horrid things that have happened to them

Several years ago, I had these spots in my eyes, the doctor said there was nothing that could be done. Well I said, I am not putting up with this, right then, I had talked myself out of the problems So the spots have gone away, I know we can heal ourselves, like we can make ourselves feel poorly, so we can make ourselves well, it is all in the mind. Just like hearing people saying "I am getting too old for this" so what have you just done, but convinced yourself of feeling weak. The things is we need to believe is in our hearts and minds we can do it. That is where the love comes in for self. I hope
I am making sense. Just like not having money, we have to believe we have it and it will come. This I am working on now, got a ways to go, but it will happen.

I found this article, which I think is pretty good.

Laurance Johnston, Ph.D.mstheme

msthememstheme

msthememsthemeseparator As part of this ongoing series, I have reviewed diverse healing approaches, none of which has been more intriguing yet initially alien to my Western-trained scientific mind than Native-American medicine. As a scientist who uses physical laws to further dissect the microcosm, it was challenging to metaphorically absorb the spiritual, cosmological, and ecological views of the macrocosm that shape Native-American healing. In The Way of the Scout: A Native American Path to Finding Spiritual Meaning in a Physical World (1995), Tom Brown, Jr. describes how when he was a child an Apache elder taught him to use an “expanded focus,” where the task (i.e., any of life’s pursuits) is but a small part of the whole picture. When we relax an absolute focus, we become more aware of life’s flow around us, and, as a result, assistance in many unanticipated forms becomes available. For most of us who view the world through the conditioning of Western thought, an expanded focus fosters a greater understanding of Native-American wisdom. In my case, as I relaxed the rigidity of my scientific beliefs, an understanding grew that complemented - not negated - these beliefs. (photo: The author next to a petroglyph of “Thunderbird,” a mythological being who speaks in thunder and lightening and teaches us how to use its power to heal.) Contributions: Throughout our nation’s history, Native-American societal contributions have been immense but often unrecognized. A few examples include Benjamin Franklin’s modeling the Articles of Confederation on the Iroquois Nation’s constitution, World War II’s Navajo code breakers, tribal donations of over $200,000 for post-9/11 relief efforts, and, the first servicewoman killed in Iraq being a Hopi Indian. Such contributions hold true for medicine, also. For example, more than 200 Native-American herbal medicines have been listed at one time or another in the US Pharmacopoeia; many modern drugs have botanical origins in these medicines.

More here

Blessings and hugs,
Myrna

Hi Luis,

I am so glad to see you here. Yes, I read your forums all the time and I would not miss them. You just have a writing talent that I don't have, and explain things so much better then I. But I got it in my heart. You just keep those great articles coming and it makes me happy.

This video is so relaxing I would love to know what it all means. I enjoy it any way.