“….It Is Not Fit That Such Great Warriers Should Fight Anymore, But That They Should Remain Like

“….It is not fit that such great warriers should fight anymore, but that they should remain like women who were not warriers…. treaty is held sacred all this time and they say it will until the party that put the coat onto them shall take it off, or break the treaty.” - Thayendanegea to Holmes 1801 regarding the Haudenosaunee-Lenape Peace of 1669.

This is just a quick little drawing of “Sara”/Min-asin-ink/ Munsee Lenape & her sister Wënami/ Unami Lenape around the time of this peace treaty.

Indigenous histories is something I’m trying to understand more as its own separate history of US & Canadian canon. And as my main focus has always been New York City, and given that “Sara” is Lynn/NYC’s biological mother, I was curious as to what happens to her following the theft of her lands with the founding of New Netherlands. Lynn is also a lot like her mother. Sara is a bit of busy body, a bit nosy, but very charming and she has a way with words- historically allows her to make good deals and treaties what have you. Lynn is also like this except Lynn is probably the poster child of girlboss capitalism 😔 Lynn is like monopoly woman. Also “Sara”’s sister Wënami is Luke/Philadelphia’s mom.

The tl:dr on Lynn’s relationship to her mother is: it’s rocky. I think they both love each other. But Lynn has spent much of her time as a settler personification and has adopted very different values than her mother’s values. So sometimes they, but more so Lynn, get on each other’s bad side. Also both are quite stubborn

I plan on expanding further and making proper designs and lore for other nations, but my main focus is settler-colonial history. I want to eventually discuss the events of Tecumseh’s War against the United States because it’s a pivotal moment in settler and indigenous histories but we never fully discuss the Indigenous sides of it. So I’m trying to learn more about each nation outside of their relationship to settler-colonial powers hence why I also focused on the great peace of 1669.

Info dump below the cut

Also I want to quickly note that the Lenape were made of several different groups prior to colonization, and could be broken culturally into Munsee and Unami, but this changes with colonization. I assume “Sara” & her sister are the youngest the Lenape personifications given that they represent the broader groups.

Historically, it was like highkey the Haudenosaunee Confederacy versus everyone and their mother. But in 1669 the Lenape along with the Mohicans brokered a peace deal with the Haudenosaunee. This treaty in effect by calling the lenape women gave them a nation status of being peace makers and also gave them neutrality within international conflict.

This status explains a lot about how “Sara” and her sister were able to survive but also why they later align themselves with the Haudenosaunee, or the Cherokee or why they were involved in Tecumseh’s war.