Lenape Country

Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn

By: Jean R. Soderlund

Narrated by: Richard Travis

In 1631, when the Dutch tried to develop plantation agriculture in the Delaware Valley, the Lenape Indians destroyed the colony of Swanendael and killed its residents. The natives and Dutch quickly negotiated peace, avoiding an extended war through diplomacy and trade. The Lenapes preserved their political sovereignty for the next 50 years as Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and English colonists settled the Delaware Valley. The European outposts did not approach the size and strength of those in Virginia, New England, and New Netherland. Even after thousands of Quakers arrived in West New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the late 1670s and '80s, the region successfully avoided war for another 75 years.

Lenape Country is a sweeping narrative history of the multiethnic society of the Delaware Valley in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Drawing on a wide range of sources, author Jean R. Soderlund demonstrates that the hallmarks of Delaware Valley society - commitment to personal freedom, religious liberty, peaceful resolution of conflict, and opposition to hierarchical government - began in the Delaware Valley, not with Quaker ideals or the leadership of William Penn but with the Lenape Indians, whose culture played a key role in shaping Delaware Valley society.

©2015 University of Pennsylvania Press (P)2016 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Meticulously researched and cautiously analyzed... It is a much needed study of this pivotal time in American history and a valuable contribution to Native American and colonial-era scholarship." ( American Studies)

"Succinct and imaginatively conceived, Lenape Country is one of the best narrative histories I have read to date on the European-Indian interaction along the Delaware River."- (Gunlög Fur, author of A Nation of Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters Among the Delaware Indians)

very informative

I really loved the detail of the Lenape in the Delaware River Valley. Jean Soderland does an amazing job of research and presents it here. Read this book!

Incredibly important perspective

This is an excellent resource for people to better understand the history of Lenapehoking/New Netherland/New Sweden/New Jersey (plus southern NY and eastern PA) starting around the time of the first contact with Europeans, going all the way up to the 1770s.

In some ways this feels like several overlapping shorter books with each chapter feeling free to retell important previously explained events and go into the future consequences of the current events, rather than stick to a strictly chronological narrative. it felt bit repetitive at first but eventually I appreciated how it really solidified key events in my memory for me in a way a more simple narrative might not have.

The performance isn't matched well to the book. The narration is clear and the audio quality is good, but the performance constantly seemed out of step with the words being read. The was a constant tone of sinisterness and almost a snarling feeling, that might be appropriate for some of the most troubling parts of the history (though that would be an odd injection from a performer who isn't the author), but it isn't actually connected to what is being read. It's just always there.

Ultimately, while I believe this book would benefit from a new performance, it doesn't detract enough that anyone should be deterred from buying this and giving it an attentive listen. This is a part of the history of this place that isn't prominent enough in our local or national consciousness. This book makes an excellent stride in helping to correct that.

a great book was terrible on Audible

This book was loaded with information that I have never seen before. Not only did the book reveal things about the Lenape that I had never seen in print before, it is easily the most informative description that I have seen about the Swedish (and Finnish) settlements on the Delaware. The relations between the Swedes and Lenape were news to me. I learned a LOT from this book, and I am pleased to have heard it.
But.. I can't believe that someone hired this narrator. I found his voice annoying. Worse, his pronunciation was, at best, incorrect. I started this book months ago, but I could not get past Lenape pronounced with the strees on the first syllable, and I have always heard it as -pay, not -pee. I went to primary school in New Jersey and the Lenape were discussed in three different grades, and the pronunciation by the Audible narrator is different. not only from youth, but everywhere else that I have heard it pronounced. Also, Teedyuscung is a name that I have heard pronounced on a few TV shows, and those are different than what I hear on Audible. Goteborg (Gothenburg) is one of several other pronunciation mistakes. If you have not caught my drift, this book was painful to listen to, and took a couple months to finish.
I had seen this book avaible on Audible for quite some time, and it sat in my wish list for a couple of years before I finally despaired of seeing it as available through Kindle. After I acquired the Audible version, it did become available on Kindle, and that is how I would recommend getting this book - and I DO recommend it. Audible provides neither footnotes nor a bibliography, both of which I would have loved to glimpse. But maps are non-existent as well, and with so many place names with which I am unfamiliar, maps are crucial to fully understand this story. I realize that I am asking for the moon here, but I would have been thrilled if Audible made maps available, perhaps as a PDF.
So, I found this a vastly enlightening book that would be even more enlightening in a different format.

Unlistenable

The narrator has a great voice. But his dry delivery does not fit the book. When dealing with material that is already dry, you need to vary your tone and inflection. He does not do this. Plus, he mispronounces Lenape, a word that is in the title of the book. This oversight alone tells me it was not reviewed before being released on Audible. I’m annoyed I wasted one of my monthly credits on this.

So much disinformation, especially to..

So much disinformation, especially to suggest that the tribe known amongst other tribes as the Peaceful Grandfather tribe (Lenape) before any European settlers was only peaceful because the pre-Quaker settlers taught them how to be peaceful is historically incorrect and another attempt from the European side to paint Native Americans as uncivilized savages. They even had their own utopian agricultural system going long before European settlers.