Lenape Migration Routes

This drawing shows the routes of Norse traders from the year 1000 to 1350. The routes with the blue color indicate ships coming from Iceland or Europe. The orange routes were probably traveled by 15 men in a 20-oar knarr. The green and pale blue lines indicate the routes followed by the Lenape bandss that went with Snowbird (green) and White Beaver (Light blue)

Click on the words beneath icons to go to the expanded text.

STONE HARD

 MOB

Geese & Whale

Pleasant Land

Fish Land

Peaceable

         
   

                Flight

               

   

Caves

                                                                                     

Big Crops

         Mississippi                               

                                                         
                                                                             Restored

                                                                                                         

Divide

The End

Dear Americans,

If the linguists said your ancestors spoke Algonquin, then your ancestors really spoke Lenape.

If your ancestors spoke Lenape, they were Norse Catholics who came from Greenland.

This map above of the Lenape migration is overlayed with key pictographs. The duplicate pictographs below the map have links for more detailed explanation of the pictograph.  

Your ancestors rowed from Greenland to stakke lake in Western Minnesota. Stakke lake was equivalent to Ellis Island today. Nearly every Lenape came to America via Stakke lake. 

Some Lenape went south into South Dakota and up the Missouri river.  We can trace their route because they carried whetstones. South Dakota has two whetstone rivers. This branch of the migration returned north as far Mandan North Dakota. 

The Little Ice Age weather forced most of the Lenape to leave western Minnesota.  They went south to the Missouri where they raised bumper crops. Pressure from the people on the planes and the chaos to the east encouraged the Lenape to move into the Illinois countryside. 

The French found the Lenape there.  The French called them the pure people. Illinois means pure people. The french named river, where the pure people lived, the "River of the Divine." 

The main group of the Lenape moved on east.   They made a heartland in Ohio. In Old Norse "Miami" means "My Heart." There the Lenape population multiplied. Some people went south.   The Lenape continued east to the east coast.

The Lenape history stopped in AD 1585.  Ralph Lane, the English commander, put a pistol to the head of the Lenape Historian.  Lane pulled the trigger.

Lane's action was a preview of what was to come in the following centuries.