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The PA Native American Flute Circle members were all sad to hear of the loss of one of our own. Sue was an active member, and a smiling face who always added so much to our meetings and our lives. Sue would always play the peaceful, soothing music “from her heart”, often on a flute of her own construction.
We will miss you Sue, but know that you will be with us in the Circle always.
Immediately before the advent of the white man, eastern Pennsylvania was inhabited principally by groups belonging linguistically to the Algonquians, who occupied a more extended area than any other linguistic stock in North America. An important tribe within this group was the Lenni-Lenape, or 'original people,' known historically as the Delaware.
The tribe consisted of three principal subtribes: The Unami or Wonamey, the Minsi or Munsee, and the Unalachtigo or Unalatka, each having its own territory and slightly different dialect. According to Lenape tradition, they had migrated into eastern Pennsylvania from the west, the tribal divisions later receiving their names from some geographic or other peculiarity characterizing the region in which they lived.
The Unami, using the turtle as their totem, inhabited the Delaware River Valley from the junction of the Lehigh River southward to what is now New Castle, Delaware. The Minsi, or Wolves, occupied the headwaters of the Delaware as far south as the Lehigh. The Unalachtigo, or Turkeys, lived on the west bank of the Delaware, in what is now the State of that name, and on the east bank in the present New Jersey. The Delaware had declined in power and dignity by the time Pennsylvania history began, and also had undergone a considerable redistribution in population areas. The Delaware within the present limits of Pennsylvania numbered only a few thousand when Penn came into the territory, and had become the vassals of the Iroquois Confederacy.
The Delaware were tall, broad-shouldered, small-waisted, and erect, with tawny reddish-brown complexion and straight black hair. Their hair was usually worn long, but sometimes they burned off all except a scalp lock. They wore no beards; hairs of the face were plucked out with pincers made of clam shells or small fiat stones; their cheekbones were broad and high, and their eyes small and dark. Among their musical instruments were the drum, rattle, gourd, and a sort of flute fashioned from a reed or a deer's tibia. They also had an instrument through which they could emit a howling, melancholy sound. They never developed harmony in instrumental music, although, like many other tribes, they achieved harmonic effects in choral singing.
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