Existing comment:
"Nothing is too Good for their Friends."
-- William Penn, speaking of the Lenni Lenape Indians of the Delaware Valley
More than 10,000 years ago, the earliest settlers of Delaware arrived from Asia emigrating across the Bering Straits. After the Ice Age, it was the "original people," ass the Lenape called themselves, who summer-camped on the river called Minquas, after the Susquehanni Valley tribe that had brought the beaver trade to this area. It was this river that the the [sic] Swedes later named Christina after their child queen. The Lenape fished the streams, hunted game in the forests and tidal marshes, and gathered wetland plants for food and weaving.
The Lenape, who were greatly respected by other area tribes for their skills at peacemaking befriended the new settlers from Sweden. The Swedes and the Lenape established a level of peaceful coexistence unusual in the New World.
The Swedes settled Wilmington and began a lucrative trade in beaver pelts and other furs. But the beaver population was soon exhausted, and settlers had to rely on farming. It was the Lenape who taught the Swedes to grow maize, the staple grain of the New World that we call corn, and tobacco, which became the cash crop of the settlement.
Today, few people realize that the log cabin, that most "American" of building types, was introduced to the New World by European settlers. The cabin which now stands near Fort Christina resembles the one built in 1638 by Swedish-Finns in the colony of New Sweden. As Americans migrated to settle the south and west, the log cabin continued to provide shelter on land cleared for trees for farming.
The Kalmar Nyckel, the flagship of the first expedition to bring European settlers to the shores of Delaware in 1638, is shown here in the upper right.
A sister ship of the expedition to New Sweden, the Fogel Grip, sailed on to trade in the Caribbean. When the Fogel Grip returned to New Sweden, Antoni Swart (Black Anthony) was aboard. He was the first black inhabitant of Delaware, and ultimately became an assistant to Johan Printz, who was Governor of New Sweden from 1643 to 1653.
On September 28, 1997, three hundred and fifty-three years after the first Swedish vessel landed on the Christina River, the replica ship Kalmar Nyckel was launched. During the summer months, the ship is frequently moored at Riverfront Wilmington. |