Synopsis
In 1823, a man named Charles C. Trowbridge went to Indiana Territory on an assignment from Governor Lewis Cass of the Michigan Territory. His mission was to obtain the answers to a list of questions pertaining to the Lenape or Delaware language. After only two and a half months, Trowbridge collected over 280 pages of handwritten information, making the first full-fledged treatment of Southern Unami, the dialect spoken by the two groups still existing in Oklahoma today. This is the dialect of Lenape that was spoken in the southern half of New Jersey, southeastern Pennsylvania, and Delaware. After almost two centuries, Delaware Indian language scholar James A. Rementer has now edited and published Trowbridge's extremely thorough study in full. With well over a hundred pages devoted to verb forms alone, and extended word-by-word analyses of texts such as the Lord's Prayer and common phrases, Trowbridge's work serves not only as a detailed grammar but also as an invaluable cultural record from a time when the Lenape community was on its journey from the Mid-Atlantic toward the west. Rementer's extensive introductory material puts in context the historical forces that went into producing this text, with a biography of Captain Pipe, one of Trowbridge's main Indian informants. Contributions by Lenape scholar Bruce Pearson and Timothy Crumrin round out the picture with biographies of Trowbridge himself and William Conner.
About the Author
James Rementer has worked with tribal elders on Lenape language and culture since he moved to Oklahoma in 1962. He was born and raised near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the old Lenape homeland. James was adopted in the Lenape Indian way by James Thompson (then age 94) in 1963 because Mr. Thompson felt a special kinship to him. Due to his study of the Lenape language and culture, James became the Project Director for the Lenape Language Project working under grants from National Science Foundation and the Administration for Native Americans. He has served as the Secretary of the Culture Preservation Committee of the Delaware Tribe since 1991.
Rementer also worked for the Delaware Tribal Enrollment Department researching old tribal rolls and correlating data. He is on the Board of Advisors of the Williamson Museum, Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, Louisiana, and served as a consultant for American Playhouse's Roanoak docudrama, and the Home Box Office production of Dear Diary: Standing in the Light.
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