The masks and idols
Divine power arises in people’s lives into various ways. For Lenape, ritual specialists—shamans—could offer themselves as containers of the divine for ceremonial devotion.
Brainerd’s described a mask worn by Lenape ritual specialists that is similar to masks of contemporary Lenape in Oklahoma. Perhaps we can assume that the Lenape religious specialists who moved through Elmhurst also brought these types of masks.
The missionary tried to discern the inner essence of the objects. The masks were not idols inhabited by deity, Brainerd reported but were used in a ceremony in which the Lenape ritual leader himself is inhabited by a supernatural being with power. Religious scholars would call this shamanism.
Mircea Eliade’s classic work on shamanism associates a complex of beliefs and practices that were diffused from northern Asia to North and South America. Eliade says shamanism is an “archaic technique of ecstasy” that arises from guardian spirit belief.
The divine can be a more everyday presence through “idols.” They are static presences that are divine lodestars for daily life.
Some images representing the female figure were also carved on wood dolls and used in private ceremonies by Lenape women. These were perhaps classic idols.
John Brainerd, brother of David, mentions an “idol image” that seems to be of this class, and a Lenape Munsee specimen is figured by Peter Jones’ work a century later. It is now in the American Museum of Natural History.
The Spirit guides
Lenape concepts regarding the numerous animal spirits, who were believed to offer themselves as guardians for mankind, are rather hard to define. Most Lenape seemed to regard their mysterious animal helper not as the spirit or soul of any particular animal taken as an individual, but as a spirit representing the entire species as a whole and partaking of the nature of the species in its material and spiritual attributes.
Brainerd attempted to make sense of this phenomenon:
They do not indeed suppose a divine power essential to, or inhering in, these creatures; but that some invisible beings … communicate to these animals a great power; … and so make these creatures the immediate authors of good to certain persons. Whence such a creature becomes sacred to the persons to whom he is supposed to be the immediate author of good, and through him they must worship the invisible powers, though to others he is no more than any other creature. …
Certain it is, if a Lenape states that his blessing or power comes from “the otter,” he does not mean some particular otter, but a spirit otter whose existence is independent of the life of any particular animal. However, such an animal was supposed, like a man, to have a spirit or soul of its own.
Lenape believed that a boy became an adult when he went on a solitary spirit quest for a spirit guide. A good relationship with a spirit guide was the key to a good and happy life. Otherwise, the Lenape man felt forsaken, small, and lost.
With a spirit guide, the Elmhurst Lenape males would feel a sense of purpose. We don’t have any specific information about spirit guides in Elmhurst, but contemporary reports on the Lenape were pretty consistent about the presence of spirit guides.
In 1691, a Swedish explorer reported that when an Indian even dreamed of his spirit guide “he will at once the following day be able to shoot as much game and catch as much fish as ever he wants to,” Brainerd wrote.
When a Christian showed up alone at a Lenape village, he fit into the frame of a holy man on a spiritual quest. He was also not threatening, and the Lenape sometimes remarked on the bravery of such approaches.
The women as religious leaders
Lenape women played an important religious role as keepers of the spiritual practices within the families and were responsible for the religious education of the children. They could also receive visions, and they kept their families informed of big spiritual developments locally. Although men usually predominated when a religious visionary or missionary came to a village, women were the ones who carried the news around. Brainerd and others noticed that starting on the second day of their preaching, the number of women significantly increased.
The hunting parties from various tribes that came through the Elmhurst area were made up of male braves, but small nomadic villages would have had women. Locally, the Maspeth and Matinecock women made a lot of wampum which was valuable in trade. In Flushing, the Lenape settlement was made up of whole families, and there is no reason that the same thing didn’t happen in Elmhurst.
Dreams, visions, songs, and body movements
Curiously, the Lenape in Elmhurst, Queens may have practiced their faith with visions, dreams, songs, and body movements that parallel those at Christian revival meetings. In fact, the Lenape in the New Amsterdam/New York City area also pointed out the parallels.
Brainerd experienced a welcome to his singing “in the worship of God.” Public singing became a common practice of revival meetings with Lenape.
The Lenape employed singing in their formal and personal interactions. One Dutch settler in Brooklyn escaped almost certain death by singing a hymn. The Indians found him hiding in the hollow of a tree just a short way from where the Mespeth Lenape established camps.
They forced him to stand to face his punishment, death. But they had a tradition of allowing a victim to give their testament, often as a song, before execution. The Dutchman probably wasn’t thinking of this but was giving himself courage and prayer in the face of death. The Indians listened, admired the song, and released the man.
Other visitors found that the Lenape also valued visions and dreams (just like the Labadists).
Visions could come from the spirit guides or some other source. At Big House Ceremonies, the Lenape would share their visions with each other. When Christian Lenape started showing their visions, there was opposition that gradually gave way to a hearkening.
One of the most influential Lenape visions was that of Mose (Tunda) Tatamy (c. 1689-c1760) in Pennsylvania. News of this vision spread to the Lenape in the New York City area.
According to Brainerd, Tatamy saw “an impassable mountain before him.” He looked “this way and that Way, but could find no Way at all.” Tatamy came to the same realization that Solomon had arrived at in his dreams 2500 years ago in Biblical history. Solomon realized that all his work and kingly powers were vain in the face of “time and Chance.” Tatamy “labour’d for a Time, but all in vain.” He just couldn’t find a way out of his dilemma by himself. He then “gave over striving,” realizing that “his own Power” would forever be “vain and fruitless.”
Then, Brainerd says that Tatamy found that his soul was at rest. The tribal leader’s countenance and way of life started to noticeably change. Brainerd observed, that there was a “very great change in the man, so that it might justly be said, he was become another man, if not a new man.” Tatamy’s wife also changed. They were “born again.”
The Indian chief became one of the most effective communicators of the gospel. Though he was not from Elmhurst, Queens, his change represented changes that were starting to happen among the Lenape of Queens and Brooklyn. The example of matching American spirituality to immigrant influences is a tradition that has embraced much of our local community’s history.
The guide of practicality
Lenape were strong believers in the practical outworking of religious faith. Did a vision lead to better fishing? Then, the Indians felt that their spiritual life was authentic and true. Did the prayers of the Christians lead to the curing of illness? Then, this was seen as an indication of the true way of the spirit.
Some Lenape chiefs prevented the Christian missionaries from preaching unless they could bring something of practical value to the Indians. Otherwise, chiefs said that the missionaries were just trying to make the Lenape into Europeans rather than enriching Lenape community life. This virtuous circle of demand and supply actually meant that Christianity became embedded into Lenape society, rather than just remaining external. To most Lenape, religion found its fulfillment in Jesus and the Christian way of life. The new native American norm became Christianity– a factor that was really threatening to some less godly European Christians. As the Lenape tell the story, the Europeans were envious of the Lenape and their prosperity in Christ. So, the heathen Whites tried to defraud, steal, and kill off the Lenape Christian challenge.
Unfortunately, both the early Lenape religious traditions and their development into a new Lenape religious tradition are, at present, impossible to document from sources strictly from Elmhurst, Queens. So, we have tried to tell a plausible story based on the best and earliest evidence from the early times of the Lenape-European frontier. Out of this frontier, we suggest, came traditionalist and Christian revivals and conversions. Elmhurst, Queens could well have been one of the hot burned-over districts of religious effervescence that periodically manifests in New York.
