Lenape Creation Story

The Lenape Creator God is also known as Kishelemukong or Kitanitowit (keh-tah-nuh-tuh-wit). For 10,000 years the Lenape creation story has been carried down orally from generation to generation as they had no written language.

Of the historically documented accounts, one of the earliest recorded tells of how a Lenape Elder answered the inquiry of a Dutchman who wanted to know where the Lenape People came from… He was silent for a little while, either as if unable to climb up at once so high with his thoughts, or to express them without help, and then took a piece of coal out of the fire where he sat, and began to write upon the floor. He first drew a circle, a little oval, to which he made four paws or feet, a head and a tail. “This,” he said, “is a tortoise, lying in the water around it,” and he moved his hand round the figure continuing, “This was or is all water, and so at first was the world or the earth, when the tortoise gradually raised its round back up high, and the water ran off of it, and thus the earth became dry.” He then took a little straw and placed it on end in the middle of the figure and proceeded, “The earth was now dry, and there grew a tree in the middle of the earth, and the root of this tree sent forth a sprout beside it, and there grew upon it a man, who was the first male. This man was then alone, and would have remained alone; but the tree bent over until its top touched the earth, and there shot therein another root, from which came forth another sprout, and there grew upon it the woman, and from these two are all men produced.” [Jaspar Dankers & Peter Sluyter, Journal Of A Voyage To New York In 1679-80.]