Unami Tribe

Unami Indians. One of the principal divisions of the Delaware, formerly occupying the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River, from the junction of the Lehigh southward about the Delaware line. According to Brinton, many of the New Jersey Delaware were Unami who had crossed the Delaware to escape the inroads of the Conestoga, and Ruttenber classes with this division the Navasink, Raritan, Hackensack, Aquakanonk, Tappan and Haverstraw, of northern New Jersey.  The Unami held precedence over the other Delaware.  Their totem was the turtle (pakoango). According to Morgan, they were one of the three gentes of the Delaware, while Brinton says the turtle was merely the symbol of a geographic division.

The Unami have sometimes been called the Turtle tribe of the Delaware.


Topics:
Delaware, Unami,

Collection:
Hodge, Frederick Webb, Compiler. The Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. Bureau of American Ethnology, Government Printing Office. 1906.

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