The State of Delaware puts a lot of pride in being the first state in the union to ratify the constitution and assure representation in the United States Congress. The Nation of Delawares nearly formed the 14^th state in the union to have a representative in the Continental Congress. The Lenape (Delaware) Nation and Delaware the U.S. state went on to have very different histories over the past 250 years, but both can teach us a lot about the ongoing story of America.

From Wikimedia Commons.

For its 400th episode in 2024, the excellent Ben Franklin’s World podcast asked a whole slew of historians what event they wished more people knew about. There was only one event that more than one historian mentioned: both John Bickers and Colin Calloway wanted more people to think about the 1778 Treaty of Fort Pitt. That treaty was never fully ratified, but at a time when the cause of independence needed as many allies as it could get, both French and Lenape sovereignties had resources to offer. Article VI of the proposed treaty includes a fascinating potential development:

And it is further agreed on between the contracting parties should it for the future be found conducive for the mutual interest of both parties to invite any other tribes who have been friends to the interest of the United States, to join the present confederation, and to form a state whereof the Delaware nation shall be the head, and have a representation in Congress: Provided, nothing contained in this article to be considered as conclusive until it meets with the approbation of Congress.[1]

Congress’s “approbation” was never forthcoming. There were several interconnected reasons for this. For one, the focus of the Revolutionary War shifted to the south, meaning the Continental Army was not going to need free passage west for an attack on Detroit. For another, many Lenape people were not keen to become an ally of the colonists surrounded by allies of the crown unless the colonists were prepared to commit resources toward their protection. Finally, the Continental Congress later told a delegation of Lenape leaders that did not ratify the treaty because some Lenape warriors from other communities fought with the British.

The Lenape of the Allegheny had already relocated to western Pennsylvania from eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and, yes, Delaware before the treaty. HAfter the treaty was not ratified, the Lenape did not get the chance to organize a state east of the Mississippi. Changes in the independent United States’ posture over time shifted from alliance to forced removal westward through what are currently Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas before reaching their current territory in Oklahoma.

From the website of the Delaware Nation.

Today the U.S. has recognized three Lenape governments: the Delaware Nation in Anadarko, Oklahoma, the Delaware Tribe of Indians in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians in Bowler, Wisconsin. There are also Lenape people among First Nations who crossed over the Great Lakes to Ontario at about the same time as many loyalist colonists made the same move after the end of the Revolutionary War.

The war ended with the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which included the promise that state governments would pay off all of their debts to British banks. However, just as with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, this international agreement did not address the concerns of Native nations. Pontiac (Odawa) led a coalition of Native nations to continue their fight after the English and French ended their Seven Years’ War. Little Turtle (Myaamia) led a coalition of Native nations to continue their fight after the Revolutionary War.

During the span of the Northwest Indian War, from 1786 to 1795, the newly independent states operated under the Articles of Confederation government, drafted a new constitution, ratified that constitution, elected the first president, and then re-elected that president. Washington did not want to retire with too many big issues unresolved, and the Northwest Indian War was one of those, along with the Whiskey Rebellion.

From Wikimedia Commons.

Maps like the one above, and the legal agreements it is illustrating, completely ignore Native territory and sovereignty. In 1785 the Confederation Congress’s Land Ordinance standardized a rectangular survey system. Under this system, the government could reduce its war debts by quickly drawing up land deeds that contain no local knowledge of the land, only a patent with numbers referring to the grid. This quick sale by federal offices to anyone with cash could not coexist with the previous potential for Lenape statehood. The Northwest Indian War broke out in 1786 as a war of Native resistance against land privatization.

The 1787 Northwest Ordinance sought to end the possibility for Native-led states by codifying a procedure for forming states out of territories with large enough settler populations.  It also began the invasion of surveyors by targeting Lenape and Shawnee land in Ohio for new enclosure and sale. Section 8 of the Northwest Ordinance is focused on the creation of new governments with jurisdiction to enforce uniform laws over areas of land under the assumption that no Native nation’s laws or jurisdiction would be extant in the future.

 the governor shall make proper divisions thereof; and he shall proceed from time to time as circumstances may require, to lay out the parts of the district in which the Indian titles shall have been extinguished, into counties and townships, subject, however, to such alterations as may thereafter be made by the legislature.[2]

The question of how to add new settler states north of the Ohio River was an academic one until the Northwest Indian War ended with the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, a full 20 years after Lexington & Concord. The Treaty of Greenville is what truly codified the way the newly United States would interact with Native nations. Instead of following the potential of agreements like the aborted 1778 Treaty of Fort Pitt, treaty relationships would be based on the forcing “extinguished” Indian title, the Northwest Ordinance’s guidelines for adding new settler states to the union would be the way forward.

The Treaty of Greenville set a precedent that the U.S would only sign a treaty with one Native nation for any given area of land and would in exchange offer perpetual support in food, goods, and education. Though they were formal treaties between sovereign nations, future land treaties were calculated to spend less federal money providing for Native peoples than the profit that could be made from selling deeds to enclosed squares of their homelands. It is Native nations who paid for the Revolutionary War, both in bounty lands for soldiers and in the cash made from selling land deeds.

From the website of the USGS.

In the nineteenth century, the War of 1812 and the “Marshall trilogy” of Supreme Court decisions further restricted the potential future laid out in the provisional 1778 Treat of Fort Pitt. Instead, the federal government claimed that territorial separation along racial lines, as codified in the 1830 Indian Removal Act, would be best for all involved. Instead of seeing Native nations as self-governing, the 1831 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia Supreme Court decision opines:

They may more correctly, perhaps, be denominated domestic dependent nations. They occupy a territory to which we assert a title independent of their will, which must take effect in point of possession when their right of possession ceases; meanwhile, they are in a state of pupilage. Their relations to the United States resemble that of a ward to his guardian.[3]

The Lenape people, like the Cherokee and many other Native nations, did not stop fighting for their sovereignty after Chief Justice Marshall belittled it in 1831. From Native leaders making their X-Marks on whatever agreements might possibly further their community’s “survivance” to independent governments under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act and schooling under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, Native nations never stopped working to assert their own sovereignty. “We’re still here” is the defiant and necessary mantra spoken toward settler audiences by many Native people from YouTubers to artists to employees of the National Parks Service.

The same time that we spend learning more about the 250 years and counting of the independent United States, is also time for us to learn more about the countless years of Native sovereignty. The Lenape people and their homelands, Haudenosaunee perseverance, Indigenous food systems, and many other subjects in American Indian history are essential parts of United States history.

The Smithsonian’s “Our Shared Future: 250” events and exhibitions “invite us to reflect on the past, engage with the present, and imagine the future together.” It is also worth remembering that each point in the past had multiple potential futures along the way and learning about futures that did not take place, like inviting a Lenape state into the union, can help expand the range of futures we can imagine together today.

Endnotes

[1] Charles J. Kappler, “The Avalon Project : Treaty With the Delawares: 1778,” Text, Washington, DC, 1904, accessed May 28, 2026, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/del1778.asp#art6.

[2] “Northwest Ordinance (1787),” National Archives, May 17, 2021, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/northwest-ordinance.

[3] “Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1 (1831),” Justia Law, accessed May 28, 2026, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/30/1/.