Lenape time of sustained European contact in the 1600s and 1700s the Lenape were a powerful Native American nation who inhabited a region on the mid-Atlantic coast spanning the latitudes of southern Massachusetts to the southern extent of Delaware in what anthropologists call the Northeastern Woodlands. Although never politically unified, the confederation of the Delaware roughly encompassed the area around and between the Delaware and lower Hudson rivers, and included the western part of Long Island in present-day New York. Some of their place names, such as Manhattan ("the island of many hills"), Raritan, and Tappan were adopted by Dutch and
Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape seq.). The largest American Indian tribe in New Jersey, the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape enjoy friendly relations with the nation of Sweden, which acknowledges its tribal identity and sovereignty. Sweden recently celebrated its more than 350-year-old treaty of friendship with the Tribe, dating to the early settlement of the Swedes and Finns in the Land of the Lenape, before Dutch and British colonial powers settled in the area. The Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribe is governed by a nine-member elected Tribal Council. All council members must be enrolled citizens of the tribe. The tribe has determined that membership is dependent on tribal Indian blood