Occupied for 10,000 years by Native Americans, the land that would become New Jersey was overseen by clans of the Lenape or Lenni Lenape or Delaware, who farmed, fished, and hunted upon it. The pattern of their culture was that of a matrilineal agricultural and mobile hunting society that was sustained with fixed, but not permanent, settlements in their "matrilineal clan" territories. Leadership by men was inherited through the maternal line, and the women elders held the power to remove leaders of whom they disapproved.