Economy/Trade/Crop/Jobs

Before colonial times, the Lenape lived as farmers, hunters, and fishermen. Lenape men hunted while the women farmed. Men made tools and weapons. The women were in charge of planting seeds in the spring, tending fields in the summer, and harvesting crops in the fall.The jobs took so much time they took their babies with them, strapped to cradle-boards, pieces of wood with leather straps. They wore the cradle-boards while working. Girls helped their mothers and tended the fields. They were taught to cook many different dishes. They did most of their cooking inside houses called wigwams. Boys spent most of the time with their fathers. They were responsible for hunting and fishing, and they taught their sons these things as well. Villages were located along rivers and bays to ensure the Indians had a plentiful supply of fish. The sons were also taught how to build dugout canoes that could be paddled along the rivers while fishing. They were made by burning and then hollowing out tree trunks. They used nets or wooden traps called weirs to catch their fish. The Indian boys were taught to spear fish with haerpoons made from deer antlers.. When a fish was caught, it was cleaned, wrapped in clay, and cooked in the warm ashes from a fire. The clay was then cracked and the fish inside eaten.