Statue honoring Tamanend in downtown Philadelphia

Tamanend, Chief of the Unami

Tamanend was chief of the Unami (Turtle) clan of the Lenni Lenape in the 1680s. His name means affable (i.e., pleasant, courteous, and easy to talk to). In 1683, he signed treaties with William Penn to sell him four large pieces of land which eventually comprised Penn's Woods (Pennsylvania). Later that year, before a large meeting of various Native American chiefs and William Penn, Tamanand declared, “We will live in love with William Penn and his children, as long as the creeks and rivers run, and while the sun, moon, and stars endure.”

Many years later, a Moravian missionary, Rev. John Heckwelder, wrote this about Tamanend:

The name of Tamanend is held in the highest veneration among the Indians. Of all the chiefs and great men which the Lenape nation ever had, he stands foremost on the list. But although many fabulous stories are circulated about him among the whites, but little of his real history is known… All we know about Tamanend, therefore, is that he was an ancient Delaware chief who never had his equal. He was in the highest degree endowed with wisdom, virtue, prudence, charity, affability, meekness, hospitality, in short with every good and noble qualification that a human being may possess. He was supposed to have had an intercourse with the great and good spirit, for he was a stranger to everything that is bad.

Prior to the American Revolution, patriots adopted Tamanend as a patron saint, calling him St. Tamany. On the first of May each year, they held a festival in honor of St. Tamany, celebrating freedom for the common man. The festival included dancing, smoking the calumet, and orations in support of a government of the people and free from British tyranny.

Tamanend’s Day is a heritage worth remembering and a holiday worth restoring!

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