Delaware's Native American History
Paleo-Indians inhabited the area now known as Delaware at least 12,000 years ago. Thousands of years later, various Native American tribes, including the Algonquian, Lenape, Nanticoke and others, lived in settled communities, farmed and traded along the region’s waterways.
The Dutch and Swedes arrived in the early 17th century, with the Dutch founding the colony of New Sweden. The region’s name comes from the Delaware River and Delaware Bay, named after Sir Thomas West, Lord De La Warr, an English nobleman who became the first colonial governor of Virginia.
European-introduced diseases, including smallpox and measles, killed many Native Americans in the Delaware Valley, and conflict over land and with the Iroquois Confederacy forced most surviving Lenape to relocate.
Delaware's Colonial History
English Explorer Henry Hudson’s 1609 discovery of Delaware Bay led to European settlements in the area. In 1631, Dutch traders established Zwaanendael (archaic Dutch for "swan valley”) near present-day Lewes, which members of the Lenape tribe destroyed due to cultural misunderstandings. In 1638, Swedish settlers founded Fort Christina, now Wilmington, the first permanent European settlement in Delaware. New Castle, founded in 1651, was another significant settlement, serving as a major colonial port.
The Dutch and Swedes clashed over the territory, leading to the Dutch-Swedish War (1655-1657). The war ended with Dutch control, but the English seized the territory in 1664, incorporating it into the English colony of New York. William Penn gained the land in 1682, putting it under Pennsylvania governance, and in 1703, it was granted its own provincial assembly until 1776, when it became its own colony.
Delaware and the American Revolution
In 1776, during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), Delaware’s delegates were divided on whether to vote for the Declaration of Independence. Famously, Caesar Rodney, elected to serve as the first president of Delaware two years later, rode 70 miles in the rain from Dover to Philadelphia to cast his vote for independence from England.
Delaware’s location along the Atlantic coast made it a strategic asset for trade and military operations during the war. The state contributed troops, including the Delaware Regiment and the “Blue Hen Chicks,” but saw only one Revolutionary War battle in 1777, at the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge.
Following the British defeat, delegates to the Constitutional Convention drafted a new U.S. Constitution, and Delaware was the first state to ratify it on December 7, 1787.
