Editing Matrilineality (section)

==== Lenape ====
{{Main|Lenape}}
Occupied for 10,000 years by [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]], the land that is present-day [[New Jersey]] was overseen by [[clan]]s of the [[Lenape]], 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.

Villages were established and relocated as the clans farmed new sections of the land when soil fertility lessened and when they moved among their fishing and hunting grounds by seasons. The area was claimed as a part of the Dutch [[New Netherland]] province dating from 1614, where active trading in furs took advantage of the natural pass west, but the Lenape prevented permanent settlement beyond what is now Jersey City.

"Early Europeans who first wrote about these Indians found matrilineal social organization to be unfamiliar and perplexing. As a result, the early records are full of 'clues' about early Lenape society, but were usually written by observers who did not fully understand what they were seeing."<ref>This quote is from [[Lenape]]'s [[Lenni-Lenape#Society|Society]] section.</ref>