"The Lenape (or Delaware) people were pushed out of the New Jersey region in colonial times, embarking on a two-hundred year odyssey that eventually brought them to Indian Territory, soon to be the State of Oklahoma. On the Turtle's Back: Stories the Lenape Told Their Grandchildren presents the stories that they decided to write down in the early 1900s, when their language was still fully vibrant, but they were beginning to fear for the future. Two Delaware families, Charles and Susan Elkhair and Julius and Minnie Fouts, together with their children, invited an anthropologist into their living rooms, and they began to talk. These families told stories of creation, of great heroes, and of people who needed to learn a lesson or two. In doing this, they allowed future generations into their imaginative and metaphorical story world, elements of which had existed for centuries. The book they hoped for wasn't published in their time, but their efforts to preserve their culture were nevertheless fruitful: they made this book possible. The second part of this volume includes interviews with elders at the end of the twentieth century, people who had been children when the stories were told. They still remembered the old Lenape story world, as do the Delaware of today"-- Provided by publisher.