Trowbridge and the Delaware Indians
Conner Prairie thanks The History Channel® for its support of the Preserving A Heritage: Trowbridge and the Delaware Indians project. The project was funded by a grant from The History Channel’s Save Our History initiative. Conner Prairie also thanks its project partners - the teachers and students of Carmel High School, Carmel, Indiana.
Now reaching more than 88 million Nielsen subscribers, The History Channel®, "Where the Past Comes Alive®," brings history to life in a powerful manner and provides an inviting place where people experience history personally and connects their own lives to the great lives and events of the past. The History Channel earned six News and Documentary Emmy® Awards and previously received the prestigious Governor's Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for the network's "Save Our History®" campaign dedicated to historic preservation and history education. The History Channel web site is located at www.History.com. Press Only: For more information and photography please visit us on the web at www.historychannelpress.com.
Conner Prairie received a Save Our History grant to develop programming and materials about Charles Christopher Trowbridge and his work on Delaware (Lenape) Indian culture and language. Both of these subjects have direct links to our museum site. The Lenape Indians lived in our area from around 1795 to 1820. In 1823, Trowbridge, an early ethnographer, came to William Conner’s house to gather information about the Delaware. Conner had been a fur trader among the Indians and his house remains here today.
For this project, Carmel High School teachers and students and museum staff researched Trowbridge. They also studied materials on early 1800s Lenape history (and other American Indian groups). A first-person presentation of Trowbridge was then developed and implemented, covering both Lenape culture and language. A Lenape vocabulary brochure and this Web resource were also created.
Save Our History is an Emmy® Award-winning strategic philanthropic initiative of The History Channel® that launched in 1998, designed to further historic preservation and history education. The program supplements the teaching of history in America’s classrooms, educates the public on the importance of historical preservation and motivates communities across the country to help save endangered local historic treasures. The Save Our History campaign includes original documentaries, special
teachers’ materials, national promotion on The History Channel, broadband activities in schools, and has worked with The Smithsonian Institution, National Park Service, National Trust for Historic Preservation, National World War II Memorial, American Rivers and The White House 200th Anniversary. Additional information about the grassroots Save Our History program can be found at www.saveourhistory.com.