Nora Thompson Dean

Nora Thompson Dean (1907–1984), also known as Weenjipahkihelexkwe, which translates as "Touching Leaves Woman" in Unami, was a member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians. As a Lenape traditionalist and one of the last fluent speakers of the southern Unami dialect of the Lenape language, she was an influential mentor to younger tribal members and is widely cited in scholarship on Lenape culture.

Nora Thompson was born ten miles east of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, USA, at Glen Oak, on July 3, 1907, to James H. and Sarah (Wilson) Thompson, both full-blood Delawares. She received her education in the Oklahoma Public Schools. She graduated from Midway School in 1921, as salutatorian, and from Dewey High School in 1925. Nora Thompson also had some nursing training and several university credits. In 1941 she married Charley Dean, who was also born and raised in northeastern Oklahoma. She died on November 29, 1984.

Her name "Touching Leaves Woman," has some complexity, which requires some explanation, as follows: Nora Thompson Dean, Lenape /luh-NAH-pay/, 1907-1984, Dewey, Oklahoma. Normally indigenous blessing names are kept quiet, but Nora was such a wonderful woman that it should be shown why she additionally had such an appealing demeanor. It would be sad to let it pass from memory by silence. The Unami (= /w’NAH-mee/ ‘downriver [person]’) name of Nora Thompson Dean and the genealogy of her ancestors is now readily accessible on the Internet after someone in 2008 adapted the spelling Wenjipahkeehlehkwe, intending it to be limited to one cultural event, but it spread widely on the Internet; instead it is properly, as on the Talk-Lenape website, Weènchipahkihëlèxkwe, ‘Touching Leaves Woman’, or, as Nora herself had proposed, ‘Leaves-that-touch-each-other-from-time-to-time woman’, phonetically Weεnčipahkihəlεxkwe, /way-en-jee-paH-kee-hull-EKH-kway/, morphologically segmented (We:εnt-ipahk-ihəle:)-xkwe, ‘on.both.sides/on.either.side/together-leaves-moving–woman’. The initial stem shows a rare reciprocal reduplication (in Unami, as if *we:we:- for wë-), ‘the leaves (of the trees) on either side (of the path) come together (overhead rustling)’. This is the kind of blessing name that is derived from a vision recitation. Her name was bestowed on her by her mother, Sarah Wilson Thompson. The woman with whom Sarah Wilson was riding on a horse was not her biological mother but her aunt, Way-lay-luh-mah (‘the esteemed one’), as supplied by Weslager, and it was not Kweiti, Sarah’s biological mother, but Way-lay-luh-mah who raised her and whom she called her mother, and so Nora called Way-lay-luh-mah her grandmother. This naming pattern is in line with Lenape kinship ideas. The vision occurred after Sarah was riding horseback one day holding onto Way-lay-luh-mah’s waist when Way-lay-luh-mah had fainted from a probable heart attack. Sarah tried to hold her, but her grip slipped, and both had fallen off the horse. Sarah was very frightened, but some of the trees turned into people who told her not to be afraid and wanted to help her. Sarah stood listening, and the tree leaves by rustling started to sing a song to her, one that she sang in the Big House. [Paraphrased by Carl Masthay per NTD’s interview by Katherine Red Corn, April 1968: http://digital.libraries.ou.edu/whc/duke/transcripts/T-296.pdf, and compiled with help from Ives Goddard, Raymond Whritenour, and James Rementer.]

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