John Henry Kilbuck (May 15, 18611922) — sometimes spelled Killbuck (Lenape)— and his wife, Edith Kilbuck (née Romig; April 16, 18651933), were Moravian missionaries in southwestern Alaska in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. John H. Kilbuck was the first Lenape to be ordained as a Moravian minister. They served the Yup'ik, used their language in the Moravian Church in their area, and supported development of a writing system for Yup'ik. John was the great-grandson of the Delaware (Lenape) principal chief Gelelemend, who signed the Treaty of Fort Pitt (1778). It was the first American Indian treaty with the recently declared United States. Born in Kansas, John Henry Killbuck was educated by Moravians in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he went to seminary. Edith was the daughter and granddaughter of Moravian missionaries in Kansas. Biography John Kilbuck was born in Franklin County, Kansas on May 15, 1861, into a family of the Christian Munsee band of the Lenape (Delaware). His mother was Mahican, a related Algonquian tribe. Through his father, Kilbuck was the great-grandson of the Lenape principal chief, Gelelemend of the Turtle Clan, the first American Indian to sign a treaty with the United States. Traditionally, the Lenape had a matrilineal kinship system, in which descent and inheritance were figured through the mother's line. Many Munsee had relocated from Ohio and Indiana to Kansas Indian Territory by 1821, forced out of their former territory in the Midwest by continued settler pressure. The United States pushed to remove all the American Indians from east of the Mississippi River and offered land in the west. Moravian missionaries in Kansas recognized that Killbuck was a bright youth. They encouraged him to go East for studies at the Moravian center of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to obtain an education, first at the Nazareth Boys’ School and later at the Moravian College and Seminary. In 1884 Killbuck was the first Lenape to be ordained as a Moravian minister. Edith Romig was born on April 16, 1865, also in Franklin County, Kansas, the daughter of Joseph Romig, a Moravian minister among the Munsee in Ottawa, Kansas, and his wife. Her maternal grandparents were Levi Ricksecker and his wife. Ricksecker was Romig's predecessor as missionary to the Munsee in Kansas. Both Ricksecker and Romig preserved important historical information about the Munsee of that period. Edith Romig was teaching in the mission school and was 19 years old when she