We might hope this sense was confined to the lower animals; but not so. Change the accent from the first to the second syllable, _ni´hillan_, to _nihil´lan_, and you have the animate active verb with an intensive force, which signifies "to beat to death," "to kill some person;" and from this, by another suffix, you have _nihil´lowen_, to murder, and _nihil´lowet_, murderer. The bad sense of the root is here pushed to its uttermost.
But the root also developed in a nobler direction. Add to _ni´hillan_ the termination _ape_, which means a male, and you have _nihillape_, literally, "I, it is true, a man," which, as an adjective, means free, independent, one's own master, "I am my own man." From this are derived the noun, _nihillapewit_, a freeman; the verb, _nihillapewin_, to be free; and the abstract, _nihillasowagan_, freedom, liberty, independence. These are glorious words; but I can go even farther. From this same theme is derived the verb _nihillape-wheu_, to set free, to liberate, to redeem; and from this the missionaries framed the word _nihillape-whoalid_, the Redeemer, the Saviour.
Here is an unexpected antithesis, the words for a murderer and the Saviour both from one root! It illustrates how strange is the concatenation of human thoughts.
These are by no means all the derivatives from the root _ni_, I.
When reduplicated as _n[)e]n[)e]_, it has a plural and strengthened form, like "our own." With a pardonable and well-nigh universal weakness, which we share with them, the nation who spoke that language believed themselves the first created of mortals and the most favored by the Creator. Hence whatever they designated as "ours" was both older and better than others of its kind. Hence _nenni_ came to mean ancient, primordial, indigenous, and as such it is a frequent prefix in the Delaware language. Again, as they considered themselves the first and only true men, others being barbarians, enemies, or strangers, _nenno_ was understood to be one of us, a man like ourselves, of our nation.
In their different dialects the sounds of _n_, _l_, and _r_ were alternated, so that while Thomas Campanius, who translated the Catechism into Delaware about 1645, wrote that word _rhennus_, later writers have given it _lenno_, and translate it "man." This is the word which we find in the name Lenni Lenape, which, by its derivation, means "we, we men." The antecedent _lenni_ is superfluous. The proper name of the Delaware nation was and still is _Len âpé_, "we men," or "our men," and those critics who have maintained that this was a misnomer, introduced by Mr. Heckewelder, have been mistaken in their facts.