Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Far From Home: The Lenape Indians' Trail of Tears
LOWER HUDSON VALLEY
On May 11, 1647, 55-year-old Petrus Stuyvesant stomped ashore at New Amsterdam on a wooden leg decorated with incised bands of silver. Only three years before, while attacking the Spanish-held Caribbean island of St. Martin, he had lost his right leg to a cannonball. Adriaen Van der Donck, a young lawyer and witness to his arrival, described him as “Peacock like, with great state and pomposity.”
The Princess Amelia, the ship on which the hot-tempered new governor of New Netherland arrived, would later return to the Netherlands carrying Willem Kieft, the man Stuyvesant was replacing. Wrecked off the Welsh coast, she carried the unpopular Kieft to his death.
Large areas of the colony Stuyvesant had inherited had already been carved from the original Dutch lands—Connecticut and New Haven. As one of his first actions following the creation of a municipal charter for New Amsterdam in 1653, Stuyvesant would endorse the decision “to surround the greater part of the City with a high stockade and a small breastwork.”
Along the northern edge of the settlement, a palisade consisting of stout oak logs 12 feet long, six inches in diameter and “sharpened at the upper end” were sunk three feet into the ground. This ambitious structure would give the name to Wall Street. Contrary to popular belief, it was erected not to defend against Indians, but against the English threat from New England.
New Amsterdam, capital of New Netherland, was a mess. Stuyvesant later reported to the directors of the Dutch West India Company that Kieft's "land-destroying and people-expelling wars with the cruel barbarians" had ruined the colony. Settlers abandoned farms on the frontier, entire villages were destroyed and many colonists gave up and headed elsewhere. Some 700 people, afraid to return to outlying homes, huddled in makeshift dwellings near the settlement’s fort.
The Dutch West India Company was under the impression that the bitter enmity caused by Governor Kieft's ruthless killing of Indians had been calmed with the treaty signed at Teller's Point (Croton Point) in 1645. They couldn't have been more mistaken. Sporadic Indian attacks continued. Stuyvesant, under orders not to provoke another devastating war, tried to placate the Indians.
The Peach War
On September 15, 1655, a fleet of 64 canoes landed at New Amsterdam and about 500 armed Indians attacked the settlement. They broke down doors, smashed furniture, ransacked homes and threatened the terrified occupants. Finding barrels of beer and brandy, they drank themselves into a stupor. Stuyvesant and his entire army were absent. They had sailed down the Jersey coast, rounded Cape May to attack Swedish forts along the Delaware River. Established along the lower Delaware by former Dutch West India Company director Peter Minuit in 1638, colonies of Swedes and Finns were diverting the local fur trade away from the Dutch.
This was the first act of Indian retaliation in what would be known as the Peach War. A prominent citizen and former West India Company soldier, Hendrick van Dyck, had caught an Indian woman stealing peaches from his orchard and had shot her.
Before the Peach War was over, Dutch settlements at Pavonia (Jersey City) and Staten Island were laid waste. Indians murdered fifty colonists and carried off into captivity more than a hundred more, mostly women and children. Twenty-five farms were burned, and 600 head of cattle and 12,000 bushels of grain were destroyed. Too weak to take military action, the Dutch paid ransom to the Indians for the captives. The Peach War dragged on inconclusively until 1657, with the ransoming of the last of the Dutch prisoners.
The Esopus Wars
When Dutch settlements expanded north of the Hudson Highlands, a series of bloody conflicts erupted between them and a Delaware tribe, the Esopus. These clashes became known as the Esopus Wars. Thanks to treaties they had made with the Dutch, most of the Indians of Westchester managed to avoid becoming involved. To lessen the risk of the Westchester Indians being drawn into the conflict, in the summer of 1663, Stuyvesant moved the Wiechquaeskeck, Kitchawanck, Sint Sinck and Keskistkonck tribes to the northern end of Manhattan Island near Spuyten Duyvil.
The British Take Over
In May of 1664, a treaty finally ended the Esopus Wars, leaving the Dutch exhausted once again. British King Charles II, recognizing island of Manhattan was the key to the Hudson River and the untapped fur trade of the west, made a gift of the vast stretch of land between Maine and Delaware to his brother, James, the Duke of York, who would later rule as James II. Less than four months later, New Netherland easily fell to an English squadron of four gunships and 450 men commanded by Colonel Richard Nicolls. With a fort that was weak, few men and supplies, and a populace on the brink of rebellion over the shortsighted policies of the Dutch West India Company, Stuyvesant had no choice but to surrender.
The English moved quickly to set up an alliance with the Iroquois. Called the Covenant Chain, its purpose was to use the fierce Indian tribe as a buffer, protecting the newly named colony of New York from the French in Canada.
By the early decades of the 18th century, most of the remaining Indian lands in the Hudson Valley had been sold to the English. The Hudson Valley had long since been trapped out. Lenapes of the lower Hudson Valley were forced to travel as far as the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes in search of pelts. Many returned empty-handed from such expeditions. Some never returned, having been killed by Mohawk, Seneca, Mohican or Susquehannock Indians who resented intrusions into their fur-rich lands.
This may be a good place to stop this account to clarify Indian names. The Mahican and Mohegan tribes are frequently confused. The names refer to two very distinct Algonquian tribes in two different and widely separated locations. Mahicans inhabited the upper Hudson Valley in New York, and Mohegans lived in the Thames River Valley in eastern Connecticut.
Popular novelist James Fenimore Cooper, who wrote The Last of the Mohicans in 1826, was partly responsible for the mix-up. Cooper lived in Cooperstown, New York, and the setting of his story was the upper Hudson Valley. He could only have been writing about the Mahicans of that area. Unfortunately, "Mohican," the spelling variation of the Mahican tribal name chosen by Cooper, and his use of Uncas--the name of an important Mohegan sachem in Connecticut--only added to the confusion.
The Mahican homeland was on both sides of the upper Hudson River, from the Catskill Mountains north to Lake Champlain. On the other hand, Uncas and the Mohegans occupied the upper portion of the Thames River valley in Connecticut, which empties into Long Island Sound at New London. The Pequots, a closely associated tribe, lived nearer the coast. Despite the presence of a hamlet named Mohegan Lake in Westchester County, there were no Mohegans in Westchester nor anywhere near it.
No conspiracy existed among colonial governments to obliterate Indians or their culture. Acquisition of Indian lands had been driven by the oldest of motives: greed. Facing chronic problems resulting from friction between Indians and a growing, expanding population of newcomers, colonial leaders decided that civilizing the natives was the only practical solution. They would encourage them to settle down as farmers.
New Jersey established the first Indian reservation on the North American continent. In 1758, the colony purchased 3,044 acres of land for a reservation called Brotherton at the present village of Indian Mills in Burlington County. The following year, about a hundred Indians, mainly Lenapes, moved to the reservation.
Waiting for them were comfortable homes, a log meeting house, general store and gristmill. Although they accepted the fruits of European technology, the Indians clung desperately to their native lifestyles. Confining Indians to small tracts of land conflicted with their concept of freedom and mobility. Indian men considered it demeaning to become farmers. Indian women traditionally cultivated the fields, while the men hunted and fished. The Indian population on the Brotherton Reservation dwindled.
The Exodus Begins
For many Indians in the Hudson Valley, the solution to settler encroachment was to move west to unspoiled forests rich in game and to land that had not been disturbed by the plow. The Susquehanna and Ohio River valleys beckoned. Here it was almost like old times again--but not for long. Colonial America was expanding. No matter where the Indians moved, it was only a matter of time before white settlers would begin to pour in.
Delawares who moved to Pennsylvania and later to Ohio found that German-speaking pastors of the Moravian Church had established mission houses for them. The Indians found haven in Moravian missions and were converted to Christianity. Housed in log cabins, Indian converts ate well, and learned agriculture and other useful skills. They were encouraged to abandon their primitive way of life and live in peace and harmony.
Ignoring the westward movement and reversing direction, a large group traveled east. They converged on a new mission settlement for displaced Oneida Indians at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Some Mahicans who remained behind in New York also became Christians and were baptized, taking biblical names like Aaron, Jacob, John and Joseph while retaining Indian last names.
During the Revolutionary War, Stockbridge Indians enlisted in the Continental Army. They hoped a new government--if it should become a reality--would look more favorably on Indian problems. On August 31, 1778, American troops were posted near the present northern boundary of New York City. With them was a company of 40 or 50 Stockbridge Indians under their chief, Daniel Nimham. The Indians were south of what is now McLean Avenue, the Americans north of it.
While the Stockbridge Indians attacked a British force advancing from the east, a second British force struck the Indians from the south. Before they could reload their muskets, a third column, mounted dragoons under infamous Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton descended on them. Pursued by the British, the Indians retreated into an open field at the northeast corner of today's Van Cortlandt Park.
Outnumbered and lacking bayonets, the Indians mounted a valiant but doomed defense. A bronze plaque erected by the Bronx Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution marks the site and memorializes Chief Nimham and 17 Stockbridge Indians, noting that they "gave their lives for liberty." The exact number of killed and wounded may never be known.
Migration to Canada
Other Indians, notably the Iroquois and their dependent tribes, including some Delawares, fought on the side of the British during the Revolution. To punish them, the new American government confiscated their lands. Because the British owed a debt to their former Indian allies, the Canadian government set aside land for them in Ontario along the Grand River. Known as the Six Nations Reserve, this reservation is today and is home to Mohawks and other tribes, including some who identify themselves as Delawares. Nearby are two smaller Canadian reservations that include Delawares among their populations. One is called Moraviantown, and the other is at a hamlet called Muncy Town.
Reconstructing the movements of Delaware bands is not easy. Famine, disease and alcoholism took their toll, and bands went out of existence. Some Lenapes quietly moved to Seneca villages along the Allegheny and Genesee rivers of western New York, where traces of them can be found to this day. Others headed to New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Homesick for their former lands, from time to time Indians would return to the Hudson Valley to visit ancestral gravesites or even to die. Strangers now in a changed land, they would trade furs they had trapped in their new homeland, or peddle homemade baskets and brooms from door to door.
The Stockbridge Indians remained in Massachusetts until 1788, when they joined Oneida Indians in central New York at a town they named New Stockbridge. Other Indians arrived, including Delawares from the Brotherton Reservation in New Jersey. Now calling themselves Munsees, from the name of their dialect, they traveled farther west again with their Oneida hosts to Indiana, and on to Wisconsin in 1822. Although the Munsees had remained only briefly along the White River in Indiana, their stay is recalled in the name of the present city of Muncie.
Moving Farther West
On the eastern shore of Wisconsin's Lake Winnebago they established a town they again named New Stockbridge. In 1856, refusing a government offer of land even farther away in Minnesota, the Stockbridge band moved again to a home on 40,000-acre reservation purchased by the government from an Algonquian tribe, the Menominee Indians, near Bowler, Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin tribal group now call themselves the Stockbridge Munsees and operates a comprehensive health care center, a residential facility, and a family recreation and fitness center. For tribal parents who work, it offers children's day-care services. Their secret? A highly successful gambling casino on the reservation pays for these.
Other Delawares found their way to Kansas and from there to the Indian Territory, which woild become the present state of Oklahoma in 1907. The tribe now numbers about 10,00 members and makes its headquarters at Bartlesville, Oklahoma. A small group of separately organized Delawares (called "the Absentees") are located in Anadarko, Oklahoma, on lands they jointly control with the Wichita and Caddo tribes. Interestingly, there are no Indian reservations in Oklahoma.
The story of our treatment of Indians over the years is a sad chronicle. Four hundred years after Europeans first strong-armed their way into their homeland, American Indians as a whole remain economically the poorest, the least employed, the unhealthiest, the lowest in education and income level, and the worst housed ethnic group in America. For our disgraceful treatment of these proud people, we should all be ashamed.
The Delaware Indian Research Center
Readers interested in learning more about the Delawares, or Lenapes, should visit a valuable local resource and repository of information, the Delaware Indian Research Center at the Trailside Nature Museum in the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation. A large library of books, tapes and photographs, as well as a collection of local Delaware artifacts is available here for viewing and study. The museum is maintained by Westchester County's Department of Parks, Recreation and Conservation (Tel.: 914/864-7322). The entrance to the park, Westchester's largest, is near the intersection of Routes 35 and 121 in Cross River.
On May 11, 1647, 55-year-old Petrus Stuyvesant stomped ashore at New Amsterdam on a wooden leg decorated with incised bands of silver. Only three years before, while attacking the Spanish-held Caribbean island of St. Martin, he had lost his right leg to a cannonball. Adriaen Van der Donck, a young lawyer and witness to his arrival, described him as “Peacock like, with great state and pomposity.”
The Princess Amelia, the ship on which the hot-tempered new governor of New Netherland arrived, would later return to the Netherlands carrying Willem Kieft, the man Stuyvesant was replacing. Wrecked off the Welsh coast, she carried the unpopular Kieft to his death.
Large areas of the colony Stuyvesant had inherited had already been carved from the original Dutch lands—Connecticut and New Haven. As one of his first actions following the creation of a municipal charter for New Amsterdam in 1653, Stuyvesant would endorse the decision “to surround the greater part of the City with a high stockade and a small breastwork.”
Along the northern edge of the settlement, a palisade consisting of stout oak logs 12 feet long, six inches in diameter and “sharpened at the upper end” were sunk three feet into the ground. This ambitious structure would give the name to Wall Street. Contrary to popular belief, it was erected not to defend against Indians, but against the English threat from New England.
New Amsterdam, capital of New Netherland, was a mess. Stuyvesant later reported to the directors of the Dutch West India Company that Kieft's "land-destroying and people-expelling wars with the cruel barbarians" had ruined the colony. Settlers abandoned farms on the frontier, entire villages were destroyed and many colonists gave up and headed elsewhere. Some 700 people, afraid to return to outlying homes, huddled in makeshift dwellings near the settlement’s fort.
The Dutch West India Company was under the impression that the bitter enmity caused by Governor Kieft's ruthless killing of Indians had been calmed with the treaty signed at Teller's Point (Croton Point) in 1645. They couldn't have been more mistaken. Sporadic Indian attacks continued. Stuyvesant, under orders not to provoke another devastating war, tried to placate the Indians.
The Peach War
On September 15, 1655, a fleet of 64 canoes landed at New Amsterdam and about 500 armed Indians attacked the settlement. They broke down doors, smashed furniture, ransacked homes and threatened the terrified occupants. Finding barrels of beer and brandy, they drank themselves into a stupor. Stuyvesant and his entire army were absent. They had sailed down the Jersey coast, rounded Cape May to attack Swedish forts along the Delaware River. Established along the lower Delaware by former Dutch West India Company director Peter Minuit in 1638, colonies of Swedes and Finns were diverting the local fur trade away from the Dutch.
This was the first act of Indian retaliation in what would be known as the Peach War. A prominent citizen and former West India Company soldier, Hendrick van Dyck, had caught an Indian woman stealing peaches from his orchard and had shot her.
Before the Peach War was over, Dutch settlements at Pavonia (Jersey City) and Staten Island were laid waste. Indians murdered fifty colonists and carried off into captivity more than a hundred more, mostly women and children. Twenty-five farms were burned, and 600 head of cattle and 12,000 bushels of grain were destroyed. Too weak to take military action, the Dutch paid ransom to the Indians for the captives. The Peach War dragged on inconclusively until 1657, with the ransoming of the last of the Dutch prisoners.
The Esopus Wars
When Dutch settlements expanded north of the Hudson Highlands, a series of bloody conflicts erupted between them and a Delaware tribe, the Esopus. These clashes became known as the Esopus Wars. Thanks to treaties they had made with the Dutch, most of the Indians of Westchester managed to avoid becoming involved. To lessen the risk of the Westchester Indians being drawn into the conflict, in the summer of 1663, Stuyvesant moved the Wiechquaeskeck, Kitchawanck, Sint Sinck and Keskistkonck tribes to the northern end of Manhattan Island near Spuyten Duyvil.
The British Take Over
In May of 1664, a treaty finally ended the Esopus Wars, leaving the Dutch exhausted once again. British King Charles II, recognizing island of Manhattan was the key to the Hudson River and the untapped fur trade of the west, made a gift of the vast stretch of land between Maine and Delaware to his brother, James, the Duke of York, who would later rule as James II. Less than four months later, New Netherland easily fell to an English squadron of four gunships and 450 men commanded by Colonel Richard Nicolls. With a fort that was weak, few men and supplies, and a populace on the brink of rebellion over the shortsighted policies of the Dutch West India Company, Stuyvesant had no choice but to surrender.
The English moved quickly to set up an alliance with the Iroquois. Called the Covenant Chain, its purpose was to use the fierce Indian tribe as a buffer, protecting the newly named colony of New York from the French in Canada.
By the early decades of the 18th century, most of the remaining Indian lands in the Hudson Valley had been sold to the English. The Hudson Valley had long since been trapped out. Lenapes of the lower Hudson Valley were forced to travel as far as the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes in search of pelts. Many returned empty-handed from such expeditions. Some never returned, having been killed by Mohawk, Seneca, Mohican or Susquehannock Indians who resented intrusions into their fur-rich lands.
This may be a good place to stop this account to clarify Indian names. The Mahican and Mohegan tribes are frequently confused. The names refer to two very distinct Algonquian tribes in two different and widely separated locations. Mahicans inhabited the upper Hudson Valley in New York, and Mohegans lived in the Thames River Valley in eastern Connecticut.
Popular novelist James Fenimore Cooper, who wrote The Last of the Mohicans in 1826, was partly responsible for the mix-up. Cooper lived in Cooperstown, New York, and the setting of his story was the upper Hudson Valley. He could only have been writing about the Mahicans of that area. Unfortunately, "Mohican," the spelling variation of the Mahican tribal name chosen by Cooper, and his use of Uncas--the name of an important Mohegan sachem in Connecticut--only added to the confusion.
The Mahican homeland was on both sides of the upper Hudson River, from the Catskill Mountains north to Lake Champlain. On the other hand, Uncas and the Mohegans occupied the upper portion of the Thames River valley in Connecticut, which empties into Long Island Sound at New London. The Pequots, a closely associated tribe, lived nearer the coast. Despite the presence of a hamlet named Mohegan Lake in Westchester County, there were no Mohegans in Westchester nor anywhere near it.
No conspiracy existed among colonial governments to obliterate Indians or their culture. Acquisition of Indian lands had been driven by the oldest of motives: greed. Facing chronic problems resulting from friction between Indians and a growing, expanding population of newcomers, colonial leaders decided that civilizing the natives was the only practical solution. They would encourage them to settle down as farmers.
New Jersey established the first Indian reservation on the North American continent. In 1758, the colony purchased 3,044 acres of land for a reservation called Brotherton at the present village of Indian Mills in Burlington County. The following year, about a hundred Indians, mainly Lenapes, moved to the reservation.
Waiting for them were comfortable homes, a log meeting house, general store and gristmill. Although they accepted the fruits of European technology, the Indians clung desperately to their native lifestyles. Confining Indians to small tracts of land conflicted with their concept of freedom and mobility. Indian men considered it demeaning to become farmers. Indian women traditionally cultivated the fields, while the men hunted and fished. The Indian population on the Brotherton Reservation dwindled.
The Exodus Begins
For many Indians in the Hudson Valley, the solution to settler encroachment was to move west to unspoiled forests rich in game and to land that had not been disturbed by the plow. The Susquehanna and Ohio River valleys beckoned. Here it was almost like old times again--but not for long. Colonial America was expanding. No matter where the Indians moved, it was only a matter of time before white settlers would begin to pour in.
Delawares who moved to Pennsylvania and later to Ohio found that German-speaking pastors of the Moravian Church had established mission houses for them. The Indians found haven in Moravian missions and were converted to Christianity. Housed in log cabins, Indian converts ate well, and learned agriculture and other useful skills. They were encouraged to abandon their primitive way of life and live in peace and harmony.
Ignoring the westward movement and reversing direction, a large group traveled east. They converged on a new mission settlement for displaced Oneida Indians at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Some Mahicans who remained behind in New York also became Christians and were baptized, taking biblical names like Aaron, Jacob, John and Joseph while retaining Indian last names.
During the Revolutionary War, Stockbridge Indians enlisted in the Continental Army. They hoped a new government--if it should become a reality--would look more favorably on Indian problems. On August 31, 1778, American troops were posted near the present northern boundary of New York City. With them was a company of 40 or 50 Stockbridge Indians under their chief, Daniel Nimham. The Indians were south of what is now McLean Avenue, the Americans north of it.
While the Stockbridge Indians attacked a British force advancing from the east, a second British force struck the Indians from the south. Before they could reload their muskets, a third column, mounted dragoons under infamous Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton descended on them. Pursued by the British, the Indians retreated into an open field at the northeast corner of today's Van Cortlandt Park.
Outnumbered and lacking bayonets, the Indians mounted a valiant but doomed defense. A bronze plaque erected by the Bronx Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution marks the site and memorializes Chief Nimham and 17 Stockbridge Indians, noting that they "gave their lives for liberty." The exact number of killed and wounded may never be known.
Migration to Canada
Other Indians, notably the Iroquois and their dependent tribes, including some Delawares, fought on the side of the British during the Revolution. To punish them, the new American government confiscated their lands. Because the British owed a debt to their former Indian allies, the Canadian government set aside land for them in Ontario along the Grand River. Known as the Six Nations Reserve, this reservation is today and is home to Mohawks and other tribes, including some who identify themselves as Delawares. Nearby are two smaller Canadian reservations that include Delawares among their populations. One is called Moraviantown, and the other is at a hamlet called Muncy Town.
Reconstructing the movements of Delaware bands is not easy. Famine, disease and alcoholism took their toll, and bands went out of existence. Some Lenapes quietly moved to Seneca villages along the Allegheny and Genesee rivers of western New York, where traces of them can be found to this day. Others headed to New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Homesick for their former lands, from time to time Indians would return to the Hudson Valley to visit ancestral gravesites or even to die. Strangers now in a changed land, they would trade furs they had trapped in their new homeland, or peddle homemade baskets and brooms from door to door.
The Stockbridge Indians remained in Massachusetts until 1788, when they joined Oneida Indians in central New York at a town they named New Stockbridge. Other Indians arrived, including Delawares from the Brotherton Reservation in New Jersey. Now calling themselves Munsees, from the name of their dialect, they traveled farther west again with their Oneida hosts to Indiana, and on to Wisconsin in 1822. Although the Munsees had remained only briefly along the White River in Indiana, their stay is recalled in the name of the present city of Muncie.
Moving Farther West
On the eastern shore of Wisconsin's Lake Winnebago they established a town they again named New Stockbridge. In 1856, refusing a government offer of land even farther away in Minnesota, the Stockbridge band moved again to a home on 40,000-acre reservation purchased by the government from an Algonquian tribe, the Menominee Indians, near Bowler, Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin tribal group now call themselves the Stockbridge Munsees and operates a comprehensive health care center, a residential facility, and a family recreation and fitness center. For tribal parents who work, it offers children's day-care services. Their secret? A highly successful gambling casino on the reservation pays for these.
Other Delawares found their way to Kansas and from there to the Indian Territory, which woild become the present state of Oklahoma in 1907. The tribe now numbers about 10,00 members and makes its headquarters at Bartlesville, Oklahoma. A small group of separately organized Delawares (called "the Absentees") are located in Anadarko, Oklahoma, on lands they jointly control with the Wichita and Caddo tribes. Interestingly, there are no Indian reservations in Oklahoma.
The story of our treatment of Indians over the years is a sad chronicle. Four hundred years after Europeans first strong-armed their way into their homeland, American Indians as a whole remain economically the poorest, the least employed, the unhealthiest, the lowest in education and income level, and the worst housed ethnic group in America. For our disgraceful treatment of these proud people, we should all be ashamed.
The Delaware Indian Research Center
Readers interested in learning more about the Delawares, or Lenapes, should visit a valuable local resource and repository of information, the Delaware Indian Research Center at the Trailside Nature Museum in the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation. A large library of books, tapes and photographs, as well as a collection of local Delaware artifacts is available here for viewing and study. The museum is maintained by Westchester County's Department of Parks, Recreation and Conservation (Tel.: 914/864-7322). The entrance to the park, Westchester's largest, is near the intersection of Routes 35 and 121 in Cross River.
Labels: Delaware (Indian tribe), Lenape (Indian tribe), Lower Hudson Valley, Peter Stuyvesant
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The Lenape Series Bibliography
LOWER HUDSON VALLEY
Editor's Note: For the benefit of readers who desire to know more about the Lenape Indians who once roamed the area we now call home, the following is a list of books used in the preparation of this series.
For readers who seek a basic introductory work on the subject of America's first inhabitants and the archeological science that enables us to discover details about their way of life, I recommend the late Louis A. Brennan's delightful book, No Stone Unturned (see below).
Upon moving to Croton almost a half-century ago, and after reading his fascinating work , I sought out Mr. Brennan for additional information, not knowing that he was famous for always generously sharing his wide-ranging knowledge. Later, at his invitation, I accompanied him on some of his "digs." With his sudden and untimely death in 1983, the world lost a great scientist, educator and journalist. I lost a dear friend.
I should also like to take this opportunity to thank the librarians and staff of the Croton Free Library and the Westchester Library System for their invaluable assistance in obtaining through the very efficient Interlibrary Loan system many of the following titles I consulted in writing this series:
Anderson, Fred. Cradle of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empires in North America, 1754-1766. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
Bolton, Reginald Pelham. New York City in Indian Possession. New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1920.
-------. Indian Life of Long Ago in the City of New York. New York: J. Graham, 1934.
-------. Washington Heights, Manhattan, Its Eventful Past. New York: The Dyckman Institute, 1936.
Brawer, Catherine Coleman, ed. Many Trails: Indians of the Lower Hudson Valley. Katonah, N.Y.: The Katonah Gallery, 1983.
Brennan, Louis A. No Stone Unturned: An Almanac of American Prehistory. New York: Random House, 1959.
Burrows, Edward and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Dunshee, Kenneth Holcomb. As You Pass By. New York: Hastings House, 1952.
Federal Writers' Project. Connecticut: A Guide to its Roads, Lore, and People. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938.
-------. New York: A Guide to the Empire State. New York: Oxford University Press, 1940.
Goddard, Ives. "The Delaware Language, Past and Present," in A Delaware Indian Symposium. Harrisburg, PA: Historical and Museum Commission, 1974.
Grumet, Robert S. We Are Not Such Great Fools: Changes in Upper Delawaran Sociopolitical Life, 1630-1758. Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University, 1979.
-------. Native American Place Names in New York City. New York: Museum of the City of New York, 1981.
-------. "Children of Muhheahkkunnuck: A Lower River Indian History," in Many Trails: Indians of the Lower Hudson Valley. Katonah, N.Y.: The Katonah Gallery, 1983.
-------. Historic Contact: Indian People and Colonists in Today's Northeastern United States in the 16th through 18th Centuries. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.
-------, ed. Northeastern Indian Lives 1632-1816. Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.
Jameson, J. Franklin. Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909.
Kammen, Michael. Colonial New York: A History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975.
Kenney, Alice P. Stubborn for Liberty: The Dutch in New York. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1975.
Kraft, Herbert C. The Lenape: Archaeology, History, and Ethnography. Newark, N.J.: New Jersey Historical Society, 1986.
-------, ed. The Archaeology and Ethnography of the Lower Hudson Valley and Neighboring Regions: Essays in Honor of Louis A. Brennan. Bethlehem, Conn.: Archaeological Services, 1991.
-------, ed. A Delaware Indian Symposium. Harrisburg, Pa.: The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1974.
Lederer, Richard M., Jr. The Place Names of Westchester County. Harrison, N.Y.: Harbor Hill Books, 1978.
Pierce, Carl Horton. New Harlem, Past and Present. New York: The Harlem Publishing Company, 1903.
Ritchie, William A. The Archaeology of New York State, Revised Edition. Harrison, N.Y.: Harbor Hill Books, 1980.
Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World. New York: Doubleday, 2004.
Smith, William, Jr. The History of the Province of New York, Vol. One: From the First Discovery to the Year 1732. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Terrell, John Upton. American Indian Almanac. New York: World Publishing Company, 1971.
Trelease, Allen W. Indian Affairs in Colonial New York. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960.
Ultan, Lloyd. The Bronx in the Frontier Era: From the Beginning to 1696. Bronx, N.Y.: The Bronx Historical Society, 1993.
Weslager, C.A. The Delaware Indians: A History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972.
-------. "The Munsee, Mahican and Unami-Delaware from 1765 to the Present," in Many Trails: Indians of the Lower Hudson Valley. Katonah, N.Y.: The Katonah Gallery, 1983.
Editor's Note: For the benefit of readers who desire to know more about the Lenape Indians who once roamed the area we now call home, the following is a list of books used in the preparation of this series.
For readers who seek a basic introductory work on the subject of America's first inhabitants and the archeological science that enables us to discover details about their way of life, I recommend the late Louis A. Brennan's delightful book, No Stone Unturned (see below).
Upon moving to Croton almost a half-century ago, and after reading his fascinating work , I sought out Mr. Brennan for additional information, not knowing that he was famous for always generously sharing his wide-ranging knowledge. Later, at his invitation, I accompanied him on some of his "digs." With his sudden and untimely death in 1983, the world lost a great scientist, educator and journalist. I lost a dear friend.
I should also like to take this opportunity to thank the librarians and staff of the Croton Free Library and the Westchester Library System for their invaluable assistance in obtaining through the very efficient Interlibrary Loan system many of the following titles I consulted in writing this series:
Anderson, Fred. Cradle of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empires in North America, 1754-1766. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
Bolton, Reginald Pelham. New York City in Indian Possession. New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1920.
-------. Indian Life of Long Ago in the City of New York. New York: J. Graham, 1934.
-------. Washington Heights, Manhattan, Its Eventful Past. New York: The Dyckman Institute, 1936.
Brawer, Catherine Coleman, ed. Many Trails: Indians of the Lower Hudson Valley. Katonah, N.Y.: The Katonah Gallery, 1983.
Brennan, Louis A. No Stone Unturned: An Almanac of American Prehistory. New York: Random House, 1959.
Burrows, Edward and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Dunshee, Kenneth Holcomb. As You Pass By. New York: Hastings House, 1952.
Federal Writers' Project. Connecticut: A Guide to its Roads, Lore, and People. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938.
-------. New York: A Guide to the Empire State. New York: Oxford University Press, 1940.
Goddard, Ives. "The Delaware Language, Past and Present," in A Delaware Indian Symposium. Harrisburg, PA: Historical and Museum Commission, 1974.
Grumet, Robert S. We Are Not Such Great Fools: Changes in Upper Delawaran Sociopolitical Life, 1630-1758. Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University, 1979.
-------. Native American Place Names in New York City. New York: Museum of the City of New York, 1981.
-------. "Children of Muhheahkkunnuck: A Lower River Indian History," in Many Trails: Indians of the Lower Hudson Valley. Katonah, N.Y.: The Katonah Gallery, 1983.
-------. Historic Contact: Indian People and Colonists in Today's Northeastern United States in the 16th through 18th Centuries. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.
-------, ed. Northeastern Indian Lives 1632-1816. Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.
Jameson, J. Franklin. Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909.
Kammen, Michael. Colonial New York: A History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975.
Kenney, Alice P. Stubborn for Liberty: The Dutch in New York. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1975.
Kraft, Herbert C. The Lenape: Archaeology, History, and Ethnography. Newark, N.J.: New Jersey Historical Society, 1986.
-------, ed. The Archaeology and Ethnography of the Lower Hudson Valley and Neighboring Regions: Essays in Honor of Louis A. Brennan. Bethlehem, Conn.: Archaeological Services, 1991.
-------, ed. A Delaware Indian Symposium. Harrisburg, Pa.: The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1974.
Lederer, Richard M., Jr. The Place Names of Westchester County. Harrison, N.Y.: Harbor Hill Books, 1978.
Pierce, Carl Horton. New Harlem, Past and Present. New York: The Harlem Publishing Company, 1903.
Ritchie, William A. The Archaeology of New York State, Revised Edition. Harrison, N.Y.: Harbor Hill Books, 1980.
Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World. New York: Doubleday, 2004.
Smith, William, Jr. The History of the Province of New York, Vol. One: From the First Discovery to the Year 1732. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Terrell, John Upton. American Indian Almanac. New York: World Publishing Company, 1971.
Trelease, Allen W. Indian Affairs in Colonial New York. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960.
Ultan, Lloyd. The Bronx in the Frontier Era: From the Beginning to 1696. Bronx, N.Y.: The Bronx Historical Society, 1993.
Weslager, C.A. The Delaware Indians: A History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972.
-------. "The Munsee, Mahican and Unami-Delaware from 1765 to the Present," in Many Trails: Indians of the Lower Hudson Valley. Katonah, N.Y.: The Katonah Gallery, 1983.
Labels: Indians, Lenape (Indian tribe), Lower Hudson Valley
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Lenape: Westchester's First Inhabitants
LOWER HUDSON VALLEY
Half of our nation’s fifty states bear names of Indian origin, as do uncounted thousands of individual towns, rivers and landscape features. Sad to say, the names the Indians left us and the few mute artifacts to be seen in museum collections are our only links to Westchester’s early inhabitants. It is important to remember that because Indians had no written language, spellings of tribe names may vary, being governed by the orthography of the transliterator’s language--Dutch, English, Swedish or French.
The first Indians Henry Hudson encountered in 1609 were the Navasinks who occupied the Atlantic Highlands below Sandy Hook. Living in the valley of the Raritan River and the southwestern part of Staten Island were the Raritans. The closest neighbors of New Amsterdam were the Hackinsacks who inhabited the west bank of the Hudson in what is now Jersey City and Bayonne. To their north, near the present New York-New Jersey state line, were the Tappans. North of them were the Haverstraws.
Fellow Algonquian speakers and occasional enemies on the east side of the river were the Rechgawawancks. Also called the Manhattans, they were the southernmost of the Wappinger bands that occupied most of the island of Manhattan and the western half of the Bronx. Because of their proximity to the Dutch settlements, unfortunately, they would be the first to be displaced.
One of the most important bands in Westchester, the Wiechquaeskecks, controlled the area between the Hudson and Bronx rivers. English settlers later called them the Wicker's Creek, or Westchester Indians. The Sint Sincks lived in the area south of the Croton River that would later become the incorporated village of Sing Sing. Unhappy with the name's association with the infamous prison, the village changed its name to Ossining in 1901.
Farther north in Westchester were the Kitchawancks, with villages at Croton Point and Peekskill. The Nochpeem occupied Putnam and lower Dutchess counties. Occupying the eastern section of the Hudson Highlands was a Wapppinger tribe sometimes called the Highland Indians.
Along the Westchester shore of Long Island Sound between Hell Gate and Norwalk were the Siwanoys. Straddling the present New York-Connecticut boundary, were the Tankitekes, sometimes called the Pachamis, after the name of their sachem, Pacham.
Canarsees, Rockaways, Matinecocks, Merricks, Massapequas, Shinnecocks, Manhassets, and Montauks occupied Long Island, all lending their names to communities there.
These individual tribes were all part of linguistically related groups. They called themselves “Lenape,” meaning "true men" or "real men." Their land was Lenapehoking--"where the Lenape live." It included the lower Hudson Valley and western Long Island, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and northern Delaware. They spoke an Algonquian language. In the lower Hudson Valley, the Dutch--and later the English--referred to them collectively as the "River Indians."
To their north were the fierce Algonquian-speaking Mahicans, who would descend on the Lenapes regularly and exact tribute. Still farther north, west of Albany, were the dreaded Mohawks, members of the Iroquois-speaking Five Nations. They, too, would occasionally raid to the south, exacting tribute from both the Mahicans and the Lenapes.
Neighboring tribes called the Lenape "the grandfathers" because they had occupied their lands for so long. The Iroquois contemptuously called them "women" because they had no political institutions for organizing their scattered families and bands into effective units for battle.
The Lenape were the only large and important tribe to be known by an English name: the Delawares. Along with the river, the bay and the state, they took their name from Lord De La Warr--Sir Thomas West, governor of the Virginia colony at Jamestown.
The White Man Cometh
Indian cultures were already ancient and well established when the first Europeans arrived on these shores. The newcomers called the indigenous inhabitants “savages.” They did not know it but they had stumbled upon a complex and cosmopolitan native way of life--a society in which descent passed through the female line, Indian families and kinship groups, sometimes called clans, held property and land in common. Living in scattered, semi-permanent villages, they supported themselves by a mixed economy of hunting, fishing, farming and foraging.
Their villages were not villages as we understand the word, but a succession of seasonal campsites, reoccupied and abandoned. During the spring and summer, a band could be found near riverbanks or seashores, fishing and clamming. Nearby, they cultivated corn, the staple of the Indian diet, also beans, sweet potatoes, squash, melons, cucumbers and tobacco. In winter, the Indian communities would often break up, with family groups moving inland to find game and firewood.
War chiefs led in conflicts with other tribes or groups, and brought spoils, captives and glory. Guiding civil affairs by consensus, hereditary chiefs were called sachems or sagamores. Sachems worked with councils of lesser chiefs, usually chosen because of age and experience, exploits in war or service to the community.
Kinship--traced through the female line of descent--was the basis of their society. A sachem could only be succeeded by a brother or a son of a sister of the previous sachem. Although women performed much of the manual labor of the tribe, they actually wielded considerable power in communal affairs.
The Tribe
The tribe has been considered the major unit within linguistic groups. Recent research, however, reveals that its role in Indian society was exaggerated. Tribal divisions were less significant than the smaller village communities or bands composing them. For individuals, the primary unit of society, other than the family and clan, was the band. Bands included from 50 to 300 members living in one or more villages.
To the Indians, land was not a commodity to be bought and sold. They saw it as a product of nature put there for their use. The right to such use could pass from one generation to another, but when a family or an individual ceased to use the land, such rights ceased to exist. According to Indian interpretation, exchanges of land for gifts were merely conveyances of residence and subsistence rights for as long as the parties were agreeable. Demands for the return of lands resulted in grumbling by whites. Settlers coined a new term, "Indian giver"--but these disputes often arose because the Indians saw that the lands were not being used.
The Indians' migratory habits, seasonal living sites, primitive tools and few possessions, combined with their lack of domesticated animals, and haphazard planting of fields appeared to be an uncivilized, inferior way of life. Nor could Europeans understand the Indians’ classless and stateless society, matrilineal kinship, and disinterest in commerce.
Dutch Views of the Indians
The Dutch saw all Indians as savages and called them "die Wilden." The English compared them to the "wild Irish," who seasonally migrated with their sheep and cattle. Europeans saw no reason why Indians living in so bountiful a land should not have become civilized and wealthy. It was easy to conclude that they had no right to be there at all, and to want them gone.
Despite the hardships of their primitive life, Indians did not appear to suffer. "It is somewhat strange," one Dutch observer recorded, "that among these most barbarous people, there are few or none cross-eyed, blind, crippled, lame, hunchbacked or limping. All are well-fashioned people, strong and sound of body, well-fed, without blemish." Another Dutch writer recorded, "There are among them no simpletons, lunatics or madmen, as among us."
Intruding on the idyllic Indian world, the Dutch who settled New Netherland brought a completely different set of values centered on commerce. The Indians had access to a major economic resource: animal pelts. The Dutch especially sought beaver skins. These brought a high price in Europe, where they could be converted into hats, coats and other articles of apparel.
Traders were initially welcomed by Indians for the goods they carried and because they sought no land. Even farmers were tolerated at first because there was more than enough land to go around. Large tracts were sold for a song.
Appointed by the Dutch West India Company as director general, or governor, of New Netherland, in May or June of 1626, Peter Minuit "purchased" the 22 square miles of Manhattan Island for 60 guilders in trade goods. Nineteenth-century historian Edmund O’Callaghan later calculated this to be the equivalent of 24 dollars. In either currency. it has to be regarded as the greatest real estate coup of all time. No bill of sale or deed has survived. When Minuit and five colonists bought Staten Island on August 10, 1626, the local sachems received "Some Diffles (duffel. a coarse woolen cloth), Kittles (kettles), Axes, Hoes, Wampum, Drilling Awls, Jew's Harps, and diverse other wares." These were probably the same kind of trade goods for which they had obtained Manhattan.
The Price of Westchester
Westchester County was another incredible bargain. Starting in 1639, Indians traded their Westchester lands for goods in a series of about 25 separate conveyances These included more than 300 knives, 185 hatchets, adzes and axes, 141 hoes, 67 guns, 227 pounds of gunpowder, 130 bars of lead, three melting ladles and five bullet molds.
Besides the enumerated hardware, there were such domestic articles as 182 coats, more than 300 yards of duffel cloth, 113 shirts, 92 pairs of stockings, 87 blankets, 10 "corals or beads," 117 iron or brass kettles, 76 earthenware or stone jugs, 12 firesteels (for starting a fire with flint), 20 spoons, a thousand fishhooks, 220 needles and 120 awls. Awls were prized because they could be used to manufacture wampum.
Among miscellaneous items were 130 clay pipes, ten bells, ten Jew’s harps, a few rolls of tobacco and 32 tobacco boxes, 25 half-vats of strong beer, 16 ankers (162 gallons) of rum and 1,800 yards of wampum.
The monetary value of these items has been estimated at $4,750--not counting the wampum, made of drilled-out cylinders of shell. This sum works out to be about ten dollars and four yards of wampum per square mile. Wampum had no fixed value and was only a token of good faith to seal an agreement. Coastal tribes along Long Island Sound eventually monopolized manufacture of wampum made from the quahog shells that were abundant there.
The Beginning of the End
Unanticipated by the Indians were the white man's insatiable appetite for land and the diseases he brought to which they had no resistance. As the newcomers bought more land, the areas available for planting, hunting and fishing by the Indians became smaller. Close contact with whites brought disease: smallpox, influenza, measles, tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria and typhus. Between 1633 and 1691, no fewer that seven devastating epidemics swept through the Indians of the lower Hudson Valley.
The goods the Indians received in exchange for pelts or land brought dramatic changes in their way of life. Guns and ammunition improved their ability to hunt, but diminished the importance of traditional knowledge and skills. Iron farming tools, knives, axes and even kettles and other cooking utensils simplified women's domestic chores. And alcohol--to which the Indians were unaccustomed--wrought havoc in behavior and tribal discipline.
As early as 1624, excessive drinking had destroyed the authority of one sachem, who "comes forward to beg a draught of brandy with the rest." The inexorable downward spiral of Westchester's Indians had begun. As evanescent as wood smoke, the Indians’ unique folklore, knowledge of plant medicines and the unwritten grammar and vocabularies of their ancient languages are gone forever, never to be retrieved. We call this the march of civilization.
Editor’s Note: This is the first of a three-part series. The next article will examine the officially sanctioned Indian genocide that became known as "Governor Kieft's War."
Half of our nation’s fifty states bear names of Indian origin, as do uncounted thousands of individual towns, rivers and landscape features. Sad to say, the names the Indians left us and the few mute artifacts to be seen in museum collections are our only links to Westchester’s early inhabitants. It is important to remember that because Indians had no written language, spellings of tribe names may vary, being governed by the orthography of the transliterator’s language--Dutch, English, Swedish or French.
The first Indians Henry Hudson encountered in 1609 were the Navasinks who occupied the Atlantic Highlands below Sandy Hook. Living in the valley of the Raritan River and the southwestern part of Staten Island were the Raritans. The closest neighbors of New Amsterdam were the Hackinsacks who inhabited the west bank of the Hudson in what is now Jersey City and Bayonne. To their north, near the present New York-New Jersey state line, were the Tappans. North of them were the Haverstraws.
Fellow Algonquian speakers and occasional enemies on the east side of the river were the Rechgawawancks. Also called the Manhattans, they were the southernmost of the Wappinger bands that occupied most of the island of Manhattan and the western half of the Bronx. Because of their proximity to the Dutch settlements, unfortunately, they would be the first to be displaced.
One of the most important bands in Westchester, the Wiechquaeskecks, controlled the area between the Hudson and Bronx rivers. English settlers later called them the Wicker's Creek, or Westchester Indians. The Sint Sincks lived in the area south of the Croton River that would later become the incorporated village of Sing Sing. Unhappy with the name's association with the infamous prison, the village changed its name to Ossining in 1901.
Farther north in Westchester were the Kitchawancks, with villages at Croton Point and Peekskill. The Nochpeem occupied Putnam and lower Dutchess counties. Occupying the eastern section of the Hudson Highlands was a Wapppinger tribe sometimes called the Highland Indians.
Along the Westchester shore of Long Island Sound between Hell Gate and Norwalk were the Siwanoys. Straddling the present New York-Connecticut boundary, were the Tankitekes, sometimes called the Pachamis, after the name of their sachem, Pacham.
Canarsees, Rockaways, Matinecocks, Merricks, Massapequas, Shinnecocks, Manhassets, and Montauks occupied Long Island, all lending their names to communities there.
These individual tribes were all part of linguistically related groups. They called themselves “Lenape,” meaning "true men" or "real men." Their land was Lenapehoking--"where the Lenape live." It included the lower Hudson Valley and western Long Island, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and northern Delaware. They spoke an Algonquian language. In the lower Hudson Valley, the Dutch--and later the English--referred to them collectively as the "River Indians."
To their north were the fierce Algonquian-speaking Mahicans, who would descend on the Lenapes regularly and exact tribute. Still farther north, west of Albany, were the dreaded Mohawks, members of the Iroquois-speaking Five Nations. They, too, would occasionally raid to the south, exacting tribute from both the Mahicans and the Lenapes.
Neighboring tribes called the Lenape "the grandfathers" because they had occupied their lands for so long. The Iroquois contemptuously called them "women" because they had no political institutions for organizing their scattered families and bands into effective units for battle.
The Lenape were the only large and important tribe to be known by an English name: the Delawares. Along with the river, the bay and the state, they took their name from Lord De La Warr--Sir Thomas West, governor of the Virginia colony at Jamestown.
The White Man Cometh
Indian cultures were already ancient and well established when the first Europeans arrived on these shores. The newcomers called the indigenous inhabitants “savages.” They did not know it but they had stumbled upon a complex and cosmopolitan native way of life--a society in which descent passed through the female line, Indian families and kinship groups, sometimes called clans, held property and land in common. Living in scattered, semi-permanent villages, they supported themselves by a mixed economy of hunting, fishing, farming and foraging.
Their villages were not villages as we understand the word, but a succession of seasonal campsites, reoccupied and abandoned. During the spring and summer, a band could be found near riverbanks or seashores, fishing and clamming. Nearby, they cultivated corn, the staple of the Indian diet, also beans, sweet potatoes, squash, melons, cucumbers and tobacco. In winter, the Indian communities would often break up, with family groups moving inland to find game and firewood.
War chiefs led in conflicts with other tribes or groups, and brought spoils, captives and glory. Guiding civil affairs by consensus, hereditary chiefs were called sachems or sagamores. Sachems worked with councils of lesser chiefs, usually chosen because of age and experience, exploits in war or service to the community.
Kinship--traced through the female line of descent--was the basis of their society. A sachem could only be succeeded by a brother or a son of a sister of the previous sachem. Although women performed much of the manual labor of the tribe, they actually wielded considerable power in communal affairs.
The Tribe
The tribe has been considered the major unit within linguistic groups. Recent research, however, reveals that its role in Indian society was exaggerated. Tribal divisions were less significant than the smaller village communities or bands composing them. For individuals, the primary unit of society, other than the family and clan, was the band. Bands included from 50 to 300 members living in one or more villages.
To the Indians, land was not a commodity to be bought and sold. They saw it as a product of nature put there for their use. The right to such use could pass from one generation to another, but when a family or an individual ceased to use the land, such rights ceased to exist. According to Indian interpretation, exchanges of land for gifts were merely conveyances of residence and subsistence rights for as long as the parties were agreeable. Demands for the return of lands resulted in grumbling by whites. Settlers coined a new term, "Indian giver"--but these disputes often arose because the Indians saw that the lands were not being used.
The Indians' migratory habits, seasonal living sites, primitive tools and few possessions, combined with their lack of domesticated animals, and haphazard planting of fields appeared to be an uncivilized, inferior way of life. Nor could Europeans understand the Indians’ classless and stateless society, matrilineal kinship, and disinterest in commerce.
Dutch Views of the Indians
The Dutch saw all Indians as savages and called them "die Wilden." The English compared them to the "wild Irish," who seasonally migrated with their sheep and cattle. Europeans saw no reason why Indians living in so bountiful a land should not have become civilized and wealthy. It was easy to conclude that they had no right to be there at all, and to want them gone.
Despite the hardships of their primitive life, Indians did not appear to suffer. "It is somewhat strange," one Dutch observer recorded, "that among these most barbarous people, there are few or none cross-eyed, blind, crippled, lame, hunchbacked or limping. All are well-fashioned people, strong and sound of body, well-fed, without blemish." Another Dutch writer recorded, "There are among them no simpletons, lunatics or madmen, as among us."
Intruding on the idyllic Indian world, the Dutch who settled New Netherland brought a completely different set of values centered on commerce. The Indians had access to a major economic resource: animal pelts. The Dutch especially sought beaver skins. These brought a high price in Europe, where they could be converted into hats, coats and other articles of apparel.
Traders were initially welcomed by Indians for the goods they carried and because they sought no land. Even farmers were tolerated at first because there was more than enough land to go around. Large tracts were sold for a song.
Appointed by the Dutch West India Company as director general, or governor, of New Netherland, in May or June of 1626, Peter Minuit "purchased" the 22 square miles of Manhattan Island for 60 guilders in trade goods. Nineteenth-century historian Edmund O’Callaghan later calculated this to be the equivalent of 24 dollars. In either currency. it has to be regarded as the greatest real estate coup of all time. No bill of sale or deed has survived. When Minuit and five colonists bought Staten Island on August 10, 1626, the local sachems received "Some Diffles (duffel. a coarse woolen cloth), Kittles (kettles), Axes, Hoes, Wampum, Drilling Awls, Jew's Harps, and diverse other wares." These were probably the same kind of trade goods for which they had obtained Manhattan.
The Price of Westchester
Westchester County was another incredible bargain. Starting in 1639, Indians traded their Westchester lands for goods in a series of about 25 separate conveyances These included more than 300 knives, 185 hatchets, adzes and axes, 141 hoes, 67 guns, 227 pounds of gunpowder, 130 bars of lead, three melting ladles and five bullet molds.
Besides the enumerated hardware, there were such domestic articles as 182 coats, more than 300 yards of duffel cloth, 113 shirts, 92 pairs of stockings, 87 blankets, 10 "corals or beads," 117 iron or brass kettles, 76 earthenware or stone jugs, 12 firesteels (for starting a fire with flint), 20 spoons, a thousand fishhooks, 220 needles and 120 awls. Awls were prized because they could be used to manufacture wampum.
Among miscellaneous items were 130 clay pipes, ten bells, ten Jew’s harps, a few rolls of tobacco and 32 tobacco boxes, 25 half-vats of strong beer, 16 ankers (162 gallons) of rum and 1,800 yards of wampum.
The monetary value of these items has been estimated at $4,750--not counting the wampum, made of drilled-out cylinders of shell. This sum works out to be about ten dollars and four yards of wampum per square mile. Wampum had no fixed value and was only a token of good faith to seal an agreement. Coastal tribes along Long Island Sound eventually monopolized manufacture of wampum made from the quahog shells that were abundant there.
The Beginning of the End
Unanticipated by the Indians were the white man's insatiable appetite for land and the diseases he brought to which they had no resistance. As the newcomers bought more land, the areas available for planting, hunting and fishing by the Indians became smaller. Close contact with whites brought disease: smallpox, influenza, measles, tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria and typhus. Between 1633 and 1691, no fewer that seven devastating epidemics swept through the Indians of the lower Hudson Valley.
The goods the Indians received in exchange for pelts or land brought dramatic changes in their way of life. Guns and ammunition improved their ability to hunt, but diminished the importance of traditional knowledge and skills. Iron farming tools, knives, axes and even kettles and other cooking utensils simplified women's domestic chores. And alcohol--to which the Indians were unaccustomed--wrought havoc in behavior and tribal discipline.
As early as 1624, excessive drinking had destroyed the authority of one sachem, who "comes forward to beg a draught of brandy with the rest." The inexorable downward spiral of Westchester's Indians had begun. As evanescent as wood smoke, the Indians’ unique folklore, knowledge of plant medicines and the unwritten grammar and vocabularies of their ancient languages are gone forever, never to be retrieved. We call this the march of civilization.
Editor’s Note: This is the first of a three-part series. The next article will examine the officially sanctioned Indian genocide that became known as "Governor Kieft's War."
Labels: Delaware (Indian tribe), Indians, Lenape (Indian tribe), Lower Hudson Valley
