Misplaced Pages

#666333

58-454: The origin of the name Siwanoy is unknown. It appears at least as early in that spelling on the 1685 revision of a 1656 Dutch map, Novi Belgii Novæque Angliæ ("New Netherland and New England", and also parts of Virginia, by Petrus Schenk the Younger from an original by Nicolaes Visscher I . The name Siwanoy may be a corruption of Siwanak , "salt people". The Siwanoy spoke Munsee ,

116-683: A Delaware language , which was an Eastern Algonquian language . Nohham Cachat-Schilling of the Massachusetts Ethical Archaeology Society writes that the Siwaony might not have spoken Munsee but instead may have spoken Paugusset or another dialect. Like the greater Lenape , women typically wore their hair loose, whereas men would often remove all hair but a long forelock. They frequently painted their bodies and faces (black, red, yellow, blue, and white) for ceremonial rites, war, and festive occasions, or to mourn

174-612: A deal with the tribe. They would be given nearly 2 acres (0.81 ha) in Madison County and give up their larger claim in exchange for the state's giving them 330 acres of land in Sullivan County in the Catskill Mountains , where the government was trying to encourage economic development. The federal government had agreed to take the land in trust, making it eligible for development as a gaming casino, and

232-476: A dispersed settlement pattern, with each community likely dominated by a single lineage or clan. The villages usually consisted of a small cluster of small and mid-sized longhouses , and were located along floodplains. During times of war, they built fortifications in defensive locations (such as along ridges) as places of retreat. Their cornfields were located near their communities; the women also cultivated varieties of squash, beans, sunflowers, and other crops from

290-631: A freshet, the Dutch abandoned the fort. In 1618, having once again negotiated a truce, the Dutch rebuilt Fort Nassau on higher ground. Late that year, Fort Nassau was destroyed by flooding and abandoned for good. In 1624, Captain Cornelius Jacobsen May sailed the Nieuw Nederlandt upriver and landed eighteen families of Walloons on a plain opposite Castle Island. They commenced to construct Fort Orange . The Mohicans invited

348-606: A militia invasion force consisting largely of City Island colonists and led by Pell himself, entered New Amsterdam and forced Peter Stuyvesant , the Dutch Governor of New Netherland, to surrender. Following the 1654 treaty, the Siwanoys remained in the area around Westchester County for another hundred years, until they eventually "melted away" by intermarriage with the English settlers. Some continued to reside along

406-570: A new location among the Oneida people in central New York, who had been granted a 300,000-acre (120,000 ha) reservation for their service to the Patriots, out of their former territory of 6,000,000 acres (2,400,000 ha). They called their settlement New Stockbridge . Some individuals and families, mostly people who were old or those with special ties to the area, remained behind at Stockbridge. The central figures of Mohican society, including

464-554: Is often referred to as Kieft's War , and is said to have cost the lives of some 1,600 Wappinger refugees. Thus, tensions between the colonists and the indigenous people of the area were extremely high at this time. A group of Siwanoy, led by Wampage I, killed Anne Hutchinson , six of her children, and nine others in August 1643, near Split Rock , an ancient landmark. The only survivor was Hutchinson's nine-year-old daughter, Susanna - possibly spared because of her red hair - who "became

522-720: The Algonquin and Montagnais to bring their furs to Fort Orange as an alternative to French traders in Quebec. Seeing the Mohicans extend their control over the fur trade, the Mohawk attacked, with initial success. In 1625 or 1626 the Mohicans destroyed the easternmost Iroquois "castle". The Mohawks then re-located south of the Mohawk River , closer to Fort Orange. In July 1626 many of the settlers moved to New Amsterdam because of

580-658: The Eastern Agricultural Complex . Horticulture and the gathering and processing of nuts (hickory, butternuts, black walnuts and acorns), fruits (blueberries, raspberries, juneberries among many others), and roots (groundnuts, wood lilies, arrowroot among others) provided much of their diet. This was supplemented by the men hunting game (turkeys, deer, elk, bears, and moose in the Taconics) and fishing (sturgeon, alewives, shad, eels, lamprey and striped bass). The formally extinct Mohican language belonged to

638-746: The Eastern Algonquian branch of the Algonquian language family. The Mohican were a confederacy of five tribes and as many as forty villages. The Algonquians (Mohican) and Iroquois (Mohawk) were traditional competitors and enemies. Iroquois oral tradition, as recorded in the Jesuit Relations , speaks of a war between the Mohawks and an alliance of the Susquehannock and Algonquin (sometime between 1580 and 1600). This

SECTION 10

#1732771920667

696-715: The Four Mohawk Kings . The Stockbridge Indians allowed Protestant missionaries , including Jonathan Edwards , to live among them. In the 18th century, many converted to Christianity , while keeping certain traditions of their own. They fought on the side of the British colonists in the French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years' War ). During the American Revolution , they sided with

754-857: The Hoosic River , and south along the Hudson to the Roeliff Jansen Kill , where they bordered on the Wappinger people. This nation inhabited the river area and its interior southward to today's New York City. Most of the Mohican communities lay along the upper tidal reaches of the Hudson River and along the watersheds of Kinderhook-Claverack-Taghkanic Creek, the Roeliff Jansen Kill, Catskil Creek, and adjacent areas of

812-590: The Housatonic watershed . Mohican territory reached along Hudson River watersheds northeastward to Wood Creek just south of Lake Champlain . The Mohican villages were governed by hereditary sachems advised by a council of clan elders. They had a matrilineal kinship system , with property and inheritance (including such hereditary offices) passed through the maternal line. Moravian missionary John Heckewelder and early anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan both learned from Mohican informants that their matrilineal society

870-722: The Hutchinson River northward to Mamaroneck , including modern day Pelham , New Rochelle , The Pelham Islands , and portions of The Bronx . The parties signed a treaty under the Treaty Oak near Bartow-Pell Mansion in Pelham. New Netherland authorities did not recognize his title, accusing the New Englanders of continued encroachment upon Dutch territory. In September 1664, the British Navy, supported by

928-616: The Iroquois Oneida on their reservation in central New York. The Oneida gave them about 22,000 acres for their use. After more than two decades, in the 1820s and 1830s, the Oneida and the Stockbridge moved again, pressured to sell their lands and relocate to northeastern Wisconsin under the federal Indian Removal Act. A group of Mohican also migrated to Ontario, Canada to live with the predominately Iroquois Six Nations of

986-624: The Mohegan , a different Algonquian tribe that lived in eastern Connecticut . Cooper set his novel in the Hudson Valley, Mohican land, but used some Mohegan names for his characters, such as Uncas . The novel has been adapted for the cinema more than a dozen times, the first time in 1920. Michael Mann directed a 1992 adaptation , which starred Daniel Day-Lewis as a Mohican-adopted white man. In 2016, German metal band Running Wild released their 16th album Rapid Foray . The last song in

1044-519: The Pound Ridge massacre , took place while a large number of Siwanoy and Wecquaesgeek people were gathered together for a corn festival. The Dutch forces slaughtered between 500 and 700 indigenous people, including women and children, who were forced into their homes and burned alive. On June 27, 1654, sagamores Shāwānórōckquot (Shanarockwell), Poquōrūm, Anhōōke (Wampage I), Wawhāmkus, and Mehúmōw deeded to Thomas Pell 9,160 acres of land east of

1102-831: The 1830s, and other reservations in the American West later. Decades later the United States government organized the Stockbridge-Munsee Community with registered members of the Munsee people and a 22,000-acre (89 km ) reservation, which was originally the land of the Menominee Nation. Following the disruption of the American Revolutionary War , most of the Mohican descendants first migrated westward to join

1160-460: The Christian religion. The Moravians built a chapel for the Mohican people in 1743. They defended the Mohican against European colonists' exploitation, trying to protect them against land encroachment and abuses of liquor. On a 1738 visit to New York, the Mohicans spoke to Governor Lewis Morris concerning the sale of their land near Shekomeko. The Governor promised they would be paid as soon as

1218-600: The Colonists. The Mohicans, who as Algonquians were not part of the Iroquois Confederacy, sided with the Patriots, serving at the Siege of Boston, and the battles of Saratoga and Monmouth. In 1778 they lost forty warriors of their Stockbridge Militia , around half "Stockbridge Indians" who were remnants of both Mohican and Wappinger tribes, in a British attack on the land of the van Cortlandt family. (In 1888,

SECTION 20

#1732771920667

1276-616: The Eastern Algonquian family of tribes, they are related to the neighboring Lenape , whose indigenous territory was to the south as far as the Atlantic coast. The Mohican lived in the upper tidal Hudson River Valley , including the confluence of the Mohawk River (where present-day Albany, New York , developed) and into western New England centered on the upper Housatonic River watershed. After 1680, due to conflicts with

1334-636: The English later expressed as Mohican , in a transliteration to their own spelling system. The French, adopting names used by their Indian allies in Canada, knew the Mohican as the Loups (or wolves). They referred to the Iroquois Confederacy as the "Snake People" (as they were called by some competitors, or "Five Nations", representing their original tribes). Like the Munsee and Wappinger peoples,

1392-567: The Grand River reserve. The tribe identified by the place where they lived: Muh-he-ka-neew (or "people of the continually flowing waters"). According to Daniel G. Brinton and James Hammond Trumbull "two well-known authorities on Mohican history", the word Muh-he-kan refers to a body of water that flows in both directions, being tidal to most of its Mohican range, so they named the Hudson River Mahicanuck , or

1450-580: The Indians would lose their lands if the Colonists achieved independence. Sir William Johnson , his son John Johnson and son-in-law Guy Johnson and Brant used all their influence to engage the Iroquois to fight for the British cause. The Mohawk , Onondaga , Cayuga , and Seneca ultimately became allies and provided warriors for the battles in the New York area. The Oneida and Tuscarora sided with

1508-524: The Mohican identified collectively as the Muhhekunneuw , "people of the waters that are never still". At the time of their first contact with Europeans traders along the river in the 1590s, the Mohican were living in and around the Hudson River (or Mahicannituck ). After 1609, at the time of the Dutch settlement of New Netherland , they also ranged along the eastern Mohawk River and

1566-467: The Mohican land. In August 1775, the Six Nations staged a council fire near Albany, after news of Bunker Hill had made war seem imminent. After much debate, they decided that such a war was a private affair between the British and the colonists (known as Rebels, Revolutionaries, Congress-Men, American Whigs, or Patriots ), and that they should stay out of it. Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant feared that

1624-568: The Mohican were Algonquian-speaking, part of a large language family related also to the Lenape people , who occupied coastal areas from western Long Island to the Delaware River valley to the south. In the late twentieth century, the Mohican joined other former New York tribes, including the Oneida and some other Iroquois nations, in filing land claims against New York for what were considered unconstitutional purchases of their lands after

1682-405: The Mohicans and Mohawks throughout the area from Skahnéhtati ( Schenectady ) to Kinderhoek ( Kinderhook ). By 1629, the Mohawks had taken over territories on the west bank of the Hudson River that were formerly held by the Mohicans. The conflict caused most of the Mohicans to migrate eastward across the Hudson River into western Massachusetts and Connecticut. The Mohawks gained a near-monopoly in

1740-469: The Mohicans. Besides exposing them to European epidemics, the fur trade destabilized the region. In 1614, the Dutch decided to establish a permanent trading post on Castle Island , on the site of a previous French post that had been long abandoned; but first they had to arrange a truce to end fighting which had broken out between the Mohicans and Mohawks. Fighting broke out again between the Mohicans and Mohawks in 1617, and with Fort Nassau badly damaged by

1798-605: The Open Space Initiative. Prior to colonization, the island was used for ceremonies by the Mohicans before it was acquired by Dutch merchant Kiliaen Van Rensselaer in 1637. The property is managed by Rensselaer County and the Rensselaer Land Trust for public access and protection, while owned by the Mohicans. James Fenimore Cooper based his novel, The Last of the Mohicans , on the Mohican tribe. His description includes some cultural aspects of

Siwanoy - Misplaced Pages Continue

1856-771: The Revolutionary War. Only the federal government had constitutional authority to deal with the Indian nations. In 2010, outgoing governor David Paterson announced a land exchange with the Stockbridge-Munsee that would enable them to build a large casino on 330 acres (130 ha) in Sullivan County in the Catskills , as a settlement in exchange for dropping their larger claim in Madison County . The deal had many opponents. In their own language ,

1914-541: The Siwanoys believed the boulders to have been placed there by their guardian Manitou (the spiritual, omnipresent life force that manifests itself in everything). Many Siwanoys likely became Christianized ; the Siwanoy sagamore Wampage I was one of these, taking John White as a baptismal name . The western bands of the Wappinger, including the Siwanoy, were at war with the Dutch from 1640 to 1645. Part of this period

1972-599: The Throgs Neck site, on the peninsula Throggs Neck , and sites at Clasons Point in the Bronx, which he identified as being once occupied by Siwanoy, as well as other peoples. Native people attacked a European ship from this site in 1619. Two glacial erratic boulders named Grey Mare and Mishow , located on Hunter Island, were spiritually significant to the Siwanoy. Here the Siwanoys practiced their sacred ceremonies, and two sachems are believed to be buried at Mishow ;

2030-994: The Younger Peter Schenk the Younger (born 15 February 1693 in Amsterdam ; died: 14 January 1775) was a Dutch engraver and map publisher active in Leipzig . He was the son of the engraver and map publisher Peter Schenk the Elder who owned a shop in Leipzig and travelled regularly between there and Amsterdam in the 17th century. In 1715 Peter the Younger traveled to Leipzig in order to sell some paintings by Jan van Huchtenburgh and Jan and Willem van Mieris . Mohicans The Mohicans ( / m oʊ ˈ h iː k ən z / or / m ə ˈ h iː k ən z / ) are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe that historically spoke an Algonquian language. As part of

2088-408: The area surrounding Ann Hook's Neck and Hunter Island as Laaphawachking ("place of stringing beads"), because of the large quantities of wampum produced there. The village of Nanichiestawack, or Nawchestaweck ("place of safety"), located near present-day Woods Bridge at Muscoot Reservoir , was destroyed during the Pound Ridge massacre in 1644. In the early 20th century, Alanson Skinner unearthed

2146-612: The chief sachem, Joseph Quanaukaunt, and his counselors and relatives, were part of the move to New Stockbridge. At the new town, the Stockbridge emigrants controlled their own affairs and combined traditional ways with the new as they chose. After learning from the Christian missionaries, the Stockbridge Indians were experienced in English ways. At New Stockbridge they replicated their former town. While continuing as Christians, they retained their language and Mohican cultural traditions. In general, their evolving Mohican identity

2204-547: The colonists. In the eighteenth century, some of the Mohicans developed strong ties with missionaries of the Moravian Church from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania , who founded a mission at their village of Shekomeko in Dutchess County, New York . Henry Rauch reached out to two Mohican leaders, Maumauntissekun , also known as Shabash ; and Wassamapah , who took him back to Shekomeko. They named him

2262-421: The conflict. The Mohicans requested help from the Dutch and Commander Daniel Van Krieckebeek set out from the fort with six soldiers. Van Krieckebeek, three soldiers, and twenty-four Mohicans were killed when their party was ambushed by the Mohawk about a mile from the fort. The Mohawks withdrew with some body parts of those slain for later consumption as a demonstration of supremacy. War continued to rage between

2320-528: The dead. Wampum jewelry and belts were worn as a symbol of social status. The Siwanoy no doubt ate all varieties of fish and shellfish, as the shore had numerous fishing stations and a rich aquatic life; and the interior provided fruits, nuts, and animal life. Their closest allies were the Lenape to the west and the Mahicans to the north, with whom they shared a totem (or emblem) – the “enchanted wolf”, with

2378-832: The entire confederacy. In his history of the Indians of the Hudson River, Edward Manning Ruttenber described the clans of the Mohican as the Bear, the Turkey, the Turtle, and the Wolf. Each had a role in the lives of the people, and the Wolf served as warriors in the north to defend against the Mohawk , the easternmost of the Five Nations of the Iroquois. Like the Munsee-speaking communities to their south, Mohican villages followed

Siwanoy - Misplaced Pages Continue

2436-428: The fur trade with the Dutch by prohibiting the nearby Algonquian-speaking tribes to the north or east from trading. Many Mohicans settled in the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts , where they gradually became known as the "Stockbridge Indians". Etow Oh Koam , one of their chiefs, accompanied three Mohawk chiefs on a state visit to Queen Anne and her government in England in 1710. They were popularly referred to as

2494-443: The lands were surveyed. He suggested that for their own security, they should mark off their square mile of land they wished to keep, which the Mohicans never did. In September 1743, still under the Acting-Governor George Clarke the land was finally surveyed by New York Assembly agents and divided into lots, a row of which ran through the Indians' reserved land. With some help from the missionaries, on 17 October 1743 and already under

2552-432: The late twentieth century, the Stockbridge-Munsee were among tribes filing land claims against New York, which had been ruled to have unconstitutionally acquired land from Indians without Senate ratification. The Stockbridge-Munsee filed a land claim against New York state for 23,000 acres (9,300 ha) in Madison County, the location of its former property. In 2011, outgoing governor David Paterson announced having reached

2610-467: The missionaries' work accused them of being secret Catholic Jesuits (who had been outlawed from the colony in 1700) and of working with the Mohicans on the side of the French. The missionaries were summoned more than once before colonial government, but also had supporters. In the late 1740s the colonial government at Poughkeepsie expelled the missionaries from New York, in part because of their advocacy of Mohican rights. European colonists soon took over

2668-410: The new Royal Governor George Clinton , Shabash put together a petition of names of people who could attest that the land in which one of the lots was running through was theirs. Despite Shabash's appeals, his persistence, and the missionaries' help, the Mohicans lost the case. The lots were eventually bought up by European-American colonists and the Mohicans were forced out of Shekomeko. Some who opposed

2726-432: The new religious teacher. Over time, Rauch won listeners, as the Mohicans had suffered much from disease and warfare, which had disrupted their society. Early in 1742, Shabash and two other Mohicans accompanied Rauch to Bethlehem, where he was to be ordained as a deacon. The three Mohicans were baptized on 11 February 1742 in John de Turk's barn nearby at Oley, Pennsylvania . Shabash was the first Mohican of Shekomeko to adopt

2784-551: The powerful Mohawk to the west during the Beaver Wars , many were driven southeastward across the present-day Massachusetts western border and the Taconic Mountains to Berkshire County around Stockbridge, Massachusetts . They combined with Lenape Native Americans (a branch known as the Munsee) in Stockbridge, MA, and later the people moved west away from pressure of European invasion. They settled in what became Shawano County, Wisconsin . Most eastern Native American populations were forced to reservations in Indian Territory during

2842-442: The property became Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, New York.) The Battle of Kingsbridge decimated the troop's ranks. It received a commendation from George Washington, was paid $ 1,000 and dismissed. After the Revolution the citizens of the new United States forced many Native Americans off their land and westward. In the 1780s, groups of Stockbridge Indians, today regarded as Stockbridge Munsee , moved from Massachusetts to

2900-528: The right paw raised defiantly. They were also allied and shared a common lifestyle with the Wecquaesgeek . Like other tribes of the area, the Siwanoy were loosely organized into several groups, each with a sagamore (chieftain) and a somewhat-defined territory. The Siwanoys' largest village in 1640 was Poningo, located near modern-day Rye . They also had stockade settlements at Ann Hook's Neck , Hunter Island , and Davenport Neck ( Shippan ), and “winter quarters” farther south at Hell Gate . They referred to

2958-466: The river with waters that are never still. Therefore, they, along with other tribes living along the Hudson River, such as the Munsee to their west, known by the dialect of Lenape that they spoke, and Wappinger to the south, were called "the River Indians" by the Dutch and English. The Dutch heard and transliterated the term for the people of the area in their own language, variously as: Mahigan , Mahinganak , Maikan , among other variants, which

SECTION 50

#1732771920667

3016-687: The shore in Westchester County until 1756, when most of the Wappinger and Mahicans remaining in the area joined the Nanticoke , then living under the protection of the Iroquois , and with them were eventually merged into the Lenape . Some of them joined the Stockbridge Indians , a Lenape people who were forcibly removed to Wisconsin in the 1830s. The Stockbridge Munsee Community is a federally recognized tribe based in Wisconsin . The Delaware Nation and Delaware Tribe of Indians are both federally recognized tribes in Oklahoma . New York , New Jersey , and Delaware have state-recognized tribes that identify as Lenape descendants. Petrus Schenk

3074-455: The state would allow gaming, an increasingly important source of revenue for American Indians. Race track and casinos, private interests and other tribes opposed the deal. In 2011, the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of the Mohican Indians regained ownership 156 acres along the Hudson River, a tract known as Papscanee Island Nature Preserve near East Greenbush and Schodack . The land was donated to descendants of its indigenous inhabitants by

3132-437: The two formed a band and are federally recognized as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community . Their 22,000-acre reservation is known as that of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians and is located near the town of Bowler . Since the late twentieth century, they have developed the North Star Mohican Resort and Casino on their reservation, which has successfully generated funds for tribal welfare and economic development. In

3190-430: The wife of an Indian Chief, residing in a settlement near the Split Rock". It has been written that Wampage himself was the murderer of Hutchinson and that he adopted the name of Anhōōke due to a Mahican custom of taking the name of a notable person personally killed. In February 1644, the entire village of Nanichiestawack was wiped out by 130 Dutch mercenaries under Capt. John Underhill . The surprise attack, known as

3248-400: Was divided into three phratries (Turkey, Turtle, and Wolf). These were divided into clans or subclans, including a potentially prominent Bear Clan. This finding is supported by the evidence of Mohican signatures on treaties and land deeds (see the works of Shirley Dunn ). A general council of sachems met regularly at Scodac (east of present-day Albany) to decide important matters affecting

3306-404: Was perhaps in response to the formation of the League of the Iroquois. In September 1609 Henry Hudson encountered Mohican villages just below present day Albany, with whom he traded goods for furs. Hudson returned to Holland with a cargo of valuable furs which immediately attracted Dutch merchants to the area. The first Dutch fur traders arrived on the Hudson River the following year to trade with

3364-413: Was still rooted in traditions of the past. In the 1820s and 1830s, most of the Stockbridge Indians moved to Shawano County, Wisconsin , where they were promised land by the US government under the policy of Indian removal . In Wisconsin, they settled on reservations with the Lenape (called Munsee after one of their major dialects), who were also speakers of one of the Algonquian languages. Together,

#666333