[National Park Service (2021)] DUTCH AND NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE IN THE HUDSON VALLEY WHITE PAPER Prepared for the Hudson River Valley Greenway By: Allison Jungkurth July 17, 2018 Indigenous Peoples of the Hudson Valley Prior to European arrival, the Hudson River Valley was home to a thriving network of diverse Native American societies. The lower river valley was home to the Munsee Indians, a branch of the Algonquin-speaking Lenape. Known later as the Delaware, the Lenape were usually the first Native Americans European explorers encountered in North America, and they showed the new arrivals how to navigate the rivers and to survive in the New World. Today the island of Manhattan retains the Munsee name for the island: Mannahatta, “the island of many hills.” The upper Hudson Valley was home to the Mohicans, a related group of Algonquinspeaking people with whom the Munsee frequently traded and interacted. Also known historically as the “Mahicans,” the Mohicans derive their name from their word for the Hudson River: Muhicanituk, “the water that flows both ways.” The upper river valley was also home to the Mohawk tribe, who lived in the Mohawk River Valley and traveled east to hunt, trade, and occasionally wage war with the neighboring Mahican tribes. The Mohawk are the easternmost branch of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a political league whose structure inspired the United States’ federalist government system. For the Native peoples living in the region, religion and ecology were closely entwined. Early Dutch settlers learned important survival techniques from the Native Americans and admired many of their cultural practices, including a strong diplomatic ability and sophisticated societies far less violent and criminal than the sailors were used to in Europe. Trade with the Dutch gave Native Americans access to goods like woolen fabrics, glass beads, and steel tools, but the Europeans also carried new diseases that decimated much of the Indian population. Wars and violent conflicts with the settlers became more frequent as the Dutch colony grew, further reducing the American Indian population and pushing them from their traditional homelands. Political pressure forced the indigenous peoples to sell or otherwise lose their territories. Many tribes were forced to migrate west, surviving in what became the tribal nations today of Stockbridge Munsee Community (Wisconsin), and the Delaware Tribe and Delaware Nation (Oklahoma). Other communities remained in New York and assimilated into the new American society. Today, New York State is home to eight federally recognized tribes and over 220,000 people who identify as American Indian or Alaska Native. Community engagement among members of the Mohawks, Mohicans, Munsee, and many other tribes remains active around the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area. New Netherland In 1609, Henry Hudson and his crew were the first Europeans to sail into what is now called the Hudson River Valley. Exploring for the Dutch East India Company, they met and traded with Lenape and Mohawk villages throughout the region. Although they failed to discover a northwest passage to Asia, Hudson’s ship the Half Moon returned to Amsterdam with reports of a beautiful land, rich in resources and navigable by what Hudson’s first mate Robert Juet called “as fine a river as can be found.” Dutch traders quickly established posts in the New World, gradually dominating the trade economy begun by the Native Americans. At Fort Orange (1624) on the upper Hudson River, Mohawk and Mohican trappers became an important source for beaver pelts, which were fashionable and in very high demand in Europe. The lucrative trade in beaver furs was so critical to New Netherland that this northern outpost was called Beverwijck, before being renamed Albany at the end of the 17th century. In the 1620’s, the Dutch West India Company decided to expand their colony’s territory and population. They—in their view—“purchased” land from the Native peoples in the region and sold large properties to Dutch landowners, called patroons. The first and largest of these patroonships was the estate of Kilaen Van Rensselaer. Granted in 1629, Rensselaerswijck encompassed the land surrounding Albany and extended for miles on both sides of the Hudson River. Crailo State Historic Site (1707) was the Van Rensselaer family’s home until 1924. Today the house is a museum preserving the story of Dutch colonial settlement in the upper Hudson River Valley. Goods from Beverwijck were transported down the Hudson River to other Dutch settlements, including the village of Esopus in the mid-Hudson Valley and New Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan. Esopus, later renamed Wiltwijck and finally Kingston, attracted settlers as a fertile place to grow wheat and other crops. Wheat was measured out in schepels as a medium of currency to purchase land, enslaved Africans, and goods at the market. Dutch farms encroached on land traditionally used by the Esopus Indians and tensions grew as the Esopus resisted permanent occupation