The Munsee Indians

The Indian sale of Manhattan is one of the world’s most cherished legends. Few people know that the Indians who made the fabled sale were Munsees whose ancestral homeland lay between the lower Hudson and upper Delaware river valleys. The story of the Munsee people has long lain unnoticed in broader histories of the Delaware Nation. Now, The Munsee Indians deftly interweaves a mass of archaeological, anthropologi-cal, and archival source material to resurrect the lost history of this forgotten people, from their earliest contacts with Europeans to their final expulsion just before the American Revolution. Anthropologist Robert S. Grumet rescues from obscurity Mattano, Tackapousha, Mamanuchqua, and other Munsee sachems whose influence on Dutch and British settlers helped shape the course of early American history in the mid-Atlantic heartland. He looks past the legendary sale of Manhattan to show for the first time how Munsee leaders forestalled land-hungry colonists by selling small tracts whose vaguely worded and bounded titles kept courts busy—and settlers out—for more than 150 years. Ravaged by disease, war, and alcohol, the Munsees finally emigrated to reservations in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Ontario, where most of their descendants still live today. Coinciding with the four hundredth anniversary of Hudson’s voyage to the river that bears his name, this book shows how Indians and settlers struggled, in land deals and other transactions, to reconcile cultural ideals with political realities. The result is the most authoritative treatment of the Munsee experience—one that restores this people to their place in history. This book is published with the generous assistance of Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

The Indian sale of Manhattan is one of the world's most cherished legends. Few people know that the Indians who made the fabled sale were Munsees whose ancestral homeland lay between the lower Hudson and upper Delaware river valleys. The story of the Munsee people has long lain unnoticed in broader histories of the Delaware Nation. Now, The Munsee Indians deftly interweaves a mass of archaeological, anthropologi-cal, and archival source material to resurrect the lost history of this forgotten people, from their earliest contacts with Europeans to their final expulsion just before the American Revolution. Anthropologist Robert S. Grumet rescues from obscurity Mattano, Tackapousha, Mamanuchqua, and other Munsee sachems whose influence on Dutch and British settlers helped shape the course of early American history in the mid-Atlantic heartland. He looks past the legendary sale of Manhattan to show for the first time how Munsee leaders forestalled land-hungry colonists by selling small tracts whose vaguely worded and bounded titles kept courts busy--and settlers out--for more than 150 years. Ravaged by disease, war, and alcohol, the Munsees finally emigrated to reservations in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Ontario, where most of their descendants still live today. Coinciding with the four hundredth anniversary of Hudson's voyage to the river that bears his name, this book shows how Indians and settlers struggled, in land deals and other transactions, to reconcile cultural ideals with political realities. The result is the most authoritative treatment of the Munsee experience--one that restores this people to their place in history. This book is published with the generous assistance of Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

Profiles Manhattan Island's first residents, the Munsee Indians, from their first interactions with European settlers in 1524 to the group's relocation to reservations in the Midwest and Canada during the eighteenth century.

This book offers the full, annotated translation of a recently discovered Dutch account book recording trade with Native Americans in Ulster County, New York, from 1712 to 1732. The ledger contains just over two-thousand transactions with about two-hundred native individuals. Slightly more than one-hundred Indians appear with their names listed. The volume and granularity of the entries allow for detailed indexing and comparative analysis of the people and processes involved in these commercial dealings in the mid-Hudson River Valley. Waterman and Smith place this exceptional resource within its historical context, presenting figures and tables with aggregated data. They examine several key aspects of the intercultural exchanges, such as the high level of participation by Native American women and the growing importance of the deerskin trade in this region. In addition, the appendix contains individual profiles of forty Esopus and Wappinger Indians appearing in the Ulster County account book.

"While Otto's conceptual framework is familiar, his interpretation offers much that is new and fresh...the benefits of placing the specific and local in a broader transnational and transatlantic context, which yields important correctives to notions of American exceptionalism and illuminates broader comparative perspectives, are apparent. The result is an enlightening and thought-provoking look at cultural interaction and frontiers in the colonial Northeast." - H-Atlantic "Otto provides important insights in the cultural developments with the Munsee during this time. He also broadens his analysis in an Afterword by comparing the three phases of the Dutch experience in New Netherland with their colonization of The Cape Colony in South Africa. He finds many parallels, but the most striking was that after periods of peaceful trade and episodes of violent conflict, both aboriginal groups eventually lost their land and became marginalized...The rest of us will be better served by looking to Otto's book to help us understand the complexities of the relationship between the Dutch and the Munsees in the seventeenth-century." - Long Island Historical Journal "...it offers a thoughtful investigation of understudied peoples and events, and on that count, it is wholly successful...With this useful book, Otto shows how historians of early America can both 'face east from Indian Country' and tell the story 'with the Dutch put in'". - H-Low-Countries "[this book is] a sterling example of how the scholarship on New Netherlands has grown recently...[Otto's] straightforward narrative provides an excellent chronology of events, causes, and consequences for both peoples in the region." - Choice "This is a first-rate discussion of native-European relations, which deals in a lucid way with the different layers of the encounter." - Wim Klooster, Clark University "The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America fills a major gap in scholarly studies of New Netherland. With keen judgment and perceptive analysis, Paul Otto examines European intrusion into the lower Hudson Valley and western Long Island and evaluates the changes it wrought on Indian and Dutch societies. This deeply-researched book is as nearly definitive - in the absence of Munsee sources - as it could be, and the comparative essay on South Africa is a valuable bonus." - Alden T. Vaughan, Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University Employing a frontier framework, this book traces intercultural relations in the lower Hudson River valley of early seventeenth-century New Netherland. It explores the interaction between the Dutch and the Munsee Indians and considers how they, and individuals within each group, interacted, focusing in particular on how the changing colonial landscape affected their cultural encounter and Munsee cultural development. At each stage of European colonization - first contact, trade, and settlement - the Munsees faced evolving and changing challenges. Understanding culture in terms of worldview and societal structures, this volume identifies ways in which Munsee society changed in an effort to adjust to the new intercultural relations and looks at the ways the Munsees maintained aspects of their own culture and resisted any imposition of Dutch societal structures and sovereignty over them. In addition, the book includes a suggestive afterword in which the author applies his frontier framework to Dutch-indigenous relations in the Cape colony.

A concise history of the Indians said to have sold Manhattan for $24 The Indian sale of Manhattan is one of the world's most cherished legends. Few people know that the Indians who made the fabled sale were Munsees whose ancestral homeland lay between the lower Hudson and upper Delaware river valleys. The story of the Munsee people has long lain unnoticed in broader histories of the Delaware Nation. First Manhattans, a concise and lively distillation of the author's comprehensive The Munsee Indians, resurrects the lost history of this forgotten people, from their earliest contacts with Europeans to their final expulsion just before the American Revolution. Anthropologist Robert S. Grumet rescues from obscurity Mattano, Tackapousha, Mamanuchqua, and other Munsee sachems whose influence on Dutch and British settlers helped shape the course of early American history in the mid-Atlantic heartland. He looks past the legendary sale of Manhattan to show for the first time how Munsee leaders forestalled land-hungry colonists by selling small tracts whose vaguely worded and bounded titles kept courts busy—and settlers out—for more than 150 years. Ravaged by disease, war, and alcohol, the Munsees finally emigrated to reservations in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Ontario, where most of their descendants still live today. With the four hundredth anniversary of Hudson's voyage to the river that bears his name, this book shows how Indians and settlers struggled, through land deals and other transactions, to reconcile cultural ideals with political realities. It offers a wide audience access to the most authoritative treatment of the Munsee experience—one that restores this people to their place in history.

From origin stories to contemporary struggles over treaty rights and sovereignty issues, Indian Nations of Wisconsin explores Wisconsin's rich Native tradition. This unique volume—based on the historical perspectives of the state’s Native peoples—includes compact tribal histories of the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Oneida, Menominee, Mohican, Ho-Chunk, and Brothertown Indians. Author Patty Loew focuses on oral tradition—stories, songs, the recorded words of Indian treaty negotiators, and interviews—along with other untapped Native sources, such as tribal newspapers, to present a distinctly different view of history. Lavishly illustrated with maps and photographs, Indian Nations of Wisconsin is indispensable to anyone interested in the region's history and its Native peoples. The first edition of Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal, won the Wisconsin Library Association's 2002 Outstanding Book Award.