A culture whose forebears had celebrated the river as their center of existence was being put under unbearable stress. As one historian put it, the in search of Indian trading lower Ri ver Indians would fi nd partners, the Dutch merchantthemselves " between a rock explorers discovered wamand a hard pl ace" as the sevenpum in common use among teenth century wore on. Their the tribes of the Hudson River. own lands were hunted out. In These small black and white the north the Iroq uois League beads were made from quatribes of the Mohawk and Senhog and other shells, strung eca dominated the struggle fo r on thread and then woven into beaver territory, a pos ition the belts. Wampum was prized Iroquois maintained for well above gold or silver by the over a century after the voyIndi ans, and the Dutch acage of Hudson, and from becepted it as currency within low they feltthe press of Dutch New Am sterd am. It was coloni al ambitions. manufac tured by local tribes, The earliest known view ofNew Amsterdam c. 1626-28,probably In the face of Briti sh domia process that the Dutch evenintended to show the directors of the West India Company the of Atl anti c Ameri ca , nation tually controlled. For many proposed location of the fort (courtesy New Yark Public Library ) however, the Dutch plan to years, a ferry ride across the settle New York as a colony was always a precarious proHudson or East River could be purchased with wampum . The early relationship that grew between trader and Indian position. When George Nico ll s' squ adron of fo ur British ships was symbiotic. Parties of Indians would arrive regularl y by with 300 soldiers entered New York Harbor on September 1, dugout and birchbark canoe to trade for wampum and Euro- 1664 , and put Dutch intentions to the test, New Netherl and pean goods at Fort Amsterdam and Fort Orange. From Fort was surrendered without bl oodshed. The citizens of New Orange, furs went downriver in small canoes and in larger war Amsterdam were outnumbered by the British and ex hausted canoes transformed into freight carriers, as well as some by a string oflndian wars rooted in the grow ing number of land European style flat-bottomed boats and the Dutch ocean- di sputes. Dutch treachery, in parti cular an ambush of Ri ver Indians sheltering around Fort Amsterdam from a Mahican going vessels. At the time of encounter, the entire area in and around New attack in 1643, had united lower Ri ver Indi ans against the York City, with its many favorable sites along the waterfro nts, Dutch. Thwarted in the lower Hudso n, the Dutch had tried to was extensively utilized by the natives. The native res idents of ex pand into the Esopu s country on the west bank of the Hudson Manhattan were the Reckgawawanc, and hard by the banks of Ri ver midway between Forts Orange and New Amsterdam, the Hudson clear to Albany lived numerous Algonquin tribes, above the Highlands. Thi s sparked conflicts between the usually in settlements not totalling more than 200 at any one Esopu s, Wappinger and Min isink Ind ians almost until the time. To the east of the Hud son co uld be fo und th e arrival of the British. The West Ind ia Company decision in the Weckquaesgeek around Bronx and Yonkers, Sintsin k in earl y 1630s to vigorously pu rsue the acqui sition of land fo r Ossining, Kitchawank in Cortl and and Nochpeem in Putnam settlement as well as pelts and fu rs fro m the Indians, had in the County. To the west were the Hackensack and Raritan in end been a large part of its undoi ng. Unravelling much fas ter, however, were the lifeways of the Jersey , Tappan and Haverstraw further north before the Highlands, and Minisink and Esopus above them. On the eastern River Indians. A cul ture whose fore bears had celebrated the side above the Highlands lived the Wappingers, and further ri ver as their center of ex istence was being put under unbearnorth the Mahicans. These tribes were loosely termed the able stress. Ever since the glac iers receded, this stream-turnedriver had been their own. Sizable shell middens mark sites River Indians. They had traditionally traded amongst themselves , and where earl y Indi an inhabitants took oysters of great size as far archaeological ev idence points to contact with tribes as far north as Croton, up to 8,000 years ago. south as the Chesapeake Bay and as far north as the Maritime A slow di aspora began. Some Ri ver Indians worked the ir way south toward the Provinces of Canada. In the end , though, the fur trade undermined and warped the back country of Virgin ia and the Carolinas, while most went economic relations between tribes. In the years between 1624 west beyond the Appalachian Moun tains to the remote Far and 1632 the West India Company in Holland had received Country of the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes. The Westches63,000 skins worth 454 ,000 guilders, a good return indeed. ter Indians to the east of the river had sold most of their But, by this time, the Beaver Wars-a struggle fo r sources of remaining landholdings to the Engli sh by the first decades of supply and control of trade routes-had begun in earnest and the eighteenth century. They would return onl y periodicall y to would gradually involve every Indi an group in eastern North their lands to trade furs trapped in the Far Country , to sel1crafts America. Around Fort Orange the conflict between the door to door, to visit the graves of the ir ancestors, and to die in Mohawks and Mahicans threatened the trade itself. And by the their own homeland . By the mid to late 1700s even this 1630s the lower River Indians were in dire straits. Smallpox , presence was missing. European shipping now th ronged the ri ver. The sloop malaria, influenza and other diseases were depopulating vil lages . The surv ivors struggled to secure their trade ro utes became the common cargo vessel in a European-dominated against attacks from the competing Mahicans and Mohawks trade. The fertile land of the Hudson Valley was going the way while trying to obtain enough wampum , trap enough beavers, of the axe and plow on the huge estates of the Dutch patroons, and produce enough food to buy Dutch tools, fabrics, and the likes of Van Cortlandt and Van Rensselaer. The river, for always a great highway of commerce, would be the load bearer firearms. 20
SEA HISTORY 58, SUMMER 199 1