The Lenape and Early Manhattan 4th grade · age 9

[1]In 1609, a group of Dutch merchants paid for a ship to sail along the Atlantic coast. The Dutch lived in Europe, and they wanted to buy spices from Asia. The trip to Asia was very long, so the merchants hoped the ship would find a shorter way. Alas, the crew never found one. But they found something else.

[2]The land along the Atlantic coast that we now know as a part of the United States was rich with beaver, and the people who lived there were eager to trade. These people were the Lenape. For more than ten thousand years, the Lenape had lived on the land they called Lenapehoking — a large region including what is now New Jersey, with the island of Manahatta at its heart. They had thrived by farming corn, beans, and squash, hunting deer, and catching huge amounts of fish. But after that first Dutch ship, more Dutch ships kept coming.

[3]As the Dutch met the Lenape, they learned that the Lenape already had their own ways of living together. The Lenape governed themselves peacefully. Each community chose its own leader, called a sachem, who could not make big decisions without the community's approval. The Lenape valued peace and trade over war. They exchanged wampum — valuable beads made from shells — across long distances, connecting communities far and wide. So when the Dutch merchants sought to trade for beaver furs, the Lenape welcomed them as trading partners.

[4]But the Dutch did not come just to trade. In 1621, the leaders of the Dutch government started a business called the Dutch West India Company. (A company is a group of people who work together to make money.) This company wanted to make money from the fur trade. In the fur trade, people swapped goods for animal furs. The furs were sold in Europe, where beaver fur was made into hats.

[5]The Dutch West India Company claimed a huge stretch of land it called New Netherland. This stretch of land covered land that is now New York, New Jersey, and parts of nearby states, including the island where New York City stands today. The company wanted not just trading posts where people could agree to meet to buy and sell goods, but also permanent farms — and that meant taking over Lenape land. After thousands of years on this land, the Lenape now had to face the Dutch West India Company's leaders, who wanted that land for themselves.

[6]In 1626, the Dutch West India Company sent a governor to Manhattan. He offered the Lenape a small amount of trade goods — things like beads, knives, and cloth — for the whole island. But the Lenape did not think about land the way the Dutch did. They moved across the land to hunt, fish, and grow food in different seasons. No one person or group could own it. They probably thought they were agreeing to share the land, not give it away forever. The Dutch, however, treated it as something they had bought for good. They began building Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan.

[7]As more Dutch settlers spread across the land, fights with the Lenape grew dangerous. Willem Kieft, who led New Netherland for the Dutch, tried to force the Lenape to pay taxes and leave their homeland. From 1643 to 1645, Kieft launched terrible attacks known as Kieft's War. Dutch soldiers massacred thousands of Lenape men, women, and children.

[8]The Lenape had little time to recover. In 1655, Native warriors launched attacks on Dutch settlements in what became known as the Peach War. The Dutch struck back hard. By the end of this fighting, the Lenape had lost most of their villages near Manhattan. At the same time, diseases that Europeans brought with them, like smallpox, swept through Lenape communities. The Lenape had never been sick with these diseases before. Many, many more Lenape died from sickness, in addition to all those who had been killed in the wars.

[9]Before Europeans came, at least twelve thousand Lenape had lived throughout the region. Now their numbers were dropping fast. Strangers had come to their shores, and now the Lenape families who were left had to find a way to keep going.

[10]The Lenape who survived these wars and epidemics struggled to hold their ground. They moved their remaining villages to safer areas in New Jersey. They tried to keep farming, fishing, and trading as they always had. They sent diplomats to negotiate with the Dutch, hoping to protect what was left of their homeland. But there was less and less land to live on, and fewer and fewer people to work it. Plus, the fur trade had made many Lenape families depend on European goods, so they could not simply go back to the way things had been before.

[11]Then, in August of 1664, English warships sailed into the harbor at New Amsterdam. The English promised that Dutch settlers who gave up would stay safe and keep their homes. So the Dutch gave up without a fight, and the English renamed the colony New York. The English brought far greater numbers of settlers.

[12]These settlers moved onto Lenape land by simply moving in and stealing it outright. English settlers pushed the Lenape westward — first to Pennsylvania, then to Ohio, and finally to Oklahoma. A people who had called Lenapehoking home for more than ten thousand years now lived scattered across the continent, far from the rivers, shores, and forests where their ancestors had lived.