Tribes of New Netherland

When Henry Hudson first sailed into what became New York Harbor, he and his crew had several encounters with the people who came to be known as American Indians (after Christopher Columbus, who at first believed he had landed in India). The Indians of the region of New Netherland were not of one tribe. In fact, three different major groups occupied the lands stretching from present-day Albany, New York, south to Delaware Bay.

  • The Delaware occupied the area from the south shore of Delaware Bay up through the Lower Hudson Valley, including all or part of present-day Delaware, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and the entire New York City region.
  • The Mahican, or Mohican occupied the middle Hudson Valley region, centered roughly at the present-day Albany.
  • The Mohawk occupied a swath of territory including much of central and northern New York state. Initially the Mohawk lands were well to the west of the Hudson River, but at about the time of Dutch contact the Mohawk, through a series of wars, gradually encroached on Mahican lands.

Many people imagine that American Indians at the time of European contact had a frozen, stagnant culture. Some people think of the Indians as living a pre-industrial ideal of hunting and wholesome, simple living. In this view, the Indians had a kind of moral superiority over the Europeans, as though their "lower" level of development was balanced by a higher, nobler sensibility. Such thinking doesn't do justice to the Indians or to the historical evidence. In New Netherland, contact between the Indians and the Dutch was complex. Both sides were curious about the other, often respectful of the other, and eager to trade. Of course, both were equally capable of deceit and bloodshed.

In general, Dutch policy toward the Indians was oriented toward peaceful relations. In fact, far from wishing the Indians gone, the Dutch found them invaluable. The province of New Netherland was in large part a mechanism by which the Dutch could obtain animal furs, which they got through trade from the Indans. The West India Company sent its first director-general, Willem Verhulst, explicit instructions on dealing with the Indians: "He shall also see that no one do the Indians any harm or violence, deceive, mock, or contemn them in any way, but that in addition to good treatment they be shown honesty, faithfulness, and sincerity in all contracts, dealings, and intercourse, without being deceived by shortage of measure, weight or number, and that throughout friendly relations with them be maintained." In later years, the province's most famous leader, Peter Stuyvesant, went so far as to publicly punish a Dutch woman who was found guilty of cheating Indians with whom she had traded.

But bloodshed came. A series of wars-beginning in 1643 when a contingent of soldiers under Governor Willem Kieft attacked a Raritan village on Staten Island, setting off a bloody two-year war between settlers and a confederation of tribes that became known as Kieft's War-put an end to the idea that the newcomers and natives could live and prosper side by side. And as much as any war, disease decimated the tribes of the region. At least seven epidemics swept through their ranks from the earliest period of European contact to 1700, as the Europeans had unwittingly brought with them a lethal weapon in the form of diseases for which their cultures had built antibodies but before which the Indians were defenseless.

Many place-names in the region today come from Indian languages. Probably the most famous is Manhattan, which may have come from the Delaware mannahatta, meaning "island." Hackensack, Montauk, Rockaway and Jamaica Bay are just a few of the hundreds of current place-names that date to before Europeans arrived in the region.