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The Lenapes:
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Part 2The Lenape: Contact with the Dutch The Indian tribes of the lower Hudson Valley, the Delaware, Mahican and the Wappinger, were drastically affected by the first European contact and interaction: the Dutch traders and colonists. The Indians met their unpreventable demise through the fur trade, disease and the disruption of their entire way of life upon the arrival of Europeans interested only in expansion and trade. The following is a brief account of initial white man contact with these natives and its results. In 1609 Henry Hudson was hired by the Dutch East India Company to explore a route around Siberia to the Orient. Unsuccessful there, he disobeyed orders to return and headed westward to investigate the possibility of a passage through North America. Hudson and his sailors discovered the Delaware Bay, and did not find the desired passage. He continued northward and sailed up the New York Bay and into the Hudson River and again found that there was no strait to be found. However, Hudson encountered his first Native Americans after anchoring along the Hudson River. He and his crew fished and bartered with the indians, the natives offering no violence. Hudson made his way back down the river cautiously trading with the natives that they encountered.(Kenney 14) Hence was the initial encounter with the white man that the Natives of the Hudson Valley experienced. When news reached Amsterdam of the high quality of furs that Hudson had traded with the Indians of the Hudson Valley, officials there sent more ships to trade these furs with the Natives and the fur trade in the Hudson Valley began. In 1613, two Dutch traders attempted an alliance with the Mahican tribe in order to establish a trading post opposite a Mahican village. This sparked hostility and competition from the Mahican rivals, the upstate Mohawks. The two tribes were constantly warring over exclusive trading privileges with the Dutch. The Mahicans became so preoccupied with trade and fur trapping that they offered little resistance to Dutch colonization.(Trigger 202) More and more Dutch colonists and traders triggered more hunting and trapping on the part of the Indians. This unstable exchange was detrimental to the Hudson Valley Indian. The fur trade initiated by the Dutch created an awareness of territoriality among the Indians in the Hudson Valley. There was competition and disputes over trapping territories. For example, "by favoring a particular local Indian as interpreter and/or spokesman for the group the traders stimulated the emergence of a band chief with the authority to divide communal lands." (Bowdoin) Prior to the fur trade with the Dutch and later with other Europeans, the Mahican and the Delaware only killed animals for food and shelter. Never was there a concern for land ownership or cause for disputes with other tribes. Peaceful trade existed between tribes as archaeological evidence finds they traded pottery, shell beads and native copper.(Bowdoin) However the Mahicans became so preoccupied with trapping for as many furs as possible for the increasing amounts of Dutch settlers and traders that they eventually expired their own territories of furs. All the natives got in return for their efforts were European luxuries such as cloth and liquor. The increasing amount of Dutch colonization and exploitative sale of Mahican land moved the Mahicans slowly from the Hudson River area. An example of such negotiations is the notorious sale of Manhattan Island to the Dutch from the Manhattes, a Wappinger tribe (the Wappingers were relative to the Mahican tribe), for an amount equitable to twenty-four dollars.(Josephy 22) Amateur Dutch traders were also the first to introduce firearms to the natives which proved to be exceptionally harmful. Mahican concentration on trapping for the fur trade instead of hunting animals for their own use was detrimental to their health and their existence. While the men were busy hunting and trapping, it kept them from performing their regular tasks like providing meat, furs and other products from the animals to their families. The preparation of the fur pelts was added to the daily tasks of the women, while they were usually in the gardens and gathering food. This created an imbalance of responsibility imposed on the sexes as well. The unpreventable loss of economic dependence, decay of native crafts and chronic malnutrition were all the damaging effects of the fur trade. (Bowdoin) Despite their inherent exploitation of the Indians of the Hudson Valley, the Dutch were intent on gathering as much information as possible about the tribes they encountered, who they referred to as Wilden, or wildmen. Many letters from colonists that went back to the Netherlands included detailed descriptions of the native persons, their clothing, houses, food, domestic habits and social customs.(Kenney 25) The traders had little or no knowledge of Indian dialect beyond that of what they used for trade, so the descriptions were purely external and visual. Some traders took native women as wives and some did make an attempt to learn the language and ways of the people, but in most cases it did not stop them from joining the Dutch in battle against the Indians when war finally broke out. Initial Dutch contact with the Native Americans was nothing but detrimental to them. By 1640, epidemic diseases such as small pox, measles and typhus wiped out approximately ninety percent of Indian populations in the Hudson Valley. The fur trade and Dutch colonization lured the Indians from their native practices and customs to the entrapment of European luxurious commodities. Finally, white contact with the Indians lead to many years of harsh wars and unfair treaties. Previous Table of Contents Next Part | |