Native Americans had lived in the Bronx region for thousands of years before European contact. The document outlines the history of Native tribes like the Mahican, Delaware, and Wappinger who inhabited the area. It discusses locations of Native villages and artifacts found throughout the Bronx. After European settlement, conflict arose as settlers took Native lands and warfare became common between whites and Native Americans. Some Natives remained in the area, hiding in wetlands, while others fought for both sides during the American Revolution.

1. NATIVE AMERICANS AND
THE BRONX
A partial history of Native Americans in New York City to counter the
propaganda surrounding Columbus Day

2. Native Americans lived in the Bronx Language groups
defined Indians Nations
Kurt Griesshaber 1962
Indian Lake in Crotona Park

3. Native cultures
include Mahican,
Delaware and
Wappinger
By 1100 AD,
New York's main
tribes, the
Iroquoian and
Algonquian
cultures, had
developed.
Natives were
well-established
peoples with
sophisticated
cultural systems.
KEY

4. Locations of Native Artifacts Found on Hunts Point
Hunt Burial
Ground
2
1
3
1
2
3
Dickey Estate Hunt Mansion “The Grange”

5. Bronx River
Called Aquehung or River of
High Bluffs by the Algonquian
Indians who first lived and fished
along it. The river attracted
European traders in the early 1600s
for the sleek, fat beaver living there.
Once heavily polluted action
has been taken recently by
environmentalists to clean the river.
In February 2007 biologists
spotted a beaver in the river. There
has not been a sighting of a beaver
lodge or a beaver in New York City
for over 200 years. Jose the Beaver

6. Remains of a Native American village show 2000 years
of habitation
Indian paths in the great metropolis, Part 1 By Reginald Pelham Bolton
Artifacts from present day Soundview, Bronx

7. Indian Trails in Manhattan and the Bronx
Native
Villages
in the
South
Bronx

8. Quinnahung
Kurt Griesshaber
1962
Quinnahung means “Long High Place.” Algonquian name for Hunts Point.

9. Native American L i fe
Woodland people lived in houses made of sticks and tree bark
called wigwams.
Kurt Griesshaber 1962

10. Mohican Vocabulary
• Mohican word • English translation
• aquai • hello
• nomasis • little grandmother
• achwahndowagan • love
• aki • earth
• mbei • water
• stau • fire
• we-ku-wuhm • wigwam or house

11. Henry Hudson 1609
Trading House, 1615
Dutch and other Beavers
traders came to the
Hudson valley to
trade with Indians
for beaver furs and
other products
before settlers
arrived.

12. Birth of the Bronx
Joanas Broncx Signs Treaty with the
Kurt Griesshaber
Indians in 1642. 1962

13. Warfare between whites and Indians was
common and bloody.
Warclubs
AMNH

14. Anne Hutchinson
denied the dogma of
original sin. A
controversial idea in
colonial America.
Kurt Griesshaber 1962
Anne Hutchinson,
her servants and 5
of her children
allegedly killed by
Indians in 1643.
Anne’s daughter
was kidnapped,
married an Indian
and resisted
returning to the
Illustration from an early colony.
19th century book

15. Hutchinson River
The Hutchinson River is a
small freshwater stream in New
York. It flows 5 miles south
through Westchester and the
Bronx, until it empties into
Eastchester Bay. The Hutchinson
River Parkway follows the river
for most of its distance.The river
is named for Anne Hutchinson.

16. Deed with native signers 1664 Hunts Point
This may certify whom it may concerne
that we Shonearoekite, Wapomoe,
Tuckorre, Whawhapenucke, Capahase,
Quannaco, Shaquiski, Passachahenne,
Harrawooke, have aleined and sold unto
Edward Jessup and John Richardson,
both of the place above said, a certain
Tract of land bounded on the east by the
River Aquehung or Bronxkx... -from original
deed with native signers 1664
Leggett Estate at
Rose Bank 1890.
Jessup and Richardson
The first landholders on Hunts Point were Jessup and
Richardson. They bought the land from some Indians.
The land was later bought by Gabriel Leggett. His name
is on Leggett Ave. Thomas Hunt married Gabriel’s
daughter Elizabeth.

17. Native’s enslaved could be inherited
• “By deed dated April 2, 1705,
Westchester Records, L. 3, p. 165:
Elizabeth Legatt of West Farms,
widow, to her daughter Mary Legatt,
gives "unto the said Mary Legatt,
her heirs and assigns forever my
two negro children born of the body
of Hannah my negro woman, and of
the issue of the body of Robin My
Indian slave, the boy being named
Abram, and the girl named Jenny.*”
*EARLY SETTLERS OF WEST FARMS, WESTCHESTER COUNTY, N. Y. Reprinted from the New
York Genealogical and Biographical Record, July, 1913.]

18. Some natives were hiding out in a dense wetland now Bronxdale
There may have
been a Native
American
settlement there
at one time: in
Bear Swamp the early 1800s a
basin for grinding
Fording Place near the Indian
Village on the Bronx River corn was found
cut into a rock
1868 www.nycgovparks.org outcrop. bronxriver.org
Before the coming of the white man, this tree stood
near the fording-place of the Indian tribes whose trail
passed nearby ; down through a gap between rock ledges
dashed the stream in a rapid to the point where the fresh
water mingled with the salt, for then the tide rose and
fell at that point, and the Indians found that at the join- DeLancey Pine
ing of the waters, there was at all tides a shoal place
suitable for wading the stream. The Indians, on their was used by
way to the summer camps at what was afterwards Hunts rebel snipers
Point, crossed over to the west bank of the stream and
continued southward on a trail following the windings aiming at
of the stream, and this stream they named the "Stream of British troops
the High Banks" or "Aquehung" on account of the ledges near the
near the big pine.
Fording Place
Morris Park Race Track located in
Bronxdale until 1913
Valentine's manual of old New York on the Bronx

19. Revolutionary War Battles; 1775-83
Bronx
Relics found in the ruins of the Hunt Mansion.
British troops pursue
retreating Americans
from Brooklyn,
through Manhattan
and north into the
Bronx.
A cannonball, cutlass and other Revolutionary war items.

20. Warriors for America
Native Americans who fought on the Patriot side. The
Stockbridge Indians were originally from the Bronx.

21. The Queens Rangers.
Queen’s Rangers
were Colonists who
Simcoe’s men on
remained loyal to the
patrol
King. The British
commander in the Bronx
was John Simcoe, who
went on to found
Toronto, Canada.

22. The American Commander
Chief Daniel Nimham

23. AMBUSH
Indian Fields
Fight.
Brave Indian
warriors
are ambushed by
Queens Rangers in map of
Van Courtland Park the battle
drawn by
on August 31, 1778. a British
officer

24. Kurt Griesshaber 1962

25. LINKS
http://www.mohican-nsn.gov/Departments/Library-
Museum/Mohican_History/origin-and-early.htm
http://www.bigorrin.org/mohican_kids.htm
Nimham's Indian Company of 1778
The Events Leading up to the Stockbridge Massacre of August 31, 1778
by Richard S. Walling
http://www.americanrevolution.org/ind2.html