Siwanoy

The Native American Siwanoy were a tribe of the Wappinger Confederacy, in what is now the New York City area.[1] By the mid-17th century, when their territory became hotly contested between Dutch and English colonial interests, the Siwanoy were settled along the East River and Long Island Sound between Hell Gate and Norwalk, Connecticut, a territory that included parts of what became the Bronx, Westchester County, New York, and Fairfield County, Connecticut. They referred to the territory as Wykagyl.[2]:28

History

The name Siwanoy may be a corruption of Siwanak, 'salt people'.[3]:585 They spoke Munsee, a Delaware language.[4] Their closest allies were the Mahicans to the north, with whom they shared a totem (or emblem) - the “enchanted wolf”, with the right paw raised defiantly.[5][6]:27–28 The Siwanoys' largest village in 1640 was Poningo, located near modern-day Rye, New York.[3]:279 They also had stockade settlements at Anne’s Hoeck, Hunter Island, and Davenport Neck, and kept “winter quarters” farther south at Hell Gate.[6]:27 They referred to the area surrounding Anne's Hoeck and Hunter Island as Laaphawachking (the place of stringing beads).[2]:37

Two glacial erratic boulders named Grey Mare and Mishow, located on Hunter Island, were spiritually significant to the Siwanoy.[7] Here the Siwanoys practiced their sacred ceremonies, and two sachems are believed to be buried at Mishow; the Siwanoys believed the boulders to have been placed there by their guardian Manitou (the spiritual, omnipresent life force that mainfests itself in everything).[2]:37–38 However, many Siwanoys likely became Christianized; the Siwanoy sagamore Wampage I was one of these, and he took John White as a baptismal name.[6]:38

Conflicts with European colonists

The western bands of the Wappinger, including the Siwanoy, became involved in war with the Dutch in 1640, which lasted five years;[8]:913 this period is often referred to as Kieft's War, and is said to have cost the lives of some 1,600 Wappinger refugees.[8]:913 Thus, tensions between the colonists and the Native Americans were extremely high at this time, and this undoubtedly led to the massacre of Anne Hutchinson and her family in 1643.

A group of Siwanoy, led by Wampage I, killed Hutchinson, six of her children, and nine others in August 1643,[9] near Split Rock, an ancient landmark. The only survivor was Hutchinson's nine-year-old daughter, Susanna - possibly spared because of her red hair - who "became the wife of an Indian Chief, residing in a settlement near the Split Rock".[10] It has been written that Wampage himself was the murderer of Hutchinson and that he adopted the name of Anhõõke due to a Mahican custom of taking the name of a notable person personally killed.[11][12]:18

Treaty with Thomas Pell

On June 27, 1654, sagamores Shawanórõckquot, Poquõrúm, Anhõõke (Wampage I), Wawhamkus, and Mehúmõwof deeded to Thomas Pell 9,160 acres of land east of the Hutchinson River northward to Mamaroneck, including modern day Pelham, New Rochelle, The Pelham Islands, and portions of The Bronx.[12]:1 The parties signed a treaty under the Treaty Oak near Bartow-Pell Mansion in Pelham. [12]:18–20 New Netherland authorities did not recognize his title. They accused the New Englanders of continued encroachment upon Dutch territory. Pell's coup turned out to be decisive in New York history. A militia of his colonists from Minneford Island (present-day City Island) supported the English naval invasion force that conquered New Amsterdam in 1664.

Merger and removal

Following the 1654 treaty, the Siwanoys remained in the area around Westchester County for another hundred years, until they eventually "melted away" by intermarriage with the English settlers.[6] Some continued to reside along the shore in Westchester County until 1756, when most of the Wappinger and Mahicans remaining in the area joined the Nanticoke, then living under the protection of the Iroquois, and with them were eventually merged into the Lenape. Some of them joined the Stockbridge Indians, who were removed to Wiconsin in the 1830s.[8]

See also

Notes
  1. Cook, Sherburne Friend (1976). The Indian Population of New England in the Seventeenth Century. University of California Press. p. 60. ISBN 0-520-09553-7.
  2. Bolton, Robert (1881). History of the Several Towns, Manors, and Patents of the County of Westchester. New York: Chas. F. Roper. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  3. Hodge, Frederick Webb (1912). Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. 3. ISBN 9781582187501. Retrieved 2020-07-14.
  4. Goddard, Ives (1978). "Delaware". In Bruce G., Trigger (ed.). Handbook of North American Indians. 15: Northeast. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 213–214. ISBN 978-0160045752.
  5. Ruttenber, E. M. (1872). History of the Indian Tribes of Hudson's River. Albany, N.Y.: J. Munsell. p. 50.
  6. Pell, Robert T. (1965), "Thomas Pell II (1675/76-1739): Third Lord of the Manor of Pelham", Pelliana: Pell of Pelham, New Series, vol. I (no. 3): 25–48
  7. O'Hea Anderson, Marianne (June 1996). "Native Americans" (PDF). Administrator's Office, Van Cortlandt & Pelham Bay Parks, City of New York Parks & Recreation. pp. 5–6.
  8. Hodge, Frederick Webb (July 2003). Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. 4. ISBN 9781582187518. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
  9. Shorto, Russell (2004). The Island at the Center of the World. New York: Doubleday/Vintage. pp. 160, 384. ISBN 1-4000-7867-9.
  10. Barr, Lockwood. Ancient Town of Pelham, Westchester County, New York. Richmond, Va.: Dietz Press. p. 13.
  11. Mays, Victor (1962). Pathway to a Village: A History of Bronxville. Nebko Press. p. 14.
  12. Bell, Blake A. (2004). Thomas Pell and the Legend of the Pell Treaty Oak. New York: iUniverse.
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