Connecticut Water Trails Association
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Connecticut Water Trails Association |
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Connecticut Water Trails Program
History Of Connecticut's Water Trails
Native Americans
The Ramapo
The origins of these people have for years been surrounded by myth and legend, e.g., that they are descended from a mixture of the Tuscarora, Hessian deserters, women kidnapped in England by a man named Jackson, and runaway slaves. Research suggests that the origin of these
people is to be found among remnants of the Algonquin, early white
settlers (mainly British and Dutch), and free, landholding blacks who
pioneered the area in the early 19th century
Location
Ridgefield
Name
Munsee is an Algonquian language
closely related to Lenape and Nanticoke
Connecticut Village Locations
Ridgefield
The Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation are described as the descendants of the Lenape – (including the Hackensack, Tappan, Rumachenanck/Haverstroo, and Munsee/Minisink people – with varying degrees of Tuscarora, African, Dutch, and other Caucasian ancestry. The Ramapough have common ancestry with the
Stockbridge-Munsee and the Brothertown Indians of Wisconsin.
Although the Ramapough
Indians have resided in the Ramapough Mountains for more than three
hundred years, there is very little documentation in Connecticut ,New
York or New Jersey that refers to the tribe.
There are many reasons for this, starting with
the lack of a written language by the Lenape people. The written history
of the native people in this area was always left to the non-native
community to write, and with their ignorance of Lenape ways and
language, their documentation was seldom accurate. Therefore, we rely on
our oral history more than the writings found in the history books.
Most of the Europeans that came to
Lenapehoking didn't understand that the different bands of natives that
lived throughout Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania
were all part of the whole Lenape Nation. The bands were known by the places they
resided, therefore Europeans thought they were different Tribes. Each
band had their own chief or Sachem, whom represented them. Although he
was the representative, the majority of the Band made decisions.
In time, most of the Munsee migrated north.
The few individuals and families that stayed behind began making
decisions for themselves. This caused even more confusion among the
newcomers, and more trouble for the natives.
The Lenape didn't believe anyone could own the
land or water. They believed that would be like someone owning the air.
You could only own what you can hold in your hand and even that was for
sharing. They believed the Creator put the land and water here for the
survival of all people. Land couldn't be owned by one person, or group
of people.
They also believed that all things on Turtle
Island had a life. The plants, animals, and even the rocks would give
their life so the people could survive. When the whites wanted to buy
the land, the natives thought they wanted to give them gifts for sharing
the land with them.
Of course the new settlers didn't look at
things in the same way, so when they "bought" the land, they would take
action against the Lenape if they tried to use any part of it. When they
realized what the settlers had in mind they began to refuse, but land
speculators found ways of getting the land away from the Indians. It didn't matter if the signor was anyone of importance among his people, or if he had any claim to the land, as long as they put their mark on a deed, saying he was the rightful owner. They would also tell the person signing the deed that the boundary was at a different location than it really was, so the natives had no idea that the deed turned over rights to thousands of acres.
Gatoonah was their sachem
According to the first part of the legend, the first settlers in
the Ramapo Mountain region were Tuscarora Indians. They fled northward
on the Cumberland Trail to join their allies the Iroquois in upper New
York after a humiliating defeat at the hands of the British Army in a
series of skirmishes, part of the French and Indian Wars, in western
North Carolina from 1711 to 1714. They were either joined shortly after
their arrival by or came accompanied with runaway slaves, often referred
to in those days as "Jacks." The sons of Black freedmen from the
plantations of the nearby Hudson River Valley and Catskill Mountains
also joined them and brought their former masters' Dutch surnames with
them to the Ramapos. They intermarried with the Tuscaroras and possibly
local Lenni Lenape Indians, as well. It is at this time that their local
neighbors may have begun to refer to these people as the "Jacks and
Whites."
According to the second part of the legend,
during the War of Independence, the British Army command at New York
contracted with a Colonial sea captain and trader named Jackson to bring
3,500 prostitutes recruited in the cities of England to New York to
serve the garrison. On the trans-Atlantic voyage one of the twenty ships
in the convoy foundered during a storm and most of the passengers were
drowned. The clever and industrious Jackson made for the West Indies and
picked up an additional 400 black women to replace those lost at sea.
On his return to New York harbor the black
prostitutes, known ironically as "Jackson Whites" and as "Jackson
Blacks," were segregated from the rest and billeted for several years in
a cow pasture in Greenwich Village called Lispenard's Meadows. When the
British were forced, abruptly, to quit New York during the War of
Independence, the women fled Manhattan in fear of their lives and
wandered northward into the Hudson Valley where they heard, possibly
from Hessian deserters, that the Ramapos were a haven for Tory refugees,
Dutch adventurers and villains of all kinds, including the infamous Tory
guerilla Cladius Smith, Cowboy of the Ramapos. and his followers and
admirers.
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