People first began to live in the Hudson Highlands and other areas of New York 12,000 years ago!
In what's called the Clovis Culture period — around 10,500 BCE (before the common era) — Paleo-Indians lived in our area. Eugene Boesch details their history in Native Americans in Putnam County. Archeologists have discovered evidence that early Clovis people hunted mastodon in 9000 BCE in Hyde Park, New York, just north of Poughkeepsie, The closest surviving Paleo-Indian site near Putnam County is located at the Piping Rock site on the shoreline in Ossining.
In what's called the Clovis Culture period — around 10,500 BCE (before the common era) — Paleo-Indians lived in our area. Eugene Boesch details their history in Native Americans in Putnam County. Archeologists have discovered evidence that early Clovis people hunted mastodon in 9000 BCE in Hyde Park, New York, just north of Poughkeepsie, The closest surviving Paleo-Indian site near Putnam County is located at the Piping Rock site on the shoreline in Ossining.
THE LENAPEHOKING
The Native Americans we know most about are the Algonquin people, who knew themselves as Lenape or Lenni-Lenape. They began living in Manhattan in about 1,000 BCE (before the common era). Until the late 17th and early 18th centuries, their homeland was the drainage area of the Delaware River and all of its tributaries, along with the lower portion of the Hudson River. They called this place Lenapehoking (lu-nah-pay hoe-king), meaning “Lenape Country.” The Lenape spread in 200 miles in every direction, and came to live in the Hudson Highlands, in what is now Garrison. By the 16th century, the Lenape were an alliance of three political groups that lived in different parts of the Delaware Valley. The Munsee lived in the lower Hudson River area, where Garrison is located, and in western Long Island. The Unami lived in the Philadelphia region. The Unalactigo (Nanticoke) lived in southern New Jersey. Each group spoke closely related dialects of the Algonquian language.
The first known contact between New York Lenape and Europeans occurred on April 17, 1524, when explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano and his men arrived at what's now known as Staten Island. Unknowingly, Verrazzano and his crew brought diseases with them that the Lenape had never encountered -- and many Lenape died. The Lenape experienced at least 14 epidemics between 1633 and 1702, notes anthropologist and writer Robert Grumet. "Thus the Lenape people, who may have numbered 24,000 before the Europeans arrived, dwindled to probably fewer than 3,000 by the year 1700," Grumet writes
The first known contact between New York Lenape and Europeans occurred on April 17, 1524, when explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano and his men arrived at what's now known as Staten Island. Unknowingly, Verrazzano and his crew brought diseases with them that the Lenape had never encountered -- and many Lenape died. The Lenape experienced at least 14 epidemics between 1633 and 1702, notes anthropologist and writer Robert Grumet. "Thus the Lenape people, who may have numbered 24,000 before the Europeans arrived, dwindled to probably fewer than 3,000 by the year 1700," Grumet writes
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