Category: Native American

Media Monday: Land of the Lenape: A Violent Tale of Conquest and Betrayal

11/8/2021

Map of Lenape languages, Wikimedia Commons.

November is Native American Heritage Month, and although we've been interpreting Indigenous history through guest speakers Harv Hilowitz and Justin Wexler aboard Solaris this summer, we thought we would take this Media Monday to highlight some of the Lenape history in New York City and the Hudson Valley.

The Bowery Boys have been interpreting New York City history for the general public via podcast since 2007. In this episode, "Land of the Lenape: A Violent Tale of Conquest and Betrayal," they examine the history of the Lenape in New York City and environs.

The Hudson River Valley is part of Lenapehoking - or the Lenape homeland. As residents of the southern Hudson Valley and the New Jersey coastline, they were some of the first Indigenous people in the Northeast to make contact with Europeans, and therefore among the first to bear the brunt of disease, violence, and forced removal. In the Hudson Valley, Manhattan, Tappan, Ramapo, Neversink, Wappingers, and Esopus are all place names derived from Lenape tribal names or words.

Although some Lenape people still live in the Northeast, most were forcibly removed multiple times to several different locations, including Wisconsin, Ontario, and Oklahoma. You can learn more about the Lenape through the work of the Lenape Center, located in Manhattan.

Learn More:

If you missed this summer's video with historian Harv Hilowitz on Lenapehoking, you can check it out here.
"The True Native New Yorkers Can Never Truly Reclaim Their Homeland" Smithsonian Magazine
A Tour of Native New York from Barnard College
"How New York Was Named" the New Yorker
Visit the "Native New York" exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in New York City.

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Media Monday: Building a Birchbark Canoe

8/16/2021

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Indigenous Algonquin Canadian woman sewing birchbark onto canoe frame. Film still from "How Indians Build Canoes (1946)."

On Saturday we looked at a birchbark canoe in the Hudson River Maritime Museum's collection. So today we thought we'd share a couple of documentary films about traditional birchbark canoe building.

The first is called "How Indians Build Canoes" and was published in 1946 by the International Film Bureau. It was produced by Crawley Films in collaboration with the Canadian Geographic Society. Filmed in eastern Canada (possibly Ontario) this short film, together with another called "Trappers and Traders," was originally shown as a longer film known as "Portage" (1946), which described the Canadian fur trade. The film was digitized by the American Indian Film Gallery, a project of the University of Arizona.

The second film is an hour-long documentary about reconstructing a historic 1860s Ojibwe birchbark canoe and was produced by Lakeland PBS, a public television station in central Minnesota.

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Featured Artifact: Birchbark Canoe

8/14/2021

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Birchbark canoe on display in the East Gallery, Hudson River Maritime Museum Collection.

Today's Featured Artifact is this beautiful birchbark canoe. The museum was recently notified of a project to catalog birchbark canoes in museum collections across North America into one comprehensive online resource. Of course, knowing about this one, we had to add our canoe to the digital collection!

Like many objects that get donated to museums, we don't know much about its history, except that it was built by Indigenous Algonquian people in Canada, sometime in the 1930s. It was donated to the Hudson River Maritime Museum in 1998 and is currently on display in the museum's East Gallery - you just have to look up to see it!

Because it is currently being displayed on top of an exhibit case, we took these photos so you could see some of the beautiful interior details. Click on the images below to make them larger and click through the gallery.

This canoe is listed in the digital collection created by The Museum of Underwater Archaeology and Georgia Southern University’s spring 2021 American Indian History class, which includes over 30 museums, parks, and historical societies across North America that have traditionally built birch-bark canoes in their collections.

This digital storymap currently includes 54 bark canoes from Canada’s Northwest Territory to Savannah, Georgia. Each organization provided photos of their canoes and information about their origins, cultural affiliations, age, and physical characteristics. In addition, researchers visiting the storymap can download a spreadsheet containing the canoe data for analysis. The website also hosts videos on canoe construction and an interview with a traditional bark canoe builder.

Visit the Canoe Collection

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Media Monday: Finding Lenapehoking

6/21/2021

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Today's Media Monday video is one of our own! In this short documentary film, independent researcher Harv Hilowitz outlines the history of the Lenape people in the Hudson Valley, from pre-contact to the present. This video was recorded as part of the RiverWise Project.

If you want to learn more, Harv is leading a series of programs on Lenape history aboard our 100% solar-powered tour boat Solaris! Get tickets here.

To learn more about the Lenape in New York today, visit the Lenape Center.

If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!

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History Blog

Media Monday: Land of the Lenape: A Violent Tale of Conquest and Betrayal

Media Monday: Building a Birchbark Canoe

Featured Artifact: Birchbark Canoe

Media Monday: Finding Lenapehoking

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