The Indian sale of Manhattan is one of the world's most
cherished legends. Few people know that the Indians who made the
fabled sale were Munsees whose ancestral homeland lay between the
lower Hudson and upper Delaware river valleys. The story of the
Munsee people has long lain unnoticed in broader histories of the
Delaware Nation.
Now, "The Munsee Indians" deftly interweaves a mass of
archaeological, anthropologi-cal, and archival source material to
resurrect the lost history of this forgotten people, from their
earliest contacts with Europeans to their final expulsion just
before the American Revolution. Anthropologist Robert S. Grumet
rescues from obscurity Mattano, Tackapousha, Mamanuchqua, and other
Munsee sachems whose influence on Dutch and British settlers helped
shape the course of early American history in the mid-Atlantic
heartland. He looks past the legendary sale of Manhattan to show
for the first time how Munsee leaders forestalled land-hungry
colonists by selling small tracts whose vaguely worded and bounded
titles kept courts busy--and settlers out--for more than 150
years.
Ravaged by disease, war, and alcohol, the Munsees finally
emigrated to reservations in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Ontario,
where most of their descendants still live today. Coinciding with
the four hundredth anniversary of Hudson's voyage to the river that
bears his name, this book shows how Indians and settlers struggled,
in land deals and other transactions, to reconcile cultural ideals
with political realities. The result is the most authoritative
treatment of the Munsee experience--one that restores this people
to their place in history.
"This book is published with the generous assistance of
Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund."
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