Open the PDF: New York Before the Europeans

King of the Forest Manhattan Burning The American chestnut As in many of the was the largest tree forests of the northeast, in the forests that were the Lenape managed SHORAKAPOK Mannahatta’s most their environment on CAMP widespread ecosystem— Mannahatta by controlled MUSCOOTA CAMP MOUNT WASHINGTON some were likely 120 feet burning. Much of the tall and four feet wide. forest was burned HENRY HUDSON’S SHIP ATTACKED (There are few American regularly. The Harlem chestnuts left on the plain seems to have been LAST WOLF SHOT East Coast, the result of kept open by regular a blight first noticed at burning, probably for use the Bronx Zoo in 1904.) as a hunting ground. HARLEM SAVANNAH, MAINTAINED Fort George, currently Battery Park, A 1768 view from the West Village, looking An engraving of the Collect Pond and UNQUENCHABLE SPRING BY LENAPE FIRE in the early days of British control. Trinity south over the Sand Hills. (The palm tree was added Bayard’s Mount, circa 1798. Church is to the left. by an imaginative illustrator.) The city proper is in the distance. Deep Waters Contact Spring Is Here Hunter and Hunted The Collect Pond, as much as On September 12, 1609, Aaron Burr’s Manhattan Water In Mannahatta as everywhere 70 feet deep, was the largest Henry Hudson, a British Company commercialized in the northeastern forest, body of freshwater on the captain sailing for the Dutch this spring near the corner of wolves were the dominant island, and was a center of East India Company in Broadway and Spring Street. predators. Their population OAK-AND- CHESTNUT FOREST SAW KILL lower-Mannahatta culture for search of a passage to the On January 2, 1800, the body was decimated in the 1720s eons. The Lenape settlement east, anchored the Half of a woman named Juliana after a determined just to its southwest may have Moon off Manhattan. “It is as Elmore Sands was said to have hunt in the forests of Inwood. had three longhouses and six pleasant a land as one can been found in a well at - wigwams, housing possibly tread upon,” the log noted. the spring, after which there GREAT KILL wild / 100 people. The Dutch and The Lenape came out by were legends of ghosts. In English used it for fishing and canoe to meet the ship, 1974, a resident of a building drinking—fishing with nets and Hudson traded with them on the corner claimed project was banned in 1734. During for beans and oysters. that a mossy apparition rose BEAVER POND LENAPE PATH the Revolution, there were Later, possibly at Jeffrey’s from his water bed. rumors of a Loch Ness–type Hook, now the Manhattan monster that was said to terminus of the mannahatta have consumed a Hessian George Washington soldier. The tanning industry Bridge, the Lenape the nthropology / SUN-FISH POND that sprang up on its banks attacked Hudson’s ship. A MINETTA STREAM of terminally poisoned it by the boyer early-nineteenth century, and a canal was dug along the SAPOKANIKAN CAMP course of Lispenard’s Creek— ivision Island Tribes , D markley roughly, today’s Canal Street— The Lenape are more The vegetation of to drain it. The slum known commonly known as the on the Sand as Five Points was built on the istory Delaware. William Penn Hills may SAND HILLS H swampy, fetid infill—part of called them “the most merry have looked what gave the neighborhood Creatures that Live, Feast much like this courtesy atural its particular charm. ; and Dance almost perpetually; pitch-pine- N they never have much, nor and-scrub-oak SPRING STREET SPRING of want much: Wealth circulateth barren in Long amiaga LISPENARD MARSHES like the Blood, all parts Island. Crossing the Water useum LOWER EAST SIDE MARSHES partake.” At least three The Lenape crossed from M separate communities seem stephen Manhattan to the Bronx over to have inhabited Manhattan. Spuyten Duyvil Creek BAYARD’S MOUNT They grew corn, beans, merican at what was known as the Hill of a Town squash, and tobacco, and Wading Place, near 220th Mannahatta was known as the hunted the abundant wildlife, Street and Broadway. COLLECT POND “island of many hills,” some but agriculture probably , COURTESY OF 573 in all. The tallest was, provided only a secondary left and is, Mount Washington, part of their diet. Seafood was in Washington Heights. the staple. They fished for from Downtown’s tallest hill was shad in the spring, trapped Bayard’s Mount, just north of eel in the fall, and ate huge A Lenape . THIS SPREAD, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT, NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY; MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK; NEW YORK the Collect Pond. Another numbers of shellfish. ceremonial Crosstown East notable feature was the Sand Downtown’s Indians were mask (in the The Saw Kill had the Hills, a miniature dunelike known as the Manahate. collection of society BEAR SHOT, CIRCA 1630 biggest watershed of all range covered with scrub oak They had a settlement on the the American of Mannahatta’s streams and Swampy Terrain running from Tribeca into the Collect Pond as well as on Museum creeks, with its headwaters near Great Kill drained much of Village that separated the salt harbor islands. They may of Natural 85th Street and Columbus midtown, emptying into marshes of downtown have been connected to the History) Avenue. The island’s streams the Hudson at 42nd Street. from the heavy chestnut-and- Canarsee, of Brooklyn. Their from Lenape conservation tended to flow southeast, There may have been a oak forests of the West enemies were the Sankhikan, in Ontario, life PUBLIC LIBRARY; COURTESY OF ERIC W. SANDERSON; A following the glacier’s course. beaver pond in Times Square. PHOTOGRAPHS: PREVIOUS SPREAD, Village extending north. of central New Jersey. Canada. 50 new york | april 20, 2009 Map by Haisam Hussein month 0–00, 2009 | new york 51.

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