It Happened Here -- The People of the
"River that Flows Both Ways"

Main St., Catskill at the Marina

They called themselves the "People of the River that Flows Both Ways", or the Mohicannau*, and that river, of course, is the tidal estuary Hudson.** The Mohicans, or Mahikans as the Europeans called them had lived for centuries in the Hudson River watershed and the adjacent Housatonic River watershed, having separated from the Delaware Indian peoples, perhaps a millennium ago.

They lived in towns from present day Schaghticoke to the mouth of the Catskill Creek, settling in smaller numbers, as far west as the Schoharie Valley. On the eastern side of the Hudson were important settlements at Kinderhook and Schodack, and farther east and south to Taghkanic and Gallatin in present day Columbia County. In eastern Dutchess County they settled around what became Pine Plains and Amenia. In the Housatonic Valley there were settlements near Sharon Connecticut and Great Barrington and Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Rte. 23B, Leeds

In pre-contact days the Mohicans lived a balanced and successful life with their fields and forests adequately, if not abundantly providing all their sustenance and material wants. Their populations grew.

With the arrival of Europeans came stresses that would ultimately result in the Mohicans near- extinction, and, with the exception of a few families, their removal from New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Pine Plains-Silvernails Rd. Gallatin

                                                                       The first of these stresses were European diseases--Small Pox, Chicken pox, Measles, and Diptheria. These diseases devastated Native American populations, because they had no natural immunities built up against them. The Mohicans in closest contact with the Dutch and English--those living in the Hudson Valley were decimated. In 1690 the Mohican village at Schaghticoke  was nearly wiped out by small pox.

Rte 23B, Jefferson Heights, Catskill

The second of these stresses were Colonial wars and Indian-Colonial wars that disrupted hunting patterns, causing food shortages and took the lives of unknown numbers of Mohican men.  Even though the Mohican peoples often tried to maintain their neutrality, as in the Esopus Wars between their neighbors, the Esopus Indians from the Kingston area, and the Dutch, they risked becoming involved if they ventured afield to hunt. Too often they discovered colonial militias could be remarkably inept at distinguishing Indian friend from foe; and persistent fear of attacks on their villages discouraged hunting parties from venturing far from home. Villages were fortified with stockades, built around them,  which the Europeans  called  "castles".  Even if they were never attacked, building a stockade was a labor-intensive activity that took hunters from the task of providing for their village.

The fur trade, itself, became catastrophically disruptive for all the Indian peoples involved. Hunting which heretofore had provided sustenance and clothing was substantially replaced by hunting for the fur trade.  To be successful at this, native-American hunters needed European guns, shot and powder.

Montgomery Co.Rte 33, Hickory Hill Rd., Fonda

In the scramble to control the declining stocks of fur-bearing game, and gain direct access to Dutch traders, the Iroquois used the power of their confederacy and their early access to firearms to attempt to dominate/intimidate their native-American neighbors. Beginning in 1663 a coalition of eastern Indian tribes, provoked by the bullying of the Iroquois began hostilities against the eastern-most Iroquois, the Mohawks. A truce was negotiated in 1666 by the new English government at Albany, but by 1669 war had broken out again as Indians from Massachusetts, Connecticut joined the Mohicans forming an army of perhaps 300, and attacking the new village of Caughnawaga.  The besieged Mohawks sent runners to summon reinforcements from the towns of Canagora, Canajora and Tionnontogen; they repulsed an assault, then sallied forth to engage the Mohicans and their New England allies in a sharp but inconclusive fight.                                                                               

The Caughnawaga village site, excavated by archaeologists 1945-1956, had post mold locations marked with stakes.
The common areas, recently mowed, reveal the size and position of three of the longhouses.
The foliage in the foreground marks the location of a double palisade.

   Following the fight, the Mohicans and their allies, with their ammunition and supplies depleted, withdrew along an ancient east/west trail leading to New England. The Caughnawaga Mohawks, supported by reinforcements from the neighboring towns, raced ahead of the retiring invaders and set an ambush, along a natural breastwork, caused by a fault in the earth.  Details of the battle are sketchy but the coalition army was defeated and broken up. Thereafter Mohicans came under intense pressure from the victorious Mohawks, leading Mohicans  to abandon their villages on the western side of the Hudson, and sell their lands to Dutch or English speculators.

Schenectady Co. Rte 40, Glenville

The coalition army most 
likely retired along
this trail

Hoffman Hill Rd, Co. Rte 59, Glenville

Trade goods--clothing, iron implements
and weapons quickly replaced  materials  Native Americans formerly produced themselves. In years when food stocks
ran short, food too was traded for furs.
Credit was often extended to the Mohicans, and other native Americans, in part, because some traders were sympathetic to the Indians' increasingly precarious existence; in part because it made good business sense to obligate Indian hunter-customers to continue to hunt for their trader-creditors; and in part because many traders cynically knew the growing cycle of debt and dependence could eventually be settled for something Europeans prized even more than furs--land.

Into the mix of the fur trade was added another devastating element, alcohol. Native Americans appeared to have a genetic intolerance for alcohol. They craved it, and binge-drank it. Beer, rum, and among French traders, brandy, became important trade goods. Alcohol may have accounted for 1/3 the value of all items traded to native Americans.  Alcohol and alcoholism clouded judgement, robbed native Americans of the ability to engage in sustained purposeful activities. It upset the social order of families and contributed to the impoverishment of the Indian peoples.

Ultimately it was this impoverishment combined with the Europeans insatiable desire for land that led to the Mohican's near-demise.  In a thousand land deals, large and small, Mohicans traded away their lands for food and European goods, and were often swindled, as well. Indistinct and often unsurveyed boundaries left room for interpretation. Land speculators and the colonial courts were only too willing to interpret in the white purchasers favor.  Robert Livingston***, the first Patroon's dealings were among the most egregious. Livingston purchased a tract of land along the Hudson from the Wappinger Indians and later another tract from the Mohicans in the Taconic hills. He applied for title  for both purchases and was given title for both and everything in between --nearly 2/3ds of all of what would become Columbia County!

 Along with Livingston,
and Jan Bronk were  
Abram Staats who had 
an early trading post at the
mouth of Kinderhook 
Creek and "Baron"Thomas

Ross who speculated in

land south of

Livingston's.There were

many others.


                                                                                                 
   *or Muhheakannuck. Because the Mohicans had no written language their words were often written down as Europeans thought they heard them. The result was there are often multiple spellings, recorded centuries before standardized phonetic conventions. With the exception of scattered phrases, object and place names the Mohican's language has been lost, so it is unlikely these differences will ever be resolved.

**The Hudson not only flows both ways as the tides surge in and out of it, but in some locations, as the tide is turning, may flow both ways at once, with the slower currents continuing to flow north, after the tide in main channel has turned and has started to flow south!

***see my post of June 30, 2013 "The Tough Wiley Scotsman and his Diligent Vrouw"


 Next Week--  (Part II)   It Happened Here--The Mohicans and the Moravians

Marker of the Week-- The "Comet-finder" and his Patron.

Castle Rd., Geneva

Since the first decades of the 20th Century we have become used to thinking of science as a big enterprise, funded by governments, research institutes or major universities, taking place in large laboratories, research centers, or observatory complexes.  But for most of the history of science, scientific observations have been largely a private affair, conducted by individuals in classrooms, basements, workshops, garages and backyards.  So it was when William R. Brooks began to study and observe comets, setting up his own observatory at his home in Phelps, NY, in 1881. That year he built his own telescope and discovered his first comet. In the next five years he discovered three more comets in his back yard observatory.

The Smith Observatory with Brook's home, in front

In 1886  he came to the attention of William
Smith a successful nurseryman and founder of Standard
Optical Company. Smith also dabbled in astronomy and astrology and had his own backyard observatory, in Geneva, New York.  In 1886 he had built for  him a much grander observatory equipped with a 10" refractor telescope.  Hoping to entice Brooks to join him, he offered the Phelps astronomer a position as Director of the Observatory, and built a substantial Victorian house for him (!) in front of the observatory.  Brooks accepted and came to Geneva. Working there he discovered sixteen more comets, a lifetime total of twenty seven--one short of the record number of twenty eight, discovered by French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons (1761-1831).