Timeline of Early Local History with Resource Links
Here is a 2 page outline of Native American History in our area from the Smithsonian:
https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/manhattan/pdf/manhattan-rr-timeline.pdf
Here is a link to a map of Lenape lands from The Lenape Center: https://thelenapecenter.com/lenapehoking/
The comprehensive outline of the Munsee Indians before and after contact with Europeans was created by Robert Grumet and published in his book The Munsee Indians: A History, [published in 2009].
Links have been provided next to some events if we thought the reader might not know the context.
11,500 years ago
The earliest scientifically verifiable physical evidence of the first people arriving in northeastern North America, called Paleo-Indians by archaeologists, coincides with the end of the last glacial epoch.
10,000 years ago
People belonging to what archaeologists call archaic cultural traditions begin hunting small game like deer and start gathering plants more intensively as moderating conditions cause forest to replace park tundra in the Northeast.
3,000 - 4,000 years ago
People in the Northeast increasingly adopt technological innovations, like pottery developed further south and west, as modern climatic conditions emerge.
1,000 years ago
Bows and arrows; ceramic pots and pipes; longhouses; science of corn, bean, and squash cultivation; and other tools and technologies resembling those used by historically chronicled Munsee people appear in archaeological sites about the time the medieval warm period moderates climate throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
500 years ago
Europeans begin sailing to Northeastern North American shores.
1524
Giovanni de Verrazzano, an Italian sailing in French service, writes the earliest known visitors account mentioning Indians in New York Harbor.
1607
Total Indian population in Munsee country may have been as large as 15,000 people.
The English establish their first permanent North American colony at Jamestown, Virginia.
1609
Holland and Spain agree to what becomes known as the Twelve Year Truce.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Twelve-Years-Truce
Dutch Merchants commission and Englishmen named Henry Hudson to sail east to find a northern passage to the Orient. He sails across the Atlantic to find a Northwest Passage instead and becomes the first European known to sail up the river that today bears his name.
Accompanying a Canadian Algonquin raiding party, Samuel de Champlain gets into a fight with Iroquois on the lake that bears his name.
The first Anglo Powhatan War breaks out in Virginia. Fighting ends in 1613.
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/first-anglo-powhatan-war-1609-1614/
1614
Dutch trading vessels sailing for the newly established New Netherland Company are given the right to cruise, chart, and trade along the Northeast Coast shores for a three-year period.
The Dutch built Fort Nassau on the banks of the Hudson River in present-day Albany, New York.
1616
An epidemic that may have been a pneumonic plague breaks out among Indians in New England. Sickness does not end until 1619.
1618
The Thirty Years War begins in Europe.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Thirty-Years-War
1620
English settlers establish their first colony of Massachusetts Bay at Plymouth.
1621
The Twelve-Year Truce between Holland and Spain ends.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Twelve-Years-Truce
The Dutch States General charters the Dutch West India Company to establish and maintain outposts in New Netherland, West Africa, Brazil, and the Caribbean to attack Spanish shipping, trade with local people, and, if feasible, establish mines and plantations.
1622
The second Anglo-Powhatan War breaks out in Virginia.
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/anglo-powhatan-war-second-1622-1632/
1624
The Dutch built Fort Orange near the site of the abandoned Fort Nassau.
The first Mohawk-Mahican war breaks out. Fighting ends in 1628.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265882559_From_the_Mohawk--Mahican_War_to_the_Beaver_Wars_Questioning_the_Pattern This is an abstract of a scholarly article about recent changes in thinking about this war.
Johannes de Laet publishes the first edition of Nieuwe Wereldt presenting the first detailed descriptions of Indians in New Netherland.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdclccn.11022409/?st=gallery
1626
The Dutch report purchase of Manhattan from the Indians for 60 guilders worth of goods. They build Fort Amsterdam at the island's southern tip. The village of New Amsterdam soon grows up next to the fort.
1630
The Dutch West India Company authorizes the patroon system, giving wealthy corporate investors the right to administer self-governing manors directly purchased from the Indians.
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3966.html
Agents of patroon Michiel Pauw obtain the first deeds from Munsee sachems for land in their homeland. His patroonship, named Pavonia after himself, takes in Staten Island, the Bayonne Peninsula, and Jersey City.
English Puritans, operating under a charter granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, establish their first colony at Boston.
1633
Smallpox ravages New England and spreads to Iroquoia by 1634.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12003378/
1634
Indian population in Munsee country declines to somewhere around 6,000 people.
English Catholics led by Lord Baltimore established the capital of the new Maryland colony at St Mary's City on the Potomac River.
1637
The Pequot War breaks out in Connecticut. English Massacre of non-combatants in the Pequot Fort at Mystic becomes a byword for terror in the region.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pequot-War
1638
Pequots surrender to the English. The English break the Pequot Nation apart and scatter most among colonial Indian allies. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pequot-War
The Consortium of Swedish and Dutch investors established the colony of New Sweden along the lower Delaware River. https://www.history.com/news/americas-forgotten-swedish-colony
1640
The first phase of Kieft’s War begins when the Dutch attack Raritan Indians on Staten Island. Confined to the New York Harbor area, fighting sputters out by 1641.
http://archaeology.cityofnewyork.us/collection/nyc-timeline/kiefts-war
1642
Civil War begins in England. Parliamentary forces defeat King Charles I and execute him in 1649. Fighting ends in 1651. https://www.britannica.com/event/English-Civil-Wars
1643
The second and most violent phase of Kieft’s War begins when the Dutch massacre Lower River Indians taking refuge among them. https://www.nycourts.gov/history/legal-history-new-york/luminaries-dutch/de-vries-david-pieterszen.html
Massapequa sachem Tackapausha and Hackensack leader Oratam first appear in Dutch records.
1644
Dutch settlers led by immigrant English veterans of the Pequot War attack Lower River Indian towns and massacre their inhabitants on the mainland and on Long Island.
The Third (& Final) Anglo-Powhatan War breaks out in Virginia. Fighting ends in 1646. http://www.virginiaplaces.org/nativeamerican/thirdanglopowhatan.html
1645
The Treaty of August 30 ends the worst of the fighting during Kieft’s War. https://iarchives.nysed.gov/xtf/view?docId=tei/A1809/NYSA_A1809-78_V04_p232-234.xml
Hostilities drag on in Raritan country until 1649.
Indian population in Munsee country dropped to 4000.
1647
Influenza is reported in New England. [https://www.nfid.org/infectious-diseases/influenza-flu/]
1648
The Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years War. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/treaty-westphalia
1649
South Bay sachem Mattano is first mentioned in Dutch records.
1650
The Treaty of Fort Hope, now called the Treaty of Hartford since Fort Hope was in present-day Hartford, Connecticut, establishes a boundary between New Netherland and New England.
https://connecticuthistory.org/reckoning-with-the-dutch-the-treaty-of-hartford-1650/
1652
The first Anglo-Dutch Naval war begins. https://www.britannica.com/event/Anglo-Dutch-Wars
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio/timeline-dutch-history/1652-1674-anglo-dutch-wars
The Treaty of Westminster re-establishes peace in 1654. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/modern-europe/treaties-and-alliances/treaty-westminster
Esopus sachem Harman Heckan, better known among the settlers as Ankerop, starts appearing in Dutch records.
1653
Matinecock sachem Suscaneman makes his documentary debut.
An interesting Prezi slideshow that highlights Suscaneman’s role in signing documents and colonial/Native American land issues: https://prezi.com/twabipp0l04-/suscaneman-and-the-mantinecock/
1655
The Peach War begins in New Netherland. Hostilities last until 1657.
[There are widely differing accounts and interpretations of this war; this link is one of them.]
A Dutch Expedition that launched from New Amsterdam seizes the colony of New Sweden on the Delaware River.
Adrian Van der Donck publishes the first edition of his Description of New Netherland.
https://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/history-and-heritage/dutch_americans/adriaen-van-der-donck/.
1657
Having driven off settlers in 1640 and to 1655, Indian sell Staten Island for a second time.
1658
Malaria is reported on the Delaware River.
https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/malaria/index.html
1659
Fighting breaks out between Indians and settlers at Esopus.
Today, this is called The Esopus Wars. This link includes its own very detailed outline.
1661
Smallpox breaks out in New York.
1662
The second Mohawk-Mahican war begins. Fighting drags on until 1675.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265882559_From_the_Mohawk--Mahican_War_to_the_Beaver_Wars_Questioning_the_Pattern This is an abstract of a scholarly article about recent changes in thinking about this war.
1663
Esopus warriors destroy Nieuwdorp (Hurley, New York) and devastate Dutch settlements in and around Wiltijck (Kingston, New York).
Dutch soldiers aided by Long Island Indians burn two Esopus forts and scatter their occupants.
100 Indians from the Delaware River help the Susquehannocks defend their fort against a besieging Iroquois force.
Hackensack leader Pierwin, also known as Hans, is first mentioned in colonial records.
1664
Numbers of Indian people living in Munsee country are reduced to less than 3000 as the colonial population in New Netherland reaches 9000.
The Dutch sign a treaty ending their war with the Esopus. https://you.stonybrook.edu/undergraduatehistoryjournal/2020/11/26/history-of-the-esopus-wars-part-i-1659-1660/
New Netherland Falls to an English Fleet and is renamed New York.
https://www.history.com/news/the-dutch-surrender-new-netherland-350-years-ago
New Jersey is established by the English crown while the British Invasion fleet is en route to Manhattan.
New York Governor Richard Nicholls grants patents encompassing 750,000 acres west of the Hudson River at Elizabethtown and Navesink before news of New Jersey's establishment arrives. These remain trouble spots for the remainder of the colonial era. http://www.archives.nysed.gov/research/res_tips_011_land_patents.shtml
Smallpox continues to ravage the region.
1665
Nicholls and his agents signed treaties establishing enduring alliances with the Esopus and Mohawk Nations.
The Second Anglo-Dutch Naval War begins. https://www.britannica.com/event/Anglo-Dutch-War
1666
French troops destroy Mohawk towns. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/248?revision_id=159
Mamanuchqua, an Esopus woman who later rises to the rank of sachem, and the key Lower River Indian culture broker called Claes the Indian make their first appearances in colonial records.
1667
The Treaty of Breda ends the Second Anglo-Dutch Naval War. The English keep New York. https://www.britannica.com/event/Anglo-Dutch-War
Pequannock, Connecticut, sachem Taphow, later referred to in several deeds as “the commander and chief of all Indians living in northern New Jersey,” is first mentioned.
1669
Mohawks defeat and destroy a large invading force of Mahican and Northern Indians led by Josia Chickataubut.
1670
Indian sell Staten Island for the third and last time.
1672
The Third Anglo-Dutch Naval War begins. https://www.britannica.com/event/Anglo-Dutch-Wars
New York is recaptured by a Dutch Fleet.
The Rebellion of 1672 breaks out in New Jersey.
1674
The second Treaty of Westminster ends the Third Anglo-Dutch Naval War. New York is returned to English rule for the second and final time. https://www.britannica.com/event/Anglo-Dutch-Wars
1675
King Philip's War begins in New England. https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/king-philips-war
Bacon's Rebellion breaks out in Virginia and Maryland. https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/bacons-rebellion.htm
Susquehannocks are forced to abandon their homeland. https://lenapeprograms.info/teacher-parent-resources/susquehannocks/
Fighting drags on in these locales for several years.
Weequehela, later known as the King of New Jersey, is first mentioned in English records. https://books.google.com/books?id=LJuJBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=Weequehela&source=bl&ots=YlwdDpanER&sig=ACfU3U0zUQWiycVwrUWbOmsjUYvYfdzb7g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjEnfqglbr2AhVilIkEHcMIDX4Q6AF6BAgPEAM#v=onepage&q=Weequehela&f=false
1676
The Quintipartite deed estables the separate colonies of East and West Jersey. [link to the document: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/nj06.asp]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintipartite_Deed
The New York Government erects a sanctuary north of Albany at Schaghticoke, New York, for Indian refugees from New England and establishes another above the Falls of the Delaware River for Susquehannocks.
Influenza ravages Seneca country. https://www.nfid.org/infectious-diseases/influenza-flu/
1677
Treaties at Albany established the covenant chain Alliance linking the five nations and the upper and lower River Indians with English provincial government from New England to Maryland and Virginia. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/covenant-chain
1679
Smallpox ravages the region until 1680.
1681
Pennsylvania is established.
1684
Rene-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, encounters a large party of Eastern Algonquians from Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia, including a number of Munsees, near the mouth of the St. Joseph River in Michigan. He refers to these people collectively as Loups. https://www.historymuseum.ca/virtual-museum-of-new-france/the-explorers/rene-robert-cavelier-de-la-salle-1670-1687/
1684
Malaria devastates communities throughout the Northeast until 1685. Mamanuchqua, Pierwim, and many other lower Indian leaders disappear from European records within 2 years.
Total Indian population along the lower Hudson and upper Delaware Rivers drops to approximately 2,800.
1685
Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which protected rights of Huguenots in France. Many of the thousands who flee to England and the Netherlands soon move to New York and the Jerseys to join co-religionists from Belgium who had migrated earlier. https://www.britannica.com/event/Edict-of-Nantes
1686
Separate New England colonies are joined into one Dominion administered by a single Royal Governor. New York and the Jerseys are annexed to the Dominion of New England in 1688. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/dominion-new-england
1688
Revolutionaries oust King James II and crown Dutch stadtholder Prince William of Orange and his wife/cousin, Mary (the daughter of King James II) as King William III and Queen Mary II of England. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/william-and-mary-proclaimed-joint-sovereigns-of-britain
1689
Colonists arrest or drive out Dominion officials and re-establish their separate provinces.
Jacob Leisler seizes control of government to New York and the Jerseys in the name of King William without Royal Authority.
King William's war against France begins.
Iroquois Warriors destroy Lachine just outside Montreal.
1690
Soldiers and warriors returning from an abortive Expedition against Canada inadvertently spread smallpox through Munsee country.
Susquehannocks regather in the Susquehanna Valley at Conestoga town under joint Pennsylvania and Five Nations supervision.
French raiders burn Schenectady.
1691
Smallpox continues to ravage the region.
Refusing to surrender authority promptly to the representative of the newly-appointed royal governor, Leisler is arrested and executed for treason.
1693
French troops destroy the Mohawk towns.
1694
Shawnees abandon their alliance with the French further west and move to the Delaware Water Gap.
1696
French troops destroy the Onondaga and Oneida towns.
1697
The Treaty of Ryswick ends Kings William’s War.
1699
Tackapousha makes his final documentary appearance.
1701
Indian population in Munsee country reaches a low point of a little more than 1,000; nearly 50,000 Europeans and almost 4,000 enslaved Africans live between the Delaware and Hudson River valleys.
The Great Peace of Montreal ends wars between the Five Nations and the French and their Indian allies.
The Five Nations place lands claimed farther west under English protection.
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (later called the New England Company) is founded in London to promote Anglicanism and convert Indians and enslaved Africans in the Americas.
1702
Queen Anne's War begins.
Yellow fever kills 570 colonists in New York.
Smallpox sweeps across the region until 1703.
1707
Delaware Valley sachem Nutimus is first mentioned in the records.
Plans for a land-sea invasion of Canada miscarry when a promised English fleet fails to arrive.
1710
The Four Indian Kings (3 Mohawks and an Upper River Indian sachem) visit England to drum up support for another attack on Canada.
1711
The second invasion attempt on Canada is aborted when a substantial part of the English fleet sent to reduce Quebec is lost in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
The Tuscarora War breaks out in North Carolina.
Yemasees, Cherokees, and Catawbas help the Carolinians defeat the Tuscaroras.
1712
Tuscarora refugees begin to seek asylum among Unami- and Munsee - Delaware people in Pennsylvania and New York.
A slave revolt in New York City is savagely repressed.
An unsuccessful Mesquakie and Mascouten Siege of Detroit sparks the beginning of the Fox Wars. Fighting drags on until 1733, scattering and nearly destroying the Mesquakie Nation.
1713
The Treaty of Utrecht and Queen Anne's War.
1714
Munsee country Indians sell the last of their major land holdings east of the Delaware River.
The Five Nations formally invite the Tuscaroras to settle under their protection in the Susquehanna Valley.
1715
River Indian Warriors join Tuscarora in the Iroquois war parties traveling south to attack Yamasees at war with North Carolina.
1716
Iroquois diplomats tell Covenant Chain allies in Albany that henceforth gifts to their confederacy should be divided into six parts so that they might be properly shared by the Tuscaroras. Shortly thereafter, colonists began to refer to the Confederacy as the Six Nations.
Smallpox rages until 1717.
1720
The population of Indians from Munsee country, mostly spread out between the Housatonic and Susquehanna valleys, hovers around the 1000 mark; 92,300 Europeans and nearly 11,000 enslaved Africans live in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and to New York.
1722
War between the Abenakis and settlers began in New England. Fighting Ends by 1726.
Expatriate River Indians are living among other Indian refugees at Ochquaga, Tioga, and other towns along the upper parts of the West and North branches of the Susquehanna River.
1727 ****enslaved people revolt*****
The name Munsee first appears in colonial records in a reference to Indians living along the upper branches of the Susquehanna River.
Weequehela is hanged for killing a settler in New Jersey. Shortly thereafter, most of his people move to the Lehigh Valley at the Forks of Delaware.
1728
The Shawnees move away from Minisink country.
Weequehela’s cousin Manawkychickon tries to spark a general war against the English.
1731
Intermittent outbreaks smallpox strike the region at five-year intervals throughout the remaining decades of the colonial era.
1734
The Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, known as the Scotch Society (founded in 1709), starts its first mission among Mahicans and Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
1735
Pennsylvania Governor Thomas Penn approaches Indians at the forks of Delaware with an unregistered deed dated 1686 to all land within a day and a half's walk of the village of Wrightstown.
1736
The Six Nations sell the land between the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers below the Kittatiny Ridge belonging to Munsee- and Unami-speaking Delawares.
1737
Indians from Minisink and the mid Delaware Valley sign the confirmatory Walking Purchase Deed. Runners sprinting along the road made for the purpose stake the province's claim to the bulk of remaining Munsee lands west of the Delaware River.
1739
Moravians arrive at the Forks of Delaware. They begin building their central community on the banks of the Lehigh River at a place they christian Bethlehem one year later.
1740
Most Munsees and Unamis live farther north, east, or west of the 204,000 Europeans and 16,500 enslaved Africans residing in their former homeland.
Moravians start their missions at Shekomeko and Pine Plains in present-day Columbia County, New York, and at Pachgatgoch in Kent, Connecticut.
1742
At a treaty meeting in Philadelphia, the Six Nations order the Munsees to leave lands within Walking Purchase bounds and move to the Susquehanna Valley.
1743
Scotch Society missionary David Brainerd starts working at the mixed Munsee-Mahican community of Kaunaumeek in the Berkshire foothills of New York.
1744
King George's War begins.
Brainerd begins his mission among the Munsees at the Forks after urging his Kaunaumeek converts to relocate to Stockbridge.
1745
French and Indian raiders burn Saratoga.
Minisink and Esopus Indians living among settlers on the Hudson River, fearing attacks from colonial neighbors, move to their winter hunting camps in the upper Delaware Valley.
Brainerd's followers at the Forks begin moving back to New Jersey. They complete the move the following year.
1746
Dutchess County officials drive the Moravians from Shekomeko and Pine Plains.
1747
Malaria breaks out in New York.
1748
The Treaty of Aix-la- Chappelle and King George's War.
1754
Six Nations sachems sign over nearly all Indian lands in Pennsylvania at private meetings with Pennsylvania and Connecticut colonist sheld during the Albany Congress. George Washington's attack on a French patrol outside present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, starts the French and Indian War, whose European phase is known as the Seven Years’ War.
Abenaki Indians convince the few Indians still living at Schaghticoke to move to Canada.
1755
Substantial numbers of Munsee warriors join other dispossessed former English allies attacking colonial settlements along the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York Frontier after a French and Indian Force destroys General Edward Braddock Army at the Battle of the Monongahela.
An Indian force destroys Gnadenhuetten, killing its missionaries and carrying off many of the community's Indian converts.
Another Army led by William Johnson stop the French forces at the Battle of Lake George.
A planned British campaign meant to take Fort Niagara miscarries.
1756
Pennsylvania formally declares war on the Delawares and Shaunees.
Pennsylvania militiaman burn the Delaware town of Kittanning on the Allegheny River.
Colonists kill Munsee families living in the settlements at Peapack, New Jersey, and Walden, New York.
1758
Most Munsees join other Delawares signing peace treaties with the English.
Munsees and Wappingers give up all but their hunting and fishing rights in northern New Jersey in the treaty signed at Easton, Pennsylvania.
Unamis and Munsees exchange remaining land claims in New Jersey south of the Raritan River and Delaware Water Gap for a reservation at Edgepillock (Indian Mills, New Jersey).
Most Munsees signing these treaties live in exile with the majority of their countryfolk; a couple of hundred Munsees continue to hang on to small reservations and isolated, otherwise untenanted trapped scattered at various places in their homeland in the midst of a colonial population in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania totaling 428,000 people, a figure that includes 29,000 mostly enslaved Africans.
1759
Yellow fever devastates the region.
1762
The Treaty of Paris ends the Seven Years War.
1765
Pontiac's War begins.
A column led by Andrew Montour destroys the Chemung Valley Munsee towns. Major fighting ends in 1766.
1775
The War of Independence begins.
1783
The Treaty of Paris ends the War of Independence.
1801
Munsees and Unamis at Edgepillock agree to sell their Brotherton reservation in the Pinelands and move north among the Oneidas.