Where does the border design on the mural come from?

It's based on a design known as "Kingston incised". According to Joseph Diamond of SUNY New Paltz, the motif was used in pottery around 1525-1650 on both sides of the Hudson River extending from today's Albany area to the New York City area, especially Westchester.

Is that really how they dressed and what their homes looked like?

"Animal skins and furs were used for clothing. Bearskin with its fur on was valued especially. The claws of the bear were made into necklaces or attached to armbands. Other jewelry was made from stones and shells. Both men and women wore jewelry."

"Mohican men and women let their hair grow long and then tied it back. Warriors might shave part of their heads. Sometimes they wore a headband with a feather in it. Leather moccasins protected their feet, and in the winter months, they wore leggings and wrapped themselves in fur blankets to keep warm."

The Mohican's homes, "called wik-wams, (wigwams), were circular and made of bent sapling covered with hides or bark. They also lived in long-houses which were often very large, sometimes as long as a hundred feet. The roofs were curved and covered with bark, except for smoke homes which allowed the smoke from fire pits to escape. Several families from the same clan might live in a longhouse, each family having its own section."

[Information about clothes from The Mohicans by Aileen Weintraub and Dhirley W. Dunn, 2008 Info on homes from the history documented on the website of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians]

What does "Konomansi" mean? What languages did the Indians here speak?

The word 'konomansi' generally means, "greetings". It literally means, "Are you well?" It can also be spelled as Konomanse, Kunamanse, and Quinamontha. An appropriate response would be, "Nonamansi", or "I'm feeling well." [It's found in the field notes of the linguist, Morris Swadesh, who visited the Wisconsin reservation in the 1930s, and also in the Moravian missionary Schmick's Mohican vocabulary at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. Lion Miles has a forthcoming Mohican dictionary, and was the source of this information.]

The last fluent speaker of Mohican died in 1933.

"Koolamalsi" is the equivalent of Konomansi in Munsee, the language of the Wappingers. There are less than five fluent speakers of Munsee alive today, living in Moraviantown in southern Ontario. There is a brief but moving news clip and article that shows these elders who still speak the language and of a younger person trying document as much as she can and learn it herself. I highly recommend it.

More than words: Can Canada's dying languages be saved?

Mohican did not have R or L sounds, and Munsee didn't have an N sound.

Munsee is a subgroup of Delaware (the other subgroup being Unami), which is itself a subgroup of Eastern Algonquian, which is a subgroup of Algonquian.

Mohican is also an Eastern Algonquian language and in some classifications Mohican is grouped with the Delaware languages of Munsee and Unami as "Delawaran", reflecting their similarities. But most classifications do not group them this way.

How do we know when the first people arrived in this area? Where did they come from?

50 miles south of us is the Dutchess Quarry Cave where points from spears were found near the remains of now extinct caribou and giant beavers. They carbon dated to 10,580 BCE. And about 15 miles south in Hyde Park there is evidence of mastodon hunting from around 9,000 BCE.

Roughly 50 miles south of Red Hook, near the Dutchess Quarry Cave, points from the end of spears were found near the remains of now extinct caribou and giant beavers that have been carbon dated to 10,580 BCE. There is evidence of mastodon hunting in what is today Hyde Park, roughly 15 miles south, from around 9,000 BCE.

There is archeological evidence of a human "presence" specifically in Red Hook going back to 5,000 BCE., and evidence of "seasonal camps" going back at least 4,000 years.

["5,000 BCE": Lindner, Christopher R, "Grouse Bluff: An Archaeological Introduction", The Hudson Valley Regional Review: A Journal of Regional Studies, March 1992 Volume 9, Number 1
"4,000 years": Carr, Clare O'Neill, Brief History of Red Hook, 2001, p.6]

How many years is 600 generations?

This is an approximate number. Roughly 12,000 years passed between the time the first humans arrived in this region and Henry Hudson's arrival. In the past, people had children on average at an earlier age than now. If we assume that people had children by the time they were 20, then 12,000 years is roughly 600 generations.

Where did the Wappingers and Mohicans live and where was the boundary between them?

Speaking in very general terms, the Mohican homeland included land on both sides of the Hudson as far west as the Schoharie River (north of Woodstock), as far east as the Berkshire Mountains from northwest Connecticut to southern Vermont, and went as far north as the southern tip of Lake Champlain.

The Wappinger homeland was the east side of the Hudson River, extending as far south as the Bronx and east to the crest of the Taconic Mountains on the border between New York and Connecticut.

The exact border between the Wappingers and Mohicans is unknown. Traditionally it's been thought that the Wappingers lived as far north as the Roeloff Jansen Kill, north of Red Hook. But there is a lot of evidence that the boundary was right where Red Hook is today, or even just south of Red Hook. I've written a 20-page paper summarizing the in-depth research I did into this question which can be downloaded here if you want to really delve into this question.

Otherwise, it's safe to say that the boundary is somewhere around Red Hook.

What do the names Mohican and Wappinger mean, and are there other spellings? Is Mohican the same as Mohegan?

Mohican means "People of the Waters that are Never Still". It is sometimes written as Mahican, and has historically been written in many different variations on the word Muhheconneok, which is more accurately how the Mohicans referred to themselves. They were also known as the "River Indians". They should not be confused with the Mohegan, a distinct tribe that in 1609 lived in southeastern Connecticut and were related to the Pequot.

It doesn't seem clear where the name Wappinger comes from or what it means. Most people seem to believe it's a form of the word "easterner", referring to the fact that they lived on the east side of the Hudson River. The Native Languages of the Americans website argues that, "Some people think this name might have come from the Algonquian word Waban, meaning "dawn" or "east," but according to historical records it actually comes from the word Wapinkw, which means "opossum people."" Another source suggests that it may have been a corruption of wapendragers, the Dutch word for "weapon-bearers". [Vasiliev, Ren (2004). From Abbotts to Zurich: New York State Placenames. Syracuse University Press. p. 233. ISBN 0815607989]

Were there other Europeans who arrived in North America before Henry Hudson?

In 1007, the Vikings established a village of about 60 people in present-day Newfoundland. That's about 1500 miles from here and it was abandoned within a few years.

Between 1492 and 1502 Christopher Columbus led four voyages that explored lands far south of here, including the Bahamas, Cuba, and Central America.

In 1497 John Cabot was the first European to reach North America since the Vikings. It's thought he also landed in Newfoundland.

In 1524 a French ship captained by Giovanni da Verrazano reached the Atlantic Coast of North America. Searching for a way to Asia, they traveled the coastline north past the Chesapeake Bay and landed on Staten Island where they had some interactions with the people living there. He then headed into Lower New York Bay, but in a stroke of good luck for the Mohicans and others on the mainland, a storm forced him away from land and he continued on, sailing past Nova Scotia and returning to Europe. This was good luck because his crew unwittingly infected the people of Staten Island with the small pox. Thousands died -- only about 500 survived.

Henry Hudson was the first to sail up the Hudson River and was the first European that the Wappingers or Mohicans ever saw. Two months earlier, French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who had founded the city of Quebec a year earlier, journeyed into what is now known as Lake Champlain.

Where did the Dutch settle and how many were they?

Four years after Hudson's arrival, in 1613, a small number of Dutch established a trading post at the tip of Manhattan. The next year more Dutch established a fort in present-day Albany. The population of European traders, and later settlers, continued to grow, though very slowly over the next forty years. There were less than 100 when the forts were established and there were still only 2,000 in 1655, though there were 9,000 in 1664, about half of them Dutch.

"Although the Netherlands only controlled the Hudson River Valley from 1609 until 1664, in that short time, Dutch entrepreneurs established New Netherland, a series of trading posts, towns, and forts up and down the Hudson River that laid the groundwork for towns that still exist today. Fort Orange, the northernmost of the Dutch outposts, is known today as Albany; New York City's original name was New Amsterdam, and the New Netherland's third major settlement, Wiltwyck, is known today as Kingston." [Excerpt from a National Park Service article on Dutch Colonization]

What does "Mohicanituk" mean?

Waters that are never still.

Who was Henry Hudson and what became of him?

There is a vast amount of information available on Hudson. This is a brief excerpt from Wikipedia. "Henry Hudson (d. ca. 1611) was an English sea explorer and navigator in the early 17th century. After several voyages on behalf of English merchants to explore a prospective Northeast Passage to India, Hudson explored the region around modern New York City while looking for a western route to the Orient under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company. He explored the Hudson River — the first European to see the river was Giovanni da Verrazano for the king of France Francis I in 1524 — and laid the foundation for Dutch colonization of the region."

"Hudson's final expedition ranged further north in search of the Northwest Passage, to the Orient, leading to his discovery of the Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay. After wintering in the James Bay, Hudson tried to press on with his voyage in the spring of 1611, but his crew mutinied and they cast him adrift. His ultimate fate is unknown."

How many Mohicans and Wappingers were there?

In the painting, the total Wappinger and Mohican population at the time of Hudson's arrival is given as 11,000. This is a reasonable estimate, but the truth is that we do not know for sure how many there were.

"Most Indian population figures for the 17th century are based upon rough estimates which must be balanced with other factors like archaeological findings, the availability of economic resources, and historical references to tribal activity. The problem has plagued observers from the beginning, and in many cases they are still far from agreement." [Trelease, Allen W., Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century, 1997, p.5]

Many estimates of the Mohican population are based on a statement by a Dutchman who bought the first land from the Mohicans. He stated that the Mohicans had been "in their time" 1600 strong. It's believed that he was referring to the number of warriors. Based on that, the question is how many women, children, and elders would there have been if there were 1600 warriors. Ted Brasser in the Handbook of North American Indians writes that this "implies a total population of 4,000 to 4,500." Shirley Dunn in The Mohicans and their Land think it makes sense to multiply by 5, meaning 8,000. Lion Miles wrote me that he likes Neal Salisbury's ratio of 7.5 to 1, which means a total of 12,000.

Over 200 years after Hudson's arrival, a Mohican chief asked, thought there were many more. He asked, "Where are the twenty-five thousand in number, and the four thousand warriors, who constituted the power of the Muh-he-con-ew Nation in 1604?"

The Wappinger population has been estimated at 3,000, though the person who established that number has been criticized that he "erred too often on the side of conservatism" and that he had a "lack of knowledge about the very existence of some communities." [Again, Trelease, p.5]

What exactly caused their massive decline?

The Europeans brought with them diseases that were unknown to the Indians, so the Indians had little or no resistance to them. There were repeated epidemics in the decades following the Europeans' arrival. It's clear that these epidemics played a massive role in the decline of Indians through the northeast, though it's not certain exactly what portion of the population died off from disease.

A Dutchman who lived in New York and Albany wrote, "The Indians also affirm that before the arrival of the Christians, and before the small pox broke out amongst them, they were ten times as numerous as they are now, and that their populations had been melted down by this disease, whereof nine-tenths of them had died." The Dutchman did not specify which Indians gave him this estimate, but he did spend time among the Mohicans. [Dunn, Shirley, The Mohicans and their Land, p. 259]

Violence took a major toll on the Indians as well. The Wappingers had repeated conflicts with the Dutch. In 1643 the Dutch massacred over 100 Wappingers which sparked a war. By the summer of 1645, more than 2,600 Wappingers and their allies had been killed. [First Nations website]

The Mohicans (who were generally allied with the Dutch) had on and off battles with the Mohawk to the north for decades after Hudson's arrival. Battles between these two tribes and with others became increasingly lethal as colonists of different nationalities supplied them with firearms.

"Underlying the real loss of population was a low reproduction rate among natives . . . Most of the family units presented in seventeenth century deeds identify three children or fewer. The Mohicans, as a result of dislocation, disease and war, were losing far more adults than they could replace with children. At the same time in the Hudson Valley, many European couples were successfully rearing large families ranging up to ten or more children." [Again Dunn, p.258]

Alcoholism also played a role. It ravaged the Indian communities and contributed to the fraying of the very fabric of their lives, exacerbating periods of hunger, violence, and despair.

What became of the Wappingers? What became of the Mohicans? Wasn't the book, Last of the Mohicans, about the death of the last Mohican?

By 1628 the Mohican population had dropped significantly due to smallpox and war with the Mohawks, and the Mohicans had abandoned all of their villages west of the Hudson River. Many eventually retreated to the village of Wnahktukuk, later named Stockbridge (Massachusetts) by the Europeans, where a Christian mission was established. The Indians who lived there came to be known as the Stockbridge Indians.

The Mohicans (increasingly blended with other tribes that fell in together to support each other) were one of the few tribes to support the American colonists in the Revolutionary War and many of them died during the war. Nonetheless, "when the surviving warriors returned home they discovered that plans had already been made to remove them from Stockbridge." [This quote and most of the information about what became of the Mohicans is from the Brief History of the Mohicans on the Stockbridge-Munsee website.]

They retreated to "New Stockbridge" near Oneida Lake in New York in the mid-1780s. By that time their population had fallen to about 600. "But land companies, desirous of making profits from the land, proposed that New York State remove all Indians from within its borders." They moved to Indiana to live with other Indians but found that they had already been coerced into selling that land. In 1822 they moved to Wisconsin where they were moved two more times, each time to less-desirable land. A group of Munsee joined them there and the group came to be known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Indians.

The land they held was reduced from 40,000 acres to 15,000 and most people lived in poverty. Lumber companies clear cut the trees, leaving the land with little of economic value. In the mid-1930s, families began to move into the abandoned lumber company buildings.

1/3 of the more than 1,500 recognized members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians today live on that same reservation west of Green Bay, though today it has a broad range of services such as health care, housing, education, and public safety, along with many businesses.

The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fennimore Cooper was indeed based on the Mohicans, but it confuses some aspects of the Mohican culture, such as names and aspects of their history, with those of the Mohegans who lived in today's Connecticut. It was also not exactly a model of sensitivity or awareness in light of the many Mohicans that were still alive when it was published in 1826 and that are still alive today.

As Lee Sultzman has written, when it comes to the Wappingers "there was no massive migration which would be easy to trace where they went."

According to Ives Goddard, they generally ended up in 4 different places. A good number of them fell in with the Mohicans. Some found their way to southern Ontario, where the only living speakers of Munsee are today. Others are recorded as having ended up with the Seneca in western NY and others somewhere in Kansas, but it must have been in smaller numbers because I haven't been able to find any further information about them.

Were the Mohicans and Wappingers really "forced" to leave the Hudson Valley?

They were not driven away at gunpoint by the military, the way some tribes were, most infamously the Cherokee with the Trail of Tears. However, the Mohicans and Wappingers experienced frequent violence and threats of violence from Europeans throughout the 1600s and 1700s. They lost almost all of their land through often questionable land "sales". These sales took place under circumstances where the Indians often didn't realize they were giving more than things like the right to hunt and pass over the land, where they were often under tremendous hardship and had little choice, and sometimes where they had already retreated from the land being sold as their numbers fell and Europeans kept moving in. They were sometimes intentionally tricked or the amount of land sold was greatly exaggerated.

The lack of stability due to the decline in population, violence, loss of land, and alcoholism, also contributed to the Indians going through periods of hunger as well that contributed to their need to move on to try to find a more secure place to live.

And violence continued to follow them. Many Mohicans and some from other tribes retreated to the Shekomeko near today's border with Connecticut where they lived with missionaries. In 1746, locals petitioned the governor to issue a warrant authorizing the killing of "Shekomeko Indians". The petition was denied, but word of it spread and all remaining residents, forty-four Mohicans in all, left Shekomeko to seek refuge elsewhere. In an even more dramatic example, some Stockbridge Mohicans were among those killed in the Gnadenhutten massacre in 1782 as they knelt in prayer.

All of this contributed to an overwhelming reality that they were not safe so long as they did not go along with the Europeans' repeated desires to move them off their land.

Chief Quinney of the Stockbridge-Munsee Tribe said the following in a Fourth of July speech he returned to New York to deliver in 1854.

"Let it not surprise you my friends, when I say, that the spot on which we stand has never been purchased or rightly obtained; and that by justice, human and divine, it is the property now of the remnant of that great people, from whom I am descended. They left it in the tortures of starvation and to improve their miserable existence; but as a cession was never made and their title has never been extinguished."

Where can I learn more about the Mohicans today?

You can learn a lot by reading (and subscribing to!) the twice-a-month newspaper, Mohican News, which is available online.

There is also a lot of info on the tribe's website, Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians.

Where can I learn more about these topics in general?

Check out the "Additional Resources" page.