Leave It To Beaver

Leave Beaver
not to be confused with Little Beaver in regard to our recent Native American thread

The Lenape Indians

Lenape

The First Americans

First Americans

The Native Peoples Of Lower Manhattan

above image and information below are from Eric Ferrara at the the lower east side history project

Gentrification? The native peoples of Lower Manhattan
Native American peoples inhabited the New York City area for a thousand years before America was "discovered" by Christopher Columbus.
These people were the Lenape tribes of Algonquin lineage, who were considered to be the "grandfathers" of all the various Algonquin-speaking tribes. It was Lenape canoes that met Verrazano in NY Harbor during the very first recorded contact with Europeans in 1524.
The complicated Native American social structure is easier to identify and group by language-spoken rather than by "tribe," but for the sake of this article, I will lazily associate each group as "tribe" anyway. :)
The Native peoples of early Manhattan island hunted big game like Moose and deer, and harpooned bottlehead whales off the shores. They grew maize and trapped small game like beaver. Since nature was sacred to the Lenape, who believed animals held spiritual significance, not one bit of their game was wasted. Pelts, bones, and meat were used in every way possible. In fact the Dutch were impressed by the minimal footprint the Lenape left after living here for hundreds of years. Nothing was destroyed that was not necessary for survival or ritual.
According to Dutch accounts, "The environment was pristine. The air smelled unusually sweet and dry, and schools of playful dolphins escorted ships into the harbor. The air was so filled with birds that sometimes you could hardly hear a conversation."
Large settlements of Native Americans sprouted up at strategic locations along today's Hudson and East River banks. The streets we call the Bowery and 4th Avenue today were the exact route the natives used to travel North and South and Astor Place was a sacred meeting place called "Kintecoying" (meaning "Crossroads of Three Nations").
It was here at Astor Place, or Kintecoying (see map, right), that these three diverse sects of Lenape met around a tall oak tree, a sacred symbol to the people of the day, and told stories of ancient tradition and held spiritual ceremonies. This is where the tribes would share important news and information from around the territories, where tribal councils were set up to decide disagreements, and where valuable goods were traded.
The closest tribe to Kintecoying was the Renneiu-speaking Canarsie tribes, who predominantly settled on the east side of the Bowery, with two major Villages: Shempoes, which was located between modern day 10th to 14th Streets along 2nd Avenue; and Rechtanck, located on the coast around modern day Clinton and Montgomery streets.
To the West of the Bowery were the Unami-speaking Sapohannikan tribes. Their territory was approximately between today's W.14th Street and Canal streets, with their main village, Sapohannikan, established along the coast of the Hudson River approximately where Horatio and Greenwhich streets sit today. And North of today's Union Square were the Munsee speaking Lenape tribes.
The trail from Shempoes Village started about where St. Marks Church sits today and cut straight through 9th Street and St. Marks Place, then West into Astor Place.
The Sapohannikan trail originated around Horatio Street heading North to 13th Street before essentially following Greenwich Avenue all the way to Washington Square Park -- which the path cut straight through -- before heading East again to Astor Place.
The Lenape were not helpless people; Manhattan island was a thriving center of agriculture and commerce; The Canarsie had set up shipping routes to export local goods as early as 1300 AD, 300 years before the first Europeans settled New Amsterdam.
To put it in perspective, once the Dutch arrived for good in 1613, there were about 15,000 Lenape inhabiting the area. It took only a few short years before most of Manhattan island's natural resources were exhausted and the native people were wiped or forced out. By 1700, less than 200 Lenape remained.
I can only imagine the nerve of guys like Columbus, Verrazano, et al. Think about it. That is like you or I driving into a small town upstate, setting up a shop a main street, telling the locals they now live in "Joe town," then inviting all of our friends from the city to join us. (Oh, then we negotiate deals with neighboring towns to kill all of the locals so there is no opposition. Then we kill the people who helped us because we need to expand to accommodate more of our friends.)
Want to talk about gentrification?

The Last Of The Mohicans

Last Mohicans 1
a link to marvel's teacher's guide
The Mohicans were related to the Lenape Indians who inhabited Manhattan prior to the arrival of the Dutch. About the Mohicans

The Mahicans (also Mohicans) are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe, originally settling in the Hudson River Valley (around Albany, NY). After 1680, many moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. During the early 1820s and 1830s, most of the remaining descendants migrated westward to northeastern Wisconsin. The tribe's name for itself (autonym) was Muhhekunneuw, or "People of the River." Their current name is the name applied to the Wolf Clan division of the tribe, from the Mahican manhigan.
The Mahican were living in and around the Hudson Valley at the time of their first contact with Europeans in 1609, who were mostly Dutch. Over the next hundred years, tensions between the Mahican and the Iroquois Mohawk, as well as Dutch and English settlers, caused the Mahican to migrate eastward across the Hudson River into western Massachusetts and Connecticut. Many settled in the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where they became known as the Stockbridge Indians.
The Stockbridge Indians allowed Protestant Christian missionaries, including Jonathan Edwards, to live among them. In the 18th century, many converted to Christianity, while keeping certain traditions of their own. Although they fought on the side of the American colonists in both the French and Indian War (North American part of the Seven Years' War) and the American Revolution, citizens of the new United States forced them off their land and westward. First the Stockbridge settled in the 1780s at New Stockbridge, New York, on land allocated by the Oneida, of the Iroquois Confederacy.
In the 1820s and 1830s, most of the Stockbridge moved to Shawano County, Wisconsin, where they were promised land by the US government. In Wisconsin, they settled on reservations with the Munsee. Together, the two formed a band jointly known as Stockbridge-Munsee. Today the reservation is known as that of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians (Stockbridge-Munsee Community).
Moravian Church missionaries from Bethlehem in present-day Pennsylvania founded a mission at the Mahican village of Shekomeko in Dutchess County, New York. They wanted to bring the Native Americans to Christianity. Gradually they were successful in their efforts, converting the first Christian Indian congregation in the United States. They built a chapel for the people in 1743. They also diligently defended the Mahican against European settlers' exploitation, trying to protect them against land encroachment and abuses of liquor. Some who opposed their work accused them of being secret Catholic Jesuits (who had been outlawed from the colony in 1700) and of working with the Indians on the side of the French. The missionaries were summoned more than once before colonial government, but also had supporters. Finally the colonial government at Poughkeepsie expelled the missionaries from New York in the late 1740s. Settlers soon took over the Mahican land.
The now extinct Mahican language belonged to the Eastern Algonquian branch of the Algonquian language family. It was an Algonquian N-dialect, as were Massachusett and Wampanoag. In many ways, it was more similar to, and just as easily considered one, of the L-dialects, such as that of the Lenape.