Hackensack people

The Hackensack were the Native Americans who lived in northeastern New Jersey along the Hudson River and Hackensack Rivers at the time of European contact. The Hackensacks were phratry of the Lenni-Lenape. They were Unami, of the Turtle Clan, the Algonquian language they spoke of the same name. They occupied the territory called Ack-kinkas-hacky (other spellings include Achkinhenhcky, Achinigeu-hach, Ackingsah-sack), which has been variously translated as "place of stony ground" and "mouth of a river". The area roughly corresponds to the Upper New York Bay, Newark Bay, Bergen Neck, the Meadowlands, and the Palisades in Hudson and Bergen Counties. To the south their territory overlapped that of the Raritan on Staten Island/Raritan Bay, while to the north it overlapped that of the Tappan, also Unami, or "people down river".

In the 1600s they numbered about a thousand, of whom 300 were warriors, and their sachem (or high chief) was Oratam, who was born circa 1576.. It is likely that he was also sagamore of the Tappan, a distinct but intimately related group. A mostly sedentary people, the Hackensacks set up seasonal campsites and practiced companion planting, hunting, fishing, trapping, and shellfishing. The terrain was quite diverse with massive tidal flats, forested mountains, and level land that could be cultivated. Ackensack, their semi-permanent village, would be relocated every several years to allow the land to renew itself., mostly between Tantaqua (Overpeck Creek) and the middle reaches of the Hackensack River. Their council fire was located at Gamoenpa (Communipaw) (Liberty State Park)..

The society of the Unami was based on governance by consensus. (The word caucus comes from the Algonquian caucauasu meaning counselor.) A sagamore was obliged to follow decisions of the council or to abdicate. Those with the totem of the turtle were held in great esteem by Lenape groups, particularly as peacemakers, and Oratam brokered many land sales, and treaties between the native and colonizing peoples, including those that ended Kieft's War and the Esopus Wars.

Living close to New Amsterdam (at the tip of Manhattan), the Hackensack had early and frequent contact with the New Netherlanders, with whom they traded beaver, pelts, wampum, manufactured goods, including firearms, gunpowder and alcohol. They also "sold" the land for settlements at Pavonia (Communipaw, Harsimus, Hoboken, Weehawken, Constable Hook), Achter Col, Vriessendael. The area became collectively known as Bergen with the founding of a village at Bergen Square in 1661. In 1666, the Hackensack sold the land that would become the city of Newark to Robert Treat and in 1669, Oratam deeded a vast tract of land (2200 acres) to Sara Kiersted (a New Amsterdammer who had mastered the Lenape language) between Overpeck Creek and the Hackensack River.

The British take-over of New Netherland between 1663 and 1674 coincided with Oratam's death (who is said to have lived into his 90s). The government of the new formed province of East Jersey quickly surveyed, patented, or deeded lands throughout Hackensack, Tappan, and Raritan territory. In some cases, such as the Elizabethtown Tract, they were compensated for sale of the land. It appears by the lack of their mention in documents after that period that the Hackensack had removed themselves (as was sometimes required in land deeds and treaties), had integrated into European settler society, or became tributary to other Lenape groups (such as the Ramapo Mountain Indians and Munsee).

By the mid-1700s most Lenape, who had become known as the Delaware Indians has been dispersed to the west. They were signatories to the Treaty of Easton-an attempt by the British control lands they had gained in the French and Indian War, as well as an attempt by the Native Americans to restrict further European migration inland.