Rockaway
With Rockaway one is Algonquian -speaking Native American tribe called the beginning of the 17th century in the southwestern part of Long Iceland in today's urban area of Queens in New York City lived.
Name and language
Rockaway is the English falsification of the proper name Reckowacky and means place of our own people . According to other sources, Reckowacky is called lonely place or place of bright water . It was a village name that, like many tribes in the region, was used for the entire tribe. The early English settlers were not very sure of their spelling, so there were a number of other spellings for this tribal name: Rechouwhacky, Reckonhacky, Rechkewick; Rechqua Akie, Rechkawyck, Reckowacky, Reckomacki and Rechowacky.
The Rockaway spoke Munsee-Delaware . The Delaware or Lenni Lenape spoke dialects of two closely related Eastern Algonquian languages, namely Munsee and Unami . Munsee is distinctly different from the languages of its eastern neighbors, the Mahican and the idioms of southern New England and eastern Long Islands. However, among the Eastern Algonquian languages, many words and other linguistic features are shared with neighboring languages.
The Indians in western Long Island were politically, culturally and linguistically closely connected to the tribes around Manhattan . These included the Canar Sea in Brooklyn , the Rockaway, and probably the Massapequa and Matinecock north of the Massapequa. On Long Island, it is particularly difficult to distinguish between village names and larger local groups. A sharp linguistic and political divide between western and eastern Long Island Indians is clear, and archaeological sites seem to be clustering on opposite ends of the island, but the eastward flow of the population in the 17th century made it difficult to understand the ethnic boundaries of the indigenous people to be precisely determined. It is possible, for example, that the Massapequa and Matinecock weren't Munsee speakers at all, but rather belonged to the linguistic ancestors of the Unquachog. Although there were permanent residents of Staten Island , the Indians of the surrounding areas appeared to have usufructuary rights over the island. Some of the Nayack beyond the Narrows moved there in 1652 after selling their own land, and this may indicate a close relationship with the indigenous people of Staten Islands.
residential area
In the 17th century, the Rockaway inhabited an area that is known today as Richmond Hill and is located in the New York borough of Queens, as well as parts of Jamaica Bay and the rockaway peninsula in front of it . It is known from historical records that Henry Hudson discovered the peninsula, later called Rockaway, in his search for a shorter sea route to East Asia. He mistakenly believed that the Jamaica Bay behind it was the mouth of a large river coming from the north.
history
As is well known, Hudson did not find the shortened sea route to Asia, but he returned to Europe with a load of valuable furs. In the following year the next Dutch ship was sailing up the Hudson River, and a brisk fur trade with the indigenous people soon developed. The Rockaway had no furs to offer, but wampum , which was accepted as a means of payment in the fur trade. Wampum pearls were made by breaking open and grinding sea shells. The red area of the quahog mussel (Mercenaria mercenaria) provided the black pearls and the shell of the tubular sea snails (Busycon carica and Busycon canaliculatum) the white ones, which were only half the value. The indigenous people of Long Island were masters at making wampum. This was correspondingly valuable and soon aroused the desires of other tribes.
The contact with Europeans quickly brought about changes in the way of life of the Indians on Long Island. Most of the time they no longer spent gathering food, but instead changed their seasonal migrations and concentrated almost entirely on collecting and making the shell beads. The Dutch had introduced the fur trade with various Indian tribes on a large scale and Fort Orange near today's Albany was the trading center for the tribes in the central and northern state of New York. These were in direct competition with the indigenous people of the lower Hudson Valley and on Long Island, who, however, did not have the fur resources by far like their neighbors in the north. In the meantime, however, wampum had been recognized as an official means of payment and the Rockaway were back in business. When the men increasingly had to take care of the hunting and making of wampum, the women took over the procurement of food for the family.
Meanwhile, the Dutch began selling firearms and ammunition to the Mohawk and other Iroquois tribes. Around 1635, the Mohawk raided the Rockaway and their neighboring tribes, subjugated them, and demanded tribute payments in the form of wampum.
In the Wappinger War (1643-1645), the Rockaway fought together with about 20 other tribes from the region against the Dutch. Although little is known about it today, the Wappinger War was one of the bloodiest and cruelest wars of extermination against the Indians. In the spring of 1644 the sachems of the alliance came to Fort Amsterdam to conclude a peace treaty. Together with their allies, they had over 1,600 tribal members dead. The Long Island tribes alone lost 1,000 members and were therefore initially unwilling to lay down their arms. After mediation by the Mahican, they finally signed a peace treaty in Fort Orange in August 1644. The Wappinger and western Metoac became tributaries to the Mahican and made an enormous annual payment to the Mahican in the form of wampum.
The Mahican had no losses of their own and the Treaty of Fort Orange enabled them to control the wampum trade in western Long Islands. The tribes in western Long Island, for their part, were nearly decimated in this conflict. To heighten the humiliation, the Mahican did not collect the due tribute themselves, but instead sent the Wappinger to the Metoac as their collectors. The lack of payments resulted in raids by the Wappingers on Metoac villages and the Dutch did not intervene.
It was also the Mahican who sold part of the Rockaway land, including the peninsula, to the Dutch. By 1685 the English had taken New York over from the Dutch and the rest of the land was sold by Sachem Tackapoucha to an English colonist for £ 31.
The Rockaway shared the fate of their neighbors. In less than a hundred years they have been decimated by wars against the Dutch, English and various Indian tribes, by devastating European diseases and alcohol abuse. The remaining Rockaway mingled with the neighboring tribes and probably lost their identity as a tribe as early as the 18th century.
Individual evidence
- ↑ History, Place of waters bright ( Memento of the original dated November 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 15. Northeast - Chapter: Delaware, pp. 214f. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1978 ISBN 0-16004-575-4
- ↑ History, Place of waters bright ( Memento of the original dated November 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 15. Northeast - Chapter: Delaware, pp. 214f. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1978 ISBN 0-16004-575-4
- ^ Metoac History
- ↑ History, Place of waters bright ( Memento of the original dated November 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
