Wappinger

Wappinger

Wappinger territory (in center, "Wappinges"), from a 1685 reprint of a 1656 map
Total population
Extinct as a tribe,[1] descendants joined the Stockbridge-Munsee[2]
Regions with significant populations
United States (New York)
Languages
Eastern Algonquian languages, probably Munsee[1]
Religion
traditional tribal religion
Related ethnic groups
Other Algonquian peoples

The Wappinger (/ˈwɒpɪndʒər/ WOP-in-jər)^[3] were an Eastern Algonquian Munsee-speaking Native American people from what is now southern New York and western Connecticut.

At the time of first contact in the 17th century they were primarily based in what is now Dutchess County, New York, but their territory included the east bank of the Hudson in what became both Putnam and Westchester counties south to the western Bronx^[4] and northern Manhattan Island.^[5][6] To the east they reached to the Connecticut River Valley,^[1] and to the north the Roeliff Jansen Kill in southernmost Columbia County, New York, marked the end of their territory.^[7]

Their nearest allies were the Mohican to the north, the Montaukett to the southeast on Long Island, and the remaining New England tribes to the east. Like the Lenape, the Wappinger were highly decentralized as a people. They formed numerous loosely associated bands that had established geographic territories.^[8]

The Wequaesgeek, a Wappinger people living along the lower Hudson River near today's New York City, were among the first to be recorded encountering European adventurers and traders when Henry Hudson's Half Moon appeared in 1609.^[9]

Long after their original settlements had been decimated by wars with the colonists, wars with other Indian tribes, questionable land sales, waves of diseases brought by the Europeans, and absorption into other tribes, their last sachem and a group of their heavily dwindled people were residing at the "prayer town" sanctuary of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. A stalwart spokesman for Native American concerns and valiant soldier, Daniel Nimham had traveled to Great Britain in the 1760s to argue for a return of tribal lands, and served in both the French and Indian Wars (on behalf of the English) and American Revolution (in support of the Colonists). He died with his son Abraham in a slaughter of the Stockbridge Militia at the Battle of Kingsbridge in 1778.^[10]

Following the war,^[11] what was left of a combined Mohican and Wappinger community in Stockbridge, Massachusetts left for Oneida County in western New York to join the Oneida people there. There they were joined by the remnants of the Munsee, forming the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe.

From that time, the Wappinger ceased to have an independent name in history, and their people intermarried with others. Their descendants were subsequently relocated to a Stockbridge-Munsee reservation in Shawano County, Wisconsin. The tribe operates a casino there, and in 2010 was awarded two tiny parcels suitable for casinos in New York State in return for dropping larger land claims there.^[12]

The totem (or emblem) of the Wappinger was the "enchanted wolf," with the right paw raised defiantly. By one account, they shared this totem with the Mohicans.^[13]