Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquin People of New York by Evan T. Pritchard

I think that if the Munsee and the other nations of New York are all honored once again and given their proper place in U.S. history, it will be a good sign that, in the words of the old Munsee blessing, "The sun will shine on our wigwams, and our moccasins will not get wet." We will then begin the great healing of all our people that must take place--the red, white, yellow, and black nations coming together as four parts of the hoop of life. Only then can the earth be healed. As the Cree say, "Animals don't have problems, we do!" It's our healing that will ensure a more bountiful earth and a better place for children to grow up. And that's something we can all do for each other.

At one point in Mi'kmaq author Evan T. Pritchard's Native New Yorkers, he tells the reader that the Algonquin people who call New York their homeland trust in visions, in which respected family members or guides often appear. He then tells us about one such vision of his own, walking around Manhattan. It's a clear sign that, while scrupulously and doggedly researched, Native New York is not quite like other books you might have read about Indigenous history. It is, among other things, a book that takes seriously the power of life as it was lived among the Munsee Lenape, and takes seriously the idea that it might provide a kind of schema for us to live by in the future. A good antidote, actually, to the stale land acknowledgements who present Indigenous presence as something long gone and never to return.

Mostly, Native New Yorkers is what its title promises: a compendium of Indigenous history and geography in New York State. Pritchard takes us through a tour of nearly all of New York State, from the city to the Hudson Valley to the Capital Region to Long Island--western New York is conspicuously left out--describing the names and locations of tribes, villages, and pathways. I was interested to learn that Manahatta, the island we now know as Manhattan, was not really a densely populated place, thanks to its rockiness, but instead often served as a kind of meeting place for the various tribes of the area. I was impressed by the level of detail here. A different book might have tried to pick and choose a few places to illustrate larger themes, and while that might have been (sorry to say) a slightly more readable book, there's something awe-inspiring, and informative, about seeing every single Lenape, Mohican, or Haudenosanuee village mapped out. It's impossible to read Native New Yorkers and come away thinking that Dutch colonists sailed into a "fresh, green breast" empty of people.

In between the geography, Pritchard fills in the gaps with chapters on history and culture. I really enjoyed his attempts to capture the shape of what life might have been like among the pre-colonial Lenape, and the section on "Lenape exodus" really cleared up for me a lingering question about how the Lenape got from New York to their reservations in Oklahoma and Wisconsin. (Much of the story, which I did not know, involved a gradual migration to Pennsylvania and then further into the Ohio River Valley, where they were absorbed by the Shawnee of the great rebel Tecumseh.) And although I wasn't always persuaded by the parallels that Pritchard tries to draw between history and the present--like when he insists that the chess tables of Washington Square Park are somehow a continuation of the "outdoor gaming contests" of the Lenape--they often made me laugh, and think a little more deeply about the fundamental humanity of those who once stood where I am standing.