Siwanoy

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The Native American Siwanoy or Sinanoy were a band of Algonquian-speaking people, the Lenape, in what is now the New York City area. By the mid-17th century, when their territory became hotly contested between Dutch and English colonial interests, the Siwanoy were settled along the East River and Long Island Sound between Hell Gate and Norwalk, Connecticut, a territory that included eastern parts of what became the Bronx and Westchester County in New York and southwestern Fairfield County in Connecticut. They are best known for their massacre of Anne Hutchinson's settlement on Pelham Bay during Kieft's War in 1643.

[edit] History

On August 20, 1643, a group of Siwanoy led by the sachem Wampage massacred Anne Hutchinson's dissident settlement at Split Rock in revenge for New Netherland governor Willem Kieft's February massacres of Lenape refugees from Wecquaesgeek at Corlaer's Hook and Pavonia. Hutchinson was not at fault, yet, like thousands of Indians and a number of other colonists, she was caught up in the bloody reprisals which characterized the two year conflict. The Siwanoy attack killed Hutchinson, six of her children, and nine others.^[1]

On June 27, 1654, Thomas Pell, a Connecticut physician, obtained title, in Connecticut, to a large amount of Siwanoy territory through a treaty with a number of sachems, including Wampage. This included the Pelham Islands and parts of the mainland Bronx and coastal Westchester. New Netherland authorities did not recognize this title, of course, accusing the New Englanders of continued encroachment upon Dutch territory. Pell's coup turned out to be decisive in New York history, as the 1664 English naval invasion force that conquered New Amsterdam was supported by a militia of Pell's colonists from Minneford Island.