Ramapough Mountain Indians

The Ramapough Mountain Indians, also known as Ramapo Mountain Indians or the Ramapough Lenape Nation, are a group of approximately 5,000^[1] people living around the Ramapo Mountains of northern New Jersey and southern New York. Their tribal office is located on Stag Hill Road on Houvenkopf Mountain in Mahwah, New Jersey. Since January 2007, the Chief of the Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation has been Dwaine Perry.^[2]

The Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation are described as the descendants of the Lenape – including the Hackensack, Tappan, Rumachenanck/Haverstroo, and Munsee/Minisink people – with varying degrees of Tuscarora, African, Dutch, and other European ancestry.^[3] The Ramapough have common ancestry with the Stockbridge-Munsee and the Brothertown Indians of Wisconsin.^[4] The Ramapough ancestral language was Munsee, but, following contact with European colonists, the community was also known to have spoken English and Jersey Dutch in the past. Today they speak English.^[5][6] The Ramapough are engaged in an effort to revitalize the Munsee language among their members. The Ramapough Lenape Nation, the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation, and the Powhatan Renape Nation have a longstanding history of working together to care for its members in the State of New Jersey. As of May 2011, The three Tribes formed the United State Recognized Tribes of New Jersey.^[7]

Recognition

The Ramapough have been identified by the state of New Jersey by Resolution 3031 as an Indian tribe since 1980. They were also recognized by the State of New York by Resolution 86 in 1979. "The Ramapough have been repeatedly and consistently identified as an Indian entity since 1900 by historians, anthropologists, various other scholars, journalists, and federal and state reports."^[8] In August 2006, Governor Jon Corzine formed the New Jersey Committee on Native American Community Affairs to investigate issues of civil rights, education, employment, fair housing, environmental protection, health care, infrastructure and equal opportunity confronting New Jersey's three indigenous Native American tribes and other New Jersey residents of Native American descent.^[9][10] The Committee's report was delivered on December 17, 2007 and cited "lingering discrimination, ignorance of state history and culture, and cynicism in the treatment of Indian people".^[11]

The New Jersey citation read: "Be it resolved by the General Assembly of the State of New Jersey (the Senate concurring): 1. That the Ramapough Mountain People of the Ramapough Mountains of Bergen and Passaic counties, descendants of the Iroquois and Algonquin nations, are hereby designated by the State of New Jersey as the Ramapough Indians."^[12][13] New York has a bill pending to recognize the Ramapough people as Native Americans.^[14]

Earlier exonym

Until the 1970s, the tribe was frequently referred to as the "Jackson Whites", which, according to legend (folklore or myth) was shorthand for "Jacks and Whites".^[15] Belief was that they were descendants of runaway and freed slaves ("Jacks" in slang) and whites (including Dutch settlers and Hessian soldiers) who had supported the British during the American Revolution. They fled to frontier areas of the mountains after the end of the war. There is no documented proof of slaves, freed or runaway, nor of Hessian soldiers' marrying into the tribe.^[15]

The group rejects this name and its associated legends as pejorative.^[15][16] On July 30, 1880, The Bergen Democrat was the first newspaper to print this term. As an article written in 1911 pointed out, this was a title of contempt. The Mountain People did not recognize this name; it was used only by neighbors.^[17] New Jersey historian David Cohen wrote that the old stories about these people were legends, not history. He stated, "It became increasingly obvious that, not only was the legend untrue, it was also the continuing vehicle for the erroneous and derogatory stereotype of the Mountain People,"^[18] an issue previously documented by Miles Merwin in 1963.^[19]

Historical perspective

A number of local historians and genealogists have written about the Ramapough people.

Below is a summary of findings:

• Noted scholar on New Jersey's native people, Herbert C. Kraft stated, "The origins of these people are very controversial, but it is clear that some are descended from local Munsee-speaking Indians who moved into the isolated Ramapo Mountains seeking a haven from the Dutch and English settlers in the latter half of the seventeenth century. It is theorized that many Esopus joined with the Ramapough Mountain Indians of New Jersey following the wars, as some Wappingers had done after Kieft's War in 1643.^[5] Kraft says about Cohen's claim, "Cohen acknowledges that a gap exists in the genealogical record between about 1790-1830 that prevented his assembling with exactitude individual relationships between most of the Hackensack Valley settlers and those of the Ramapo Mountains."^[20] Kraft was not able to establish a genealogical connection between the present-day Ramapough and colonial-era Indian tribes.

• The Algonquian Confederacy of the Quinnipiac Tribal Council website states "The Quinnipiac/Quiripi (Mattabesec) defended the eastern half of southern New England with the Wampanoag as part of our alliance. The Munsee Bands protected the western half. This evolved to include the Iroquois in the Dawnland Confederacy, and the Renapi contingency was known as the Wappinger-Mattabesec Confederation (i.e., Western CT, Eastern NY, and N. NJ). The Ramapo Mountain Region in N. NJ became a refugium after the forced removal of our ancestors began."^[21]

• James Revey (Lone Bear}, chairman of the New Jersey Indian Office, wrote, "The Mountain Indians included those Delaware Indians who in Colonial times retreated into the Pohacong and Schooley Mountains in northwestern New Jersey, and those Minisink, Pompton (Wappingers), Hackensack and Tappan Indians who remained in the mountains of the northeastern part of the state. The Raritan included those Indians who still lived on Staten island, New York, and in parts of Burlington, Monmouth and Middlesex Counties in East Jersey."^[22]

• Evan T. Pritchard, a professor of Native American history, and of Micmac descent, wrote "The Ramapough, or 'mountaineer Munsee', on the other hand, never disappeared. Their people still occupy the southwest portion of the point of Rockland County, on all sides of Ramapo Mountain. ... Whites have always tried, and continue to try to portray the Ramapough as foreigners: Dutch, blacks, Tuscarora, Gypsies, or Hessians. However, they are the only actual non-foreigners to be found still living in community in and around New York’s metropolitan region. ... The main Ramapough Lenape villages in New York were Hillburn, Johnsontown, Furmanville, Sherwoodville, Bulsontown, Willowgrove, Sandyfields, and Ladentown. Better known, however, as Native American strongholds, are the towns just south of the border, namely Stagg Hill and Ringwood."^[23]

• Roger D. Joslyn, a certified genealogist with over 30 years' experience in the New York and New Jersey area (and one of 50 people recognized as a fellow of the American Society of Genealogists), submitted a certified report to the BAR tracing the Indian ancestry of the Ramapough tribe to the 18th century.^[24][25]

• John "Bud" Shapard, the former head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, went on record supporting the Ramapoughs, stating their case for Federal recognition as a Native American tribe was "well-documented".^[25]

• Cornelia F. Bedell, author of Now and then and long ago in Rockland County New York, wrote about the town of Sloatsburg, New York, "The first land-owner was Wynant Van Gelder who purchased it from the Ramapough Indians in 1738. The original deed, with the names of the five Indian chiefs - Manis, Wactau, Sonees, Ayco, Nakam - is still in the possession of the Sloat family."^[26]

• The Ramapough claim to Indian tribal heritage is disputed by the historian David S. Cohen. Cohen works as a Research Associate at the NJ Historical Commission. According to Cohen, his genealogical research "established that their ancestors included free black landowners in New York City and mulattoes with some Dutch ancestry who were among the first pioneers to settle in the Hackensack River Valley of New Jersey".^[18][27]

• Cohen's work was criticized by two of the foremost genealogists in the United States, Alcon Pierce and Roger Joslyn. When Cohen was contacted by Roger Joslyn and WWOR-TV in 1995 to discuss his claims, he did not respond.^[28] Cohen states that "gaps in the genealogical records and the fact that the federal censuses for 1790-1830 are missing prevent establishing positively the exact relationship between many of the these colored families in the mountains, and the earlier colored families of the Hackensack River Valley."^[18] The State of New Jersey prohibited free blacks from owning any land.^[29] Cohen states that there is "an oral tradition of Indian ancestry among the Ramapo Mountain People as early as the eighteenth century". Cohen also states that "Some Indian mixture is possible, however, because Indian and colored interracial matings probably were not recorded in the Dutch Reformed Churches."^[30] Cohen had no professional credentials in genealogy. The BIA found much of Cohen's genealogical work lacking.^[25] Contrary to Cohen's statements, the United States Department of Justice acknowledged in court that the Ramapough are Indians.^[25]

• Benson Lossing, in his book^[31] "Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution Volume I, chapter XXXII", dated 1850, wrote, "Along the sinuous Ramapo Creek, before the war of the Revolution broke out and while the ancient tribe of the Ramapaughs yet chased the deer on the rugged hills that skirt the valley, iron-forges were established, and the hammer-peal of spreading civilization echoed from the neighboring crags."

• Edward J. Lenik is an archeologist and author of Indians in the Ramapos. Lenik writes, "The archaeological record indicates a strong, continuous and persistent presence of Indian bands in the northern Highlands Physiographic Providence-Ramapos well into the 18th century. Other data, such as historical accounts, record the presence of Indians in the Highlands during the 19th and 20th centuries. Oral traditions, and settlement and subsistence activities are examined as well. Native American people were a significant element among the primary progenitors of the Ramapo Mountain People..."^[32]

• C.A. Weslager, past-president of the Eastern States Archaeological Federation, stated in his book Magic Medicines of the Indians, "In the early and middle part of the nineteenth century the Indian descendants were largely found in the northern counties- Warren, Morris, Sussex, and Passaic."^[33] He further wrote, "The people of the northern counties were descended from Delawares and Munsie, with Tuscarora admixture. The Tuscarora, members of a southern tribe, migrated to New York state to join the Six Nation Iroquois, but a number of migrating families settled in New Jersey."

• William Harlan Gilbert, Jr. was an anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.. In 1948 he wrote, "The Jackson Whites are a mixed blood group, descendants of white, Indian, and in some areas Negro ancestors."^[34]

• John W. DeForest, historian, wrote in his book History of the Indians of Connecticut from the Earliest Known Period to 1850, published in 1851, "The Ridgefield clan called themselves the Ramapoo Indians. About the beginning of the last century they were under the government of a Sachem named Katonah. On 10 October 1708, Chief Katonah and his people sold their land for 100 pounds. The tract was estimated to contain 20,000 acres (81 km²), no reservation was made, and the Ramapoos went their way into the wide world, to seek a home where it might be found."^[35]

• Edward F. Pierson, published The Ramapo Pass in 1915, and stated "a tribe of the Delaware called the Ramapos once inhabited this area. These Ramapos were sufficiently numerous to cope with the Mohawks."^[36]

• J. H. Pierson, founder of the town New Hempstead, later changed the name in 1828 to Ramapo. "At last, after much discussion, it was by a plurality of votes decided to petition the Legislature to make the name 'Mechanicstown'. The Legislature did make it Ramapo, influenced, it is said, by a letter from Hon. J. H. Pierson, favoring that name. If posterity had no other cause to be grateful to Mr. Pierson, this act alone should make us revere his memory. Perhaps no greater wrong has been perpetrated in this country than the extinction not only of the Indian race, but also of their very names." ^[37]

• Foster H. Seville, Ethnologist of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation (now called The George Gustav Heye Center), examines and authenticates two intact dugout canoes found in Witteck Lake, near Butler, N.J., as Ramapo origin, possibly 1,000 years old. They were exhibited in the American Museum of Natural History in N.Y.C. and in Hackensack, N.J. Saville stated, "The Ramapos were a branch of the Hackensack Indian, who in turn were of the Councils of the Delaware".^[38] Another intact dugout canoe was found in 1911 in Bethel, Connecticut after a drought. It is possibly Ramapo and is now held with the anthropology collections at the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History at the University of Connecticut.^[39]

• Alanson Skinner, Assistant Curator of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History and author of Indians of Greater New York, wrote "Those Indians most closely related to the Mohegans and Mahikans became part of the mongrel remnants of those people known as Brothertowns and Stockbridges. Thy rendered signal service to Washington in his campaign at Harlem Heights and Brooklyn, and at the close of the Revolution were granted lands in the West, in Wisconsin, and there, on the edge of the Menomini Reservation, and on the shores of Lake Oshkosh, their degenerate remnants may yet be found. A few linger in Connecticut, a few on Long Island, a few in the Ramapo Mountains, all mixed with the blood of Negro and Caucasian. The rest are with the Delawares and the Iroquois in New York, Canada, and Oaklahoma."^[40]

• Henry H. Goddard, The Vineland Training School Study, 1911. This institution, supported by the State of New Jersey, was devoted to studying mental deficiencies. They made an extensive study on the Ramapough Mountain People (then called J.W.) as a result of searching for the parents of a patient named Lucy DeGroat. Their report stated: "But how [to] account for the Indian Blood that shows itself so conspicuously among this race today? Undoubtedly a large part of it comes from Indians who were formerly held as slaves."^[41]

• The Stockbridge Munsee Community of Wisconsin, The Munsee-Delaware Nation of Canada, and the Six Nations of Canada have all urged the US Government to recognize the Ramapough based on the historical records.^[41]

Bureau of Indian Affairs application

As a response to the publication of The Ramapo Mountain People, which disputes the Native American origins of the Ramapoughs, the tribe approached New Jersey Assembly member W. Cary Edwards to seek state recognition. After several months of research, Edwards and Assemblyman Kern introduced Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 3031 (ACR3031) on May 21, 1979. ACR3031 passed in the Assembly on January 3, 1980 and in the Senate on January 7, 1980.

Edwards later stated that much of the debate in the vote for recognition revolved around the validity of the Cohen book, and said, "It was necessary to prove to individual legislators that Cohen's book was without factual foundation." ACR3031 called for Federal recognition of the Ramapoughs, but is non-binding in that regard.^[42] The state of New Jersey recognized the Ramapoughs as an American Indian tribe.^[43]

The New York State Gaming Association web site says that the Ramapoughs were not recognized as a tribe,^[44] but the State of New York passed Legislative Resolution 96 granting the Ramapough state recognition on February 22, 1982.^[45]

In the proposed finding by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the BIA did not find proof of descent from a historical Native American Tribe:

In making this Final Determination, the BIA has reviewed the evidence used to prepare the Proposed Finding, the RMI response to the Proposed Finding, and additional research conducted for the Final Determination by BIA staff. None of the interested party or third party comments were directed to the specific genealogies of the RMI progenitor families. None of the interested party or third party comments provided substantive proof that the earliest proven RMI ancestors descended from a historical tribe of North American Indians. Therefore, the third-party comments were not directly pertinent to criterion 83.7(e). ...

None of the outside observers cited in the RMI Response provided documentation of actual tribal descent. Statements of generically "Indian" characteristics are not equivalent under the 25 CFR Part 83 regulations to documented descent from "a historical Indian tribe or from historical Indian tribes that combined and functioned as a single autonomous political entity." Statements concerning more general "Indian" descent are not in themselves adequate to meet criterion 83.7(e), and must also be evaluated in the full context of the available evidence. ...

In conclusion, the origins and parentage of the earliest genealogically proven ancestors of the petitioner are not known. The petitioner has not demonstrated that their earliest documented ancestors were members of a historical North American Indian tribe, nor has the petitioner documented that their earliest proven progenitors descended from any known historical tribe of North American Indians. Without documentation, the BIA cannot make an assumption, on the basis of late 19th-century and early 20th-century ascriptions, that these unknown RMI ancestors were members of a historical North American Indian tribe. The petitioner has not presented acceptable evidence that the RMI descend from a historical Indian tribe, or from tribes that amalgamated and functioned as a single unit, either as individuals or as a group.^[46]

The BIA failed to recognize the written eyewitness accounting of former county judge James M. Van Valen in his book History of Bergen County", published in 1900. {{quote|The villages and hamlets locally named as such in the township are Wortendyke, Wyckoff, Campgaw, [and] Oakland. The Ramapo Indians sometimes visited the settlements in the township. They were known formerly as the Hackensacky Indians but are more properly the race described as the "Jackson whites." They bear little resemblance to the Indians, yet as tradition gives it they are descendants of Hessians, Indians and negroes but know nothing of their ancestry, so ignorant have they become. They dwell in huts or caves in the sides of the mountains, and subsist on fish and game, principally. When Judge Garrison was a boy, one of these people, an old man, Uncle Rich De Groate by name, would often leave his home for a visit to the villagers, coming among the people without a hat, or covering for his feet and legs to his knees. When asked whether or not his lower limbs did not suffer from excess heat or cold he would reply by asking the same question concerning the exposure of the face.^[47]

On November 2001, the Ramapough presented their case to the Court of Appeals. The BIA conceded that the Ramapough were Native Americans. "At oral argument before the Court of Appeals, the BIA conceded that the RMI (Ramapough Mountain Indians) are Indians, but asserted that the Tribe provided no evidence of descent from the Aboriginal Lenape Indians, who are the only tribal group ever to have occupied the region."^[48]

The names Hackensack, Tappan, Nyack, and Minsi were all names given by the Dutch, not what the tribes call themselves.

Through the early Dutch navigators who followed Hudson's path more definite information is obtained of the people whom he visited, and also the names given to the clans or chieftaincies into which they were divided. At "Haverstroo" they were called Haverstroos; from Stony Point to the DansKammer they were Waoranecks,—subsequently called "the Murderer's Creek Indians"; from the DansKammer north through Ulster County, and west through the valley of the Wallkill, they were Warranawonkongs; in the district drained by the Delaware and its tributaries they were Minsis or Minisinks. These names were not those the natives had given as belonging to themselves, but were those given by them to the Dutch as the names of the streams on which they lived.^[49]

Since 1978, the BIA has granted federal recognition status to only 15 tribes out of the 314 that applied. Another 23 were denied; the rest are pending.^[50]

Before 1870, the State of New Jersey Census grouped the population into three categories - White, Black (free), and Black (slave). In 1870, New Jersey began recording Native Americans and 16 were documented.^[51]

Herbert C. Kraft stated "The Ramapough petitioned for federal recognition on August 14, 1978."^[52] In April 1993,^[52] the opponents of Ramapo recognition led by casino owner Donald Trump and two Bergen County Representatives charged that "the Ramapo would bring in Indian gaming associated with organized crime."^[53]

U.S. Representative Marge Roukema made these statements to the Senate Subcommittee on October 5, 1993:

A group of people residing in parts of two communities in my congressional district have been seeking federal recognition as a federal Indian tribe for nearly 20 years. When representatives of the so called, "Ramapough Mountain Indians" first approached me in the mid-1980s seeking a private bill recognizing the group as an Indian tribe, I was skeptical of the motives behind their drive for recognition. To this day, the leaders of the Ramapough community have maintained their sole reason for seeking federal acknowledgment is to improve their housing, education, and social welfare. However, from my very first discussions with the group almost ten years ago, it has been quite clear to me their sole interest in federal acknowledgment is to circumvent local, state, and federal jurisdiction for the purpose of establishing casino gambling in Bergen County, New Jersey.^[54]

Roukema further stated: "Make no mistake. BIA acknowledgement of the Ramapoughs will result in Indian gaming in northern New Jersey and it will, almost surely, bring organized crime with it!"^[54] On November 17, 1993, Roukema and U.S. Representative Robert Torricelli announced in the media that the Ramapough had been denied recognition by the BIA, although the draft report had not yet been reviewed by the Assistant Secretary. The Ramapough requested an investigation and were ignored.^[42]

The BIA rejected the petition on December 8, 1993.^[55] The Ramapough, who are opposed to gambling, appealed the BIA's decision.

Alexa Koenig, Managing Editor of the University of San Francisco Law Review and Jonathan Stein, a trial lawyer in Santa Monica, California, wrote, "The current political environment threatens to further slow the achievement of federal recognition, as legislators and citizens in various communities band together to oppose recognition for fear that newly recognized tribes will establish a casino in their community. This opposition is sometimes financed by competing Indian casinos, adding additional money and political muscle to an already uphill fight. Unfortunately, this is unfairly hindering recognition opportunities for longstanding tribes and standing in the way of such tribes acquiring much needed non-casino related benefits, such as federal grants and governmental immunities."^[56]

See also

• Black Dutch
• Brass Ankles and "Turks" of South Carolina
• Carmel Indians of Highland County, Ohio
• Chestnut Ridge people of Philippi, West Virginia
• Coree or "Faircloth" Indians of Carteret County, North Carolina
• Dominickers of Holmes County, Florida
• Haliwa-Saponi of North Carolina
• Lumbee of North Carolina
• Melungeon
• Monacan Indians of Amherst and Rockingham Counties, Virginia
• Nanticoke of Delaware
• Person County Indians, aka "Cubans and Portuguese" of North Carolina
• Piscataway Indians of southern Maryland
• Quiripi language
• Redbones of Louisiana
• We-Sorts of Maryland

References

External links

• Official Tribal Website of the Ramapough
• Indians in the Ramapos, Survival, Persistence & Presence by Ed Lenik
• Documentary about Ramapough lawsuit against Ford Motor Company