The People of the Waters That Are Never Still

Stand near the river here and you are standing inside a geography that carries two names in two languages, and both are still spoken today. The people who first made their home along this stretch of the Hudson called the river Mahicannituck, and they called themselves the Muhhekunneuw: the People of the Waters That Are Never Still. They knew this place as Pempotowwuthut-Muhhcanneuw, the fireplace of the Mohican nation, a gathering center, not just a location.

From the highlands upriver to the tidal reaches below, the Mahicans built villages, fished the river, and maintained trade networks that extended far beyond what European maps would later try to capture. To the west, along the river that now carries the name Mohawk, lived the Kanien'kehá:ka, the People of the Flint. The Mohawk were the easternmost nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the alliance of nations the colonists called the Iroquois.

They served as Keepers of the Eastern Door, protectors of the Confederacy's eastern flank, and they had been a dominant force in this valley long before any European ship appeared on the horizon. When Henry Hudson sailed upriver in sixteen oh nine aboard the Dutch vessel Halve Maen, the Half Moon, he found both peoples already deeply established here. He traded with Native peoples along the upper river, took note of the beaver-rich forests, and reported back to the Dutch East India Company with enthusiasm.

Within five years, traders arrived to build the first post on the river. The geography they entered had been shaped by centuries of Mahican and Mohawk presence. The names those nations gave this place are the oldest names it has.