Etymology of Manhattan

Last updated
The Manhattoes was the area at the very southern tip of the island which grew into New Amsterdam, and subsequently the New York City borough of Manhattan, at the birthplace of New York City (c. 1624). Stad Amsterdam in Nieuw Nederland (City Amsterdam in New Netherland) Castello Plan 1660.jpg
The Manhattoes was the area at the very southern tip of the island which grew into New Amsterdam, and subsequently the New York City borough of Manhattan, at the birthplace of New York City (c. 1624).

Manhattoe/Manhattoes is a term describing a place and, mistakenly, a people. The location was the very southern tip of the Manhattan island during the time of the Dutch colonization of the Americas at what became New Amsterdam there. The people were a band of the Wappinger known as the Weckquaesgeek, native to an area further north in what is now Westchester County, who controlled the upper three-quarters of the island as a hunting ground.

Contents

As was common practice early in the days of European settlement of North America, a people came to be associated with a place, with its name displacing theirs among the settlers and those associated with them, such as explorers, mapmakers, trading company superiors who sponsored many of the early settlements, and officials in the settlers' mother country in Europe.

Because of this early conflation there is enduring confusion over whether "Manhattoe/Manhattoes" were a people or a place. There is certainty it was a place, at the very tip of Manhattan Island, so referred to by the Dutch, [1] [2] who evidently inherited the Native American name for the spot they chose to place their settlement (rather than named it after a people already living there, as the island was not permanently inhabited at the time of their 1609 arrival nor Peter Minuit's subsequent purchase of it from the Canarse Indians [3] for $24 in 1639).

Period accounts maintain that Manhattan island was used as a hunting ground by two tribes, the Canarse (Canarsee, or Canarsie) of today's Brooklyn at its southern one-quarter and the Weckquaesgeek the rest, each having no more than temporary camps for hunting parties.

Morphology

From Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson's ship Halve Maen (Half Moon), published in the English travelogue collection of Samuel Purchas. [4] The Velasco Map, dated 1610, depicts the name Manahata on the west side, and Manahatin on the east side of the Mauritius River (later named the Hudson River), [5] though its authenticity has been questioned. [6]

Scholarship generally supports one of two possible meanings for Manna-hata — either a variation on the Lenape term for "island", or to the Lenape term designating the southernmost point of the island, said to have been the site of hickory trees.

The word "Manhattan" has been translated as island of many hills. [7] The Encyclopedia of New York City offers other derivations, including from the Munsee dialect of Lenape: manahachtanienk ("place of general inebriation"), manahatouh ("place where timber is procured for bows and arrows"), or menatay ("island"). [8]

The name Manhattan most likely originated, via loaning by Dutch, from the Lenape's local language Munsee, manaháhtaan (where manah- means "gather", -aht- means "bow", and -aan is an abstract element used to form verb stems). The Lenape word has been translated as "the place where we get bows" or "place for gathering the (wood to make) bows". According to a Munsee tradition recorded by Albert Seqaqkind Anthony in the 19th century, the island was named so for a grove of hickory trees at its southern end that was considered ideal for the making of bows. An alternate theory claims a "Delaware source akin to Munsee munahan ("island")." [5] [9] Nora Thompson Dean (Touching Leaves Woman) defined it as: 'place that is an island', from Lenape Menating. [10]

Toponym/ethnonym

Manhattoes/Manhattans (place)

The "earliest depiction of Manhattan" (c.1626) shows Fort Amsterdam on what it calls the "Manhatans" on the very southern tip of today's Manhattan island Fort New Amsterdam on the Manhatans (New York) print c1626.jpg
The "earliest depiction of Manhattan" (c.1626) shows Fort Amsterdam on what it calls the "Manhatans" on the very southern tip of today's Manhattan island

Manhattoes was the name of a Dutch settlement in New Netherlands in the early decades of their settlement there in the 1600s. [1] [2] Located at the very southern tip of today's Manhattan Island, it was known by the native term by both the Dutch and the English who wished to displace them. [11] Fort Nieuw Amsterdam was built in 1627, but the common name held fast. Eventually, by the time of the incorporation of the settlement, the fort's name displaced the original, and "Manhattoes" became Nieuw Amsterdam in 1653. [2]

The original southernmost tip of Manhattan corresponds approximately to the modern Peter Minuit Plaza.

The terms Manhattans and Manhatans were also used for the Manhattoes by some Dutch, giving rise to Manhattan island's contemporary name and conflation with a people (the Wecquaeskgeek) who neither occupied that part of the island nor went by that name.

Manhattoe/Manhattan (people)

This 1685 revision of a 1656 map erroneously indicates "Wickquaskeck" in Westchester County above Manhattan island and "Manhattans" on it Excerpt from Map-Novi Belgii Novaeque Angliae (Amsterdam, 1685).jpg
This 1685 revision of a 1656 map erroneously indicates "Wickquaskeck" in Westchester County above Manhattan island and "Manhattans" on it

Manhattoe, also Manhattan, was a name erroneously given to a Native American people of the lower Hudson River, the Weckquaesgeek, [a] a Wappinger band which occupied the southwestern part of today's Westchester County. [12] [b] In the early days of Dutch settlement they utilized the upper three-quarters of Manhattan Island [14] [15] as a hunting grounds.

The people - Wecquaesgeek - became conflated with a place - the Manhattoes, regardless that it was the only part of the island they did not occupy. Over time that term became "Manhattan" and "Manhattans" for those who hunted the vast majority of the island, as well as the name of the island.

Contrastingly, the name "Manhattans" was also applied in a 1652 colonial document to the people of the Nyack Tract in Brooklyn, and their leader is named as "Mattano". Nyack people were Canarsee, and may have been connected to southern Manhattan Island.

Notes

  1. Writer Nathaniel Benchley argues that the Dutch simply found it easier to refer to the natives as "Manhattans" rather than Weckquaesgeek [3]
  2. They were, along with the Tappans, Raritan, and other Wappinger bands along the Hudson, known as the "River Indians". [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Amsterdam</span> Dutch settlement (1624–1664)

New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The initial trading factory gave rise to the settlement around Fort Amsterdam. The fort was situated on the strategic southern tip of the island of Manhattan and was meant to defend the fur trade operations of the Dutch West India Company in the North River. In 1624, it became a provincial extension of the Dutch Republic and was designated as the capital of the province in 1625. New Amsterdam became a city when it received municipal rights on February 2, 1653.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Netherland</span> 17th-century Dutch colony in North America

New Netherland was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic located on the East Coast of what is now the United States. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to Cape Cod. Settlements were established in what became the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

The Mohicans are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe that historically spoke an Algonquian language. As part of the Eastern Algonquian family of tribes, they are related to the neighboring Lenape, whose indigenous territory was to the south as far as the Atlantic coast. The Mohicans lived in the upper tidal Hudson River Valley, including the confluence of the Mohawk River and into western New England centered on the upper Housatonic River watershed. After 1680, due to conflicts with the powerful Mohawk to the west during the Beaver Wars, many were driven southeastward across the present-day Massachusetts western border and the Taconic Mountains to Berkshire County around Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lenapehoking</span> Lands traditionally inhabited by the Lenape people

Lenapehoking is widely translated as 'homelands of the Lenape', which in the 16th and 17th centuries, ranged along the Eastern seaboard from western Connecticut to Delaware, and encompassed the territory adjacent to the Delaware and lower Hudson river valleys, and the territory between them.

The history of New York City has been influenced by the prehistoric geological formation during the last glacial period of the territory that is today New York City. The area was shortly inhabited by the Lenape; after initial European exploration in the 17th century, the Dutch established New Amsterdam in 1624. In 1664, the British conquered the area and renamed it New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kieft's War</span> Conflict in 1643-45 between Dutch colonists and Lenape Indians

Kieft's War (1643–1645), also known as the Wappinger War, was a conflict between the colonial province of New Netherland and the Wappinger and Lenape Indians in what is now New York and New Jersey. It is named for Director-General of New Netherland Willem Kieft, who had ordered an attack without the approval of his advisory council and against the wishes of the colonists. Dutch colonists attacked Lenape camps and massacred the inhabitants, which encouraged unification among the regional Algonquian tribes against the Dutch and precipitated waves of attacks on both sides. This was one of the earliest conflicts between settlers and Indians in the region. The Dutch West India Company was displeased with Kieft and recalled him, but he died in a shipwreck while returning to the Netherlands; Peter Stuyvesant succeeded him in New Netherland. Numerous Dutch settlers returned to the Netherlands because of the continuing threat from the Algonquians, and growth slowed in the colony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wappinger</span> Native American tribe

The Wappinger were an Eastern Algonquian Munsee-speaking Native American people from what is now southern New York and western Connecticut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wecquaesgeek</span> Historical Indigenous tribe in New York

The Wecquaesgeek were a Munsee-speaking band of Wappinger people who once lived along the east bank of the Hudson River in the southwest of today's Westchester County, New York, and down into the Bronx.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pavonia, New Netherland</span> European settlement on the Hudson River

Pavonia was the first European settlement on the west bank of the North River that was part of the seventeenth-century province of New Netherland in what would become the present Hudson County, New Jersey.

Oratam was sagamore, or sachem, of the Hackensack Indians living in northeastern New Jersey during the period of early European colonization in the 17th century. Documentation shows that he lived an unusually long life and was quite influential among indigenous and immigrant populations.

Hackensack was the exonym given by the Dutch colonists to a band of the Lenape, or Lenni-Lenape, a Native American tribe. The name is a Dutch derivation of the Lenape word for what is now the region of northeastern New Jersey along the Hudson and Hackensack rivers. While the Lenape people occupied much of the mid-Atlantic area, Europeans referred to small groups of native people by the names associated with the places where they lived.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tappan people</span> Native tribe of the lower Hudson River

The Tappan were a Lenape people who inhabited the region radiating from Hudson Palisades and New York – New Jersey Highlands at the time of European colonialization in the 17th century.

The Rumachenank were a Lenape people who inhabited the region radiating from the Palisades in New York and New Jersey at the time of European colonialization in the 17th century. Settlers to the provincial colony of New Netherland called them the Haverstroo meaning oat straw, which became Haverstraw in English, and still used to describe part of their territory.

New Netherlanders were residents of New Netherland, the seventeenth-century colonial outpost of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the northeastern coast of North America, centered on the Hudson River and New York Bay, and in the Delaware Valley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esopus people</span> Ethnic group

The Esopus was a tribe of Lenape (Delaware) Native Americans who were native to the Catskill Mountains of what is now the Hudson Valley. Their lands included modern-day Ulster and Sullivan counties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canarsee</span> Former band of Lenape inhabitants of western Long Island

The Canarsee were a band of Munsee-speaking Lenape who inhabited the westernmost end of Long Island at the time the Dutch colonized New Amsterdam in the 1620s and 1630s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Manhattan</span> History of New York City borough

The area of present-day Manhattan was originally part of Lenape territory. European settlement began with the establishment of a trading post founded by colonists from the Dutch Republic in 1624 on Lower Manhattan; the post was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The territory and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York, based in present-day Manhattan, served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor greeted millions of immigrants as they came to America by ship in the late 19th century and is a world symbol of the United States and its ideals of liberty and peace. Manhattan became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nyack Tract</span> Lenape settlement in New York City

The Nyack Tract or Nyack Patent was a Lenapehoking settlement to the east of the The Narrows in the vicinity of modern Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, New York City.

References

  1. 1 2 Letter from Stephen Goodyear to Peter Stuyvesant, 19 July, 1652, addressed to him at "The Manhattoes", Correspondence 1647-1653, Charles Gehring, The New Netherlands Institute, p. 189
  2. 1 2 3 The Standards of the Manhattoes, Pavonia, and Hell-Gate, David B. Martucci, 2011, p. 786
  3. 1 2 "The $24 Swindle", Nathaniel Benchley, American Heritage, 1959, Vol 11, Issue 1
  4. "Robert Juet's Journal of Hudson's 1609 Voyage". www.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
  5. 1 2 Goddard, Ives (2010). "The Origin and Meaning of the Name "Manhattan"". New York History. 91 (4): 277–293. hdl:10088/16790. ISSN   0146-437X via Smithsonian Research Online.
  6. "NYC 99 – an Historical Atlas of New York City". www.nyc99.org. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
  7. Holloway, Marguerite. "Urban tactics; I'll Take Mannahatta" Archived 17 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine , The New York Times
  8. "More on the names behind the roads we ride" Archived 7 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine , The Record (Bergen County) , 21 April 2002. Retrieved 26 October 2007.
  9. Douglas Harper (2023). "Manhattan". Online Etymology Dictionary . Retrieved December 30, 2024.
  10. Kraft, Herbert C.; Kraft, John T. (1985). The Indians of Lenapehoking (First ed.). South Orange, NJ: Seton Hall University Press. p. 45. ISBN   0-935137-00-9
  11. Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam, John S. C. Abbott, 2004. "The next morning, which was Saturday, Colonel Nicholls sent a delegation of four men up to Fort Amsterdam, with a summons for the surrender of "the town situated on the island commonly known by the name of Manhattoes, with all the forts thereunto belonging."
  12. "He sits by his fireside in the ancient city of the Manhattoes...," Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies, Washington Irving, p. 19
  13. [Indian Tribes of Hudson's River]; Ruttenber, E.M.; Hope Farm Press, 3rd ed, 2001, ISBN   0-910746-98-2
  14. Moby Dick, Herman Melville, Chapter 1, reprinted in "Melville Depicted City of ‘Manhattoes’ Lured by the Sea,", New York Times, July 5, 1976, p. 13
  15. "Brooks, ponds, swamps, and marshes characterized other portions of the island of the 'Manhattoes'", The Memorial History of the City of New York, James Grant Wilson, New York, 1892

See also