Raritan people
Template:Short description Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Short description Script error: No such module "infobox".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". The Raritan were two groups of Lenape people who lived around the lower Raritan River[1] and the Raritan Bay, in what is now northeastern New Jersey, in the 16th century.[1]
Name
The name Raritan likely came from one of the Lenape languages (among the languages in the Algonquian language group), though there are a variety of interpretations as to its meaning. It may derive from Naraticong [2] meaning "river beyond the island."
Raritan is a Dutch pronunciation of wawitan or rarachons, meaning "forked river" or "stream overflows".[3]
The first group known as the Raritan was also known as the Sanhicans.[4] A second group, known as the Wiechquaeskecks,[1] Wisquaskecks, Roaton, Raritanghe,[5] and Raritanoos settled the Raritan watershed area after the first departed.[4][1]
History
17th century
The original Raritans, the Sanhicans, lived along Raritan Bay's west shore[4] until 1640s, when attacks from the Delaware River Indians and Dutch settlers drove them inland.[1]
The Wisquaskecks had lived in what is now Westchester County, New York.[6] After the Sanhicans migrated east, the Wisquaskecks[4] moved into the area by 1649 and then also became known as the Raritans.[1]
The Raritan had early contact with settlers in the colony of New Netherland.[7][8] Dutch colonist David Pietersz. de Vries described the Raritans as "a nation of savages who live where a little stream [the Raritan River] runs up about five leagues behind Staten Island."[5] He wrote that Cornelis van Tienhoven took more than one hundred men to the Wisquaskecks to address their theft of pigs and attempt theft of a yacht. Van Theihoven's group killed several of the Wisquaskecks and took their chief's brother as a hostage.[5] Van Theihoven tortured the prisoner, and the Wisquaskecks responded to the attack by killing several Dutch settlers.[5] William Kieft, governor of New Netherland, had planned the extermination campaign against them. The attack against the American Indians was a contributing event to the bands' allying in Kieft's War (1643-45) against the settlements of New Netherland.[7]
In 1649, the Wisquaskecks held a peace conference with the Dutch settlers. Pennekeck, a leader from Newark Bay, "said the tribe called Raritanoos, formerly living at Wisquaskeck had no chief, therefore he spoke for them, who would also like to be our friends...."[4] The Sanhicans unsuccessfully tried to contest Pennekeck.[4][9]
19th century
According to Encyclopedia of New Jersey Indians, the surviving Raritans sold the last of their lands and moved to the Brotherton Reservation in Burlington County, New Jersey.[10] Their descendants are part of larger Lenape communities including the Stockbridge Munsee Community in Wisconsin,[10] Delaware Tribe of Indians, Delaware Nation, Moravian of the Thames First Nation, and the Delaware First Nation of the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario.
See also
Notes
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- ↑ a b c d e f Ives Goddard, "Delaware," p. 213.
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Virginia B. Troeger and Robert James McEwen, New Jersey's Oldest Township, Charleston, SC: Acadia Publishing, 2002, p. 18
- ↑ a b c d e f Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ a b c d David de Vries's Notes, Narratives of New Netherland, p. 208.
- ↑ Ives Goddard, "Delaware," p. 237.
- ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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- ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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References
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External links
Template:Raritan Valley navigation Template:Authority control