Footprints of the Red Men: Indian geographical names in the valley of Hudson's river, the valley of the Mohawk, and on the Delaware: their location and the probable meaning of some of them.Ruttenber, Edward Manning
History
Footprints of the Red Men: Indian geographical names in the valley of Hudson's river, the valley of the Mohawk, and on the Delaware: their location and the probable meaning of some of them.
Ruttenber, Edward Manning
Indians of North America -- New York (State); Names, Geographical -- New York (State); Names, Indian -- North America
Ancrop, or Ankerop as otherwise written, was a sachem of the Esopus
Indians in 1677, and was still serving in that office in 1722. He was
obviously an old man at the latter date. He had, however, no jurisdiction
over or part in the sale of the lands to the New Paltz Company in 1677.
His testimony, given forty-five years after the sale by the Indians, was
simply confirmatory in general terms of a location which had been made
in 1677, and the interpretation of what he said was obviously given by
the Justices in terms to correspond with what his employers wished him
to say. In the days of the locations of boundmarks of patents, his
testimony would have been regarded with suspicion. Locations of
boundmarks were then frequently changed by patentees who desired to
increase their holdings, by "Taking some Indians in a public manner to
show such places as they might name to them," wrote Sir William Johnson,
for many years Superintendent of Indian Affairs, adding that it was
"Well known" that an Indian "Would shew any place by any name you please
to give him, for a small blanket or a bottle of rum." Presumably Ankerop
received either "A small blanket or a bottle of rum" for his services,
but it is not to be inferred that the location of the boundmarks in 1677
was tainted by the "sharp practice" which prevailed later. It is
reasonable to presume, however, that the name would never have been
removed from the foot of the hill had not the Groot Stuk been situated
as it was with reference to a southeast line drawn from its apex to
Juffrouw's Hook.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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