I take pleasure in reporting that in accordance with the request of this Committee embodied in the motion made by Miss M. Louise Edge upon January 5th, 1898, I have prepared the story of Jersey City. My authorities have been: Winfield's History of Hudson County, The Jersey City Journal's History of Jersey City, Colonial and City Records, Versteeg's Translation of the Deacons Accounts of the Bergen Church, Taylor's Annals of the Classis and Township of Bergen, and numerous descendants of the old colonial families,--the Van Reypens, Van Horns, Van Winkles, Sips, Newkirks and many others, to all of whom I am greatly indebted. Also to Dr. Brett, who has kindly assisted me with his great store of historic data. I wish particularly to express my great indebtedness to Mr. C. C. Van Reypen, who, with his wonderful memory and knowledge of Bergen, has been of invaluable assistance to me. Respectfully submitted, Harriet Phillip Eaton SHEYICHBI AND ITS PEOPLE. Before the white race came to America, the locality now known as Jersey City, was occupied by a branch of the Minsi division of the Lenni Lenape Nation of the Red Men, and was called Sheyichbi. The whole of the present state of New Jersey belonged to the Lenape, and was occupied by bands bearing different names according to the special features of the locality, but all recognizing their unity as one people. Those who lived here, along the western shore of the New York Bay, extending to the sea, were known as the Wapings, or Pomptons, and were the first of the Lenape to meet the white man when Verrazano visited this harbor in 1524. Their last home was along the Raritan river. The name Lenni Lenape means "Men of our Nation," and they claimed to be the oldest nation and root of the great Algonkin stock, which, in its various divisions, with forty distinct dialects, occupied this continent from Hudson's Bay to South Carolina, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and the great plains, with the exception of a portion east of the Lakes where the Huron Iroquois dwelt. The other Algonkin nations were spoken of by them as "children," "Grandchildren," or "younger brothers," and to them was always accorded the respectful title of "grandfathers." Their traditions taught them that they came from Shinaki, the "Land of the Fir Trees," which was probably north of Lake Superior, and in their migrations they came upon the Cherokees, probably in the ninth or tenth century of our era, with whom they fought one hundred years for possession of the Ohio Valley. Finally the Cherokees went south and the Lenape eventually, in the eleventh or twelfth century, made their home in the mountainous region of the head waters of the Delaware river. Their hunting grounds included lands now in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. In 1758, New Jersey paid them $5,000 for their lands in this State.