The Lenapehoking: A World Without Walls The story of New York begins not with steel and stone, but with the sophisticated culture of the Lenape people, whose ancestral territory stretched across a significant portion of the mid-Atlantic region. This process of land reclamation and earthmoving was the physical manifestation of the city's ambition, a deliberate act of imposing human order on a chaotic natural world.
The Lenape World: New York's First Inhabitants and Landscape Adaptation
Shell middens, the ancient trash heaps of these early inhabitants, are the most tangible proof of their existence, revealing a diet rich in shellfish, fish, and game, and a life intimately connected to the natural rhythms of the land and sea. Their world, known as Lenapehoking, was a pristine landscape of tidal marshes, oak-hickory forests, and coastal meadows.
The Collect Pond, a vital freshwater source and scenic landmark, was buried beneath Canal Street after becoming a polluted health hazard. The 19th Century: Erasing the Landscape The 19th century was the era of the great erasure, a period of frantic and systematic reshaping of the land itself to accommodate a booming population.
The Lenape Landscape of New York First Inhabitants
The Hudson River, or North River, was a broad, tidal fjord teeming with marine life. Governors Island, for example, was a single, larger landmass known as Paggank, a name given by the Lenape that reflected its use for nut harvesting.
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