Indigenous Peoples

Lenapehoking (Lenape homelands) with select annotations added (original map from Wikimedia Commons) 

The Indigenous people local to what is today the area of Ulster County, New York, are known as the Esopus, a term meaning "small river" or "creek." They are considered a subgroup of the Lenni-Lenape and their language a dialect influenced by the Munsee and Unami-speaking Lenape neighbors to the south and their Mohican neighbors to the north. The Esopus shared similar lifeways with these other groups and regularly interacted with them through trading and kinship ties.  

Several documents relating to the Esopus people and other regional Indigenous groups are part of the New Paltz Historic Documents Project. Scholars like J. Michael Smith and Lisa Brooks provide insight into these significant archival materials. 

Studies of Native Peoples Associated with Documents in the New Paltz Historic Documents Project

J. Michael Smith is an independent ethnohistorian who has documented the cultural histories of the Native peoples in the mid-Hudson River Valley. Smith has generously offered to share some of his extensive research relating to the New Paltz Historic Documents project. Click on the link below to view.

• Natives’ Prosopography of Individuals Mentioned in the 1767 Land Agreement, Loughlo to Moses Depuy, et.al. 
• Coming soon: Prosopographies for the 1677 Esopus-Huguenot Land Agreement and the 1738 agreement for a tract of land known as Packanasinck in the town of Shawangunk.  

Smith was co-editor with Kees-Jan Waterman of Munsee Indian Trade in Ulster County, New York, 1712-1732 (Syracuse University Press, 2013). He is a contributing author to the New York State Museum bulletins of the Native American Institute Seminar Papers and has published various articles in the Hudson River Valley Review. Smith is a native of Beacon in Dutchess County, New York, and a retired media specialist with Vermont PBS. To watch some of Smith's virtual talks on his research, click here.