Munsee

The Munsee were the northern division of the Lenape, or Delaware Indians, named for Minisink, “the place where stones are gathered,” their council village on the upper Delaware. Their country extended from the Delaware headwaters to the Hudson. They shared Lenape matrilineal clans, longhouses and Three Sisters farming.

Henry Hudson’s voyage of 1609 opened contact with Dutch traders; Munsee and Wappinger bands suffered heavily in the Pavonia massacre of 1643 and the Esopus Wars of the 1660s. The fraudulent Walking Purchase of 1737 drove the main body from the Delaware about 1740 to the Susquehanna and then to Ohio.

Munsee who remained in New York were settled among the Mohawk in 1756. Moravian converts, the Christian Munsee, kept a separate identity: most withdrew to Canada during the American Revolution and founded Moraviantown, while others joined the Stockbridge community in Wisconsin.