On September 14th, 1609 Henry Hudson was rumored to have stopped by Nyack, in his search for the Northwest Passage, not far from where I grew up. He either stopped by somewhere near the foot of Main Street or else up the River in Peekskill, NY, depending on who tells the story. He described Hook Mountain and found the natives charming.

The Native Americans that Hudson met were actually from out on Long Island and were only up at Nyack because of the seafood. Nyack means Good Fishing, but only in a long Island Lanape dialect.

The Native Americans who actually lived in or near Nyack (Weckquaesgeek (Wappinger) and Tappan tribes) weren’t as friendly, and in 1643 they nearly wiped out the Dutch settlers murdering hundreds of them and sending the rest fleeing downriver to the growing city of New Amsterdam. The Dutch reprisal was brutal, killing thousands of local Indians, including women and children.

Here is one description of the awful Dutch atrocities:

“Infants were torn form their mother’s breasts, and hacked to pieces in the presence of their parents, and pieces thrown into the fire and in the water, and other sucklings, being bound to small boards, were cut, stuck, and pierced, and miserably massacred in a manner to move a heart of stone. Some were thrown into the river, and when the fathers and mothers endeavored to save them, the soldiers would not let them come on land but made both parents and children drown…”

A 1634 map showing some of the tribes of the Hudson Valley. The Dutch called the Hudson the Maritius River. The River Achter Kol is now known as the Hackensack and still flows about a half mile from where I am living. Nyack is near the river where it indicates that the Tappaen tribe was living between the two rivers. The green land at the head of the Achter Kol can only be the West Nyack Swamp. The Palisades Mall is built on that swamp and is slowly sinking into the muck.

Nyack history is a little more than Henry Hudson sitting down for tea in 1609.

Note: None of my ancestors were in Nyack in 1643. The Mayflower bunch were scratching out a living in Plymouth, Gerrit Hendrickson was still up state as an indentured servant, and Polhemus was on his way to Brazil. The Hunts would not arrived on Long Island until 1684, and my Scottish and Irish Ancestors would be taking pot shots at the British for another 200 years before hopping on a boat.