§2 The Struggle for Dominion

Long before the first white settlers, the area we know today as Pine Plains was populated by an indigenous people called Mahican, more specifically by a tribal division of Mahicans called Wawyachtonocks. They were Algonkians, a term that is used to classify certain tribes more by language than by culture. There seems to be uncertainty as to the relationship between the Mahicans and the Mohegans. Perhaps at one time they were one tribe, but by the time of the European invasion they were two distinct tribes, the Mohegans occupying eastern Connecticut and the Mahicans occupying the Hudson Valley region. As white settlers came into the valley in the mid-eighteenth century, the Mahican village of Shekomeko, in the present hamlet of Bethel, was an isolated remnant of what had once been a proud nation.

Two prominent Algonkian-speaking tribes whose territories bordered those of the Mahicans were the Lenni Lenapes (sometimes called Delawares) and the Wappingers, who inhabited much of present-day Dutchess County. The Wappingers, commonly known as Wapanachki ("Men of the East"), were called Wequehachkes ("People of the Hill Country") by the Moravians who came to this region as missionaries in the eighteenth century. They may actually have also been a tribal division of the Mahicans.

The other major language group in this region was the Iroquois, whose territory extended west and north of the Algonkians. The Iroquois had grown increasingly stronger since the arrival of the Europeans, while the Algonkians had weakened. Nearly everyone has heard the story of Hiawatha, who brought the five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy together in a united front against their enemies. However, at the time of Columbus, the Lenni Lenapes were the most formidable of the native North American confederacies, holding the Iroquois in subjection. What had happened to change this balance of power in favor of the Iroquois?

Much of it had to do with the relationships that these tribes developed with the first white colonists. Geographic location was one contributing factor in this. Where their territories bordered each other, it was here that conflicts often arose between the Native Americans and the Europeans. The Iroquois had only to contend with a hostile border to the north, with the French. The Algonkians, on the other hand, had long provided a buffer between the Iroquois and the incoming whites to the south and east, and by the end of the seventeenth century, most Algonkian tribes had been invaded at different points by the Dutch and English. Although the Algonkians initially put up a good deal of resistance to the European invasion, in the end they proved vulnerable to conquest because of the diversity and animosity between their various tribes, and contact with the whites brought devastation in the form of strange diseases from which the Native Americans had no immunity. Most eventually retreated west in the face of the encroaching European civilization, until they came into contact with other hostile tribes.

A Mahican village, usually located on a hilltop by the shore of a stream or lake, might be composed of several small bands, each numbering no more than 100 persons; each band considered itself independent, free to withdraw, camp apart, or join another village. The religious and civic decisions of each village were made by an hereditary chief, who had to reflect popular opinion. A chief of war, usually a renowned warrior, was an elected position. If a village did not agree with the decision of the tribal council, it could refuse to cooperate. This loose social and political organization characterized much Native American culture and made tribes like the Mahicans easy prey to white penetration.

Another contributing factor to the emergence of Iroquois supremacy was the tendency of the native peoples to seek alliances with Europeans who were in opposition to their indigenous enemies. Thus, the Iroquois established free trade with the Dutch and allied themselves with the English, while their enemies, the Algonkians, allied themselves with the French. This was a period in European history when the English and Dutch were challenging the hegemony of French and Spanish power, so the ancient hostility between Iroquois and Algonkian worked to the Europeans' advantage as each struggled for dominance in the New World. Between 1675 and 1763, the French actively contested the advancing English frontier by inciting Algonkian tribes to raid and harass the settlements, while the English, in turn, sought to instigate the Algonkian tribes to fight each other, with much success. The English and French governments also often sought to win the allegiance of the strong tribes by frequent generous gifts of liquor. This struggle finally came to a head in the French and Indian War in 1754.

Shekomeko in 1745

The end result was that the Algonkians lost control of this region, as did their allies, the French. With their numbers depleted and their men fallen victim to the white men's vices, the Mahicans were all but an extinct people by the mid-eighteenth century. Whereas the average pre-Columbian population of a Mahican village is believed to have been three hundred, it is estimated that by the end of the seventeenth century the total Mahican population in this entire country numbered only three hundred. As a comparison, the white population in the Albany area alone at that time numbered about fifteen hundred. Although the precise population of the Mahican village of Shekomeko in 1740, at the time of the first Moravian visit, is not known, it is recorded that there were about twenty huts and around fifty able-bodied men; perhaps, then, there were around one hundred people of all ages living here. In 1805, based on census figures, it is estimated that a band or village of one hundred people would have had to depend upon just seven adult men for food, clothing, and protection. This illustrates how in the space of sixty-five years the population changed and diminished drastically

Culturally, Algonkians and Iroquois were very similar. Both were primarily forest hunters whose chief food animal was the deer and whose chief food crop was corn. The men fished in the spring and summer while the women planted corn and worked in the gardens or gathered nuts and berries.

Late August brought the men home to assist the women with the harvest. Autumn saw the organization of collective hunting drives, and by November the entire village, excluding the elderly who remained behind, would scatter throughout the hunting territories, where they stayed through mid-winter. They would then return to their village before the spring thaw would make traveling on snowshoes difficult. The village was moved every eight to twelve years because of soil exhaustion, shortage of firewood, and increasing filthiness.

Both societies were matrilineal, and each tribe was divided into family groups, or clans, which had their own totemic classification, usually a bird or animal. For the Algonkians, life was particularly simple. The Algonkian house, called a wigwam, was an oval framework of poles bent into a dome shape and covered with slabs of elm bark or other similar material (birch bark was preferred, if available). The Algonkians did not know how to weave and they made a plain black pottery. Picture writing on birch bark was occasionally used to record certain events; this was unique to the Algonkians among the Native Americans of North America and is usually credited as one of the simplest forms of writing.

The approximate location of the village of Shekomeko in Bethel is known only from tradition, as there is nothing here now that would indicate that the gently rolling hills have ever been anything but farmland, and no archaeological work has been done to uncover what lies beneath the surface, although the local farmers, in plowing their fields, have turned up many arrowheads here over the last two centuries. A drawing made of the village in 1745 that is now in the Moravian Archives at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, does not compare well with a modern geological survey map of the area, although it may have been drawn from memory. However, there are reasons to believe the tradition. For one thing, as has been mentioned, the Mahicans would have been attracted to a hillside location for their village, with the small brook below for their water supply which would have made it preferable to a level site along the larger Shekomeko Creek. Also, the rediscovery of the missionary Gottlob Buettner's grave on the hilltop in the mid-nineteenth century, which will be discussed later, is further testimony that here, indeed, was the site of Shekomeko.

Introduction	Table of Contents		Land Grants and the Little Nine Partners Patent
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