A First Look at the Purchase of Elizabethtown

A FIRST LOOK AT THE PURCHASE OF ELIZABETHTOWN

This month I am taking a side trip from the ongoing story of the resort era at Feltville/Glenside Park. Due to research I have been doing for a presentation on local history with a colleague, I am detouring to explore the Elizabethtown purchase, a 500,000 acre tract of land which was the first English purchase of land in New Jersey from the local natives. The circumstances and mysteries surrounding the purchase, and its meaning to the parties on each side have long fascinated me.

It is on paper, by writing and connecting facts, and considering the conclusions past historians made from those facts, that I work through a subject. I am entering into this topic area with the humility of knowing this will be my first pass through it. I expect to return to the topic area in the future, either in a post here or as part of an eventual book. I welcome insights from readers on my discussion here.

THE BASIC CONTEXT FOR THE ELIZABETHTOWN PURCHASE

From the late fifteenth century on, many European nations were racing each other to claim and settle land in the Americas, each nation using their own version of a doctrine of discovery, to justify seizing of land that already had a considerable human population. Each of the forms of this doctrine made initial voyages of “discovery” the basis for subsequently claiming ownership of large tracts of land in the New World, regardless of native populations already there.

Spanish and Portuguese explorers each had divine authority on their sides, relying on proclamations from the Pope which allowed them to “discover” and claim land which did not have Christian peoples in residence. The English, French, Swedish, and Dutch pointed to early voyages on the behalf of their country as the basis for later massive land claims by their sovereign or government. The English, for instance, claimed all land in North America above the Spanish claims and settlements of Florida, citing a 1498 discovery of the eastern shore of the continent by John Cabot.¹ This claim included what would become New Jersey.

But the English were not the only nation laying claim to the New Jersey to be. Nor were they the first European nation to colonize New Jersey and the surrounding area. I have already introduced the earlier colony, Dutch New Netherlands in my post introducing Warren Ackerman at “Introducing Warren”. That post also details how Colonel Richard Nicolls took New Netherlands without a shot, claiming all its territory under the authority of James, Duke of York, who had been the recipient of that same territory under a “gift” of land from his brother, King Charles II. Nicolls was under orders from James not only to take the territory, but to begin filling it with English settlers, to better reinforce the English possession of the land. Approved would-be settlers were to be sent out to trade with the natives for the land.

This order might seem to fly in the face of the European notion that they owned land simply by discovery. What ownership interests did the English imagine that the natives had? Most likely, having had sufficient first attempts at colonizing in Virginia, Maryland and New England, James was recognizing the wisdom of making sure all potential claims to land in his new territory were extinguished to everyone’s satisfaction. Certainly, the requirement that land be “bought” from the natives remained throughout the English colonial period.

MATTANO AND THE MUNSEES

The very first English purchase of land from the natives was one which became known as the Elizabethtown Grant. I will detail some of the circumstances of this transaction below, but will first describe some of the relevant backstory, involving natives who were later signatories to the Elizabethtown Grant.

Three natives signed the Elizabethtown grant, Mattano, Sewakherones, and Warinanco. All of these were members of the Munsee Indians, a group of natives who occupied a roughly twelve-thousand square mile homeland which stretched across Long Island, Connecticut, Southern New York State and across northern New Jersey from the northeastern shore to the Delaware River. The Munsee spoke a variant of an Algonquin language, and are thought of as Lenape or Delaware Indians, along with natives who lived further south, across New Jersey into northern Delaware and eastern Pennsylvania. The homelands of the Munsee were not permanently fixed, nor were they meant to exclude friendly outsiders. The Iroquois Indians to the north of Munsee territory spoke a language which Robert S. Grumet, in his book The Munsee Indians, says was “as different from Algonquian as Japanese is from English.”²

Grumet describes Munsee society as egalitarian, under the meaning of the term created by anthropologist Morton H. Fried. In such a society, it is not that everyone is equal, but that “differences in power, wealth, and authority do not exist.”³ Any authority exercised by an individual is based more firmly on skill and ability than on heredity. Decisions are made on a consensus basis, which does not entail unanimity in the classic sense, but instead a decision agreed to by all, albeit somewhat grudgingly by some. These cultural traits made the Munsee very different from the status conscious and hierarchal English.

Some native leadership was provided by men called sachems by the Europeans, a term which may not be what the Munsee themselves used but will be used here for convenience. A sachem provided guidance or representation for a group of natives. Other leaders including squaw sachems (female) and spiritually blessed metewak, called medicine men by colonists, might also offer forms of leadership.

Grumet found considerable historic traces of Mattano starting with his dealings with the Dutch on behalf of the Munsees. Written traces for Mattano extend from 1649 to 1665. The Dutch described Mattano as a sachem of both Staten Island and Nayack, the latter location being one which Dutch documents describe as a “place on Long Island opposite Staten Island,”⁴ today, the Fort Hamilton section of Brooklyn. Clearly Mattano’s considerable abilities helped him become a sachem, but Grumet also indicates that many men from Mattano’s lineage were particularly influential at the time, with various males in the lineage achieving the title of sachem in native communities extending west from Long Island across northern New Jersey.

NEW NETHERLANDS AND EARLY LAND TRANSACTIONS

Dutch documents identify Manhattan Indians as living at Nayack, so Grumet speculates that Mattano may have been a member of the Manhattan Indians involved in the notorious purchase of Manhattan Island in 1626 by the Dutch. Grumet indicates that no bill of sale for the island has ever been found, and that the identity of the natives involved in the sale cannot be known for sure. Most likely, this transaction was rather informal, and may not have had a written document to evidence it.

As noted in the post introducing Warren Ackerman already referenced above, the natives involved in the Manhattan sale likely did not envision it as what we would consider fee simple sale of the island, rather a transaction authorizing shared use, for which the natives would receive periodic payments.

Indeed, individual fee simple ownership of land was not the norm in the Netherlands, with more feudal ownership models still being followed. Manhattan was not, thus, a direct sale to individuals. In both England and its American colonies, as will be discussed further below, private ownership was achieving something of a “sacred status.”⁵ English colonists were enjoying private property rights to territories immediately adjoining New Netherlands to the north, indeed, on land that the Dutch also claimed as their own. Dutch would-be colonists were naturally envious of the extent of this ownership.

Resultant pressure on the Dutch West India Company, which was organizing the settlement of New Netherlands and recruiting settlers, led the company to offer the opportunity for more nearly private land ownership. Under an act passed in 1629, a person who could recruit 50 colonists could purchase land from the Indians and establish a patroonship, allowing the patroon to have limited self-government over the residents of the patroonship. The company also issued additional permits to other private persons allowing them to purchase land from the Indians.

In doing so, the Dutch West India Company actually set up a problematic three-way competition among Dutch would-be owners of land in New Netherlands, setting the company up to compete for purchases from the Indians with would-be patroons and individual private owners. In 1630, the first written deeds were generated, signed by the Indians in the transaction, with the deeds often being sought by patroons who were afraid of later claims against their purchased land by the Dutch West India Company.

Further European competition for land came from the English colonists whose expectations of private land ownership had caused the West India Company to make concessions to its own colonists. As noted, English colonists were pressuring natives into transfers in Connecticut to the consternation of the Dutch, who also claimed that territory. English settlers spread beyond Connecticut onto Long Island, and turned their eyes to the lands beyond the Hudson, in New Jersey. They were repeatedly rebuffed by the Dutch when they requested the opportunity to trade with the natives for land there.

MATTANO AND THE SACHEMS LEVERAGE DISSENSION

Meanwhile, the Dutch were using presumed native misdeeds to attack the Munsee or were provoking other native groups to attack them. By 1645, the Munsee population was substantially reduced, and unlike the English, the natives did not have a far off homeland which could provide several new individuals for each one killed by war of disease. The Dutch colonists continued flooding in, further skewing native versus European population numbers.

Although considerably reduced in numbers, sachems for the Munsees did all in their power to slow the loss of their lands, using various means designed to pit groups of settlers against each other, either within the settlers of either the Netherlands or England, or between settlers from each nation pursuing claims to the same Indian land. The natives were clearly aware of tensions among the colonists that they could exploit, using strategies such as giving colonists deeds to overlapping pieces of ground or contesting the meaning of existing deed provisions.

Mattano was one of the sachems manipulating colonist dissension. At a time when the Dutch and English were both claiming lands in Long Island and Brooklyn, Mattano offered to sell land at Flatbush to a Dutch merchant and would-be patroon. New Netherlands’ Governor Stuyvesant tried to block the sale of land he considered the Indians to have already sold. Mattano threatened war if colonists took the land without paying for it; Stuyvesant capitulated, and Mattano and other sachems immediately sold land to two groups of colonists.

Mattano went on to orchestrate similar machinations for Dutch purchases in Staten Island and the nearby Raritan-Navesink country. He and other sachems carefully selected purchasers, often selecting those who they knew were at odds with one another, in hopes that the conflicts would lead to a shift in the balance of power and a slowdown in the flood of colonists seeking their land. Realistically, Mattano was not expecting a return of lost property, and probably knew any respite from new claims would not last.

Then the English “conquered” the territory.

MATTANO AND THE ENGLISH

By the time England took New Jersey from the Dutch, they had nearly fifty years of experience at acquiring land from its native inhabitants and transferring it into the hands of private owners, having already established colonies in New England, Virginia and Maryland. England was ahead of other European countries in offering the opportunity for private ownership. Land ownership was still considered to begin with the monarch, but land was increasingly being passed from there into private hands. New Jersey, which had been the possession of James, Duke of York when Nicolls started across the Atlantic actually passed into the hands of private “Proprietors” during the journey and conquest of New Netherlands. This would present some later land ownership wrinkles, which I will discuss in a future post.

As noted above, Nicolls had orders to recruit settlers for the newly conquered land, in order to better establish England as its rightful owner. On behalf of James, who by royal penstroke owned the whole of the land, Nicolls could entertain requests to trade with the natives for tracts of land, with private property rights to the land so acquired to be assured by both their Indian title and the patent which Nicolls would issue under the title held by the Duke.

Some would-be settlers sent a written petition within weeks to Nicolls, now Deputy Governor of the conquered territory. “The Associators:” John Bailey, Daniel and Nathaniel Denton, Thomas Benedick, John Foster and Luke Watson (several of whose names are variously spelled in different documents) asked for permission to negotiate with the natives for land in Albania, as Nicolls was calling what would become New Jersey.

The Associators were all men from Jamaica, Long Island, and were among those who had already approached the Dutch trying to secure land in New Jersey, but had been rebuffed.

Nicolls, who had been directed by the Duke to stabilize English control over the new territories by securing colonists for it, lost no time in approving the petition. Within a month the Associators had approached Mattano about purchasing land.

As We Were describes the meeting as having taken place in the “wigwam of Mattano on Staten Island.”⁶ Thayer waxes eloquent in his description of the transaction:

Mattano’s wigwam on Staten Island, where the deed for the Elizabethtown Purchase was signed, was a typical Indian dwelling. These huts were usually about fifteen feet long, half as wide and seven or eight feet high. They were covered with bark (commonly from the large chestnut trees of the area over which was draped overlapping sheets of deerskin. Within were low couches against the sides. Rush mats were spread upon the ground. In the center was a fire pit from which smoke escaped through a hole in the roof. Hanging from notches were tom-toms, hunting and fishing equipment, and other artifacts used by the Indians in pursuit of the necessities of life.

Thayer throws in some gratuitous comments about native women:

As it was autumn when the purchase was made, weather-beaten women and statuesque girls were seen busying themselves outside the wigwams caring for the harvest which must carry them through the long winter ahead.

Thayer says that a man named John Baker served as interpreter.⁷ The Associators purchase from the Indians had boundaries described by way of land features, including waterbodies, but also had some dense language that might have been difficult even for native English speakers:

“And To Run west Into the Countery Twice the Length as it Is Broad from the North to The South of the aforementioned Bounds, Together with the Lands, Meadows, woods, waters, fields, fens, fishings fowlings with all and Singular the Appurtenances with All Gaines, Profitts and advantages arising upon the said Lands an all other the premisses and appurtenances.”⁸

In the mind of the Associators, at least, the grant amounted to about 500,000 acres of land, extending west from present day Elizabeth into the Watchungs, and including future Feltville. It is not clear what the natives believed was the extent of the purchase. The consideration for the purchase included an initial transfer of

“Twenty fathom of Trading Cloath, Two made Coats, Two Guns Two Kettles Ten Bars of Lead Twenty Handfuls of powder.”

A year later, the colonists bound themselves to pay an additional “four hundred fathom of white wampum.”

Within two months, Nicolls confirmed the purchase in another written document, which confirmed the boundaries of the property as they had been described in the document signed by the natives. In the short time between the signing of the deed itself in Mattano’s wigwam and Nicolls’ written confirmation, additional Long Islanders, this time “East Enders” from towns including Northampton, Southampton, Easthampton and Southold had joined the Associators. John Ogden, Sr. and John Baker, the interpreter, bought out the shares of the purchase belonging to Thomas Benedick and Daniel and Nathaniel Denton. John Ogden had already purchased 324 acres on Long Island from a native “friend”, Wyandanch, a Shinnecock or Montauk sachem, and had gone on with others to create the settlement of Northampton on a harbor on Peconic Bay. He sold these earlier land holdings when he bought into the Associators, purchasing about a quarter of the Associators’ shares, and then going on to sell shares from his interests to other “East Enders.”⁹

DIFFERENT VIEWS OF LAND OWNERSHIP?

Over time, there has been increasing recognition of the unequalness of the land transactions between natives and Europeans, generally focusing on the different views of land ownership held by the two cultures. As Andro Linklater points out in Owning the Earth, humans cannot actually own land, only a bundle of rights concerning the use we can make of it during our period of ownership or lifetime, whichever comes first. A simplistic view of the unequalness of colonial land transactions is that English colonists such as the Associators thought (or professed to think) they were buying all the rights to the land, while natives, believing land could not be owned, were selling, or renting, rights for certain types of usage.

But both the English and the natives had been engaging in these transactions long enough to have some sense of the differences in beliefs around land ownership. Indeed, New Jersey was one of the last of England’s colonies on the Eastern Seaboard, and the social media systems of the day for both cultures would have given an inkling of what the other culture was intending. Moreover, both Mattano (and other sachems) and the Associators had engaged in negotiations and transfers before this.

As I worked my way through the sources for this month’s post, I realized that an awareness by either side of what the other side of any of these transactions intended in the way of land ownership could never be enough to stop the flow of these transactions. For my own sake, and hopefully for your edification, I have broken down the factors, one by one, that I believe drove the continued unequal transfers, and ultimately, drove Munsee and other Lenape nations from the homelands they had lived on for 12,000 years.

VIEWS ON THE LAND OWNERSHIP RIGHTS BEING SOLD

As noted above, the English were far ahead of their other colonizing peer countries in the development of private land ownership. In England, in particular, it was perhaps the primary basis for wealth; Linklater identifies the English as birthing a “land-based capitalism,” as opposed to a “mercantile capitalism.”¹⁰ The latter was exemplified by the system of capitalism in the Netherlands of the time; the Netherlands had invented the stock market and relied for raising capital chiefly on buying and selling goods. During a period extending primarily from the 1600s into the 1700s, Linklater indicates that various of England’s chief thought leaders were putting forth the idea of land as capital, with the power of labor releasing its value. Even Adam Smith, at a time when the Industrial Revolution was beginning to shift England more towards mercantile capitalism, continued to opine that land and agriculture were the basis for the economy.

The idea of land and labor as the source of wealth was eminently true in the first years of English New Jersey, where it was only through the work cutting the trees, damming the streams, hunting the animals, tilling the earth, raising the domestic animals that the value of land was extracted.

This was extremely attractive—devilishly so—to the would-be colonizers of New Jersey. Back in England, most of the forests had already been felled, the fur bearing and other wild animals with human value hunted to extinction, the land tilled to overuse (although manuring was becoming synonymous with land improvement). In New England, or other English settlement locales, the process of making America similarly denuded had already begun, making the land of New Jersey that much more attractive. Private property rights would allow a similar turning of resources into wealth, without regard for the consequences.

Contrariwise, Kraft finds evidence that the Munsee and other Lenape peoples in New Jersey never considered that land could be owned. Indeed, different bands of natives might have overlapping claims to the same land and its resources, especially to resources valuable to all, such as hunting grounds. Settlement sites created by one group might be used by others when vacant, or could simply expand to include the newcomers.

When the sachems did start “selling” the land, not only did they believe (at least at first) that they were selling shared access, but any proceeds in trade goods received did not become the property of the sachem or sachems, but were received on behalf of all members of the community being represented.

WHAT LAND OWNERSHIP ALLOWED YOU TO DO WITH THE LAND

This is related to the topic above, but important to consider separately. As noted, the English saw labor as extracting the value of the land. Indeed, they wanted to transform it into something less wild, something they were more comfortable with, and not afraid of. They gave no thought to the ecosystem—a word that would not evolve for many years. There were no limits to how much wood to take, animals to kill, streams to dam, or fields to till.

Natives, on the other hand, might be guilty of small scale overuse—e.g. expending a site’s store of firewood, and needing to move to another site. However, they saw themselves in a relationship with the land and the creatures and plants in it. Indeed, moving to a new site allowed the old one to regenerate. According to Kraft the Lenape practiced stewardship, making sure that breeding stock of wild animals such as deer were left unhunted, so that the animal population would not be depleted. They used or traded resources to the extent needed for oneself and one’s family. They were appalled (at least initiatilly) by the extent of hunting of beaver and other fur bearing animals by, or at the behest of Europeans. Some, at least got over their qualms, when presented with trade goods such as metal kettles.

FORCE OF GOVERNMENT

As noted above, prior to contact, the Munsee and Lenape had enjoyed a more egalitarian structure than the English, with sachems more or less “first among equals.” It was only the advent of the English which transformed the sachems of the natives into something the English could understand as chiefs, with authority imputed by the English, including the right to buy and sell land. The English lived in a highly hierarchical society, with authority flowing from the king through all tiers of government. These layers of government operated to allow them to buy land, and have it recognized as a valid transaction by the government, with attendant legal protections against incursions.

It was only through the monarch that land in the colonies could be transferred and owned, under the discovery doctrine. The natives had no thoughts of permanent land possession or ownership originating in their sachems.

FORCE OF WRITING

The Dutch patroons had begun in 1630 to have the Indians sign written deeds, in an effort to protect themselves against incursions by the Dutch West India Company, which governed the territory, and from the natives. Similarly, English colonists used the “power of paper” which Linklater describes thus to protect their claims against others, including the government:

But this was the hidden weapon of private property, paper. Everything was written down. The title deeds described how the property had been created and come into the owner’s hands, and any incursion upon it brought the whole panoply of the law against the perpetrator. Paper recruited the power of government to the side of the property owner.¹¹

Paper was involved at every stage of a colonial land grant such as the Elizabethtown grant, starting with a written request to the governor (later, Proprietors) to allow negotiating with the appropriate group of natives for a given tract of land. The governor responded with a written document authorizing the trade. The colonists, hopefully after initial negotiation, drafted a document, signed by the sachems, enumerating the boundaries of the land and the consideration to be given therefor. The governor then issued a document validating the deed. The land was later surveyed, and the written survey recorded. Indeed, the layers of paper only got worse over time.

When the Proprietors’ representative arrived in the newly established settlement of the Associators claiming the Proprietors owned the land, the Associators used their paper trail to defend themselves against the Proprietary government. They did let the Proprietary representatives name their settlement, calling it first Elizabethport, and then Elizabethtown. This gave the land transaction its name, the Elizabethtown Grant, in retrospect.

The natives, on the other hand, had no written language and couldn’t read the language of the English deeds, which included legalese. I imagine that the later observations by Moravian missionary concerning the Lenape might indicate some of their disdain for the need to rely on writing:

. . . the Great Spirit, knowing the wickedness of their disposition, found it necessary to give them a Great Book, and taught them how to read it that they might know and observe what He wished them to do and what to abstain from. But they—the Indians—have not need of any such book to let them know the will of their Maker: they find it engraved on their own hearts; they have had sufficient discernment given to them to distinguish good from evil, and by following that guide they are sure not to err.¹²

As noted, it is unclear whether the natives involved in the Elizabethtown transfer realized how much land the English believed they had purchased, since they couldn’t read the deed.

WAY OF VIEWING EACH OTHER

The Doctrine of Discovery was tacitly or explicitly premised on the notion of non-Christians as not truly persons, thus not having the rights of a person. Kraft documents that the natives were often referred to as savages and mocked for their customs and attire.

But, more than that, the whole of New Jersey had been “given” to the English through James, and the English had no intention of leaving any property behind for the natives. The English simply wanted them gone. Kraft also indicates that rather than feeling sorry about the epidemics that tore through native settlements, “self-righteous Europeans frequently regarded epidemics as acts of divine intervention on their behalf.”¹³ Kraft cites a statement made in the 1670s by Daniel Denton, one of the original Associators involved in the Elizabethtown purchase by way of example:

. . . it is to be admired, how strangely they have decreast by the Hand of God, since the English first settling of those parts; for since my time, when there were six towns, they are reduced to two small Villages, and it hat been generally observed that where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand makes way for them, by removing or cutting off the Indians, either by Wars one with the other, or by some raging mortal Disease.¹⁴

Albeit speaking from some decades in the future from the time of the Elizabethtown purchase, Heckewelder (who Grumet says spoke fluent Munsee) made the following observations about the attitude expressed to him by the Lenape towards the English:

“They will not admit that the whites are superior beings. They say that the hair of their heads, their features, and the various colors of their eyes evince that they are not, like themselves, Lenni Lenape,–an original people,–a race of men that has existed unchanged from the beginning of time; that that [the whites] are a mixed race, and therefore a troublesome one. . . .

It was true, they confess, that when they first saw the whites, they took them for beings of a superior kind. . . . It was not long before they discovered their mistake, having found them an ungrateful, insatiable people, who, though the Indians had given them as much land as was necessary to raise provisions for themselves and their families, and pasture for their cattle, wanted still to have more, and at last would not be contented with less than the whole country. 

CULTURE AND LIFESTYLE

Pre-contact Munsee and other Lenape seem to have lived in an environment of plenty. They had learned the ways to steward the environment to preserve that plenty. This may have stemmed, in part, from a New Jersey native population significantly less dense than either England of the time or the English settlements in America. The Lenape were generally known as a peaceful people, and lived in small, dispersed, and unfortified settlements. Their settlements were fluid both in size and duration, expanding or contracting as more people were welcomed, being used and abandoned with the seasons. Hunting and gathering provided food; agriculture was practiced by some groups, but demonstrated a decision made by a particular group to be in one location for the period of time required for planting, tending and harvesting. If adequate food was provided by the natural environment, this decision did not need to be made.

When they did choose to plant, in order to supplement their gathered or hunted foods, the Lenape did initial field clearing with fire, then surface tilled, rather than deep tilling.¹⁵ They did not have metal tools for clearing or tilling. They might use the same locale for agriculture for a number of years, then move on, having temporarily reduced the site’s fertility, but knowing that after a certain period of time, the site would be fertile again. Burning also produced the “edge effect,” which encouraged the growth of certain plants the natives used for food.

The Lenape did not work in metal, so their cooking and living equipment was composed of ceramics, skins, bones, and other natural materials. Pre-contact trading was mostly utilitarian, i.e. for things needed for everyday life, although the natives did trade for things of ornamentation. Indeed, the limits of what they had access to before European contact made them more susceptible to a desire for the trade goods offered by the Europeans, including metal pots and glass beads.

Guns were also particularly desirable. The natives fashioned their projectile points for weapons from certain types of rock, using other kinds of rock to shape the projectile point. A whole sub-discipline in archaeology, called Experimental Archaeology, has grown up around having modern people learn about the effort required to make the items of native daily living, including projectile points, by having those modern people use native tools and materials to recreate the items themselves. Making projectile points, in particular, is difficult and can be dangerous, since chips fly off in many directions during the process of shaping a sharpened point.

Native moves from one location to another might reflect the potential which the natives involved saw in a particular site for e.g. successful hunting or fishing or planting. Different locales provided access to different plant foods; the Lenape diet might include wild rice, chestnuts, walnuts, butternuts, hickory nuts, hazelnuts, wild crabapples, strawberries, maple sugar, sassafras, mulberries, cranberries, and huckleberries, just to name a few.¹⁶

The native culture and lifestyle was alien to the English. The majority of English settlers to New Jersey hoped to establish a settled home, although Thayer comments on the propensity of many colonists, including those involved in the Elizabethtown purchase, to continue resettling in various places, perhaps before coming to one permanent location.¹⁷

Unlike natives who might use different sites for different purposes, the Elizabethtown and other English settlers expected to use one site for multiple purposes. The Willcocks family, who later became the original English settlers of the land at Feltville on a piece of the Elizabethtown Grant, had a bonanza of uses, including a (somewhat failed) copper mine, trees to convert to lumber, deer to hunt, a stream to dam to power a lumber mill and a grist mill. The grist mill, of course, allowed processing of the grain that the family could grow once they had cleared the trees. Presumably the family also had domestic animals.

NUMBERS

Charles Stansfield estimates the native population of New Jersey to have been about 8,000 at the time of European contact, but notes that there have been estimates ranging from 2,500 to 10,000.¹⁸ The New Jersey population, and the density thereof, was apparently smaller than native pre-contact populations in coastal Virginia, coastal Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

With European contact, native numbers declined.  According to Kraft, each year after contact with Europeans, more Lenape died than were born, while Lenape families remained small. Any European colonist who died was offset by multiple new colonists; the size of colonist families also increased over birth rates in the sending countries. Native deaths that were not caused by European aggression were mostly due to a multitude of diseases to which the natives had no resistance, especially smallpox, but including malaria, measles, typhoid, influenza, dysentery, pleurisy, tuberculosis, and venereal diseases.

HOW THESE FACTORS AFFECTED LAND SALES

Kraft indicates that, as the flood of colonists continued, the Lenape began to find themselves short on furs or deer skins (ironically, Europeans had prized older, worn beaver skin cloaks even over fresh skins). Any remaining land might already have been over-hunted, and the natives found themselves excluded from ancestral hunting grounds elsewhere, so food became scarcer. . The English, having cleared the land sufficiently for their own crops and domestic animals, were wreaking havoc on the native ecosystem or native fields. At the same time, the settlers ceased needing the help of natives to feed themselves. The natives found themselves with nothing but land left to sell to secure what they needed to live.

By the time of the Elizabethtown purchase, the Munsee had endured decades of killings by the Dutch along with population reductions due to disease. Grumet estimates that by 1664, there were only 3000 remaining Munsee, versus 9000 Dutch. And with the English takeover, the numbers were about to explode.

Mattano and his co-signers to the Elizabethtown Grant couldn’t save their people from the takeover of a culture they were not even invited to join.

NEXT MONTH

I will be back to the resort sequence next month. Until then!