Wappinger

Member of an American Indian people who inhabited the northeast Atlantic coast and Hudson River Valley (from New York City to Poughkeepsie, New York, and parts of Connecticut) by the 1600s. An Algonquian-speaking people, they comprised many subgroups, including the Wappinger, Manhattan, Siwanoy, and Mattabesec. Farmers and hunter-gatherers, they lived in longhouses and domed wigwams, and navigated the Hudson in canoes. Diseases such as smallpox, introduced by European contact, and wars with the Dutch diminished the population, and their tribal identity was lost; surviving members blended in with other peoples.

Traditionally, the Wappinger farmed maize (corn), beans, squash (pumpkins), and tobacco, gathered wild plants, and hunted and fished. They lived in summer settlements of longhouses, and used wigwams in the hunting season. In the early 1600s Dutch settlers took over some of their land, as well as the land of neighbouring tribes. Tension mounted and, by the 1640s, resulted in Indian attacks on the settlers; the Dutch retaliated by massacring groups of Indians and the remaining Wappinger dispersed.