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This chapter focuses the interactions of Hudson Valley Indians with one another and with Natives in neighboring regions, and how their ties to these groups influenced their political and strategic behavior. Especially important to Hudson Valley Indians were relations to the Susquehannocks to the west and the Iroquois to the north of the Valley. The Valley Indians had a periodically antagonistic relationship with the Iroquois, but they could hope to use their predominantly friendly relations with the Susquehannocks to counterbalance Iroquois power. The importance of interactions with neighboring peoples is especially noticeable during the years 1664–71, when many Hudson Valley Indians allied with New England peoples to their east in waging war against the Mohawks and other Iroquois, a campaign in part made possible by continuing hostilities between the Iroquois and the Susquehannocks.

This chapter considers the relationship of Hudson Valley Indians with the English and Iroquois. From the 1670s onward, Hudson Valley Indians increasingly had to accept the reality of some degree of foreign domination of their homeland, both by the English and the Iroquois. These partners tended to see the peoples of the Valley as their subordinates, often little more than a source of military manpower at their disposal. However, on political terms, at least, the Valley Indians were far from cowed, and through evasion and delay made it impossible for their supposed superiors to place them under extensive control. Internally, Hudson Valley peoples remained in charge of their own affairs, an autonomy facilitated at least in part by the colonial government's general lack of interest in the affairs of these Natives. The Iroquois, too, often remained aloof from Hudson Valley affairs, and while they might on occasion call the Valley Indians to their bidding, for the most part Iroquois interference was fairly limited.

This introductory chapter discusses the politics and society of the Hudson Valley Indians. Indians in the Hudson Valley were part of multiple independent, and in some cases sizable, political groups, and they had effective leadership structures capable of providing a high degree of stability, even in the face of foreign invasion and war and massive depopulation. The surviving evidence points to the presence of political leaders capable of speaking for several hundred followers, even after foreign epidemics had decimated local populations. Together these leaders and their peoples created a sphere of sustained diplomatic, political, and social interaction that was surprisingly stable for almost two centuries following first contact with Europeans. The chapter details group and population numbers, formal political structures, land and authority, hierarchy and localism, effects of contact and early colonization, political stability after the beginning of colonization, and diversity and unity.

This chapter describes changes in Hudson Valley Indian populations in the eighteenth century. By the early 1700s, most Native groups disappeared as functioning polities due to loss of land, emigration to other areas, and death due to epidemic disease. After the first decades of the eighteenth century, the Mahicans, Esopus Indians, Wappingers, and Schaghticokes were the only large Native political organizations left in the Hudson Valley itself, but these groups continued to maintain networks and patterns of interaction from previous years. Whether the Matinnecocks or other western Long Island Natives participated in these networks is unknown. The ability of Hudson Valley peoples to uphold customary intergroup relations shows how it was possible for small groups living close to colonial settlements to preserve their own political traditions and their connections to a larger Native world.

The 1750s and 1760s constituted a period of unrest among the Indians of the Valley, and the Native diplomatic system was weakened by the ongoing imperial and English–Indian conflicts that reverberated throughout eastern North America at this time. These conflicts caused fissures both within individual peoples and in relations among former closely allied groups. These developments were to a large extent the result of the migration of Valley Indians to other areas, especially to the west. Migrants came into contact with and were influenced by new groups of people, and the expatriates in turn exerted influence on their compatriots at home. This chapter shows that those Indians who remained in the Valley were torn between their sympathy with Indians at war with the English in Pennsylvania and other western areas and their need to maintain peaceful relations with the European majority population at home. Faced with these pressures, some chose neutrality or alliance with the English, while others joined the war against these Europeans.

This chapter discusses the development of tourism in the Hudson Valley. According to historian John Sears, there were three prerequisites for the emergence of tourism in nineteenth-century America: the growth of an urban class that had the money and leisure to begin exploring the countryside; the construction of an adequate transportation system; and the development of an infrastructure to provide safe, comfortable accommodations for travelers. In 1823, a group of merchants from Catskill, New York, acquired a seven-acre tract of land known as Pine Orchard and built a “large and commodious hotel” there. After the Supreme Court ruled in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) that the Livingston monopoly on steamboat navigation on the river was unconstitutional, several new lines were organized. By 1830 there were eight lines operating twenty-nine steamboats on the Hudson, which both increased the efficiency of travel and led to significant decreases in cost. Other developments that promoted tourism include the emergence and public embrace of landscape painting as an appropriate form of American expression in the arts; and the publication of books such as Timothy Dwight's Travels in New England and New York (1822) and guidebooks such as The Tourist (1830). The people who visited Hudson Valley are considered first-generation consumers of the American landscape, both in the sense that building facilities for tourists transformed that landscape, and because many tourists undoubtedly thought of scenery as a commodity to be experienced.

This chapter focuses on the kinship connections between Hudson Valley Indians. Strong ties of actual and fictive kinship bound Hudson Valley groups together in a widespread network of intersocietal contact and interaction. Members of one group often had relatives among neighboring peoples, and on a larger level entire peoples were fictive or metaphorical kin. Rooted as they were in daily experience, these relations entailed duties and obligations understandable to all members of society. Spiritual ceremonies and reciprocal exchanges of gifts and favors worked to reinforce and renew these ties. The ties that bound these various people to one another formed the basis for a widespread diplomatic network.

This chapter describes how Native diplomatic networks operated in practice. The Indian peoples of the Hudson Valley maintained a widespread and coherent diplomatic system. Native leaders established routines for resolving disputes between members of different peoples. In the case of more serious conflicts involving whole groups, leaders of neighboring peoples worked as mediators. This network should not be described as a formal alliance, much less a confederation along the lines of the Iroquois, as there were no permanent councils or other forums coordinating the activities of member groups. The various Hudson Valley peoples were at any time free to pursue their own polices independently of their neighbors, but ties of kinship, custom, and friendship structured their political choices. The diplomatic system consisted of a set of common practices and patterns of interaction facilitating cooperative relations. Custom and mutual understandings, rather than formal alliance structures, governed these relations.

This chapter considers the fate of Hudson Valley Indians during Revolutionary era. In spite of continuing divisions among the Natives of the Valley, it was ultimately the unrelenting pressure of the European population, as well as the crucible of the Revolutionary War, that brought the long history of the Indian Hudson Valley to a close. Political and strategic disagreements during the long years of war were no doubt problematic, but the Valley Indians had weathered crises before. Were it not for new levels of hostility and land hunger on the part of their European neighbors, they might have managed to repair their weakened political and diplomatic arrangements. The Esopus Indians had gone quietly back to their Ulster County homeland after the end of the Seven Years' War, and many Wappingers, too, sought to return home. This latter group had seen their remaining Hudson Valley lands seized by New York grandees, and, over the following two decades, the Wappingers struggled unsuccessfully to regain their lost lands. By the early 1770s the Esopus Indians constituted the only readily recognizable Native political organization in the Valley, and, though clearly weakened, this group still showed signs of vitality until the catastrophe of the American Revolution.

During the early period of English rule in the Hudson Valley, local Native populations increasingly had to acquiesce to many aspects of foreign rule, and at least acknowledge their dependence on the government of New York. This chapter focuses on how Hudson Valley Indians abandoned their claims to complete equality with the newcomers and began to describe the provincial governor as a father figure and protector. But the Indians' acceptance of foreign domination was far from complete, and in reality colonial authorities often had little control over the affairs of the Natives. The English remained largely on the outside of the Native diplomatic system that continued to function in the Hudson Valley, and had little knowledge of its operation.

This concluding chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. It argues that the demise of a visible Native political life in the Hudson Valley by the early 1780s should not obscure the fact that the Indian societies in this area had been remarkably tenacious. The Hudson Valley Indians had stood in the direct path of European expansion since the early seventeenth century. Given the odds stacked against them, it is remarkable that such groups as the Wappingers, the Esopus Indians, and the Mahicans managed to maintain a strong presence in their homeland for as long as they did. Part of the reason for the persistence of a visible Native presence in the Hudson Valley for almost two centuries after sustained European contact may be found in the strong ties that linked the various Native peoples in the area to one another. These ties created a diplomatic network capable of ensuring overwhelmingly peaceful and cooperative relations among its participants.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the Hudson Valley at a pivotal time in American history. In the nineteenth century, the Hudson Valley played a key role in the development of an American national identity. At a time when Americans were only beginning to learn about and understand their land, artists and writers as well as tourists found in the Hudson Valley new ways of thinking about the human relationship with the natural world. The book focuses on the literary and visual culture of a small group, really an educated elite. The first key theme is how their attitudes toward the landscape evolved in response to the tremendous economic, social, and environmental change the nation was experiencing. A second key theme is the importance of historical memory, which became increasingly inseparable from an appreciation of the landscape. A third theme is the domestication of the Hudson Valley.

This chapter discusses changes that buffeted the mid-Hudson Valley in the mid-nineteenth century. People in Newbugh, Kingston, and Poughkeepsie experienced three principal developments that fundamentally reordered their communities and livelihoods. The transportation revolution, the development of steam-powered industry, and immigration from abroad impacted the river towns of the valley and affected the everyday lives of residents of the countryside as well, as the railroad introduced competition from distant markets and contributed to the transformation of agriculture in the Northeast. A fourth development was the incredible growth of New York City, whose population increased from 60,000 in 1800 to over 800,000 in 1860, and which was the major market for the agricultural bounty of the valley. Yet despite these changes, many people also proudly realized that they were living in a special place that, as Thomas Cole noted in 1836, was sanctified by history and an incredibly beautiful landscape.

This chapter details the life and work of Washington Irving and N. P. Willis, the writers most closely identified with the Hudson River in the nineteenth century. Each lived in a house that overlooked the river and has become indelibly identified with its history. Each wrote extensively about creating a dwelling and landscape that domesticated the Hudson. The careers and dwellings of both became inseparable from the public perception of the river. Irving's A Book of the Hudson, Collected from the Various Works of Diedrich Knickerbocker attributed great importance to his childhood landscape in the development of his character and personality. The youthful Irving anthropomorphized the river, ascribing to it a soul and other human qualities, and found in it inspiration that fired his fertile imagination. Willis was one of the most prolific and successful authors of his time. In 1831, he copublished the New-York Mirror with George P. Morris, an influential journal that promoted American art and literature. This was the beginning of a long partnership that culminated in the establishment of the Home Journal, one of the most successful magazines of the antebellum years.

This chapter describes efforts to preserve the landscape of the Hudson Valley which was in danger of being lost to the effects of industrial progress. The American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, for instance, sought to preserve the artifacts and places associated with the nation's early history as well as the natural scenery long considered the birthright of the American continent. One of the society's earliest campaigns was to secure the public future of Stony Point, a small peninsula and important site of the Revolutionary War. The society was also active in myriad other ways: it actively promoted the preservation of historic houses; defended New York City's parks against unsympathetic intrusions; and dedicated markers at important historic sites throughout the state.

This chapter focuses on the initial attempts of Hudson Valley Indians to integrate Dutch colonizers into their established system of intergroup relations. The Natives found the Europeans unwilling to adapt to local custom, and relations between Dutch and Indians were therefore often marked by conflict and violence. Nevertheless, as the Dutch period came to a close in 1664, the Hudson Valley Indians had reasons to feel that they had scored at least some victories in their dealings with these foreigners, who at times seemed as if they were ready to acquiesce to Native practice. Indeed, the relationship between Indians and colonists still fell far short of domination of the latter by the former.

This chapter details the life and work of landscape gardener and tastemaker Andrew Jackson Downing. Downing was born in 1815 in Newburgh, New York, a village on the west bank of the Hudson River just north of the Highlands, which Washington Irving had described as “abounding with transcendent beauties.” Just as Irving attributed much of what was good in his character and personality to having grown up on the banks of the Hudson, in his writings Downing attributed great importance to a well-designed house and garden as having a moral influence on its residents. His first book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (1841), quickly became the best-selling and most widely influential book of its type published in nineteenth-century America and remained in print well into the twentieth century. His purpose in writing the Treatise and subsequent books was to educate the public taste.