Contemporary conversations
For additions or amendments please email DCHS Executive Director, Bill Jeffway.
Click above: Christian Ayne Crouch, principal investigator of Rethinking Place and director of the Center for Indigenous Studies at Bard College notes, “the generosity and wisdom of individuals who have long engaged in the hard work of nurturing and defending the flora and fauna vital to a balanced world.”
Click above: Bonney Hartley, historic preservation manager of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Community talks about the importance of the return of the Papscanee Island, “Our land is intrinsic to who we are — it’s our identity. The greatest gift is to have our land back,” she says.
Click above: Sachem Hawkstorm, in his observance of the indigenous principle of “7 generations”, convinces all of us to “look forward” to the generations to come in a Tedx Talk in 2023.
From 1776: Voices of Indigenous People Heard Locally
A version of this article runs in the January 28, 2026 issue of the Northern and Southern Dutchess News / Beacon Free Press.
By Bill Jeffway
This is part of an ongoing series of DCHS findings that look at the launch of countless local journeys inspired by the 1776 American Revolution as we approach its 250th anniversary. At the time, the American promise of freedom and equality was a radical experiment. When we look at local Indigenous communities, we find that their ambition to maintain vital, dynamic, and discreet communities across generations past, present and future has consistently involved addressing land rights issues.
But first, some context from the Revolutionary period itself.
Many people are familiar with the great American Patriot Daniel Nimham who was originally from southernmost Dutchess County, today’s Putnam County. His motivation to join the Patriot rather than the British cause may have stemmed from his failure to get what he felt was just treatment from the British.
In 1767, he traveled to England to argue his case to the British Secretary of State and Lords of Trade, who turned down his appeal. He died in battle in the Revolution in 1778. Had he lived, he no doubt would have faced the same obstacles with the new United States that he faced in trying to have his land rights issues resolved with Colonial New York.
At the time of the publishing of the Declaration of Independence, expectations of fair treatment and property rights had been in the air among Indigenous people as both British and US Patriots sought their support.
In the late summer of 1775, “King” Solomon Uhhaunauwaunmut of the Stockbridge Munsee spoke at the Treaty of Albany meeting to leading Patriots saying, “Wherever you go, we will be by your side. Our bones shall die with yours. If we are conquered our Lands go with yours, but if we are victorious we hope you will help us to recover our just rights.” Uhhaunauwaunmut became an important Indigenous combatant, among many, for the patriot cause. But tensions over land rights would continue.
Although the phrase manifest destiny did not come into use until 1845, the concept of westward expansion to the Pacific was well in play in 1839 when efforts to remove any remaining Indigenous populations from New York State were under way.
Poughkeepsie’s Nathaniel P. Tallmadge was a US Senator from New York who was involved in the making and amending of an important Senate bill related to what was largely seen as a fraudulently obtained 1838 Treaty of Buffalo Creek.
Through the Poughkeepsie Hotel register (DCHS Collections) of 1839 we find a January 10 gathering of the most important leaders of Indigenous Peoples at the time.
Six leaders arrived and registered at the hotel. The Seneca leaders Jamison, Seneca White, and Little Johnson arrived from Buffalo and were noted as “Indians.” Two men named Quinny (one of whom would have been John Wannuaucon Quinney), and Big Bear from Green Bay, Wisconsin, were noted as “Indian Chiefs.” These leaders were trying to reverse the goals of the 1838 treaty they say was unjustly obtained by the United States, that would relocate any remaining Indigenous in New York State communities to the US West.
They were aided by Quakers, who in 1839 published a significant committee report documenting the overwhelming wish of the majority Indigenous people to remain on ancestral lands. We believe at least two of those registering at the hotel at the same time were important Quaker leaders. The treaty was ultimately amended in 1842 which preserved the Seneca territories of Allegany, Cattaraugus and Oil Springs. This was a small, but important victory. But larger battles continued.
One-hundred and ten years after the launch of the American Revolution, the Dutchess County Peace Society had its annual gathering for thousands on August 1, 1886 in the Town of Clinton’s Wiley’s Grove. The group’s leadership emerged from local Quaker husband and wife Charles and Amanda Deyo.
The Society’s main goal was to stop deadly war; but included advocacy for the fair and equal treatment of Indigenous people, people of color, women, and the working class.
On that particular day in Clinton, Chief Red Cloud (1822-1909), a highly regarded leader of the Oglala Lakota, spoke through a translator. The New York Times described him as “the greatest Chief…about six and a half feet in height, and large in proportion.”
Comments of Chief Red Cloud that day reflect the challenge of balancing a defense of identity and assimilation to engage. At Wiley’s Grove he said, “I am glad to come among White folks. I am glad to have White folks visit my people. My boys wanted to taunt White people. I would not let them. Now they don’t want to fight anymore. I came out east to see about my lands. I came with Mr. Cody (Buffalo Bill) not for money alone but to learn.”
Other speakers that day argued for citizenship rights for Indigenous people which were eventually granted in 1924. Except for the controversial 1887 Dawes Act, which for nearly 50 years promoted individual land ownership among American Indians, the federal approach was to relocate and consolidate Indigenous people on reservations.
The profiles of the many Indigenous people who lived locally is a separate and ongoing exercise. We end with a brief single profile: Hannah Coshire. The 1919 reporting of her 1887 death in or near LaGrange is revealing. The Sunday Courier (Poughkeepsie) at the time described her as, “the last of the Schaghticoke.” The persistently popular 1826 book, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper, fixed a narrative that many contemporary Indigenous people wish to correct. Keep an eye out for historical narratives of a “disappeared race” while examining the contemporary voices of Indigenous people today.
