Tackapausha Preserve creek from Clark St HDR 2021 jeh

Tackapausha -- also spelled as Tackapousha -- was a

Lenape The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory inclu ...

sachem, a successor of

Penhawitz Penhawitz was Sachem of the Canarsee band of Munsee in the 1630s and 1640s, and cultivated a relationship with the government of New Netherland. He was the first Long Island sachem known to the Dutch, and was based in modern Brooklyn. Penhawi ...

(his mother's brother, an important father-like figure in the Algonquian matrilineal kinship system). Tackapousha represented a broad coalition of

Munsee The Munsee (or Minsi or Muncee) or mə́n'si·w ( del, Monsiyok)Online Lenape Talking Dictionary, "Munsee Indians"Link/ref> are a subtribe of the Lenape, originally constituting one of the three great divisions of that nation and dwelling along ...

-speaking peoples of western Long Island in negotiations with Dutch and English settler colonials from as early as the 1640s to as late as the 1690s. Over a period of more than fifty years, Tackapausha was involved in the negotiation of many land-use agreements and alliances between the indigenous people of western Long Island and the Dutch and English colonial authorities. In 1643, he and several other Long Island sachems signed an agreement with Englishmen from the Stamford outpost of the

New Haven Colony The New Haven Colony was a small English colony in North America from 1638 to 1664 primarily in parts of what is now the state of Connecticut, but also with outposts in modern-day New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The history of ...

allowing for the "purchase" of a town plot for the new settlement of Hempstead in territory claimed by the

Dutch West India Company The Dutch West India Company ( nl, Geoctrooieerde Westindische Compagnie, ''WIC'' or ''GWC''; ; en, Chartered West India Company) was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors. Among its founders was Willem Usselincx ...

. In May 1645, after the murder of five of his people by Hempstead settlers and the murder of two more captured Indians by the Dutch, Tackapausha went to New Amsterdam to meet with Willem Kieft and make peace with the Dutch. At the time, Tackapausha said he was representing all the Indian communities of Long Island and he pledged on behalf of them all to provide warriors to help the Dutch defeat any Indians who opposed them. He was the first person to sell land in the

Rockaway Peninsula The Rockaway Peninsula, commonly referred to as The Rockaways or Rockaway, is a peninsula at the southern edge of the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, New York. Relatively isolated from Manhattan and other more urban parts of the ...

to a person of European background when he sold the present-day Far Rockaway to an

Englishman The English people are an ethnic group and nation native to England, who speak the English language, a West Germanic language, and share a common history and culture. The English identity is of Anglo-Saxon origin, when they were known in ...

named

John Palmer John Palmer may refer to: People Politicians * John Palmer (fl. 1377–1394), English politician *Sir John Palmer, 5th Baronet (1735–1817), British politician * John Palmer (1785–1840), U.S. congressman from New York * John Palmer (1842–190 ...

in 1685. He is the namesake of Tackapausha Museum and Preserve in Seaford, NY. It is "an 80-acre tract of glacial outwash plain, maintained in its natural state as a wildlife sanctuary and devoted to nature, recreation and education," according to the site's website.

References

Native American leaders 17th-century Native Americans Land owners and developers in Rockaway, Queens Lenape people Year of birth missing Year of death missing {{NYC-stub