Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Brooklyn: Native Fields, Colonial Claims and Forced Removal

Brooklyn’s Native fields and shorelines became colonial claims through separate agreements, expanding settlement and war. A 1652 Nayack agreement explicitly required residents and descendants to leave; Lenape life and cultural return continue. A deed date alone hides the people, unequal power and consequences involved. Read the promises and removal demands alongside Native perspectives and continuing Lenape presence. Native places became colonial property claims Brooklyn's bays, cultivated flats and wooded hills were places of Native life before they became farms and town lots in the Dutch colony. The surviving records describe several transactions involving named Native owners and colonial officials. They do not describe a single sale of everything now called Brooklyn. Nor does a document's assertion of permanent ownership tell the whole story of what Native people understood, retained...