Wappinger (Amerind tribe)
Years: 1500 - 1785
The Wappinger are a confederacy of Native Americans whose territory in the seventeenth century spreads along the eastern bank of the Hudson River.
Primarily based in what is now Dutchess County, New York, their territory includes the east bank of the Hudson along both Putnam and Westchester counties all the way to Manhattan Island to the south, the Mahican territory bounded by the Roeliff-Jansen Kill to the north and extends east into parts of Connecticut.
They are most closely related to the Lenape, both being members of the Eastern Algonquian-speaking subgroup of the Algonquian peoples.
The Lenape and Wappinger speak very similar Delawarean languages.
Their nearest allies are the Mahicans to the north, the Montauketts to the south, and the remaining New England tribes to the east.
Like the Lenape, the Wappinger are not organized into cohesive tribes for most of their history; instead, they form approximately eighteen loosely associated bands.
Following their service on behalf of the American cause in the Revolution, loss of their leader Daniel Nimham, and subsequent irrecoverable loss of their land, the tribe becomes scattered.
A very few are still found in Kent, New York, as late as 1811.