Algonquian

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I am a proud citizen of the eastern Algonquian speaking, Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation (Band #1101). 

At the time of colonial contact in the early 1600s, the Algonquian-speaking peoples living in what is now New York State included several distinct nations primarily in the Hudson River Valley, Long Island, and surrounding regions. These groups were linguistically related but politically independent, each with their own territories, leadership, and identities. Key Algonquian nations in the region included:

• Mohican (or Mahican) Originally occupied the upper Hudson Valley and western Massachusetts. An Algonquian-speaking nation, they navigated shifting alliances and conflicts with the Haudenosaunee during the colonial era, and by the 18th and 19th centuries were displaced westward, eventually resettling in Wisconsin as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, a federally recognized tribe with a reservation there. Today, they remain active in Wisconsin while also reestablishing ties and regaining ownership of land in their Hudson Valley homelands, marking a living return to New York after centuries of displacement.

• Lenape The Munsee-speaking Lenni-Lenape include several autonomous communities across southeastern New York, northern New Jersey, and northeastern Pennsylvania. Among them are the Canarsee of western Long Island, the Esopus near Kingston, the Wappinger along the east Hudson River, the Ramapough in the Ramapo Mountains, the Hackensack and Tappan in northeastern New Jersey, the Raritan of central New Jersey, the Pompton along the Passaic, and the Minisink along the Upper Delaware River. Distinct yet interrelated, they continue to share language, culture, and kinship ties as part of the northern Lenape, who were among the first to meet Dutch settlers in the 17th century. Descendants remain in the region, while others live at Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario and in Lenape communities in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario, carrying their traditions forward across the continent despite generations of forced displacement from their homelands.
   
• Montaukett, Shinnecock, and other Long Island groups: The Algonquian peoples of eastern Long Island have long maritime traditions in fishing, whaling, and wampum-making. Today, the Shinnecock are a federally recognized nation with a reservation in Southampton, where they pursue cultural, political, and land-rights initiatives and host a long-standing Labor Day powwow. The Montaukett, though not federally or state recognized, continue to organize, press for legal reinstatement, and revitalize their culture across Long Island and beyond.
   
• Western Abenaki: In the early 1600s, Alni-Alnôbak lived across the upper Hudson and Hoosic valleys, the Lake Champlain basin, and the Connecticut River valley in present-day Vermont, New Hampshire, western Massachusetts, western Maine, and eastern New York. Over time, they established new settlements in places tied to earlier kinship communities—Schaghticoke, Saratoga, Lake George, Stockbridge, Missisquoi, Nulhegan in Coos County, and Norridgewock on the Kennebec—as well as mission communities in Canada, including Odanak on the Chaudière, Saint-François on the Saint Francis River, Wôlinak on the Bécancour, with other enclaves across southeastern Canada. 

Many of these communities were already interconnected through language, kinship, and alliance by the early 1600s. All of these groups are part of the Eastern Algonquian language family and have maintained seasonal subsistence patterns, intertribal trade, and complex kinship networks. Their societies were deeply impacted by Dutch and later English and French colonization, warfare, disease, land loss, and forced displacement.

As I shared in Bowman’s Store: A Journey to Myself in 1997, my great-grandfather Lewis Bowman, born in 1844 in an Abenaki enclave in Brome-Missisquoi, Quebec, came from an undocumented Indigenous lineage. Like many Abenaki and Mohawk families of his time, he moved between Canada and the United States. He first lived in Missisquoi and Winooski, moved to Troy, New York by 1860, and in 1864 joined the 69th New York Infantry, fighting for the Union and becoming a U.S. citizen. After the war, he settled at Cole Hill in Greenfield, where he married my great-grandmother, Alice Van Antwerp. Alice's son, my grandfather Jesse Bowman, married my grandmother Marion Dunham. Together, they raised me on Splinterville Hill in Greenfield Center, New York.

• Marion Bowman (1921–1999) m. Joseph Bruchac Jr. (1912-1986)
  
  • Funnel lines for Marion Bowman: Lines 1–22 (Confirmed), 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Provisional), 31–39 (Confirmed), 40–50 (Reinforcement/Provisional) + Additional Algonquian DeVoe descent (Confirmed). Total: 50.
  • Residence: Splinterville, Greenfield, Saratoga Co., NY.

• Marion Edna Dunham (1895–1958)
  
  • Funnel lines: 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Provisional). Total: 8.
  • Residence: Splinterville, Greenfield Center, Saratoga Co., NY.

• Jesse E. Bowman (1886–1970)
  
  • Funnel lines: Jesse carries forward the first full convergence of all 50 ancestral funnels. These are inherited through his mother, Alice Van Antwerp, reinforced by the Conklin and DeVoe lines, and completed by a final provisional funnel line through his father Louis Bowman. Total: 50.
  • Residence: Splinterville, Greenfield Center, Saratoga Co., NY.

• Louis (Lewis) Bowman (1844–aft. 1918)
  
  • Funnel line: 50 (Provisional). Total: 1.
  • Residence: Brome-Missisquoi, QC → Vermont frontier → Greenfield, NY.

• Alice Van Antwerp (1853–1909) — carries Munsee–Canarsee via Bookhout/DeVoe/Conklin ancestry.
  
  • Funnel lines: Her convergence of Van Antwerp + Conklin + DeVoe gives 49 Iroquoian + Algonquian funnels. Total: 49.
  • Residence: Schaghticoke → Greenfield, NY. Schaghticoke, at the confluence of the Hoosic and Hudson Rivers, was a multi-tribal Native community where Mahican, Abenaki, and Lenape families rebuilt their lives—an enduring place of refuge and survival. It also became home to Dutch–Indigenous families, including descendants of Mohawk and Mohican women who had intermarried with Dutch settlers during the New Netherland era, carrying forward both European and Native traditions in this shared space.

• Edward Hobbs Dunham (1862–1934) m. Marion Flora Mann (1858-1939)
  
  • Funnel lines: 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Provisional). Total: 8.
  • Residence: Splinterville, Greenfield, Saratoga Co., NY.

• Augustus Hard Dunham (1828–1887) m. Henrietta Eliza Hobbs (1829-1909)
  
  • Funnel lines: 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Provisional). Total: 8.
  • Residence:  Splinterville (hamlet of Greenfield, NY)—right around today’s NY-9N & Middle Grove Rd / Bell Brook—and, by 1866, on land recorded in the Kayaderosseras Patent (Allotment 21, Lot 12). Local history places Augustus H. Dunham living in Splinterville (neighbor to splint/basket making factory on Mill Road, owner Judson Root), working there in the 1860s before switching to farming. Judson D. Root’s works at Splinterville were a water-powered splint factory on Bell Brook that made ash splint fans and “fancy baskets.” In 1860 a “variety of fans and fancy baskets made at Judson Root’s factory” was exhibited (the baskets won a prize). After the Civil War, the Splinterville works shifted much of their output to fancy baskets. 

• Susan Atty Maria Conklin (1828–1901)
  
  • Funnel lines: 17–22 (Confirmed), 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Provisional). Total: 14.
  • Residence: Schaghticoke →  Lake George, Warren Co., NY. →  Splinterville, Greenfield, NY.

• Lt. Daniel Wynant Van Antwerp (1821–1900)
  
  • Funnel lines: Lines 1–22 (Confirmed), 23–30 (Partially  Confirmed/Provisional), 31–39 (Confirmed), 40–49 (Reinforcement/Provisional) + Additional Algonquian DeVoe descent  (Confirmed). Total: 49.
  • Residence: Schaghticoke →  Lapeer County, MI (carpenter) → Danville Soldiers’ Home, Vermilion County, IL (final residence & death)

• Sophie Sénécal dit Laframboise (c.1816–1891)
  
  • Funnel line: 50 (Provisional). Total: 1
  • Residence: Alsigonticoke/Saint-François-du-Lac / Pierreville, Yamaska County, Quebec

• Hester Ann DeVoe (1791–1871)
  
  • Funnel lines: Lines 1-22 (Confirmed), 23–30 (Partially  Confirmed/Provisional), 31–39 (Confirmed),  41–42, 44 (Reinforcement/Provisional). Total: 43.
  • Residence: Schaghticoke, Rensselaer Co., NY →  Lake George, Warren Co., NY.

• Winant (Wynant) Van Antwerp (1793–1886)
  
  • Funnel lines: Lines 1-22 (Confirmed), 23–30 (Partially  Confirmed/Provisional), 31–39 (Confirmed), 40, 43, 45–49  (Reinforcement/Provisional) + Additional Algonquian DeVoe descent  (Confirmed). Total: 44.
  • Residence: Schaghticoke, Rensselaer Co., NY.

• Holtham Dunham Jr. (c. 1780s–1853) m. Hannah Webster (1791–1853)
  
  • Funnel lines: 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Provisional) — reinforcement through wider Conklin/Storm/Cole kinship. Total: 8.
  • Residence: Splinterville (hamlet of Greenfield, NY).

• Nathaniel Hull Conklin (1807–1888)
  
  • Funnel lines:  23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Partially Provisional). Total: 8.
  • Residence: Troy, New York.

• Clarissa Foster (1788-?)
  
  • Residence: Braintree, Vermont.

• Marytie (Marytje) Bookhout/Buckhout (1757–aft. 1790)
  
  • Funnel lines:  17–22 (Confirmed), 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Partially Provisional). Total: 14.
  • Residence: Sleepy Hollow (Philipsburgh Manor, Westchester Co., NY).

• Annetje “Annah” (Cole) Dunham (ca. 1757–aft. 1800)
  
  • Funnel lines: 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Provisional) — reinforcement through wider Conklin/Storm/Cole kinship. Total: 8.
  • Residence: Sleepy Hollow (Philipsburgh Manor, Westchester Co., NY).   →  Splinterville (hamlet of Greenfield, NY).

• Gysbert (Gilbert) Concklin (1766–1835)
  
  • Funnel lines: 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Partially Provisional). Total: 8.
  • Residence: Sleepy Hollow (Philipsburgh Manor, Westchester Co., NY).

• Catharina See (Zie) — baptized 27 Oct 1733
  
  • Funnel lines: 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Partially Provisional). Total: 8.
  • Residence: Sleepy Hollow (Philipsburgh Manor, Westchester Co., NY).

• Abraham Concklin (1736–1814)
  • Funnel lines: 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Partially Provisional). Total: 8.
  • Residence: Philipsburgh Manor (Sleepy Hollow/Tarrytown, Westchester Co., NY, birth) → Rombout Precinct/Fishkill, Dutchess Co., NY (marriage & farming) → Schodack, Rensselaer Co., NY (final residence & death).

• Jacobus (James) See (Zie) — baptized 14 Aug 1711
  
  • Funnel lines: 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Partially Provisional). Total: 8.
  • Residence: Sleepy Hollow (Philipsburgh Manor, Westchester Co., NY).

• Capt. John “Jan” Concklin (1700–1785) m. Annaatje (Annatie) Storm (1701–1785)
  • Funnel lines: 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Partially Provisional). Total: 8.
  • Residence: Philipsburgh Manor (Sleepy Hollow/Tarrytown, Westchester Co., NY, birth)

• Catharina (Elisabeth) Storm (b. ca. 1675 – d. aft. 1735)
  
  • Funnel line: 17–22 (Confirmed), 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Partially Provisional). Total: 14.
  • Residence: Sleepy Hollow (Philipsburgh Manor, Westchester Co., NY).

• Other Van Tassel descendants (feeding into Conklin)
  
  • Funnel lines: 17–22 (Confirmed), 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Partially Provisional). Total: 14.
  • Residence: Philipsburgh Manor, Westchester Co., NY. → Schaghticoke, NY.

• Jan Cornelissen Van Tassel (ca. 1625–1710) m. Annetje Alberts (1635-1704)
  
  • Funnel lines: 17–22 (Confirmed), 23–30 (Partially Confirmed/Partially Provisional). Total: 14.
  • Residence: Canarsee homeland (Brooklyn/Long Island) → Philipsburgh Manor, Westchester Co., NY.

• Catoneras (ca. 1600–1640s) m. Cornelis Jansen Van Texel or Van Tassel (ca. 1600–1660)
  
  • Residence: Canarsee homeland (Brooklyn/Long Island) → Philipsburgh Manor, Westchester Co., NY.