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:

• Mahican (Mohican): Occupied the upper Hudson Valley and western Massachusetts. Though Algonquian-speaking, they were often in conflict or alliance with the Iroquois.

• The Munsee-speaking Lenape included several autonomous groups across southeastern New York, northern New Jersey, and northeastern Pennsylvania. Among them were 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. Though distinct, these groups shared language, culture, and kinship ties, forming a northern branch of the Lenape people who were among the first to encounter Dutch settlers in the 17th century.
   
• Montaukett, Shinnecock, and other Long Island groups: These Algonquian peoples inhabited eastern Long Island and had extensive maritime traditions.
   
• Western Abenaki (including the Schaghticoke and Sokoki): Lived in the upper Hudson and Hoosic River valleys, the Lake Champlain basin, and along the Connecticut River in what is now Vermont, western Massachusetts, and eastern New York. 

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 colonization, warfare, disease, land loss, and forced displacement.

My Algonquian ancestry comes to me through my mother Marion Bowman, based on our compiled genealogy, carried over a dozen distinct lines of descent that trace back to Catoneras, the Munsee-Canarsee woman recorded in 17th-century Dutch land deeds and petitions.

Many of my documented Algonquian lines begin in Brooklyn and extend north through Westchester, Albany, Schaghticoke, and Saratoga—before settling in Lake George and Greenfield Center, New York.

Allied Mohawk Valley families preserved multiple Indigenous lineages among Bowman, Cole, Conklin, Devoe, Dunham, Fonda, Groot, Storm, Van Antwerp, Van Den Bergh, Van Olinda, Van Slyke, Van Tassel, and Van Wart kin.

My 3rd great-grandmother many times over, Hester Ann Devoe carries forward both my families lineal Iroquoian and Algonquian ancestry. Her Schaghticoke family lines include Conklins, Van Slycks, and Van Antwerps. Through allied Hudson Valley families like the Storms, See, Buckhouts, and Van Tassels, she is also linked to Munsee, Mahican, and Abenaki ancestry. Gordon M. Day documents several French-Abenaki family names that appear in both Saint Francis (Odanak) and Schaghticoke, such as Devoe, Obomsawin, Nolet, Panadis, Benedict, Joseph and others—families historically recognized as part of the Western Abenaki population who migrated between the U.S. Northeast and Quebec.

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—first settling in the Abenaki communities of Missisquoi and Winooski in Vermont, and by 1860, in Troy, New York. In 1864, he joined the 69th New York Infantry, fought for the Union in the Civil War, and became a U.S. citizen. After the war, he settled at Cole Hill in Greenfield, within the Fox Hill Indian enclave, where he married my great-grandmother, Alice Van Antwerp—the granddaughter of Hester Ann DeVoe and Winant Van Antwerp—who carried well-documented Indigenous ancestry. These connections grew stronger when Hester’s great-grandson—my grandfather Jesse Bowman married my grandmother Marion Dunham. Together, they raised me on Splinterville Hill in Greenfield Center, New York.