The Staten Island Historical Society, an education-focused non-profit, operates an interactive museum where they hosted the 2022 Hearth and Harvest Festival. It was here, in a room full of attendees awaiting a performance of traditional Native American dances, where I somehow found myself still alone.

John Scott-Richardson, a Native speaker, educator and host of the presentation, asked the audience what the month of November commemorated. Gingerly, I raised my hand. Surprised he was only getting one response, he invited me to take a stab at the question. “American Indian Heritage Month!” I hollered through cupped hands. “Exactly,” he replied.

Addressing the rest of the room, he inquired to see if anyone in the audience knew about American Indian Heritage Month. No one raised their hands.

With solemnity, he expressed his grief. “History books are not going to tell it,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”

To better understand American Indian Heritage Month, Thanksgiving and New York City’s ties to Native Americans, it is prudent to take a closer look at their relationship with the neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.

The Financial District sits on land that watched the Atlantic waters rush and recede from a time before Europeans noticed these tides. This collection of rocks in the middle of a sheltered archipelago has not only been the center of world trade that it is today, but has a much deeper history as the center of trade for Native American populations.

At the corner of Battery Park, mere steps from the Charging Bull, is the National Museum of the American Indian. Beside the entrance is a display explaining the etymology of Manhattan Island. One name is “Hay-La-Py-Ee Chen Quay-Hee-Lass,” meaning, “the place where the sun is born.” The Native Americans of Delaware also called it “Menatay,” meaning, “the island.” Others, such as Robert Juet in the log book of his 1609 voyage, used the term “Manna-hata.”

All of these names point to Manhattan’s history extending far outside its contemporary role as a center of commerce. The island of Manhattan was a thriving place of Native American culture and trade long before any European presence.

In addition to the traditional dancing performances, the event included demonstrations of both Native and Colonial life.

David Martine, a member of the Algonquin nation and an associate of American Indian Artists Inc, stood outside the courthouse in Staten Island’s Historic Richmond Town as he educated a small crowd on the intricacies of traditional Native American dwellings. A wooden structure, constructed of long arching branches and thatched phragmites reeds, stood next to Martine, who was gesturing with his hands to the intricacies of the architecture and inviting the audience to take a look inside. A network of handmade wampum sashes, ribbons, and a leather satchel criss-crossed his red shirt. Long hair, grayed by experience, flowed from beneath his feather crown wrapped in silver metal.

In soft voices and with freezing hands, we chatted about the history of this land and the relationship between the colonists and Native populations in the early 17th century. “Even centuries ago, many, many tribes came to lower Manhattan to trade. It was a very, very important trading center.”

Similarly, Bob Gevert, a building tour guide for The National Museum of the American Indian explained that “this is exactly where the Lenape people traded, right here. And this is where America traded.” With a point of his finger, he concluded. “Beneath your feet.”

Entrance to the National Museum of the American Indian | Photo by Colby McCaskill

Below my feet was the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House: a project constructed in the early 1900s to act as a bridge between the roaring sea and the hands of the consumer.

The elaborate Beaux-Arts building stands seven stories tall and cost, according to the New York Times, “a sum greater than any that has been expended on a public building in New York — with the exception, of course, of the Court House in City Hall Park.” The building was the center for shipping and commerce in the United States until around 1964. Since then, the halls have been refurbished to act as exhibits of Native American art, history and cultural education.

This year, Nov. 24 was the 401st anniversary of what is commonly referred to as the first Thanksgiving, but Martine said that is not the full story.

“The natives traditionally had many Thanksgiving ceremonies all the time,” Martine said. “Some tribes had 12 ceremonies that were specific to the seasons or what the crops were doing, what the animal life and the plant life were doing.”

Contrary to public perception, Thanksgiving is a celebration that many Native Americans hold year-round. So the “First Thanksgiving,” referring to the well-known historical feast between the English settlers of Plymouth and the Wampanoag people, was the first of its kind but not the first thanksgiving of the Native tradition.

Kyle Drumheller, the visitor services leader at The National Museum of the American Indian, and a native member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy from upstate New York, explained that Thanksgiving is really the tradition of celebrating blessings together.

“When there are visitors, you treat them with much respect,” Drumheller said.

Thanksgiving, in its most basic respect, is a road to community because “food is the vehicle for conversation.”

Martine, Scott-Richardson and Drumheller share the common sentiment that much of their true history — both their uniquely vibrant cultures and their historical hardship — is not properly learned today.

“A lot of our history is not taught in school,” he told the crowd. “Many areas of city government are not aware of the depth of our history in the city. We have, as I said, always been here.”

Martine’s words struck upon the ongoing conversation of the relationship between Native Americans and the powers of governance sitting atop their homeland. Martine explained that when it comes to the extended relationships between the native people of New York and the European colonists, “the first part of the answer would be to say that it’s complex.”

In a sense, the first Thanksgiving was a great representation of what the rapport between the two cultures could look like. But “soon thereafter, things soured in the relationship between the native people and the English colonists,” according to Martine.

As Martine spoke, his eyes drifted towards the horizon. He said that his people experienced widespread hardship, in the form of “various elements. Some of them during the colonial period were very violent — open warfare between the two cultures. In other areas, competition in the economy that the native people had to work through to survive…Some of our people were forbidden to speak the languages in the colonial period, so a lot of the languages have been lost.”

One of the most local nuances has to do with the narrative regarding how Manhattan came under English rule.

Just beyond the U.S. Customs House, a flagpole stands at the entrance to Battery Park. On its base stands a relief sculpture of a transaction between a European and a Native American. Below the scene, a golden inscription reveals that the flagpole was “presented to the City of New York by the Dutch people 1926… In testimony of ancient and unbroken friendship.”

The story goes that Dutch colonists in 1626 bought “the Island Manhattes from the Indians for the value of 60 guilders,” according to the only surviving account of the transaction.

For many Native American New Yorkers, this idea is perceived as damaging. Martine advocated that “the phrase of the selling of Manhattan is mostly a romantic tale. It's not accurate. It doesn't get into any of the reality behind it.”

Flagpole monument commemorating the sale of Manhattan | Photo by Colby McCaskill

Often, this narrative is used to justify the diminished Native population. Martine, on the other hand, contended that “the reality of political history is complicated. Our people did what they could to survive in the face of overwhelming odds… disease epidemics, political pressure, outright warfare, violence and being ostracized out of society.”

From the inseparable history in New York between the Native people and the European colonists comes a conundrum for every New Yorker to deal with: how does one go forward in such a situation? From those proximate, two solutions have been presented: education and repatriation.

For Drumheller, the Native tradition is continual thanksgiving, a celebration of blessings and treating “everybody how you would like to be treated.” It is a way of respecting those who shared the tradition all those years ago.

For Gevert, the best way forward is doing “what I did. I started helping.” In addition to volunteering at the National Museum of The American Indian, Gevert advocates for “repatriation: showing respect by giving back to whom we have stolen.”

And as Martine stated, “too few people realize that we have a history here in the 21st century that's culturally powerful, [one that] ordinary people can learn more about.”

Colby McCaskill is a freshman at The King’s College majoring in Journalism, Culture and Society. He loves to write and enjoys long runs in the rain.

“We Have Always Been Here” — Exploring American Indian Cultural Influence in Lower Manhattan