Mapping Native New York:
A Native American Handbook
for Creating Meaningful Land Acknowledgements
for the Hudson Valley

by Evan Pritchard

This 177 page book is packed full of little-known information about the middle and lower Hudson Valley from Cohoes Island (just above Albany) down to Manhattan, as it existed under the stewardship of local Algonquian-speaking people, part of a vast and ancient Native American civilization that covered much of North America at one time. Hudson Valley readers will receive an eye-opening (and long-awaited) pre-European geography lesson about where they live, plus the native placenames for many familiar towns, cities, pathways, rivers, streams, mountains, waterfalls, islands, and much of the accompanying history.

The author takes the reader up the Hudson (Mohicanituck, "Greatest of Estuaries; River That Flows Both Ways") and on a journey inland through the Rondout Valley with its islands and waterfalls, then to Mamakating, "Where We Gather By the Fire Under The Pines," home of Queen Basha a sunksskwa or female chief. Then Pritchard reveals a long-lost council rock at the edge of a lake where four tribal territories came together. He digs up evidence that there was more to the Waoranecks of Newburgh than one dares to imagine, as well as evidence that parts of upstate routes 212, 209, 28, 23, and 30 were connecting portage routes used for thousands of years by Esopus Munsee canoers, and reveals a similar network of portage routes throughout Westchester County. His detective work on Peebles (Monemin or Berry) Island following the oral traditions about berries is astounding. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the book is its encyclopedic reconstruction of Dutchess County before the Dutch (including upper Putnam). Don't miss it!

$15 plus NY state tax plus $7:95 priority 8 ½" x 11" comb-bound, hand crafted, with laminate color cover;
Extensively footnoted and illustrated with original maps; To use PayPal, use evan.pritchard7@gmail.com as address; or send check to Evan Pritchard c/o Evan Pritchard, PO Box 259, Rosendale, NY 12472.