Ramapough Mountain Indians - Controversy Over Origins

Controversy Over Origins

The multiracial ancestry of the people in the mountains was noted by their European-American neighbors. Myths, as noted in the section on their name, were derived in part from theories of origins, as well as prejudice related to their racial ancestry because slavery had developed as a racial caste. By the mid-nineteenth century, the multiracial mountain people were concentrated in the settlements of Mahwah and Ringwood, New Jersey; and Hillburn, New York. Local histories documented traditions of mixed-race descendants from intermarriages with the Lenape in the mountains. In the twentieth century, some anthropologists classified such isolated mixed-race groups, who tended to be historically endogamous, as tri-racial isolates or simply as mixed bloods. Assumptions that Indians wanted only to assimilate to the majority culture had led to thinking that their cultures had ended. During a period of urbanization, high rates of immigration, and suburban development throughout the New York metropolitan area, the Ramapough Mountain Indians uniquely lived in their historic areas of settlement in the mountains, and maintained a rural culture.

Cohen noted in 1974 that, as the federal censuses were missing for 1790-1830 for this area, it prevented "establishing positively the exact relationship between many of the these colored families in the mountains, and the earlier colored families of the Hackensack River Valley." He noted the "tradition of Indian ancestry among the Ramapo Mountain People as early as the eighteenth century." Cohen also said, "Some Indian mixture is possible, however, Indian and colored interracial matings probably were not recorded in the Dutch Reformed Churches."

Before 1870, the State of New Jersey Census had only three racial or ethnic categories for residents: White, Black (free), and Black (slave), the same categories as were used in the slave states. Census enumerators tended to use black as the category for any people of color, including Indians. New Jersey finally passed a gradual abolition law in 1804 to end slavery, but it kept slaves born before the law in an indentured status. By a law of 1846, it renamed them as apprentices, "apprenticed for life". The last slaves in New Jersey were not freed until 1865 and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. In 1870, New Jersey began recording Indians (Native Americans) as a category in its census; 16 were identified by census enumerators that year.

A less common theory of ancestry was that the Ramapough were Indian people who had been held as slaves by colonists.

With increasing interest and research in Native American history, a 1984 symposium was held on the Lenape. James Revey (Lone Bear}, then chairman of the New Jersey Indian Office, referred to "Mountain Indians" as the Lenape who had retreated into the mountains of western and northeastern New Jersey and southwestern New York during the colonial era. Other scholars, such as Herbert C. Kraft, have documented that some Munsee-speaking Lenape moved into the Ramapo Mountains to escape colonial encroachment.

Kraft noted, as did Cohen (see below), that there was a gap in "the genealogical record between about 1790-1830 that prevented his assembling with exactitude individual relationships between most of the Hackensack Valley settlers and those of the Ramapo Mountains." In his own work, Kraft has not attempted to establish genealogical links between the present-day Ramapough and colonial-era Indian tribes.

According to Catalano and Planche, consultants for the tribe in its recognition process, Cohen's work has been criticized by the genealogists Alcon Pierce and Roger Joslyn. Catalano said that Cohen had no professional credentials in genealogy, and that the BIA found much of his genealogical work lacking.

The State of New Jersey prohibited free blacks from owning any land.

Edward J. Lenik, an archeologist and author of a 1999 book about the Ramapo Indians, writes:

"The archaeological record indicates a strong, continuous and persistent presence of Indian bands in the northern Highlands Physiographic Providence-Ramapos well into the 18th century. Other data, such as historical accounts, record the presence of Indians in the Highlands during the 19th and 20th centuries. Oral traditions, and settlement and subsistence activities are examined as well. Native American people were a significant element among the primary progenitors of the Ramapo Mountain People..."

The historian Evan T. Pritchard, of Micmac descent, wrote

"The Ramapough, or 'mountaineer Munsee', on the other hand, never disappeared. Their people still occupy the southwest portion of the point of Rockland County, on all sides of Ramapo Mountain. ... Whites have always tried, and continue to try to portray the Ramapough as foreigners: Dutch, blacks, Tuscarora, Gypsies, or Hessians. However, they are the only actual non-foreigners to be found still living in community in and around New York’s metropolitan region. ... The main Ramapough Lenape villages in New York were Hillburn, Johnsontown, Furmanville, Sherwoodville, Bulsontown, Willowgrove, Sandyfields, and Ladentown. Better known, however, as Native American strongholds, are the towns just south of the border, namely Stagg Hill and Ringwood."

The archeologist C.A. Weslager noted that the Delaware were joined in the eighteenth century by some migrating Tuscarora families, who never proceeded to Iroquois country in New York.

Alanson Skinner on the American Museum of Natural History in 1915 noted the multiracial character of the people in the Ramapo Mountains, saying that the Indian descendants had later mixed with Africans and Caucasians.