The Canarsee (also Canarse and Canarsie) were a band of Munsee-speaking Lenape who inhabited the westernmost end of Long Island[3] at the time the Dutch colonized New Amsterdam in the 1620s and 1630s.
They are credited with selling the island of Manhattan to the Dutch, even though they only occupied its lower reaches, with the balance the seasonal hunting grounds of the Wecquaesgeek of the Wappinger people to the north.[4]
The Canarsee were among the peoples who were conflated with other Long Island bands into a group called the Metoac, an aggregation which failed to recognize their linguistic differences and varying tribal affinities.[5]
- ^ Strong, John A. Algonquian Peoples of Long Island, Heart of the Lakes Publishing (March 1997). ISBN 978-1-55787-148-0
- ^ Bragdon, Kathleen. The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Northeast,Columbia University Press (2002). ISBN 978-0-231-11452-3
- ^ Encyclopedia of New Jersey Indians: Encyclopedia of Native Peoples, Donald Ricky, 1998, p. 176
- ^ "The $24 Swindle", Nathaniel Benchley, American Heritage, 1959, Vol 11, Issue 1
- ^ Nathaniel Scudder, A History of Long Island From Its First Settlement By Europeans to the Year 1845, New York: 1845