Hidden Literacies

Colonial Documents and their connection to the Munsees

The Munsees also, apparently, held onto or had access to colonial documents. In claiming that they have been shut out of the annuities from the 1805 treaty known as the “Treaty of Fort Industry,” they write, “we would most tenderly refer your kind attention to the fourth article of said Treaty, which was made on the fourth of July 1805.” They show a detailed knowledge of the terms of the treaty, and cite the names of the two Munsee Chiefs who signed it.7

The memorial also reaches back to first contact with Europeans, with the premise that their kind treatment of the first colonists conferred an obligation that the United States should still uphold in 1849. Their account of the arrival of the Dutch in New York Harbor expresses another medium of memory, oral tradition. Their narrative account features a premonition about the coming of the white men, a first sighting of a ship, and a gift of metal implements that they didn’t know what to do with.

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