In The 1620s The Poesten Kill Was Already Settled

In the 1620s, Albany was known as Gastanek; Green Island was Nehanenesick; Van Schaick Island, Quahemesicos; Cohoes was called Nachawinasick. The Minuit map, produced about 1630, showed five Mohican villages near Fort Orange. One substantial community was located at the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson and was known as Monemin’s Castle, after the Mohican chief killed in battle with the Mohawk in 1626. This village was the northern limit of Killian van Rensselaer’s lands on the Hudson’s west side. It was once located on the north shore of the Mohawk, later on an island at the river’s mouth, and by 1651, Monemin’s people had moved to the north of Greenbush.

Early native people lived on the Poesten Kill’s prime farm land, rich bottom lands that the Mohican had been farming for at least six hundred years. In addition to practicing horticulture, they also fished, hunted, and gathered all types of foods, practiced skilled crafts and participated in wide ranging trade network that stretched to the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes. The difference between the Hudson bottom lands and the plateau above are striking. Above there is in fact little level land; the soil is rocky and the climate cool. There are sometimes as many as twenty fewer frost-free days on the plateau than along the Hudson and fewer still in the mountains to the east. Except for the fertile areas along the Hudson and the section from the village of Poestenkill to the village of Eagle Mills, the banks of the Poesten Kill are relatively ill-suited for agriculture.

Image: Hudson River Valley c 1635 (north is to the right)