Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquin People of New York - Taschenbuch

When Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed into the New York Harbor in 1524, he climbed a hill and beheld "campfires as plentiful as stars, as far as the eye can see." Native New Yorkers reveals the city beneath The City, telling the fascinating story of the ancient Algonquin culture that maintained a thriving civilization in the greater New York area that is now the world's foremost metropolis. A thousand years before Columbus, the area that is now New York City was a thriving paradise, hilly and green, lush with forests and wildlife, inhabited by the Lenape Indians. In many respects, this Algonquian tribe created the template by which the city was designed: Broadway, which followed the high ridge of the island, was the Mohecan Trail; Routes 80 and 78 out of the city are both ancient pilgrimage trails. Greenwich was an actual Indian village that stood on the banks of Manetta Creek, whose waters, named for a legendary monster, still run beneath the city. Contemporary New Yorkers' footsteps - and their subways, ferries, and bridges - trace many of the identical paths the Lenape used.