Our Sense Of Place: February 2008

The Source
For a drop of rain to travel the entire length of the Hudson River, it would need to start at its source, near the summit of Mount Marcy, the highest peak in New York State. There, in Lake Tear of the Clouds, it would embark on a 315–mile journey to the Atlantic Ocean.

Upon leaving Lake Tear of the Clouds, it would run through Feldspar Brook and the Opalescent River to enter Henderson Lake. Departing this lake, it would voyage through varied alpine landscapes, traveling southward and eventually leaving the Adirondack Mountains.

Leaving the Adirondacks, this drop of water would then fall into a very deep and ancient fracture in the Earth’s crust, becoming a river and winding through rural farms and villages, ancient forests and dying factory towns.

Near Troy, the river officially becomes an estuary with the speed of its current increasingly guided by the ti

des of the Atlantic Ocean. As our drop journeys further downstream, the strength of the moons on the oceans would begin to outweigh the current of the river and it would learn why the Algonquin Indians called it Muhheakantuk, “river that flows both ways.”

Around Bear Mountain, where the river narrows, it would pass through a deep gorge that is technically a fjord. For the remainder of its passage to the ocean, it would be drawn upriver during high tide and only travel downriver, toward the sea, during low tide.

Near the end of its voyage, our drop would find itself in one of the largest and finest natural ports on the planet, the harbor that surrounds and shields New York City.

Eventually, should our drop choose to leave New York City, it would flow through The Narrows, cross under the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge, travel through an underwater canyon that burrows deep into the continental shelf and finally fall into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

Ice
Fifty thousand years ago, a sheet of glacial ice lay across much of North America, stretching from the northern reaches of Labrador and all of the way into the heart of modern New York City.

So much of the earth’s water was captured in this and other contemporaneous ice sheets that global sea l

evels fell three hundred feet, causing some east coast shorelines to extend over one hundred miles further into the present-day Atlantic Ocean than they do today.

In its deepest spots, this constantly flowing sheet of ice was over one thousand feet deep. As it moved, it crushed and sculpted the land beneath. In many places, the ice peeled away every layer of earth above the 450 million year old bedrock, creating many of the physical features that define the visible landscape of today’s Hudson River Valley.

As they grew, these glaciers scoured the ground and pressed an accumulation of rock debris into a wall that ran through much of New York City, New Jersey and coastal Pennsylvania. This wall marked the ice’s furthest advances.

Climate Change
Seventeen thousand years ago, the climate of the northern hemisphere began to warm. Ice melted and sea levels rose.

The last glaciers withdrew from New York State 11,000 years ago, leaving the region to take on its present shape. As these glaciers receded, melting ice liquefied into heavy flows of water. The large coastal embankment created earlier by growing glaciers now trapped this water into large lakes.

As ice melted, the increasing weight of the water cracked the wall and broke through a mile-wide gap, now called the Narrows, and drained off into the Atlantic Ocean.

This break cut a deep channel that still reaches all of the way to the eastern edge of the continental shelf, which at this time was entirely above sea level. After breaking through the rock barrier, water ran through an exposed rock shelf for 120 miles before reaching the ocean.

As the oceans rose, water poured through the Narrows and filled the far-reaching Upper Bay. The easternmost portions of the river were submerged by rising water levels and became part of a large sunken canyon leading to the bottom of the ocean.

Where this channel nears the edge of the continental shelf, it widens to five miles and then suddenly slumps onto the floor of the Atlantic, 9000 feet deep.

Scientists speculate that there are species yet to be discovered in the deepest part of the Hudson canyon and the thick fan of debris that the river deposits as it enters the ocean.

Early Hunters
As the climate warmed and the river drained, forests full of birch and pine trees replaced thawing tundra in the Hudson Valley. These forests then gave way to stands of spruce and fir, interspersed with open meadows.

Wooly mammoths, mastodon, bison, bears, sloth, giant beavers, saber-toothed tigers, and other large animals migrated to exploit the food resources that the Hudson Valley offered in abundance.

10,000 years ago, at the end of the Ice Age, small bands of Indians arrived and began spending their summers on the island of Manhattan. Their ancestors had left a famine-struck Siberia thousands of years earlier, crossing the land bridge that connected Asia to Alaska via the Bering Strait. These nomadic Paleolithic hunters left proof of their time in the area in the form of stone projectile points and fossilized mastodon bones.

As hunters, they followed big game and became the earliest humans to settle in what would become New York State. They stayed for a while, but then, nine thousand years ago, left as further climatic warming drove away the big game on which their lives depended.

With continued warming, hardwood forests of oak, chestnut and hickory began to dominate the landscape.

By 6500 years ago, the Hudson Valley had evolved into a fertile biosphere that served eastern North America as both the northern extreme for southern species and the southern extreme for northern species.

The river and its tributaries provided a watershed for more than 13,000 square miles of land, including not only northern and eastern New York State, but also some of Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey.

At this time, a second wave of residents moved in to hunt and gather environmental resources as diverse as deer, wild turkey, fish, shellfish and nuts.

These early colonists began to cultivate local crops like tobacco, squash, sunflower and maize using slash and burn farming techniques. By burning vegetation, they were able to return essential nutrie

nts to the soil, bringing fallow land into cultivation quickly and greatly extending its productive life.

The discovery of the bow and arrow and advancements in pottery technology increased their ability to collect, store, and transport food and water.

With the development of birch and elm bark canoes, the river became the Hudson Valley’s first highway. New trading relationships blossomed.

Foreign Explorers
Sheltered from the open sea, New York Harbor can be entered from the east, though Long Island Sound, or from the south, by heading north into Lower New York Bay and traveling through The Narrows that protect the Upper Bay from the Atlantic Ocean.

A broad underwater sandbar running between Sandy Hook in New Jersey and Coney Island, pierced here and there by navigable channels, presented early mariners with the only natural obstacle to the harbor’s 770 miles of navigable waterfront.

In 1010 A.D., almost 500 years before Columbus, a Norse Viking from Greenland named Torfinn Karlsefensi landed in Manhattan and established a settlement that he called “Stream Fjord”. Along with his bride Gudrid, he built a small fishing village that fed and protected 130 people for 3 years.

In the first decade of the sixteenth century, Juan de la Cosa drew a map of the New World which hints that anonymous fishermen looking for cod may have also discovered the mouth of the Hudson and the island of Manhattan.

The first solid evidence of Europeans in Manhattan, however, comes in 1524 with the arrival of Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian in the service of French King Francis I.

Verazzano, in his ship Dauphne, wanted to find the mythical Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean.

Instead, he discovered Manhattan, where he “found a very agreeable situation located within two small prominent hills, in the midst of which flowed to the sea a very great river, which was deep within the mouth; and from the sea to the hills, with the rising of the tide, which we found at eight feet, any laden ship might have passed.”

The valley was brilliant in color and life was abundant when Henry Hudson, an Englishman working for the Dutch East Indies Company, crossed the gap between Sandy Hook and the Rockaway Peninsula, through the Narrows, into the Upper Bay and onto the river.

Traveling in a vessel called that Half-Moon, a shallow drafted yacht smaller than the Mayflower, he was hired by the Dutch to find a new passage to Asia. In the harbor, he found a wide and deep body of water with plenty of good anchorages.

Upon arrival, Hudson dropped anchor on the west side of the river, in Hoboken Bay. From this vantage point, he spied Mahican Indians in canoes on the east bank, near the north end of the island.

Hudson noted that the native people were friendly, but in a sign of things to come, Hudson kidnapped 2 Mahicans with the intention of taking them back to Holland as a gift for the king. One of his captives drowned during an escape attempt. The other successfully escaped and found his way back to his camp to warn others about the aggression.

As he sailed north, the tidal shifts and saline water of the estuary convinced Hudson that he had indeed found the much-desired Northwest Passage. It was only when he traveled upriver as far as Albany that he realized that it was a river and did not lead to Asia, so he turned around and began a return trip to the Atlantic Ocean.

Upon his return downstream to New York Harbor, Hudson navigated the East River, naming Hell’s Gate after its treacherous currents and came to realize that part of the lower east bank of the river, Manhattan, was an island with a vast forested shoreline and no natural bridges.

On October 6th, the Half-Moon returned from its voyage upriver to Albany. A

ngry Mahicans attacked the ship as it passed, but were kept at Bay by cannon fire.

Hudson returned safely to Europe only to die of starvation on a later voyage, when his crew mutinied and sent him adrift on a small raft to die.

With his reports of the Hudson Valley, the Dutch returned quickly and established lucrative trading relationships with the natives.

Manna-Hatta
By the time that the first Europeans arrived, the area that would become New York City had as many as fifteen thousand inhabitants residing in seasonal campsites.

The groups that spent the spring and summer on the island of Manhattan were not well organized in defined tribes or nations. Rather, they identified themselves primarily with autonomous bands consisting of a few dozen to a hundred people.

They called themselves Lenape – (“men” or “people”) and called the island Manna-Hatta (“island of the hills”).

The lower part of the Hudson Valley, including Manhattan, was similar to present day Maine’s rocky coast. Due to its exposure to the Harsh Atlantic elements, it was difficult to survive in Manhattan during the winter.

It was, however, a good spring and summer resort that provided ample access to fish, clams, mussels, oysters and other seafood as well as plentiful game birds, rabbit and deer. They also planted small plots of corn, squash and beans.

Pure spring water ran from the bluff at the northernmost tip of the island, making it a popular resting spot.

During the autumn and winter, however, these groups would migrate to their inland homes, dwelling in disposable longhouses that were constructed from saplings, bark and mud.

These inland sites allowed early New Yorkers to be near their fields for the autumn and winter harvests. Seasonal migrations forced them to keep their tools, weapons and cooking utensils simple and light.

Upriver from the Lenape lived the federation of tribes that formed the Iroquois League of the Great Peace.

According to legend, the idea of the League originated in the middle of the 16th century to end a streak of vicious fraternal wars between Iroquois speaking peoples.

Under the leadership of a Huron philosopher named Deganawidah, and a new tribal leader, Hiawatha, the fierce Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Tuscaron and Mohawk tribes united to form a single federation that stretched from the Hudson all of the way to Niagara Falls.

Hiawatha’s Iroquois League was in place when the Europeans established regular contact with the native people of the Hudson Valley. They negotiated lucrative trading relationships with the Dutch and profited greatly from the fur trade. They used this newfound wealth to support an aggressive expansion into territories that spread deep into Canada, east into New England, and as far south as Virginia.

The League allied with the British against the French during the French and Indian War, helping England acquire Canada, and sided again with the British during the Revolutionary War. This time they had allied with the losing side of a war, and the newly formed American nation forced them northward, onto isolated reservations near the Canadian border.