INDIANS OF MANHATTAN ISLAND 



In their fishing, and for traveling by 

 water, our Indians used canoes some- 

 times made from heavy elm-bark, but 

 more often hollowed out of logs. 

 Roger Williams says of the Narrag- 

 ansett and their neighbors: 



Obs: Mishoon, an Indian Boat, or Canow 

 made of a Pine or Oake, or Chestnut-tree: 

 I have seene a Native goe into the woods with 

 his hatchet carrying onely a Basket of Corne 

 with him, and stones to strike fire when he 

 had felled his tree (being a Chestnut) he made 

 him a little House or shed of the bark of it, 

 he puts fire and followes the burning of it 

 with fire, in the midst in many places: his 

 corne he boyles and hath the Brook by him 

 and sometimes angles for a little fish: but so 

 hee continues burning and hewing untill he 

 hath within ten or twelve dayes (lying there 

 at his work alone) finished, and (getting 

 hands), launched his boate with which after- 

 ward hee ventures out to fish in the Ocean. 



Obs. Their owne reason hath taught 

 them, to pull off a Coat or two and set it up 

 on a small pole, with which they will saile 

 before a wind ten, or twenty mile &c. 



****** 



Obs: It is wonderfull to see how they will 

 venture in those Canoes, and how (being oft 

 overset as I have myself e been with them) 

 they will swim a mile, yea two or more safe 

 to Land: I having been necessitated to passe 

 Waters diverse times: with them, it hath 

 pleased God to make them many times the 

 instruments of my preservation, and when 

 sometimes in great danger I have questioned 

 safety, they have said to me: Feare not, if 

 we be overset I will carry you safe to Land.' 



" ! " Collections of the Rhode Island Historical 

 Society, vol. 1, pp. 98-99, Providence, 1827. 



The NEW YORK TIMES for July 16 ; 

 1906, writes: 



Cherry Hill was the centre of an excited 

 crowd all day yesterday when the news got 

 about that some workmen had dug up an old 

 Indian canoe in an excavation at the corner 

 of Cherry and Oliver Streets. 



Men, women, and boys and girls flocked 

 to the spot, and so blocked the streets that 

 the police of the Oak Street Station had to 

 be sent there to keep order. 



The lower part of Oliver Street is made 

 ground, for in the old days the waters of the 

 East River used to wash above the Cherry 

 Street line. 



Workmen from the New York Edison Com- 

 pany had made an excavation about eight 

 feet deep when they came to what seemed to 

 be a big log near the bottom. They dug 

 around this and disclosed to view what the 

 police and all others who viewed it said was 

 half of an Indian canoe. Then the workmen, 

 who don't take much interest in anything 

 pertaining to the American Indian, promptly 

 got an axe and chopped away until they got 

 out the timber in sight, leaving the other 

 half still buried in the mud. 



In doing this they split the canoe into three 

 pieces, and, followed by an admiring crowd, 

 it was carried to the corner of Frankfort and 

 Pearl Streets, and deposited on a pile of dirt 

 under the Franklin Square elevated station, 

 where the night watchman could keep his 

 eye on it until to-day, when the workmen 

 expect to get the other half and piece the 

 canoe together. 



It is supposed that the canoe was lying in 

 the mud a hundred years ago or more, when 

 the river front was filled in to make more land. 



The part saved is about 7 feet long and 3 feet 

 wide, and 14 inches deep, and tapers to an 

 abrupt and rounded end, which is sharp, 

 somewhat like the Indian canoes of the West- 

 ern Indian. The whole was hewn from a 

 solid log of white pine about fourteen feet 

 long. 



PART OF DUGOUT CANOE. 



Found at Cherry St., New York. The only known fragment of a canoe used by the Indians of 

 Manhattan. 



