Ulster County officials have begun what they say is the county’s first formal effort to rebuild a relationship with descendants of the Esopus people, whose ancestral homeland includes much of the Hudson Valley.

County Historian Eddie Moran and a small group of local scholars traveled to Ontario, Canada, from April 12 to 14 to meet with members of the Munsee-Delaware Nation and the Delaware Nation at Moraviantown. The trip was part of a broader effort to share county research with Lenape communities, explore ways for Lenape descendants to return to and engage with their homelands, and eventually renew a 17th-century peace treaty between the Esopus and colonial settlers in what is now Ulster County.

The Esopus were a Munsee-speaking Lenape people rooted in what is now Ulster County. The Munsee-Delaware Nation and the Delaware Nation at Moraviantown are present-day Lenape communities in Ontario with ancestral and cultural ties to that history.

Moran and the team hope to eventually bring the effort before the Ulster County Legislature and seek a formal agreement committing the county to support the developing relationship.

“This is important not only as an act of respect and understanding for our shared history,” Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger said in a statement, “but as an opportunity to build relationships that will deepen our understanding of the cultures that came before us, allow us to learn from one another, and help restore the true spirit of these centuries-old agreements so they carry meaning for generations to come.”

The effort is being shaped by Lenape people themselves, Moran said.

“It’s always preferable when one of the Lenape folks can tell their own history. And I guess that goes for really anybody, especially marginalized people’s marginalized histories,” Moran said. “There’s a combined historical understanding with lived experience that I can never replicate.”

Andy Jacobs, a member of the Delaware Nation at Moraviantown who works with a Lenape women’s group, served as a bridge between Moran’s team and Lenape communities. The trip, she said, was the result of two years of planning.

Jacobs said she wanted the effort to include as many Lenape communities as possible. Many dream of visiting their homelands in the Catskills, she said, but transportation barriers and the lack of a dedicated place to gather have made that difficult.

“Mostly, land back is having a space that we can come to at any time that we call our own,” she said, referring to the desire for ceremonial spaces. The LandBack movement is an Indigenous-led, grassroots campaign advocating for the restoration of traditional, unceded, and treaty lands to Native American and Indigenous stewardship.

Jacobs said one of her goals was to help bring Lenape people back to their homelands to share their story and educate others. Every time she visits, she said, she learns something new about her people’s history.

“We’re healing. That’s a part of our healing, is being able to talk about our story and going out there and hearing stories and things like that, and working together,” Jacobs said.

The April trip included meetings with members of the Munsee-Delaware Nation, the Delaware Nation at Moraviantown, other Lenape representatives, and the Six Nations of the Grand River, which describes itself as the most populous First Nation in Canada. Many Esopus descendants now live in Ontario as part of Lenape communities that were forced from their Hudson Valley homelands over centuries of colonization, war, and displacement.

The relationship between the Esopus and European settlers was formalized after two wars in the mid-17th century. In 1665, Esopus leaders and colonial officials signed the Nicolls Treaty, a peace and trade agreement that called for annual renewals so it would be “kept in perpetual memory.” The treaty was renewed 13 times, with the latest known renewal dated 1745.

During one renewal, the Esopus gave colonial officials a wampum belt made from quahog shell beads. Moran said he learned during the Ontario meetings that the belt symbolized not only friendship, but a sibling-like relationship between the two peoples.

The alliance lasted more than a century, even as the Esopus were pushed farther from their homeland. It fractured during the American Revolution, when the Esopus and colonial revolutionaries found themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. In 1777, George Clinton moved to break the treaty.

Moran hopes the county will eventually take formal steps to renew or reaffirm the treaty.

The work is meant to expand the county’s public understanding of its own history, Moran said, by placing Lenape history at the center rather than treating it as a preface to European settlement.

Moran has also been working with Ulster County Archivist and Greene County Historian Jonathan Palmer to review whether county archives contain items covered by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the federal law that governs the return of certain Indigenous human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and cultural items to affiliated tribes.

Moran said he hopes that work can extend beyond county government to universities and museums in Ulster County.

Other land preservation groups have also worked with Indigenous nations to support their connections to ancestral homelands.

Papscanee Island near Albany, for example, is a 156-acre public nature preserve that was returned in 2021 to the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, descendants of the Mohican people, while remaining protected and open to the public.

Charlie Burgess, stewardship manager for northern New York at the Open Space Institute, said the land holds deep cultural significance for the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, giving members a place to visit, tell their story, discuss life on their Wisconsin reservation, and share the history of their dispossession.

“This is some of the most important work that land trusts can do is supporting tribal nations and their connections to their homeland,” Burgess said. “The fact that we were able to work together, and then we now have a relationship where, if something is under threat, we can discuss, are there ways to protect it together? I think that’s just a huge opportunity.”

Mia Quick is an editorial assistant at The Overlook. Send correspondence to mia@theoverlooknews.com.