Land Acknowledgement
Isle of the Cayugas and Isle of the Mohawks on the Mohawk River
The Saratoga Springs area, including Greenfield where the Ndakinna Education Center is located, is part of a wide area whose lands and waters were cared for by the Algonkian people known as the Mohican for over ten thousand years. About fifteen hundred years ago, a group of Iroquoian-speaking people, the Kanien-ke-haka (Mohawk), migrated to the area. Both nations regarded the area surrounding Saratoga Springs as sacred. Because of the mineral springs with healing waters, it was considered an area of peace to be shared by all.
The Mohican, who became known as the Stockbridge Munsee, were forced to remove first to Massachusetts, then to the area of Oneida, New York and eventually to Wisconsin where the Stockbridge Munsee Reservation still exists. Their name of Mohican relates to the Hudson River, the Muh-he-kun-i-tuk: The river that flows two ways. The Kanien-ke-haka (Mohawk) are the easternmost of the Five original Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nations. Haudenosaunee means “People of the Longhouse”) and Kanien-keha-ka means “People of the Flint,” the Mohawks. Although most Mohawks were forced to relocate north to the Akwesasne Reservation straddling the Canadian border and further into Canada to several other reserves, there is a contemporary Mohawk community led by Tom Porter near Fonda, New York called Kanatsiohareke.
Many Native people living in the Saratoga Springs area never left, but simply laid low. Several other groups of Algonkian people, including Abenakis, started moving here in the 1600s as a result of European settlements elsewhere. When 18th century tourism around the springs provided opportunities for Native artisans to sell their goods, they began again to have a visible presence in such places as Congress Park where Mohawk and Abenaki craftspeople regularly set up camps to sell their goods well into the early 20th century.
Illustration for Harper's New Monthly Magazine of the Indian Camp in the Pine Grove near North Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY, 1876. The Native women seated beside the small wood frame house are showing miniature canoes and baskets for sale. A Native boy is shooting at a target, and beside him, there is a pleasant face-to-face encounter between a small white boy and a Native girl.
The Lithograph by an unidentified artist of the Indian Camp in the Pine Grove near North Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY, circa 1860s. The camp features small wood frame houses and huts covered with boards and bark, and colorful drapes. Native men and women (likely Mohawk or Abenaki) wearing late 18th century style dress are mingling in a friendly manner with white visitors, and two tourists are shooting arrows at a target. Courtesy of the Saratoga Springs History Museum.