The Esopus tribe is a tribe of LenapeNative Americans who were native to what is now Upstate New York, specifically the region of the Catskill Mountains. Their lands included modern-day Ulster and Sullivan counties. The Lenape originally resided in the Delaware River Valley before their territory extended into parts of modern-day New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Eastern Delaware. The exact population of the Lenape is unknown but estimated to have been around 10,000 people in 1600. The Esopus people spoke an Algonquin dialect known as Munsee. The tribe generally lived in small communities consisting of 10-100 people. They traveled seasonally and settled mostly in clearings by sources of water, developing diverse agricultural practices. The Esopus people's main crop was corn, but also planted or foraged beans, squash, hickory, nuts, and berries in addition to hunting elk, deer, rabbits, turkey, raccoons, waterfowl, bears, and fish. They generally ate two meals a day according to what was seasonally available. Socially, the Esopus people traditionally had strict heterosexual marriages with rules to prevent inter-breeding. The average lifespan was generally 35–40 years old. Sachems or chiefs were temporary power holders meant to make decisions based on the well-being of the tribe, and although there were definite gendered roles within the tribal community, there was no sense of patriarchal structure.
The first believed interaction between colonists and the Esopus people was recorded in 1609. The Esopus tribe sold 72 acres of land to European colonists in 1652 through the Thomas Chambers land deed in Kingston, New York. It is unknown whether the two Esopus sachems at the time, Kawachhikan and Sowappekat, understood the transaction, as their communities had foundational differences in understanding money, ownership, and transactions. This deed began the following centuries of dispossession continued through the Fisher/Rutgers Land Deed of 1899 and the Peter Stuyvesant Blockade. The tribe fought a series of conflicts against settlers from the New Netherland colony from September 1659 to September 1663, known as the Esopus Wars, in and around Kingston, New York. At the conclusion of the conflict, the tribe sold large tracts of land to French Huguenot refugees in New Paltz and other communities. The Esopus Wars devastated many Lenape communities in what is now Ulster County. Populations dwindled through warfare with Dutch and French settlers, in addition to widespread disease, with smallpox being the most deadly. Casualties were exacerbated by inter-tribal warfare.
