Hackensack people

[4] The Lenape engaged in agriculture and seasonally migrated, cultivating companion planting at their campsites to supplement foraging, hunting, fishing, trapping, and shellfishing.

The terrain they inhabited was diverse: wide tidal flats and oyster beds, forested mountains, and level land that could be cultivated.

[12] After Henry Hudson first explored the area, sailing up the river now named for him, anchoring at Weehawken Cove in September 1609, the Dutch claimed Hackensack lands as part of the colonial province of New Netherland.

The Hackensack also "sold" their land, which became sites for the Dutch settlements at Pavonia, Communipaw, Harsimus, Hoboken, Weehawken, Constable Hook, Achter Col, and Vriessendael.

In 1658, Peter Stuyvesant, the Director-General of New Netherland, negotiated the purchase of all the land from "the great rock above Wiehacken", west to Sikakes, and south to Konstapels Hoeck.

In 1669, Oratam deeded a vast tract of land (2200 acres), between Overpeck Creek and the Hackensack River, to Sara Kiersted, who had mastered the Lenape language and acted as interpreter.

[4] In a series of essays published in 1655, David Pietersen de Vries, who had established a homestead at Vriessendael, gave his observations of the Hackensack.

The government of the newly formed province of East Jersey quickly surveyed, patented, or deeded lands throughout Hackensack, Tappan, and Raritan territory.

[20][21] By the mid-18th century, the English colonists referred to the Lenape people generally as the Delaware, in recognition of their major territory along that river and around the bay it feeds, both of which they named for Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, governor of the Jamestown Colony.