Native American Culture Is Alive in the Two River Area

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The Red Bank Public Library’s latest installment of its Let’s Talk About Race program included discussions about the prevalence of Native American culture in the area and state. Photo by Allison Perrine

By Allison Perrine

RED BANK – You may have noticed that there are some Native American-sounding street names around the Two River area. But do you know just how immersed the county is in Native American culture?

In the Red Bank Public Library’s most recent installment of its Let’s Talk About Race program, guest speakers Claire Garland and Lorraine Stone came together virtually to review the topic: Native American Heritage Surrounds Us. They explained just how much Native American culture, from the pants people wear to the names of the streets they live on, food they eat and beyond, is in the area.

“When I say ‘Indian,’ what do you think of? If I say ‘European,’ what do you think of? I think that’s the way to understand the word – European could be any of a number of different cultures… and it’s the same with Indian. When I say Indian, it can’t be just one monolith group; it’s a num- ber of different languages, cultures, traditions, alliances,” said Garland.

The night kicked off with Garland discussing a photo of three Cherokee chiefs visiting England. In it, they were said to be discussing what became the Proclamation Line of 1763 which defined the lines west of the Appalachian Mountains that white settlers were not to cross. The first time Garland, of Native American descent, saw the photo, she was amazed.

“Why is it that I didn’t know about this?” she questioned. “Mostly what you hear about Native Americans is that they were all savages and lots of other derogatory remarks. You don’t hear about diplomats going to negotiate treaties and bar- gains and deals for their peo- ple and their community.”

But over time, the Cherokee recognized the only way to survive was to adapt. They followed through on their deals with the British and the king, and they set up trading connections along paths across the 13 Colonies. Some of those paths traversed New Jersey and have since been transformed into major highways, like Route 80 and the Atlantic City Expressway, and more local roads such as Sycamore Avenue in Tinton Falls and Oceanport.

“Our heritage goes back hundreds of years,” said Garland. “My grandmother’s people started showing up on the New Jersey censuses in the early 1800s.”

Municipalities in Monmouth County and other New Jersey towns are named after the Lenape people and the tribes and clans that once lived in the area. That includes Manasquan, Navesink, Metedeconk, Hoboken, Weehawken, Raritan and Rockaway, to name a few.

“The names are with us and that’s one of the ways that we realize that we are still surrounded by the Native American culture,” she added.

Another way is to take a look down at the pants everyone is wearing. Anyone dressed in long pants, Garland said, is dressing “like an Indian.” Europeans used to wear skirts, bloomers and knickers; Indians wore long pants to protect their legs from thorns, bushes and cold weather.

Many words that we use today derive from a Native American language. That includes kayak, canoe, tomahawk, puma, buffalo, moose, raccoon, chipmunk, barracuda, manatee, jaguar, skunk, hurricane, husky and many others. Thousands of native words still infuse the culture and language, she said. And there are many phrases people use today that originated from native languages: bury the hatchet, playing possum, smoking the pipe, bootleg liquor, firewater, honky-tonk and yankee.

Anyone who eats one of the 4,000-plus food items made from corn is also enjoying an ingredient from Native Americans. Maize yields more grain per acre than any other crop, Garland said, and more corn is planted in and exported from the U.S. than any other crop.

“Corn is a New World crop. Corn feeds Africa and Europe. Corn brought the height and weight of Europeans up higher than it had ever been before they had corn,” she said.

As of today, there are about 576 federally and state-recognized tribal groups living in the U.S. Some ancestors of the eastern band of Cherokees live on the East Coast in North Carolina; the western band was forced to move in 1828 after gold was discovered. They walked 116 days to Oklahoma where the tribe remains today. There are even more tribal groups recognized in Canada, and more in Central and South Americas.

This article originally appeared in the June 3 – 9, 2021, print edition of The Two River Times.