PMP Announces New Edition of Shirley Dunn’s “The River Indians”
A new edition of Shirley Dunn’s acclaimed The River Indians, now featuring a refreshed design and a new foreword by Justin Wexler, cofounder of Wild Hudson Valley, a forest farm and environmental education organization in Cairo, New York, is now available from Purple Mountain Press.
First published in 2009, The River Indians was the final work of historian Shirley Dunn and the culmination of decades of meticulous research. Wexler calls the book “truly a fitting capstone for her decades of research on the Mohican People and their land.” In this landmark study, Dunn offers a vivid account of the Mohicans—often referred to as the River Indians—and their role in key historic events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including their relationships with the Colonial Dutch and their alliance with the Americans during the Revolution. Drawing on extensive archival discoveries, she brings readers closer to understanding the Indigenous peoples of the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains.
The new edition also features an endorsement from Bonney Hartley, Tribal Historic Preservation Manager for the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, who writes: “In The River Indians, Dunn centers, respects, and demonstrates the Mohican people’s connection to the landscape and illuminates factually the records and relations involved with political struggles to remain there. It importantly instructs and re-situates New York’s Hudson Valley as intrinsically Mohican, as homeland.”
Shirley Wiltse Dunn (1930–2022) was a leading scholar of the Mohicans and early Dutch settlers. She authored The Mohicans and their Land: 1609-1730, The Mohican World: 1680-1750, and The Mohicans, a booklet for young readers. A founder of the Dutch Barn Preservation Society, she was honored as a fellow of the Holland Society of New York for her research on Dutch farm locations. Her interest in Mohican history began while studying Native American deeds for early properties in the Albany area.
The new edition of The River Indians is available now through the Purple Mountain Press website and wherever books are sold.
First published in 2009, The River Indians was the final work of historian Shirley Dunn and the culmination of decades of meticulous research. Wexler calls the book “truly a fitting capstone for her decades of research on the Mohican People and their land.” In this landmark study, Dunn offers a vivid account of the Mohicans—often referred to as the River Indians—and their role in key historic events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including their relationships with the Colonial Dutch and their alliance with the Americans during the Revolution. Drawing on extensive archival discoveries, she brings readers closer to understanding the Indigenous peoples of the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains.