Long Island and Rhode Island. In 1609, the English navigator Henry Hudson explored the harbor and purportedly landed at Coney Island. Adriaen Block followed in 1615 and is credited as the first European to determine that both Manhattan and Long Island are islands. Native American land deeds recorded by the Dutch from 1636 state that the Indians referred to Long Island as "Sewanhaka" ("Sewanhacky" and "Sewanhacking" were other spellings in the transliteration of Lenape). "Sewan" was one of the terms for wampum (commemorative stringed shell beads, for a while also used as currency by colonists in trades with the Lenape), and is
Lenape Swedish West India companies to promote the fur trade. The Lenape were major producers of wampum or shell beads, which they traditionally used for ritual purposes and as ornaments. After the Dutch arrival, they began to exchange wampum for beaver furs provided by Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannock and other Minquas. They exchanged these furs for Dutch and, from the late 1630s, also Swedish imports. Relations between some Lenape and Minqua polities briefly turned sore in the late 1620s and early 1630s, but were relatively peaceful most of the time. The Lenape practiced large-scale agriculture to augment a mobile hunter-gatherer society in the