Lenape French and Indian War (a part of the Seven Years' War in Europe). The Lenape's quick adoption of trade goods, and their need to trap furs to meet high European demand, resulted in their disastrous over-harvesting of the beaver population in the lower Hudson Valley. With the fur sources exhausted, the Dutch shifted their operations to present-day upstate New York. The Lenape who produced wampum in the vicinity of Manhattan Island temporarily forestalled the negative effects of the decline in trade. Lenape population fell sharply during this period, due to high fatalities from epidemics of infectious diseases carried by Europeans,
Barren Island, Brooklyn Barren Island, Brooklyn Barren Island is a former island in Jamaica Bay, off the southeast shore of Brooklyn in southern New York City, New York. It was originally part of a Lenape Native American land before being settled in the 17th century. Barren Island, whose name is a corruption of a Dutch word for bears, was geographically part of the Outer Barrier island group on the South Shore of Long Island. The former island is separated from the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens by the Rockaway Inlet. The island was sparsely inhabited before the 19th century, owing mainly to its isolated