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
Woody Island (Alaska) short period of accommodation and trade, after which the Russians engaged in brutal subjugation of the people, resulting in "epidemics, forced relocations, and extermination of those who resisted." Russian naval officer Gavriil Davydov observed an Aleut winter ceremony on Woody Island in 1802. He wrote: In 1805 a village on the east side of Woody Island was inhabited by 54 Alutiiq people. A smallpox epidemic struck the region in 1837 and the Russians forcefully amalgamated the survivors into seven villages, among them a village on Woody Island. The Russian American Commercial Company operated an ice company on the island beginning