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A Layered Landscape: Indigenous Land and Colonial Property in the Hudson Valley Presented by BJ Lillis
On Thursday, January 23, 6-7:30pm, the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History, in collaboration with the Hudson Area Library, hosts a presentation on changing land rights in the colonial Hudson Valley including Indigenous and tenant resistance to a manorial system presented by BJ Lillis. The event will be held in-person at the library. This presentation is the first of a Leisler Lecture 4-part series for 2025. There will be no recording.
This talk traces Indigenous survival and resistance to colonialism on Hudson Valley manors from the early 18th century to the 1760s, when an unlikely alliance between tenant farmers and Native people organized tenant uprisings, rent strikes, and coordinated legal action against Hudson Valley landlords. In the 1760s, some landlords intensified their approach to market-oriented agriculture, replacing customary lease terms with shorter leases and money rents. Tenants turned to extra-legal action even as their Wappinger and Mohican allies pursued their land rights within the imperial legal system. Together, their actions reveal the contingent, contested foundations of rural capitalism and property on the eve of the American Revolution.
The colonial Hudson Valley had a distinctive political economy, defined by the manor: a form of property that granted rights in land and limited legal jurisdiction to a lord, consolidating huge tracts of land under the control of wealthy families. In practice, manorial land ownership was not absolute: property rights were shared between landlords, tenant farmers, and Indigenous communities. The Hudson Valley’s manors were profoundly shaped by the Indigenous landscapes they overlay. Elite families depended on relationships with Native nations to establish and settle manors and on Native landscapes to define their claims to land. This helped enable small Indigenous nations like the Mohicans and Wappingers to remain sovereign throughout the colonial period; they lived within but were not subject to New York.
BJ Lillis is the Hench Post-Doctoral Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA. They completed their Ph.D in history at Princeton University in 2024. Their project, A Valley Between Worlds: Slavery, Dispossession, and the Creation of a Settler-Colonial Society in the Hudson Valley, 1674-1766, brings together histories of Atlantic slavery, Indigenous North America, and English, Dutch, and German colonialism to explore the contested relationship between land, labor, and property in the 18th-century Hudson Valley. Before graduate school, BJ worked in public history at the Museum of the City of New York, including as Project Assistant for New York at Its Core, the museum’s groundbreaking three-gallery permanent exhibition on the past, present, and future of New York City. They are also known for their acclaimed collaborations with the artist Lissa Rivera, Beautiful Boy and The Silence of Spaces, exploring the history and performance of gender.community established in a Dutch cultural region in an English colony. That study received the Hendricks Award from the New Netherland Institute in 2017. Their current book project, “A God of Order,” considers the challenges the Reformed churches in colonial America faced as they transported European ecclesiastical governing models to a colonial context. Related articles have appeared in de Halve Maen, The Journal of Presbyterian History, New York History, and The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.
The Jacob Leisler Library Lectures are made partially possible through the generous support of the Van Dyke Family Foundation, HRBT Foundation, and Bank of Greene County Charitable Foundation.
The Hudson Area Library History Room houses a collection that pertains to the history of the City of Hudson, Greenport and Stockport; as well as Columbia County and New York State. The History Room also hosts the Local History Speaker Series at the library, offering free monthly talks on diverse topics related to local history.
LHSS Jan 2025 Philipsburg Manor3.jpgPHOTO CAPTION: Restored Philipsburg Manor, Sleepy Hollow, NY with manor house, mill, and dam.
The History Room is open Saturdays, 10am-1pm and Wednesdays 6 - 8pm and by appointment. Online research requests for information on local history are available at historyroom.hudsonarealibrary.org/. This is a free service to the public. To inquire about an appointment email brenda.shufelt@hudsonarealibrary.org or call 518-828-1792 x106.
The Hudson Area Library is located at 51 N. 5th St. in Hudson, NY. The mission of the library is to enrich the quality of life by providing free and equal access to programs, services and resources, and by creating opportunities for all members of our community to connect, create, learn and grow.
The Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History is an independent, not-for-profit study and research center devoted to collecting, preserving, and disseminating information relating to colonial New York under English rule. In the years spanning 1664 to 1773, New York province’s diverse European settlements and Native American and African populations fused into a cosmopolitan colonial territory with ties throughout the Atlantic World.
The Institute is unique in focusing on this under-examined 109-year period in American history.
The Institute contains a collection of original, digital, and/or paper copies of primary source manuscripts, books, maps, and illustrative materials, as well as a library of secondary resources that provide scholarly context to the primary sources. The Jacob Leisler Institute is an open resource for both scholars and the interested public.