Aquai quin'a month'ee (Hello, how are you?). When these words were being spoken the land upon which Troy sits was a much different place.

Troy was a forested river plain of red spruce, elm, pine, oak, maple and birch trees with several fresh streams, filled with fish, flowing down from the hills to the west draining into the 'Muh-he-kun-ne-tuk' (where the waters were never still) - the Hudson River.

No doubt there were tended fields growing corn, beans and squash, while white-tailed deer, bear, moose, beaver, otter, bobcat, mink, wild turkey and other animals abundantly filled the forest. The people living on the land were not Trojans, but instead indigenous people, the Algonquian speaking 'Muh-he ka-ne-ok' or Mahicans, today called the Mohicans.

'Paanpack', as Troy was then called, was home to these people as was 'Gastanek' (Albany), 'Nehanenesick' (Green Island), 'Quahemesicos' (Van Schaick Island), 'Mathahenaack' (Half Moon), and 'Nachawinasick' (Cohoes).

Stretched along the river banks and on higher ground they lived in circular wigwams composed of bent saplings covered with bark or reed mats, rectangular barrel-roofed houses, or in long houses with roofs of elm bark, where the smoke of several fires would escape from holes every 20 feet or so filling the air.

Two pallisaded villages bordered the north and south ends of the Troy area; Monemius or Moenemine's Castle on Peeble's Island and Unumats Castle at the mouth of the Poesten Kill.

The finding of several possible native graves during the excavation of the trolley barns in Lansingburgh and near Freihofer's in the 19th century, and not far from a known flint mine to the north of it, suggests that there may even have been a village, or "castle" in this vicinity, I believe. Perhaps in the woodland called 'Popgassick' in Lansingburgh, which was owned by a Mohican named Anaemhaenitt. 'Panhooseck', a tract of land from the Hudson River to the Poestenkill and between was owned by the Mohican Ampamit.

The Mohicans lived in harmony with this land. A land itself relatively newly formed from the events of the last glacier that made its way homeward to the north, after reaching terminus in the Long Island Sound some 15,000 years ago. The rich fertile flood plain was at first laid down by the sands and silts of Glacial Lake Albany that stretched from Newburg to Glens Falls, later giving way to the various levels and deposits of the newly formed Hudson River.

No one knows for sure when the Mohicans came into the region, but there is evidence that early man was in the Hudson Valley as early as 12,500 BC, hunting herds of caribou, with stone tipped spears, as they migrated up the Hudson Valley.

Today, we know the Mohican people inhabited the Hudson River Valley from the Catskill Mountains north to the southern end of Lake Champlain, west to the Schoharie River region extending east to the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts, and from northwest Connecticut north to the Green Mountains in southern Vermont. They formed the great Mohican Confederacy and at the time numbered thousands.

It was the Mohicans that Henry Hudson met when he sailed up the river - named after him - in 1609, an event that proved fatal to the Mohicans. Disease brought on by contact with the Europeans, losses from war with the Mohawks to the west due to tensions over the fur trade, and broken promises by the Whites, decimated these people and forced them out of their homeland.

A group of Mohicans, then 'christianized', left the area and founded Stockbridge (Mass.), but even here their days were numbered. After nearly loosing half the male population during the American Revolution (they sided with the colonists), the Oneida Indians, who had also fought for the colonists, offered the "Stockbridge" people a portion of their land to live on in which they settled in the 1780's.

Again, this rich fertile land was taken by the Whites and the Mohicans migrated to the White River area in Indiana to live with their relatives, the Miami and Delaware. By the time they arrived the Delaware had already been cheated out their land.

Negotiations for a large tract of land in Wisconsin was initiated by the federal government, New York officials, and others, with the Menominee and Winnebago tribes, and the Mohicans began building a new village at Grand Cackalin called Statesburg. The treaty in 1822, allowed the Stockbridge and another group called the Munsee of the Delaware Confederacy in New Jersey to move, but the Menominee did not like the agreement and renegotiated. Finally the Mohicans and Munsee moved to two townships on the east shore of Lake Winnebago by 1834.

Another Treaty in 1856, saw the Stockbridge and Munsee move to the townships of Bartelme and Red Springs in Shawano County. The official name of the groups became the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians.

The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act made it possible for the Stockbridge Munsee people to reorganize their tribal government and get back some of the land that had been lost by unscrupulous lumber dealers. About 15,000 acres of land in the township of Bartelme were purchased for the tribe.

Contrary to James Fennimore Cooper's, "The Last of the Mohicans," (read it at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/eaf/authors/jfc.html) who in one stroke of the pen exterminated these people from the minds of the public, the Mohican Nation, Stockbridge-Munsee Band, are doing just fine today (their Web site is www.mohican.com ). As Steve Comer, their local representative told me recently, "The Mohicans never disappeared. We simply forgot to give a forwarding address."

Steve also told me that the Mohican people have never forgotten their homeland even after a 250 year absence. Since 1951, members of the Nation have come back to visit every chance they can. Even today, a Mohican's tie to their homeland is as strong as the roots that hold a mighty Redwood.

Got History? Reach Don at drittner@aol.com and read his column every Tuesday.