Sapohanikan
Sapohanikan was a Lenape settlement of the Canarsee now located in close proximity to where Gansevoort Street meets Washington Street near the Hudson River in Manhattan. The people of the settlement were violently displaced under Dutch Governor Wouter van Twiller in the 1630s, who operated a tobacco plantation for the Dutch West India Company. In the colony of New Netherland, the area that is now Greenwich Village was commonly referred to as Sapokanikan up until the beginnings of British rule. The area of the settlement was referred to in historical records as Sapohanikan in 1639, as Sappokanican in 1640, and as Sapokanikan and Saponickan in 1641. Etymology The settlement name may have been derived from the Lenape language word Awasopoakanichan "over against the pipe-making place," a remnant of the name Hopoakanhaking, "at the tobacco-pipe land." The name of Hoboken, New Jersey, which lies shore of the Hudson River opposite Sapohanikan, is derived from "Hopoghan Hackingh", the "land of the tobacco pipe", most likely to refer to the soapstone collected there to carve tobacco pipes. History Pre-colonial Sapohanikan was one of at least eighty Lenape habitation sites that have since been identified by archaeologists in the area now occupied by the