Shorakkopoch Rock, Inwood Hill Park
New York, New York, United States
A glacial boulder in Manhattans last natural forest marking the Lenape village of Shorakkopoch, where the islands only sale-to-colonists story begins.
Inwood Hill Park holds the last natural forest and salt marsh on Manhattan, and within it stands Shorakkopoch Rock, a glacial erratic beside the legend-marked site of the Lenape village of the same name. It is by local tradition the place associated with the 1626 transaction through which Peter Minuit's Dutch claimed the island, the transaction that begins every telling of what New York took.
The park's interpretive work, and the Lenape-centered heritage projects of recent years, have moved the story toward the people who lived it: a village by a marsh, centuries of presence, and the beginning of dispossession. The rock itself, pocked and ancient, has become the site where New Yorkers who know the history come to stand with it.
Visiting
Inwood Hill Park, at the end of 214th St toward the ball fields, Manhattan; open park. See NYC Parks.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inwood_Hill_Park_td_(2019-04-27)_008.jpg), CC BY-SA.
Associated traditions & practices
Traditions from this region
Traditions historically rooted in this region — offered as background context, not as a claim about this particular place.
Visitor stories