SHORAKKOPOCH

According to legend, on this site of the principal Manhattan Indian village, Peter Minuit in 1626, purchased Manhattan Island for trinkets and beads then worth about 60 guilders.

This boulder also marks the spot where a tulip tree (Liriodendron Tulipiera) grew to a height of 165 feet and a girth of 20 feet. It was until its death in 1938 at the age of 280 years. the last living link with the Reckgawawanc Indians who lived here.

Dedicated as part of New York City’s 300th anniversary celebration by the Peter Minuit post 1247, American Legion January 1954.

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This marker is in Inwood Hill Park in Upper Manhattan, where I was walking yesterday.

The stone is easy to miss. It’s on one of the paths in the forested area of the park.

Shorakkopoch or Shorakapok appears to be derived from the Native American name for the area, meaning either “the wading place,” “the edge of the river,” or “the place between the ridges.”

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from Wikipedia:

Through the 17th century, the Wecquaesgeek, a Munsee-speaking band of Wappinger people, inhabited the area. There is evidence of a main encampment along the eastern edge of the park, known as the village of Shorakapok.

The park’s Shorakapok Preserve was formerly the site of a “Great Tulip Tree”, a Liriodendron tulipifera considered the largest tree on Manhattan, as well as one of the oldest, and was championed and restored by Parks Commissioner Charles B. Stover. As part of care for the tree, a plaque was put up connecting it to Hudson’s voyages, a few years after the Hudson–Fulton Celebration, commemorating the 300th anniversary of Hudson’s work and the 100th anniversary of Fulton’s. The original plaque also connected the tree to Native American archaeological finds nearby, speculating that some of the Native Americans at Shorakapok could have interacted with Hudson. Hudson actually engaged in a battle from his ship with Native Americans at nearby Nipinichsen, just north of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, on October 2, 1609. The tree survived for centuries until it was felled by a storm in 1933.

Until the 1950s the stump was still to be seen, surrounded by a large iron fence, but as it rotted it was finally removed and a boulder and plaque replaced it. Peter Minuit Post 1247 of the American Legion placed the boulder and the plaque in 1954, commemorating the 300th anniversary of New Amsterdam gaining municipal rights a year earlier. The plaque labels the boulder “Shorakkopoch” (a more recent Parks Department sign nearby calls it “Shorakapok Rock”), and claims that “according to legend” this is where Minuit negotiated the purchase of Manhattan Island from Native Americans. The account does not appear in any historical records, and some historians place any such meeting location in Lower Manhattan.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  November 28, 2018; updated July 2026