History: Land Acknowledgement

Liberty Hall is located in Lënapehòkink, or the homeland of the Lenni Lenape peoples, specifically those who spoke the Munsee dialect of the Lenape language. The Lenape almost certainly farmed, hunted, fished, and settled on this land during the several thousand years they lived in the area before European colonization. In 1664, English settlers purchased the land between the Raritan and Passaic Rivers from the Lenni Lenape, although the Lenape almost certainly understood this as the purchase of the right to use this land, not to own it, as their culture had no concept for the transfer of land ownership. Liberty Hall would be built on some of this land in the following century, but the Lenni Lenape have not disappeared from New Jersey. While many were forced westward in the eighteenth century, some remained in the state and continue to live in the area today.