Achter Col

Achter Kol (or Achter Col) was the name given to the region around the Newark Bay and Hackensack River in northeastern New Jersey by the first European settlers to it and was part of the 17th century province of New Netherland, originally administered by the Dutch West India Company. At the time of their arrival, the area was inhabited by the Hackensack and Raritan groups of Lenape.

Placenaming by Dutch explorers and settlers during the era often referred to a location in reference to other places, its shape, its topography, and other geographic qualities. Today Newark Bay is connected to Upper New York Bay by the Kill Van Kull and to Raritan Bay by the Arthur Kill. The names of the channels reflect the period of Dutch colonialization. The area around the bay was called Achter Kol, which translates as behind or beyond the ridge and refers to Bergen Hill. The emergence of the Hudson Palisades begins on Bergen Neck, the peninsula between the bay and the Hudson River. Kille in Dutch means stream or channel. During the British colonial era the bay was known as Cull bay. Kill van Kull literally translates as channel from the ridge. Arthur Kill is an anglicisation of achter kill meaning back channel, which would speak to it location behind Staten Island.

Achter Kol was nearby the patroonship called Pavonia, patented in 1630, and reverted to the Dutch West India Company in 1636. Homesteads of Pavonia where clustered at Communipaw and Harsimus on the North River (Hudson River). David Pietersen de Vries (c. 1593-c.1655), a Dutch sea captain, explorer, and trader, who had established settlements at the Zwaanendael Colony, Staten Island, and nearby Vriessendael, as was an early European proprietor of the area. In his "Korte Historiael Ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge" (Short Historical Notes and Journal Notes of Various Voyages), published in 1655, de Vries described a Lenape hunt in the valley of the Achinigeu-hach (or Ackingsah-sack) in which one hundred or more men stood in a line many paces from each other, beating thigh bones on their palms to drive animals to the river, where they could be killed easily. Other methods of hunting included lassoing and drowning deer, as well as forming a circle around prey and setting the brush on fire.

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