Daniel Nimham

Daniel Nimham (1726–1778) was the last sachem of the Wappinger. Chief of the Nochpeem band, he was the most prominent Native American of his time in the lower Hudson Valley.

Prior to Henry Hudson's arrival in 1609, the Wappinger People lived on the eastern shore of the Muhheakantuck "the river that flows both ways" from Manhattan Island north to the Roeliff Jansen Kill in Columbia County, and east as far as the Norwalk River Fairfield County, Connecticut. The Wappinger were allied with the Mahican People to the north. Their settlements included camps along the major creeks and Hudson River tributaries with larger villages located where these streams met the river.

During the early period of European contact, the population of the Nochpeem has been estimated at approximately 600. They are said to have occupied the highlands north of Anthony's Nose to Matteawan Creek. Adriaen van der Donck, one of the earliest writers of this portion of the country, assigns them three villages on the Hudson; Keskistkonck, Pasquasheck and Nochpeems; but their principal village was Canopus, which was situated in a valley in Putnam county, and known as Canopus Hollow. To the Dutch and English they were known as part the "River Indians", and the "Highland Indians".

Robert S. Grumet describes Daniel Nimham as the "leader of a small peripatetic group of from two hundred to three hundred displaced Mahican- and Munsee-speaking Indian people" who wandered the "mountainous contested borderlands separating Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. They built small bark houses and log cabins on sparsely settled lands in remote valleys far from colonial roads and towns, and made meager livings weaving baskets, crafting brooms and working as seasonal as laborers or servants on nearby farms.

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