“And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.” … “They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force – nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

The Hudson Valley since the colonial era was always militarized …West Point … Garrison …. Fort Orange ... to protect the Dutch against the native tribes, the British against the French, and then ultimately the Americans against the British.

West Point

Army Training Ship

The Hudson River valley is a palimpsest of cultures – the Native American one only surviving as a ghost with Lenape, Munsee, Algonquin, Mahican and Mohawk place names leaving their trace on the landscape.  Poughkeepsie (the reed-covered lodge by the little-water place)…Wappinger (opossum) … Esopus (high banks) – most all these peoples eventually suffered the subsequent irrecoverable loss of their land, and the tribes became scattered and lost.

Of course there must have been a clash of cultures when the Dutch headed into what they considered a heart of darkness. One example is Danskammer Point just opposite Wappinger’s Creek. Danskammer Point is “a low, flat, rocky point jutting out into the water 36 feet deep” – it takes its name from the Dutch “teufel’s danskammer” or “devil’s dancehall.” In 1663, Lt. Cowenhoven saw the Indians doing ceremonial dances there by firelight as did Henry Hudson on his first visit. “They painted themselves grotesquely, built a large fire upon this rock, and danced around it with songs and yells, making strange contortions of face and limbs, under the direction of their conjurors or ‘medicine men.’ They would tumble, leap, run and yell, when, as they said, the Devil or Evil Spirit, would appear in the shape of a beast of prey or a harmless animal, the former apparition betokened evil to their proposed undertaking, and the latter prophesied of good.” – Arthur G Adams, The Hudson River Guidebook.

Danskammer Point today completely paved over with a factory.

A recent article points out that there may have been something more sophisticated at play here (https://grahamhancock.com/kreisbergg7/) as the sun rises in a direct axial alignment over Wappinger’s Creek aligned with Danskammer Point every summer solstice morning. So rather than a place of debauchery and Satan-worship, it may have been considered by native Americans as a magical location imbued with natural meaning.

Esopus and Kingston Lighthouses

Which brings us to Kingston, formerly known as Esopus, which in 1777 was the first capital of New York, and closely thereafter, with the exception of one or two buildings, it was burned to the ground by those British …

Lovely Kingston cityscape

The dark side of Kingston is the cruel drama of the life of Sojourner Truth - the 19th century abolitionist and women's rights activist - that played out in this town.  She was born into slavery here in 1797, and when she was 9 years old, was sold at auction with a flock of sheep for $100, at which point in her life she spoke only Dutch. In New York, the process of emancipating enslaved people was not complete until July 4, 1827. Truth only gained freedom after escaping with her baby to avoid daily beatings, negotiating her freedom by trading indentured labor with those that took her in, and then becoming the first black woman to go against a white man in court and win to recover her 5-year old son who had been sold illegally into slavery in Alabama.

Two centuries later we sit on the pleasant waters of the Rondout Basin docked at Kingston City Marina opposite dozens of restaurants and modern weekend revelers and diners amid the ruins of the old tug and towing shipyards.

Rondout Basin

"The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth" Conrad, ibid.