 While the matter has yet to be fully researched, there seems to have been no large-scale long-term Native American presence in the mountains.The local Mohican and Munsee tribes used land and water routes through the mountains to get to the places beyond them, hunted the abundant game and used the mountains in some of their rituals, but in general chose not to live there due to the difficulty of farming the land.Robert Juet, one of Henry Hudson's crew, was the first European to take note of the Catskills on the "Half Moon"'s 1609 expedition up the river.