At the time of European contact, the Lenape people (named the Delaware by Europeans) inhabited the western end of Long Island, and spoke the Munsee dialect of Lenape, one of the Algonquian language family.
Native American land deeds recorded by the Dutch from 1636 state that the Indians referred to Long Island as Sewanhaka (Sewanhacky and Sewanhacking were other spellings in the transliteration of Lenape) [REF].