We know painfully little about the nature and extent of the Indian presence in what is now Warren Township. A number of artifacts found here, and some early legal documents, are the only evidence that they passed through this place long before European settlers arrived.

“The district inhabited by a nation called Raritangs is situated on a fresh water river,” wrote Cornelius van Tienhoven, secretary of the New Netherlands in 1650, “that flows through the center of a lowland which the Indians cultivated. This vacant territory lies between two high mountains far distant the one from the other. It is the handsomest and pleasantest country that man can behold, and furnished the Indians with abundance of maize, beans, pumpkins, and other fruits…. Through this valley pass large numbers of all sorts of tribes on their way north and east. This land is, therefore, not only adapted for raising grain and rearing all descriptions of cattle, but also very convenient for trade with the Indians.”

The Watchung Mountains are between two areas known to have been frequented by the Lenape: The Passaic River, a word that loosely translated means “peaceful valley river,” and the Green Brook. The Passaic River was an integral part of the Lenape existence, providing transportation and sustenance. Two branches of the Great Minisink Trail, the Indian highway between the shore and the Delaware Water Gap, ran along the Passaic in Morris, Union and Essex counties. In the Green Brook area lived the Sacunks. On the Middle Brook lived the Raweighweros. The large island in the Raritan River near the town of Raritan was called by the Indians, Matanique or Mantanike. There were villages both on the island and on the mainland. Bound Brook was the site of a large village known as the Racahovawalaby and Chimney Rock may well have been the home of “the Raritan King.” No doubt the Lenape traversed the Watchungs using well-worn paths through the mountain gaps: Dock Watch Hollow Road, Mount Bethel Road and probably King George Road follow these Indian trails.

Old deeds shed some light on the Lenape hereabouts. A purchase in 1701 by Edward Earle and others began at an Indian village site called Meehiponing, at the mouth of the Meehiponing River, which seems to be the Dead River, where it joins the Passaic. The village was said to be “south of the South Branch of the Pessayaeck.”

Nowenock was an Indian Sachem of prominence living in the area of the Dead River. He sold lands on March 6, 1690, on the South Branch of the Passaick; also on May 10, 1710, with Tokung at the Blue Hills; again on November 10, 1714, with Lockney on the south side of the Raritan and Dead Rivers; and on June 24, 1717, between the Dead and Passaic Rivers.

On July 20, 1708, Sachamakre sold to Peter Sonmans some 2,000 acres of land described as being “between First and Second Mountains upon the branches of Middlesex brook…commonly called & known by the name of Papatenunk….” The November 10, 1714, deed between Nowenike and Johnny, two Indian Sachems, to Adam Hude and Elisha Parker described an enormous stretch of land running from Chimney Rock northerly to the Dead River, then south through Dock Watch Hollow to Middle Brook and back again to Chimney Rock.

The few hundred Lenape who walked the trails through Warren left only one place name in their wake: Dock Watch Hollow, which means, in their language, “a cold hollow.”

Most of the Indians were gone from this part of New Jersey by the 1730s and 1740s, just about the time that Warren was being settled by Europeans. Not all, however. According to an article in the Somerset Unionist dated October 13, 1870, ‘[a]s late as 1770, some remnant of the once powerful Indian tribes that roamed on the banks of the Raritan lingered in the dark ravines along Washington [now Middle] Brook….” Dock Watch Hollow might have been one such “dark ravine.”

Indian artifacts found in the township provide further evidence of the Lenape presence. In about 1885 William Ralph found a 7” long stone axe on his property on King George Road. From the l920s to the l950s Harry von Osten lived in Dock Watch Hollow where he operated a quarry. It is well known that he collected numerous arrowheads, axes and grinding stones in the hollow. In the l960s William Farrell found a 2 ½” long geolithic spear point where a contractor was cutting through Roberts Road, behind the new high school. About that time another collector found a similar spear point in Carnelian Brook, behind the Community Firehouse off Stirling Road. “Fish” Salmon, who lived on Mountain View Rd.,  owned a large collection of artifacts collected near the Dead River and the Hilmer farm, at Liberty Corner Rd.

Jack Farrell, a member of the Archeological Society of New Jersey, has avidly collected Indian artifacts for nearly 50 years, many from Warren sites. Included in Farrell’s collection is a grooved axe found at Reinmann and Sawmill Roads, a quartz arrowhead discovered on Stirling Road near the Passaic River, a pestle from the Whale farm on Mountainview Road and a number of other stone implements collected from the old Cooper farm, later the site of the Glenhurst Golf Club on Mountain Avenue.