It was a privilege for me to participate in recent ceremonies that honored a Patriot of the American Revolution who was born six miles from my home, lost his life in the service of the Continental Army and sacrificed his son to the cause. He had first-hand experience of the difficult trials of life under the British – having even traveled to England to plead the case for return of ancestral lands. Yet his people would be pushed all the way to Wisconsin by the mid-1800s. For Chief Daniel Nimham (also Ninham) (1726–1778) was the last sachem of the Wappinger. He was the most prominent Native American of his time where I live in the lower Hudson Valley. And he lost his life in support of the Patriot cause.
Nimham’s son, Abraham (born 1745), was appointed captain of a company of military scouts who served the Continental Army based in Stockbridge, Mass. During the American Revolution both Daniel and Abraham Nimham served/fought with the Stockbridge Militia, alongside George Washington at Valley Forge, in the Battle of Saratoga and at the Battle at Cambridge. They also supported troops led by Gen. Marquis de Lafayette.
On Aug. 31, 1778, along with their fellow Wappinger Indians, Daniel and Abraham found themselves surrounded by Loyalists under the command of British Lt. Col. John Simcoe in the Battle of Kingsbridge at Cortland's Ridge (now Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx). All of the men lost their lives; fatality estimates range between 17 and 40 Native Americans died that day.