Oratam, also known as Oritani or Oratamin, was the sagamore, or sachem, of the Hackensack people of northeastern New Jersey during the 17th century. He led the Hackensacks, a sub-group of the Unami, or Turtle Clan, of the Lenni-Lenape, a nation numbering close to a thousand people. Their territory encompassed what is now the Upper New York Bay, Newark Bay, Bergen Neck, the Meadowlands, and the Palisades in Hudson and Bergen Counties. The Hackensacks were a sedentary, agricultural society who practiced companion planting, hunting, trapping, fishing, and shellfishing, setting up seasonal campsites across their lands. Oratam lived an unusually long life of nearly 90 years, and his age earned him great honor and respect within both indigenous and European communities. He was regarded as a skilled and sage negotiator, brokering land deals, truces, and treaties throughout his long tenure as sachem. Dutch settlers from New Netherland arrived in 1633, establishing the colony of Pavonia with settlements at Paulus Hook, Communipaw, Harsimus, and Hoboken, fundamentally reshaping the region Oratam governed. In February 1643, New Netherland Governor William Kieft ordered the massacre of eighty Wecquaesgeek and Tappan refugees sheltering near a plantation at Harsimus in Pavonia, one of the first genocides of Native Americans by European settlers in the region. The Hackensacks, Tappans, and Montauks retaliated by attacking Dutch home farms and outlying plantations, igniting a wider conflict. By April 1643, Oratam had negotiated a treaty on behalf of several tribes, though hostilities expanded into what became known as Kieft's War, lasting two more years. In August 1645, Oratam helped organize a summit in New Amsterdam that produced a formal truce and treaty, bringing the war to an end. For nearly a decade after, Oratam's steady influence helped keep the peace between the two communities, preventing local incidents from escalating into open conflict. In 1655, the killing of a Hackensack woman caught taking peaches from a Dutch farmer's orchard on Manhattan ignited a new wave of raids on Pavonia, an event known as the Peach War, and Oratam was likely involved in negotiating the return of hostages taken during the violence. In 1660, the Warranwonkong sachem asked Oratam to serve as emissary to the government at New Amsterdam following a year of conflict between the Esopus Indians and the Dutch in Ulster County. Director-General Petrus Stuyvesant welcomed Oratam's involvement, and the sachem traveled to the region and organized a conference that produced a temporary peace agreement. ...