Editing Fonda, New York (section)

== History ==
[[File:Fonda, N.Y. LOC 89694450.tif|thumb|[[Perspective map]] of Fonda with list of landmarks from 1889 by [[L.R. Burleigh]]]]
The village of Fonda developed near the site of the former [[Mohawk people|Mohawk]] village of [[Caughnawaga Indian Village Site|Caughnawaga]], also known as ''Kanatsiohareke''. Here the Mohawk had cultivated corn in the floodplain on the north side of the [[Mohawk River]].

In the late 17th century, [[Kateri Tekakwitha]] resettled here. She was a Mohawk girl who had converted to [[Catholicism]] and become renowned for her piety. She lived here with relatives after her parents died in a [[smallpox]] epidemic. She had survived it but was marked by scars. The village has [[Saint Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine & Historic Site|a national Catholic shrine devoted to her]]; she is the first Native American [[saint]]. After the French attacked the village in the late 17th century, Kateri and many other Catholic Mohawks moved to the Jesuit mission village of [[Kahnawake]], established on the south side of the [[St. Lawrence River]], opposite [[Montreal]] in Quebec.

European settlers, mostly German and English, officially organized the present-day village in 1751 at the former site of Kanatsiohareke. The settlement was later named for [[Douw Fonda]], a Dutch-American settler who was scalped in a Mohawk raid during the [[American Revolutionary War|Revolutionary War]].<ref name="gannett"/> His family were ancestors of the American actors [[Henry Fonda]], [[Jane Fonda]] and [[Peter Fonda]]. Henry Fonda wrote about them in his 1981 autobiography, as follows:

:<blockquote>Early records show the family ensconced in northern [[Italy]] in the 16th century where they fought on the side of the [[Protestant Reformation|Reformation]], fled to [[Netherlands|Holland]], intermarried with Dutch burghers' daughters, picked up the first names of the Low Countries, but retained the Italianate "Fonda". Before [[Pieter Stuyvesant]] surrendered [[New Amsterdam|Nieuw Amsterdam]] to the English the Fondas, instead of settling in Manhattan, canoed up the Hudson River to the Indian village of Caughnawaga. Within a few generations, the [[Mohawks]] and the [[Iroquois]] were butchered or fled and the town became known to mapmakers as Fonda, New York.<ref>{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20050719082340/http://www.adherents.com/people/pf/Henry_Fonda.html Henry Fonda, Howard Teichmann: ''My Life'']}}, New York: Dutton, 1981, p. 20, excerpted in: "The Religious Affiliation of Henry Fonda, Actor", ''Adherents'', 21 July 2005, Retrieved on January 11, 2007</ref></blockquote>