Washington Square in New York City's Greenwich Village. Originally a narrow marshy valley with a brook running through it, this tract of land on the island of Manhattan was occupied by native Americans until they were driven out by the Dutch in the mid-17th Century. The area became farmland, and eventually the Dutch turned plots of land over to slaves as reward for protecting the farms against native American attacks. These slaves were thus no longer slaves, though they were obliged to hand over part of the profits generated to the Dutch East India Company. The tract of land, dubbed The Land of the Blacks, remained in the possession of African Americans until 1664.
The turn of the 19th Century saw the land turned into a public burial ground, in which were interred particularly the remains of unknown or indigent people and, later on, those who had died in New York City proper from yellow fever. Though it was closed in 1825, to this day the remains of over 20,000 people rest under the square.
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