Research

Overall, I found that the Ramapough were clustered together and were not near some of the wealthier white families. When looking at the racial breakdown, they were almost always near people who were black and of those censuses that marked occupation, the most common one was Laborer with 51 people having that job. All of the other jobs were similarly blue collar, which is very much in line with the way the Ramapough talk about how they are always been treated, as well as how lower classes in general have been treated. Since Indians are often in the lower classes and rarely get the kind of education that white people get, this is not ridiculous or out of the ordinary. It is also very in line with the treatment of other oppressed peoples, like those of African descent. Since it seems likely that the Ramapough are descended from both, it is not overly surprising that they are blue collar workers for the most part, even today.