USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 16
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 16
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62
Indian dogs which were really young wolves, trained and partly domesticated, were too plentiful and became a source of constant danger to the white inhabitants. In 1649 Southampton offered a reward of twenty shillings a head for wolves killed within the town and this was soon increased to thirty shillings and the town employed a public wolf hunter. The Town Records of the time make mention of bear hunting by the Indians. Thirty years later the settlers com-
121
THE INDIANS OF LONG ISLAND
plained that the Indian dogs "doe exceed in great number and when they are called upon to kill such doggs they utterly refuse and doe norish and bring up kennels of ym yt are more prejudicial than al the wolves yt are about". It was agreed that each Indian should keep one dog but in 1718 it was ordered that "ye Indians shall be fetched up to kill their Dogs ferwith by a warrant from ye Jutis".
In 1657 houses were burned in Southampton and an Indian con- fessed that he had been hired to burn Mrs. Howell's house by two other Indians, one of whom promised him a gun and the other gave him seven shillings and six pence. As a result of this and other out- rages, Captain John Mason was sent from Connecticut with nineteen men to do all things necessary for the safety of the settlement. The Commissioners of the United Colonies levied a fine of £700 against the savages, to be paid in seven years and this penalty, afterwards in part remitted, was often called "fire money". In spite of repeated promises to reform, depredations by the Indians continued and the constable was instructed to keep them in order; if their offenses were repeated they would be sent to New York for punishment and "the Smith is to make manacls for their hands and Billboes for their feet".
Threescore years of occupation by the English brought many changes in the life of the Indians and by the end of the 17th century their principal occupations of hunting, fishing and waging war had disappeared and it had become a problem how they should be sup- ported without becoming a burden on the community. Many of the natives turned their attention to whaling and others enlisted as sea- men and in both of these occupations they displayed marked ability. Indian names appear on the colonial muster rolls of Southampton; there were Shinnecock sailors in Admiral Vernon's ill-fated expedi- tion against the Spanish West Indies in 1741, and Long Island Indians took part in the English attack on the French fortress at Louisbourg. Several Shinnecock braves were with Captain Hulburt's Southampton company in the attack on Fort Ticonderoga and marched with the first American flag of Stars and Stripes to Phila- delphia in 1775, convoying British prisoners of war. Thirty Montauks were reported among the dead in the battle at White Plains.
Many Negro slaves escaping from the South prior to the Civil War came to Long Island and intermarried with the Indians. This mixture of Negro blood has progressed so far as to leave few pure- blooded Indians among the remnants of the Montauks and Shinne- cocks who still survive. The rapid decline of the latter clan was hastened by the wreck of the ill-fated British ship Circassian, which struck a sand bar off Mecox on the night of December 10, 1876. In an effort to save the ship and its cargo a salvage crew, including ten Shinnecocks, was put on board and during the night of December 29th all thirty-two men on board were thrown into the sea by a terrific gale which broke the vessel to pieces.
Twenty-eight lives were lost including all the Indians who were described as the flower of the tribe and the last of the pure bloods. The frozen bodies of the drowned men were found along the coast as far as Montauk and were brought to Southampton for burial. The Shinnecocks were interred in a rough circle in the burial ground on
122
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
the present Reservation, only the graves of Franklin Bunn and Warren Cuffee being marked by a stone. In 1945 the trustees of the Reservation caused a brick and marble monument to be erected, on which the names of all the victims of the tragedy are inscribed.
After this tragedy few pure-blooded Indians remained but the Shinnecocks are still regarded as a tribe and retain their reservation. June Meeting as a religious observance is still celebrated by the Indians. An act of the Legislature in 1816 empowered the Shinnecocks to elect annually from their own number three Trustees who manage the affairs of the Reservation, apportion the land and with the con- sent of three Justices of the Peace may hire out the land to others for cultivation for not more than three years. In the office of the Town Clerk of Southampton is preserved a small, neatly bound red book bearing date of 1793 on its stained and faded fly leaf and therein are recorded the meetings of the Shinnecock Trustees ever since their first meeting so that the records of this self-governing community have been kept intact for over one hundred and fifty years.
When M. R. Harrington visited the Shinnecocks in 1902 he saw a few typical Indians, the best example being Wickham Cuffee who claimed to be a full-blood but spoke with a slight Yankee accent. A number of the women were pure or nearly pure-blooded Indians, but very few of the younger men showed native characteristics. Harring- ton described the construction of the Indian wigwams which had disappeared from the Reservation fifty years earlier but were dis- tinctly remembered by the natives who also recalled the use of the packbasket which was carried on the back and held in place by means of a band across the forehead. Brushes, brooms, and baskets were still being made by the Shinnecocks after the fashion of their ances- tors. Harrington made a vocabulary of the Shinnecock dialect which had died out some fifty years earlier; many of the words were similar to words of like meaning in the Natick and Mohegan speech of New England and some of the rarer words were identical with those of the Narragansetts.
A church and schoolhouse stand near the middle of the Reserva- tion which now comprises a number of crude shingle and clapboard shacks, weather-beaten and mostly unpainted. The natives neglect agriculture and home decorations and gain most of their living as gardeners and by working on golf courses, the women serving as laundresses and houseworkers.
Most warlike of the Long Island clans were the Montauks who inhabited the eastern extremity of the island, including Gardiner's Island. Their tribal name was derived from "meun-ta-cut", meaning "at the fort", as they had a fortified stockade to protect their prin- cipal village at Fort Pond. After the death of Poggaticut in 1653, their sachem Wyandanch became Grand Sachem of the loosely con- federated communities of the east end, the Manhansets, Corchaugs and Shinnecocks being more or less dominated by the Montauks. In their large canoes they traveled by water as far as Boston and made frequent visits to the Connecticut towns with which they had much traffic.
123
THE INDIANS OF LONG ISLAND
They indulged in many fights with their New England neighbors to whom they were obliged to pay tribute. They also paid tribute to the English, and Governor Winthrop records that in 1637, after the Pequot War, "the Indians sent many Pequot heads and hands from Long Island and other places and the sachem of Long Island came voluntarily and brought tribute to us of twenty fathoms of wampum." At times the payments were interrupted and in 1656 Wyandanch went to Boston to plead for the remittance of the tribute which was then four years in default.
Lion Gardiner was a leader and soldier in Connecticut until he acquired Gardiner's Island to which place he brought his family in 1639. He spoke the Indian language and his friendship with Wyan- danch availed much in protecting the colonists from assaults by hostile savages. When the bloodthirsty Narragansetts tried to unite the eastern clans against the English, Wyandanch foiled the plot by his timely intervention.
In 1642 Gardiner discovered the great chief Miantonomoh and three other Narragansetts talking with Wyandanch and urging him to pay no more tribute to the English "for they are no sachems". Gardiner advised delay for a month and after that to pay no more tribute to the Narragansetts. Again in the following year Mian- tonomoh returned to incite the islanders to rise and attack the English settlements but Wyandanch heard of the plot and informed Lion Gardiner. When they found Gardiner and Wyandanch were against them the "elder statesmen" of the clan who had encouraged the attack sent a messenger to tell the Narragansetts that all had been discovered.
Miantonomoh was assassinated by Uncas in 1643 and was suc- ceeded by Ninegret, who promptly sent an emissary to urge the Montauks to join an alliance against the English. Wyandanch had the messenger bound and sent to Lion Gardiner but the prisoner escaped at Shelter Island where the old sachem Poggaticut (who hated the English) no doubt gave him protection. In this same year the Montauks, Shinnecocks and Manhansets placed themselves under the protection of the Commissioners of the United Colonies and in 1644 a certificate was granted to the leaders of the four eastern clans who professed their friendship for the English.
Gardiner in his Journal describes another friendly act of Wyan- danch. When William Hammond was killed by a giant-like Indian, Gardiner told the Montauk sachem that he must kill the murderer but the chief said the culprit was a mighty sachem and no man should meddle with him. So the matter rested until the same Indian killed Thomas Farrington but not until after the death of Poggaticut did Gardiner speak again of the murder to Wyandanch who then went stealthily and by cunning was able to kill the giant murderer. Gar- diner says this was the last friendly act of Wyandanch, "for in the time of great mortality among them, he died, but it was by poison ; also two-thirds of the Indians on Long Island died, else the Narra- gansetts had not made such havoc here as they have."
Perhaps the death of Poggaticut may have prompted Ninegret to raid the Montauks in 1653. The savage Narragansetts came
-
124
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
stealthily by night and burned many wigwams, destroyed the corn- fields, killed many warriors and captured women and children. The unwary Montauks were celebrating the wedding feast of the sachem's daughter who on this day had married a young chief of the Shinne- cocks. The bridegroom was killed and the bride carried away to Rhode Island to be ransomed later through the efforts of Minister James and Gardiner who for his share in the affair received from Wyan- danch a generous grant of land in what is now Smithtown. The rescued "princess", who was called Quashawam, married as her second husband a young Pequot chief by whom she had a son named Wyandance, whose name appears on an Indian deed of 1703.
The crafty Ninegret hated the Montauks because they had refused to join in attacking the English; his cunning plot almost succeeded in wiping out the clan. He induced the Long Islanders to attack the Indians on Block Island and on a bright moonlight night the Montauks sailed in their war canoes and fell into an ambush from which only a few escaped. Their leader was taken alive to Narragansett and there made to walk naked on hot stones until he expired singing his death song. After this crushing defeat the remnant of the Montauks moved to the parsonage lands at East Hampton where they were cared for by Minister James and the humane settlers. The Montauk deed of 1661 mentions this brutal attack as having taken place "a few years ago" so Wyandanch must have been alive at the time but he probably took no part in the fight.
A great plague devastated the Montauks in 1658 and unable to resist the ravages of disease they fell easy victims to smallpox. This plague extended over the whole island and in the course of two years it is said that two-thirds of the natives succumbed. Strict laws were enacted to check the spread of the disease and East Hampton ordered that no Indian should come into the town under a penalty of a fine of five shillings or be whipped and no English or Indian servant was permitted to go to the wigwams.
Wyandanch died in the summer of 1659 and was succeeded by his son Weamcombone, who ruled under the guardianship of Lion Gardiner and his son David, but tribal government was administered by Wicchikitaubut, widow of the late sachem, now the Sunk Squa. The young sachem's rule was brief as lie died in 1662 at the age of twenty-two. After the death of the Sunk Squa the succession passed to her daughter, Quashawam, whose offspring by her second husband continued the so-called "royal line" of the Montauks.
No monument marks the grave of Wyandanch who "sleeps in the silence and solitude of Montauk". At his death Lion Gardiner lamented, "My friend and brother is gone; who will now do the like"? In his departure the English lost a warm and devoted friend and ally. The character of Wyandanch may well puzzle his biograph- ers. Roger Williams said he was "proud and foolish" and other writers have intimated that he curried favor with the white men and adopted their habits and customs to his own great advantage. George Rogers Howell thought he exercised supreme authority over all the clans on Long Island but his control over the western communities was never acknowledged. Nevertheless, deeds for land in the western
125
THE INDIANS OF LONG ISLAND
part of the island not confirmed by Wyandanch were often disputed as in the case of Huntington.
Fifty years after the coming of the white settlers only one-third of the Indian population of Long Island survived and by 1741 they were reduced to four hundred. Twenty years later they had nearly vanished and the number of Montauks had shrunk to one hundred and sixty-two, comprising about thirty families.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century many of the survivors of the clan joined the remnants of the Connecticut tribes to form the Brothertown Colony. These people went westward to Oneida in New York and thence to Wisconsin, where their descendants still live on a state reservation. A few Montauks crossed over to Connecticut and mingled with the Mohegans, of whom a few pure bloods are said to survive near Groton and New London.
When Sir William Johnson visited East Hampton and Amagan- sett in the summer of 1773, one of his young officers carried away a pretty young squaw in his carriage. She was the daughter of Betty and James Fowler and exceedingly handsome. Fowler's mother, the great granddaughter of Wyandanch, lived to be one hundred and two and it is recorded that when nearing the century mark she was tall and straight and could speak the native language. Her daughter Mary married the Indian preacher, Samson Occom, by whom she had ten children.
Under the guidance of Samson Occom the older Montauks learned to read and write, but many of their children reverted to a state approaching savagery. Lyman Beecher preached to a few Montauks between 1799 and 1810 and recorded in his autobiography that "there were some Indians in my parish of the Montauk tribe, although not belonging to my congregation. I was acquainted with a number of pious ones, chiefly women, about a dozen at first. They made baskets, brooms and such things. But they were a wretched set on the whole, just like other tribes."
Stephen Pharaoh, referred to as King of the Montauks, died in 1819 and was buried by public subscription. He was chiefly distin- guished for wearing a hat with a yellow ribbon. After his death otliers ruled the fast dwindling clan and the royal tradition was main- tained until the end. Sylvester Pharaoh died in 1870, aged sixty-six, and was succeeded by Eleazor who married his widow, Queen Aurelia, who was found dead on the floor of her wigwam in 1876, her age then being sixty-three.
She was succeeded by her son David, last King of the Montauks, who was born in 1838, and died of consumption in 1878 at the age of forty. The scene at his deathbed has been beautifully described in an article entitled "The Tile Club at Play", which appeared in Scribner's Monthly in February, 1879, in which an anonymous mem- ber of the Tile Club described a visit of that distinguished group of artists to Montauk during the previous summer. Some of the visitors went to a small unpainted cabin near a pond where David lay on his deathbed.
Unawed by the thought of majesty, the Tile Club members crowded into the house of clapboards, under whose eaves salted eels
126
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
and weakfish were hung up to dry. The Queen was on her knees, scrubbing the cabin floor. On a clean bed in the common room lay King David, dying of consumption. The intruders were shocked by the quietude of the room and subdued by the sense of intrusion.
The invalid seemed superior to any other in the room. Someone suggested a hymn and several voices joined in a low litany in Latin. David said, "Thank you, but I don't understand it very well." Then the baritone of the party who was David Bispham came forward and beginning in a low controlled voice, sang with exquisite grace the melody of Faure's Les Rameaux, rendered in English with deep and genuine feeling and sincerity. The Indian understood the meaning of the song with swift intuition ; its human appeal was probably never before so compellingly presented. After the singing the visitors filed silently out of the house. A few days later the King was dead. A painting by the noted American artist, E. L. Henry, entitled "The King of the Montauks" portrays an emaciated Indian driving over the dunes in a rig. It is owned by Bernard M. Feldman of the Renaissance Galleries of Philadelphia.
David's wife, Maria, the daughter of William and Mary Fowler, was born at Indian Fields about 1841 and died at East Hampton in 1936 on her ninety-fifth birthday. She was a woman of fine character who inherited the best traits of her Indian ancestors. She married three times and had eleven children, of whom only two survived her. One of her daughters, Sarah Pocahontas, still lives (1945) at East Hampton, the only surviving member of this so-called "royal family".
About twenty members of the Montauk community survived in 1879. Three years later the following descriptive letter appeared in the New York Evening Post: "Two brown weather-beaten cottages shelter eleven souls, last remnants of the Montauks. In one dwells Queen Maria, widow of the last King, David Pharaoh, with seven children. In another cottage Charles Fowler lives with his wife and child. Inside, the houses are bare and cheerless, with no carpets and only the rudest articles of furniture. The inmates are idle, ignorant and dissipated, none of them of pure Indian blood. They live from hand to mouth by hunting, fishing and doing odd jobs." In 1885 the once great Montauk tribe was legally declared to be extinct.
MISSIONARIES TO THE INDIANS
The Dutch made little or no attempt to teach Christianity to the natives. O'Callaghan noted that, "As for the conversion of the heathen, it can hardly be said to have entered into the calculations of the Dutch West India Company, or if it did, it was soon aban- doned". It is recorded that one young savage who had been instructed for two years so that he could say his prayers and read and write the Dutch language was given a Bible and sent to preach to the Indians. Instead he began to drink heavily, pawned the Bible and reverted to beastly habits, doing the natives more harm than good.
The English settlers at the east end of the island endeavored to teach the elements of Christianity to the natives, but they soon dis- covered that the Indians did not think or live like the white men.
127
THE INDIANS OF LONG ISLAND
The old pictures of our Pilgrim Fathers going to church with a Bible in one hand and a shotgun in the other were not exaggerated. Having brought firearms and fire-water to the redman, they offered him an antidote in the form of religion.
Abraham Pierson, a Yorkshireman educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, was chosen first minister of the Southampton colony. He came to Long Island in November, 1640, and his.is the first signature on the treaty by which the land was bought from the Shinnecocks. A man of devout but austere character, he wrote the first code of laws for the colony and with the assistance of the interpreter, Thomas Stanton, composed an Indian Cathechism in the Quiripi dialect. He was stiff and uncompromising in his religious views and his laws for the governance of the colony were so strict that they defeated their own purpose and were never enforced.
The first clergyman at East Hampton was the Reverend Thomas James, who labored long and faithfully among the Indians. For nearly fifty years this devout minister baptized and befriended the natives, learned their language, witnessed their deeds and gave them employment. He was closely associated with Lion Gardiner in all matters relating to Indian affairs and he enjoyed their complete confidence. In 1658 he received from Wyandanch a gift of half the whales cast up on the beach from Napeake to the end of the island and from the Society for Propagating the Gospel in New England he received a stipend for his work among the Indians. When the Mon- tauks were driven from their homes on the Point, the minister enter- tained almost the entire clan on the parsonage grounds where his bounty saved many from suffering and starvation.
William Leverich was born in England in 1608 and was educated at Cambridge University. He arrived at Boston in 1633 and was soon recognized as a man of superior talent and education. For twenty years he preached in various places in Massachusetts before coming to Oyster Bay in 1653. Four years later he moved to Huntington as its first minister. Leverich spoke the Indian language and devoted his efforts to the religious welfare of the savages around Oyster Bay and Huntington and his labors extended to include the Montauks and Corchaugs. His influence did much to restrain the Long Island clans during King Philip's war.
The great Quaker missionary, George Fox, preached to the Indians on Shelter Island and has left this report of one of his meetings : "I had a meeting on Shelter Island among the Indians and the King and his Council with about one hundred more Indians were with him, and they sate about two hours and spoke to them by an interpreter * *
* and they appeared very lovinge and they said all was truth and did make a confession after the Meetinge of it; and soe I have set up a meetinge amonge them once a fortnight and a friend, Joseph Silvester, is to reade Scriptures to them."
Sometime between 1680 and 1700 the Dutch Reformed missionary, Godfrey Delius, visited Long Island and attempted religious work among the natives, but from 1700 to 1740 missionary work practically ceased on the island. During this interval Cotton Mather petitioned the Governor of New York for aid in Christianizing the Indians but without success, as he deemed Governor Hunter "too high church".
128
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
Nevertheless, Mather prepared an essay for the use of Long Island ministers in their work among the Indians. A layman, one William Adams, preached for sixty years but was never ordained as a minister. He rambled about the country, "unencumbered with wife or child or a parish", giving religious instruction to the people. Although mis- sionary work among the Indians seems to have been suspended until 1740, a great revival then began, especially at Southold and East Hampton. James Davenport and Jonathan Barber toured the island, making many converts.
The first missionary appointed to work exclusively among the Indians of the island was Reverend Azariah Horton, who labored among the Shinnecocks from 1741 until 1751. A native of Southold, he was graduated from Yale in 1735 with high honors and five years later was licensed to preach by the New York Presbytery. Assisted by Walter Wilmot of Southampton, he preached first to the Rock- aways and Canarsies near Jamaica and traveled from there to East Hampton in seven days and extended his journey to Montauk, a dis- tance in all of one hundred and thirty miles.
In the cold winter of 1742 Horton traveled back and forth between Montauk and Moriches, and in three months he traversed on foot more than three hundred miles. There was much sickness and on his travels he ministered to the health of the natives. In 1743 Horton complained bitterly of "a great defection of some of them from their first Reformation and care of their souls, occasioned by strong drink, a vice to which the Indians are everywhere so strongly addicted".
In spite of such discouragement Horton spent ten active years on Long Island, sleeping in wigwams, eating native food, teaching the Indians to read and write and preaching daily the gospel of Christ. He kept a Journal in which he recorded his labors; he established schools at Shinnecock and Poosepatuck, which still exist, and one at Montauk which was only closed when the remnants of the clan moved away. Horton removed to Madison, New Jersey, in 1751 and con- tinued there until his death in 1777 as a result of smallpox contracted while nursing soldiers in the Continental Army. He was a man of great piety and made many converts among the Indians.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.