Anniversary Lectures Begin With Montauketts

What follows is excerpted from Dr. Gaynell Stone's Jan. 31 Guild Hall lecture on "The Material History of the Montaukett."

. . . .The English Captain Southack wrote on his early 1700s map of the two Forks: "I commanded ye first ship that ever was at this place" on the Peconic estuary portion. He also located "Indian Town" on the Napeague portion of the map. This was the first of a number of early maps which located Indian Town, or Indian Plantation, on the Montauk peninsula - an important visual adjunct to the written record.

The site appeared further east with each deed extracted from the Montaukett by the settlers - taking another portion of their land.

The sachem Wyandanch's mark (a figure drawing) on a deed authenticated it; those deeds without it could be doubtful - and there were many, in the colonists' lust to "buy" Native land with gifts. It was easier to pay Wyandanch than the many heads of bands living across the land. . .

. . . The Montaukett retained traditional wigwam housing, much of the hunting and gathering lifestyle, the use of herbal medicines, and traditional gatherings into the 20th century. One notable category of this mortuary record was trade beads . . . Their arrangement gives evidence of the esthetic values of the Montaukett known in no other way. One burial was that of a leader, Wobeton, known from the Town Records as well as by [an] autographed English spirits bottle.

A colonial economy has an insatiable need for labor for whaling, farming, herding, dairying, cheese- and butter-production, textile production, and craftware, hence servants and slaves. Of 90 Suffolk County wills probated from 1670 to 1688, 24 listed English, Negro, and Indian servants and slaves. Their value was second only to cattle owned. Of this 24, two, or 8 percent, were listed as "Indian captive servant" or "Indian slave girl. . ."

Another form of labor for the Natives was being forced to produce huge quantities of wampum (shell beads) to pay fines levied upon them for infractions of local laws (which they often did not understand). . . the wampum was used by European traders to purchase furs from the northern territories. Since the largest amount of whelk shell for making wampum is found on eastern Long Island beaches, the area became the "mint" of New Netherland.

Further participation by the Natives in the new economy was service as militiamen in all the provincial campaigns before the French and Indian Wars and in the American revolution. They served out of proportion to their numbers in the population and left many Native settlements with a large number of widows; this led to intermarriage with Anglos, African-Americans, and other groups. . .

Most of the Montaukett worked for the East Hamptoners and helped make colonial life as comfortable as it was. They were gin (fence) keepers of the livestock pastured at Montauk and laborers for the Gardiners and others. The men used traditional woodworking skills to make piggins, ladles, and bowls for settler homes; they provided fish, oysters, and game for them. Stephen Pharaoh's pay is recorded for "bottoming" (rushing) Dominy chairs. As skilled shore whalers, Montaukett men were fought over by entrepreneurial East Hamptoners to be their crewmen. . .

The Native women used the spinning wheel to spin yarn, a necessity for all knitwear and weaving of essential cloth. They became expert makers of butter and cheese, which were major cash crops for their masters. Baskets, scrubs, jellies, and fine hand work provided cash for themselves. They cared for the mothers and children of colonial families, and were encouraged by the society to be the sex objects of the men; hence the Montaukett descendants of some of the early settlers. . .

As well as the usual farm and maritime work, 19th-century economic activities of the Montaukett included work in the developing factories of the area . . . as guides for wealthy hunters and the sportsmen's clubs . . .. They delivered ice . . . provided livery service for the newly developing tourist industry . . . and produced wood and textile crafts still in early East End homes. . .

. . . Maria Pharaoh's diary, the only such document about 19th-century Native lifeways, describes their self-sufficient, happy homesteading lifestyle - gathering, hunting, fishing, guiding sportsmen, and selling crafts . . . After David Pharaoh died of tuberculosis, Maria and her children could not maintain the homesteading lifestyle. They were lured to move to Freetown, north of East Hampton village, by promises by Frank Benson that they could return in summer, would get a yearly annuity, and education for the children. The Benson family, who had bought Montauk peninsula from the Town Trustees, used it as a hunting preserve and planned to develop it. The promises were empty, the Montaukett homes at Indian Field containing their deeds and records were burned, and they were driven away from their ancestral home. . .

Dr. Gaynell Stone, who holds a Ph.D. in anthropology, is the museum director of the Suffolk County Archaeological Association.

The editor of "The History and Archaeology of the Montauk," she teaches at the State University at Stony Brook and Suffolk Community College, and is a New York Council for the Humanities speaker on the native peoples of coastal New York.

This is excerpted from Dr. John Strong's Jan. 31 Guild Hall lecture, "Wyandanch, Sachem of the Montauketts: An 'Alliance' Sachem on the Middle Ground."

In the early spring of 1648, Governors Eaton and Hopkins sent Thomas Stanton, a Connecticut merchant, to purchase lands for them on the eastern end of Long Island. . . [Several clauses] in the deed suggested a concept of joint usage. The English promised that, "if the Indians, hunting of any deer, they should chase them into the water, and the English should kill them, the English shall have the body, and the sachems the skin." According to Indian custom, when hunters drove deer or bear into rivers or ponds, the skins were sent to the sachem who controlled the hunting territory. The Montauketts must have assumed, at the time, that they still had a claim to the parcel. . .

. . . In 1649 the English put Wyandanch's commitment to a severe test. They asked him to honor a sensitive clause in the [Hartford] treaty [of 1644] which compromised his sovereignty. The clause stipulated that Indians who injured English people or property be turned over to the English courts.

When the Southampton settlers accused the Shinnecocks of murdering an Englishwoman, Mandush, the Shinnecock sachem, refused to cooperate with the investigation. The two communities armed themselves and stood ready for a confrontation. The Shinnecocks made a proposal which was in accordance with their custom of providing restitution for the victims and their families rather than punishing the guilty parties. They offered a payment that would be borne by their whole community, but the English rejected this form of restitution.

Lion Gardiner sent Wyandanch to the Shinnecock village and urged him to use his influence to end the impasse. The Montaukett sachem took advantage of the close kinship ties his people had with the Shinnecocks to help him locate and capture the men responsible for the murder. With Mandush's consent, Wyandanch took the accused men to Hartford, where they were tried and executed.

Mandush accepted a tributary status under Wyandanch and granted the Montaukett sachem full control over all of the Shinnecock lands. This was a major success for the English policy of indirect rule through "alliance sachems." The English had now neutralized a troublesome sachem and strengthened a reliable ally.

The English repaid Wyandanch's loyalty a few years later. In 1653, when Ninigret, his old nemesis from Rhode Island, raided Wyandanch's village, killing about 30 of his men and seizing his daughter, Quashawam, and 14 other captives, the Montaukett sachem turned to Gardiner and the English for help. Although the episode is very poorly documented, it appears that Gardiner helped to raise money for Quashawam's ransom. . .

When Ninigret again threatened Wyandanch in the fall of 1655, the English moved quickly to protect their loyal ally. . . The action successfully thwarted any plan the Niantic sachem may have had to retaliate for his defeat on Block Island. He did not initiate any further action against the Montauketts until after Wyandanch's death in 1659.

Tackapousha [named by the Dutch as chief sachem over western Long Island] and Wyandanch, supported by their European allies, soon became the two most powerful and influential sachems on Long Island. Both men became the primary liaisons between their people and the new immigrants to Long Island, as well as important players in the international struggle between the English and the Dutch for control over Long Island. . .

A year after Tackapousha resolved the difficulties between the Dutch and the Secatogues, the English called upon Wyandanch to resolve a much more serious confrontation. Several Shinnecock men and an African American woman conspired to burn down several buildings in the settlement. One of the buildings was the home of Eleanor Howell, the widow of Edward Howell, who had helped to found the town in 1640. One or more of the conspirators may have been servants in the Howell household . . . several other buildings in the town were also burned.

Possibly the attacks were also related to conflicts over the invasion of Indian planting grounds by English livestock, a common problem during this period. . .

The court records did not mention the African American woman, but Wyandanch later reported that the servant woman was "far deeper in that capital miscarriage than any or all of the Indians." It is possible that Wyandanch was attempting to shift the blame away from the Indians, but even so his account raises some fascinating questions about the relationship between the small population of African American servants and slaves and the Indians. Both groups certainly shared common frustrations in their relations with the dominant white settlers. The suggestion that a woman had taken a role of leadership in the small rebellion is also interesting. . . .

There is a reference in a later document to a Shinnecock man who killed himself to avoid "just execution" by the English. The man may have been Wigwagub, the only one who confessed to the arson. . .

Wyandanch endorsed several more transactions in 1658 and 1659, as Englishmen from all over Long Island sought him out to bolster their land claims.

Two weeks after his endorsement of Andrews' title, Wyandanch turned his attention to the Shinnecock land west of Canoe Place, where the Shinnecock Canal is located today. Wyandanch demonstrated his experience as a negotiator and his understanding of English institutions in these transactions. . .

[Wyandanch sold Lion Gardiner a large tract of beach land.] Once again, however, Wyandanch insisted on a clause which would provide him and his family with a regular income. Gardiner agreed to pay the sachem and his heirs 25 shillings a year, each October, forever. The whales which were cast up on the beach, a major source of wealth on the south shore of Long Island, remained Wyandanch's property. The Indians also retained the right to cut flag grass and bulrushes, which they used to make mats for the wigwams.

These transactions . . . were unique in that they guaranteed a continuing return of income rather than a final dispossession. . .

. . . The land titles were, of course, a primary concern of the English, but another important source of wealth on the East End of Long Island was whale oil. The Montauketts took the tails and fins of the whales for their ceremonial feasts, but the English were primarily interested in the oil and baleen, because these commodities could be turned into hard currency on the European market. Drift whales were the first cash crop on Long Island.

In November 1658, Wyandanch gave Lion Gardiner and Rev. James one half of the whales "or other great fish" which drifted onto the beach between Napeague and the far end of Montauk. This was an important grant because it gave the two men an exclusive right to all of the ocean beaches on Montaukett lands. The town of East Hampton owned the whale rights from Napeague on west to the Southampton border and held them in common trust. Wyandanch did require a small percentage of their profit, but left it to James and Gardiner to pay "what they shall judge meete and according as they find profit by them". . . .

On July 14, 1659, shortly before his death, Wyandanch signed a most unusual document. It reads almost like a last will and testament. Written in the first person as if dictated by Wyandanch, it acknowledged Lion Gardiner's friendship, counsel, and material aid over a 24-year period. Gardiner, said Wyandanch, "appeared to us not only as a friend but as a father." In return for this friendship, Wyandanch made him a gift of 30,000 acres of land between Huntington and Setauket which included most of what is now the Town of Smithtown . . .

Wyandanch died some time during the fall of 1659. According to Lion Gardiner, the Montaukett sachem was poisoned, but this is not corroborated in any of the colonial records. It is also possible that he died in the plague which took the lives of an estimated two thirds of the Algonquian people on Long Island between 1659 and 1664.

Wyandanch's passing was one of the events which marked the end of an era in Indian-white relations on Long Island. The era was characterized by the scramble of imperial powers at one level and aggressive individual entrepreneurs at another, to grab as much land as possible. The other markers were the death of Lion Gardiner in 1663, the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, and the great plague. . . .

In 1665, Richard Nicolls, the first governor of the newly established colony of New York, officially declared that there was no longer any "grand sachem" of Long Island. "Every sachem," said the governor, "shall keep his particular property over his people as formerly." The English, who had created the position, had now abolished it.

Dr. John Strong, who holds a Ph.D. in history, has written extensively on the Algonquian peoples of Long Island. His most recent publications include "The Algonquian Peoples of Long Island From Earliest Times to 1700," "We Are Still Here: The Algonquian Peoples of Long Island Today," and articles in such periodicals as Ethnohistory and The Long Island Historical Journal.

The full text of these two features may be found on the World Wide Web hhtp://www.350theasthampton.org .