the early s by john e. hammond · the early s by john e. hammond aside from the words "town of...

THE EARLY Sby John E. Hammond

Aside from the words "Town ofOyster Bay," the significantdevices on the town seal are astylized seagull and the date1653. The seagull was created byOyster Bay artist Alfred J. Walk-er who graduated from OysterBay High School and Pratt Insti-tute and then went on to becomean artist with the Walt DisneyStudios. The date 1653 comesfrom the first purchase by SamuelMayo, William Leverich andPeter Wright, but this was not thefirst European settlement at Oys-ter Bay. Mayo, Leverich andWright purchased the land fromthe Matinecock sachemMohannes.

The original settlers of the areawere the Matinecock Indians, socalled from the Indian wordMatinecock which meant "at thehilly ground." Historians andother researchers differ in opin-ion as to when these first settlersarrived on Long Island but it issafe to say that they were heremore than a thousand years ago.

The Matinecocks occupiedlands on Long Island as far westas Flushing and as far east asSetauket, running south to thecenter of the island. They werepart of the Algonquin languageand cultural group but had nowritten language. When the firstEuropeans arrived in the early1600s the total population of the13 chieftaincies on Long Islandwas estimated at about 6,500.

The arrival of the first Euro-peans had a great impact on theIndians; many were decimated bydiseases which the Indians had noresistance to. Writing in 1670,Daniel Denton believed that thiswas due to Divine Interventionwhen he wrote that:

It hath been generally observedthat where the English come tosettle a Divine Hand makes wayfor them, by removing or cuttingoff the Indians either by Warsone with the other, or by someraging mortal disease.

When Denton wrote these wordsthere were only two remainingIndian villages on Long Island.

Denton also tells us that theIndians subsisted by hunting andfishing while the Indian womentended the fields of corn. Theylived in small moveable tentswhich they moved two or threetimes each year. Their leaderswere called sachems and wereshown great respect by the othermembers of the community. Den-ton tells us that the sachemssought the opinions of the othermembers of the community whilesitting in council before render-ing their decision on any subject;the sachem's decision was alwaysfinal.

Among the various Indian com-munities, paying tribute by theweaker groups to the more pow-erful ones was a common cus-tom. The mainland groups weregenerally the more powerful andthe Matinecocks often tried toresist paying tribute to them butwere usually unsuccessful. Whenthe Dutch and the English settlers

arrived and began buying up theIndian lands the Indians believedin many cases that this was justanother form of tribute; many didnot believe that they were actual-ly selling off all their rights to theland.

By the year 1685, the last pieceof Indian land was bought by theEuropean settlers. Historian JohnH. Morice wrote that by 1709,"there were no Indians on theIsland except small remnants of afew scattered communities."With the loss of their land theremaining Matinecocks moved tojoin with the Poospatucks, Shin-necocks and Montauks who bythe late 1600s had negotiated forsome of their own lands whichlater became reservations. Thosethat chose to stay on their ances-tral land settled within smallhamlets near the sites of their ear-lier villages and sought work onthe new English plantations. In

A late 19th c. artist's conception ofthe appearance of a typical

Long Island Indian.