Montauk Confederacy

Tribes affected: Corchaug, Manhassett, Massapequa, Matinecock, Merric, Montauk, Nesaquake, Patchogue (Poospatuck), Rockaway, Secatogue, Setauket, Shinnecock, Unquachog

Culture area: Northeast

Language group: Algonquian

Primary location: Central and eastern Long Island

The Montauk Confederacy was formed as a protective league against mainland tribes, primarily the Pequot and Narragansett. Its member groups shared essentially the same culture patterns and language. Thus, they may have been loosely connected elements of one group or tribe. The Montauk were the most powerful and controlled the others. Montauk may mean “fortified place.”

99109859-94778.jpg99109859-94779.jpg

The Montauk subsisted on plant, land, and sea animals. Food cultivation required a complex and frequent pattern of seasonal shifting of residences, from the summer fields to the deep forests in the winter. A trade network linking regional and adjacent groups was also developed. Trading with Europeans began in the sixteenth century.

The tribes lived in villages of small circular houses holding two families during the temperate seasons. In winter they lived in large longhouses that held forty to fifty people. Villages were relocated when the supply of firewood was depleted.

Each village was presided over by a hereditary chief or sachem. Sachems had limited power and always made decisions in consultation with a council of “great men.” Women also held respected positions. Quahawan, the sister of Nowedonah and Paygratasuck, Shinnecock and Manhassett sachems, became a Shinnecock sachem around 1667. The confederacy was presided over by the Montauk sachem, the grand sachem or great chief. Wyandanck (mid-seventeenth century), brother of the above three named sachems, was the most famous leader of the confederacy.

The confederacy population was about six thousand in 1600. Because of white diseases, alcoholism, and raids, numbers rapidly declined. Around 1788, most of the one hundred or so remaining members joined the Brotherton Indians in New York and moved with them to the Oneida reservation in Wisconsin about 1833. The handful of remaining Montauk and Shinnecock, the last representatives of the Long Island tribes, preserved tribal organization into the nineteenth century. Their last hereditary grand sachem, David Pharaoh, died about 1875. The old customs and native language were lost soon thereafter.

Limited hunting, fishing, crop cultivation, and sale of craft items on the 400-acre Shinnecock reservation provided subsistence. Limited financial support from New York State and off-reservation low-wage jobs provided additional income. The encroachment of suburbia and tourists wanting to see “real Indians” rekindled an interest in traditional tribal customs and dress, self-respect, and group pride beginning in the 1900s. Renewed interest in tribal incorporation occurred in the 1930s. Intertribal associations, such as the Algonquin Council of Indian Tribes (1926), were formed. The Shinnecock are represented by an elected council in their dealings with New York State. The 2017-2021 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates indicated the population of the Poospatuck (state) Reservation totaled 684, and the Shinnecock (state) Reservation totaled 39.