The Montaukett ("Metoac"[1]), more commonly known as Montauk, are an Algonquian-speaking[2] Native American people from the eastern and central sections of Long Island, New York, United States.

The colonial Montaukett participated in the new European economic and cultural systems by using their traditional skills: hunting to provide game and fowl for colonists' tables; woodworking to make bowls, scrubs, tools, toys, and later, houses and mills; craftwork to make baskets, eel pots, and rush and cane bottoms for chairs.

Between 1677 and 1684, a documented system of credit allowed indigenous men (and their families) to purchase goods from local merchants and traders, in exchange for their share (or “lay”) of the catch during the following whaling season.

[11] The daughter was recovered with the aid of Lion Gardiner, who in turn was given a large portion of present-day Smithtown, New York, in appreciation.

The Montaukett, ravaged by smallpox and fearing extermination by the Narragansett, were provided temporary refuge by white settlers in East Hampton.

[12] Further purchase agreements were entered into in 1660, 1661, 1672 and 1686 which, among other things, allowed Easthampton townsmen to graze cattle on the Montaukett lands.

[11] The following year, Wyandanch's widow sold all of Montauk from Napeague to the tip of the island for one hundred pounds to be paid in ten equal installments of "Indian corn or good wampum at six to a penny".

Dissatisfied with their treatment by the town, the Montauketts negotiated a more lucrative sale of the same lands east of Fort Pond to two wealthy men from New York.

The land east of Great Pond (including Indian Fields) was reserved for colonial use, which primarily consisted of cattle grazing.

[1] In 1719, despite the enforced limitations on lifeways, the Montaukett population grew in small numbers and reinforced social and economic networks through exogamous marriage practices.

Altogether, these eighteenth-century encumbrances left the Montauketts, resentful of their white neighbors, in a position of tenancy on their ancestral homelands.

[1] During and after the 1730 - 1740 First Great Awakening, the Montauketts received attention from New Light preachers, most notably James Davenport and Azariah Horton.

[15] In 1749, Samson Occom a Mohegan Native American of Connecticut, came to Montauk to minister and to educate them (from 1749-1761 [11]), and began to take over Azariah Horton’s mission, while Rev.

Occom was an exceptionally talented man, not formally educated until 16, but mastering English, Greek, and Latin, as well as theology beginning in 1743.

In 1773, Samson Occum and his brother-in-law, David Fowler (c. 1735-1807, Montaukett native) form the "Brothertown Plan" with members of the neighboring Shinnecock and Christian Algonquins, including contingents of the Mohegan, Pequot, and Narragansett, to move them to the Oneida Territory.

White, Indigenous, and African-American seamen encountered sailors from international ports as vessels travelled for sometimes years at a time.

Thomas James (minister) was in Sag Harbor on an anti-slavery ministry for the free black former slaves in the whaling industry, he was engaged to preach to the Montauketts too.

The Reverend James gave the Montauketts shelter near the village during their problems with the Narragansett, and allegedly got them to sell from Napeague to Montauk Point to himself and a few other men (maybe Hedges / Benson / et.

In 1839, slaves who had seized the schooner La Amistad came ashore in the hamlet (possibly "Indian Fields") looking for provisions after being told by the white crew they had returned to Africa.

[17] The 1859 discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania, along with the growing demand for kerosene and the onset of the Civil War, led to the start of the demise of whaling.

Montaukett men sailed from ships out of Sag Harbor until 1871, a year that marked the final deep-sea departure from the port.

This potential increasing tourism sparked the idea of the sale of the entire Montauk peninsula by the Town Trustees to Arthur W. Benson in 1879 for development as a resort.

According to Marla Pharoah's autobiography, the remaining Montaukett families were allegedly contestibly "bought out" and two of those houses were moved off Montauk to Freetown, while the others were simply burned down and all their possessions stolen.

The first train from the Austin Corbin extension of the Long Island Rail Road pulled into Montauk in 1895, (to the station built in fort pond bay) the land having been bought in 1882.

In 1898, after the Benson / Corbin plan did not work out as planned, the United States Army bought the Benson property to establish a base called Camp Wikoff to quarantine Army personnel returning from the Spanish–American War – and that's how Teddy Roosevelt and His Rough Riders wound up exposed to the few remaining Montauketts as they stayed in what became known as "Third House."

(State Route 27) In 1926, Carl G. Fisher bought all of the remaining (non-state park) Montaukett Lands in Long Island (10,000 acres (40 km2)) for only $2.5 million.

Assemblyman Fred Thiele Jr. has introduced legislation to restore state recognition of the Montaukett Indian Nation in 2013, 2017, 2018, and 2019, but Governor Andrew M. Cuomo vetoed these bills, "arguing that a tribe must follow a prescribed federal administrative process to obtain recognition rather than achieve it through setting up a costly duplicated process at the state level.

Manfra McGovern concluded that "...despite the seemingly remote location of Indian Fields, Montaukett men and women were deeply entangled in local and global markets as producers and consumers; and they maintained social relationships with other laborers, employers, and kin throughout and beyond the East Hampton Town...".

Some Relics and ruins of their settlements are visible at the Theodore Roosevelt County Park, on the edge of the village of Montauk, New York.

[16] But over time, the Montauketts were increasingly dispersed from the last "reservation" at the tip of Montauk peninsula, to enclaves in Freetown (a multicultural neighborhood north of E.Hampton[21]), Eastville (eastern Sag Harbor), the Shinnecock Reservation, and were appearing, (through the Federal censuses) in Southampton, East Hampton, Sag Harbor, Southold, Greenport, Brookhaven Town, Smithtown, Oyster Bay, and New York City – and other areas of Long Island and the nation – usually as laborers, farmhands, domestic servants, seamstresses, etc.