Shinnecock Indian Nation
The Shinnecock Indian Nation is a federally recognized tribe of historically Algonquian-speaking Native Americans based at the eastern end of Long Island, New York.
[2] The Shinnecock were among the thirteen Indian bands loosely based on kinship on Long Island, which were named by their geographic locations, but the people were highly decentralized.
The most common pattern of indigenous life on Long Island prior to their economic and cultural destruction - and, on occasion, actual enslavement - by the Europeans was the autonomous village linked by kinship to its neighbors.
[3] They were related and politically subject to the Pequot and Narragansett, the more powerful Algonquian tribes of southern New England across Long Island Sound.
They shared a longhouse social system with their people also located in a territory that extended through the mid-Atlantic area, from western Connecticut, the lower Hudson River Valley, through present-day New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania.
[3] Like the other Native peoples of Long Island, the Shinnecock made wampumpeag (wampum), shell beads strung onto threads that were used as currency, for record-keeping, for aesthetic purposes, and to symbolize a family.
These shell beads have been found at Native American-inhabited sites as far west as the Rocky Mountains, showing their value in a trade.
Native American populations on Long Island declined dramatically after European colonization due mostly to vulnerability to the new infectious diseases carried by colonists, to which they had no immunity.
In addition, their communities were disrupted by land encroachment by Dutch and later English colonists; they had to shift from hunting and fishing to horticulture.
[1][7] After the American Revolutionary War, a number of Shinnecock left Long Island to join the Brothertown Indians in western New York, where the Oneida people gave them some land on their reservation.
Through the 19th century, Shinnecock men worked as fishermen and sailors on the whaling ships based at Sag Harbor and other local ports.
At the start of the 20th century, the Shinnecock were described as "daring seamen," and "furnishin[g] efficient recruits to the United States Life Saving Service" (Coast Guard).
The tribe's lawsuit challenged the state legislature's approval of an 1859 sale of the 3,500 acres (1,400 ha) of tribal land to non-native persons.
The suit charges that in 1859, a group of powerful New York investors conspired to break the lease by sending the state Legislature a fraudulent petition supporting the sale, which was purported to be from a number of Shinnecock tribal members.
[7] The Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, George T. Skibine issued the final determination of the tribe's recognized status on June 13, 2010.
On April 18, 1845 aboard the whaling vessel the Manhattan, a Shinnecock Indian named Eleazar became the first Native American to enter into Japanese territory, anchoring in Tokyo Bay.
In the early 1600s, the first recorded European reference of Long Island Indians comes from Dutch official Isaack de Rasieres.
He described Long Island as, "three to four leagues broad, and it has several creeks and bays, where many savages dwell, who support themselves by planting maize and making sewan (wampum) and who are called… Sinnecox (Shinnecock).
"[29] The Long Island Indians are generally thought to be the largest producers of wampum in the colonial era with much of it being paid as tribute to larger or more powerful tribes.
[35] The Cultural Enrichment Program is a sharing and learning process that the community has engaged in to ensure that the ideals and traditions of their ancestors are passed down through the generations.
[22] In 2019 a documentary film entitled "Conscience Point" was released and shown on WNET in New York City and other PBS stations.
