While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Metoac (contraction of
Meht-anaw-ack, 'land of the ear-shell or periwinkle. Tooker). A
collective term embracing the Indians of Long Island, N. Y., who seem to
have been divided into the following tribes, subtribes, or bands:
Canarsee,
Corchaug, Manhasset, Massapequa, Matinecoc, Merric,
Montauk, Nesaquake,
Patchoag, Rockaway, Secatoag, Setauket, and
Shinnecock. There were besides
these some minor bands or villages which have received special
designations. They were closely connected linguistically and politically,
and were probably derived from the same immediate ethnic stein. Ruttenber
classes them as branches of the Mahican.
The Montauk, who formed the leading tribe in the
eastern part of the island, are often confounded with the Metoac, and in
some instances the Canarsee of the western part have also been confounded
with them. The eastern tribes were at one time subject to the Pequot and
afterward to the Narraganset, while the Iroquois claimed dominion over the
western tribes. They were numerous at the first settlement of the island,
but rapidly wasted away from epidemics and wars with other Indians and
with the Dutch, disposing of their lands piece by piece to the whites.
About 1788 a large part of the survivors joined the Brotherton Indians in
Oneida county, N. Y. The rest, represented chiefly by the Montauk and
Shinnecock, have dwindled to perhaps a dozen individuals of mixed blood.
The Indians of Long Island were a seafaring people, mild in temperament,
diligent in the pursuits determined by their environment, skilled in the
management of the canoe, seine, and spear, and dexterous in the making of
seawan or wampum (Flint). The chieftaincies were hereditary by lineal
descent, including females when there was no male representive.
The Metoac villages were:
