Silas Wood’s sketch of the town of Huntington, L.I. is a small manuscript of 63 pages which provides an authoritative look at the early history of Huntington New York, from its first settlement to the end of the American revolution. Particularly fascinating to our Native American researchers is the history of the early interaction with the Matinecoes, the Massapeags, and the Secataugs.
Matinecoc Indians. An Algonquian tribe which formerly inhabited the northwest coast of Long Island, New York, from Newtown, Queens county, to Smithtown, Suffolk county. They had villages at Flushing, Glen Cove, Cold Spring, Huntington, and Cow Harbor, but even before the intrusion of the whites they had become greatly reduced, probably through wars with the Iroquois, to whom they paid tribute. In 1650 Secretary Van Tienhoven reported but 50 families left of this once important tribe. Ruttenber includes them in his Montauk group, which is about equivalent to Metoac; but the interrelationship of the tribes in the western part of … Read more