Canarsee Indians. Formerly one of the leading tribes on Long Island, New York, occupying most of what is now Kings County and the shores of Jamaica Bay, with their center near Flatlands. According to Ruttenber they were subject to or connected with the Montauk; however, is doubtful, as the Indians of the west end of the island appear to have been paying tribute, at the time of the Dutch settlement of New York, to the Iroquois. Their principal village, of the same name, was probably as Canarsee, near Flatlands, in addition to which they had others at Maspeth and apparently at Hempstead. They are important chiefly from the fact that the site of the city of Brooklyn was obtained from them. Having asserted their independence of the Mohawk, after the appearance of the Dutch, they were attacked by that tribe and nearly exterminated. They also suffered considerably during the war of the Long Island tribes with the Dutch. The last one of them died about 1800.
