Unquachog Erotic

The Unquachog, who today spell their name Unkechaug, are the Algonquian people of the south shore of central Long Island. What sets them apart in the New York suburbs is simple: they still hold their own land. The Poospatuck Reservation in Mastic, near Moriches Bay, was set aside for them in 1700, and the nation has lived there ever since, while Suffolk County filled in around it with manors, farms and commuter towns. Their older territory followed the bays and salt marshes from around Patchogue, a town whose name echoes theirs, east toward the Moriches. Their life was built on the shore: clams, oysters, fish, eels and waterfowl, with corn planted on cleared land back from the water.

Their language belonged to the Eastern Algonquian branch and sat closest to Quiripi, spoken just across Long Island Sound in Connecticut. Much of what survives exists because Thomas Jefferson, an avid collector of Native vocabularies, stopped at Brookhaven with James Madison in 1791 and wrote down a word list from a few elderly speakers. That short list, taken by a sitting Secretary of State, is now a working source for the nation's effort to bring the language back into use.

Like other Long Island peoples, the Unquachog lived beside the raw material for wampum, the quahog and whelk shell beads that served as currency and diplomatic record across the Northeast. In the 1600s that brought pressure more than profit: tribute demands from stronger neighbors and then from the English, epidemics, and a run of land deeds that moved most of their territory into colonial hands. Much of it went to the manor of William "Tangier" Smith, the same colonist who set aside the Poospatuck tract. Missionaries followed, and Christianity took hold on the reservation, while the community kept its own gatherings and ceremonial life.

The Unkechaug Nation is recognized by New York State but not by the federal government. Much of its modern public life has been an argument over what sovereignty means on a small reservation, including court fights over untaxed tobacco sales and a claim, based on a 1676 colonial treaty, to harvest young eels in local waters without state permits. Many families also have generations of marriages with African American and European neighbors, and the nation has had to insist, against doubtful officials and neighbors, that mixed ancestry never ended its existence as a people.