For Shinnecocks, the 'right time'

Nearly 150 years after its once vast reservation was reduced to 800 acres, South Fork tribe sets out to prove its legitimacy and reclaim land

BY ANN GIVENS AND KATIE THOMAS
STAFF WRITERS
November 30, 2005

Earlier this month, a federal judge granted the Shinnecock Indians one of their biggest victories since English settlers arrived in Southampton four centuries ago - in a rare decision, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Platt decided the Shinnecocks were a bona fide Indian tribe. In the weeks since Platt's ruling, Newsday has examined the hundreds of documents that make up the tribe's application for federal recognition to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is pending. Today, we tell the story of the tribe from the 1600s to the present, and describe the evolution of the tribe's annual powwow. Other stories will document the changing role of women in the tribe, the history of the Shinnecock Presbyterian Church and the tribe's ongoing struggle to define its identity.

The history of Southampton's Shinnecock Indians sits in two cardboard boxes in a back office of the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C.

Hundreds of dramatic moments are distilled there on letter-sized copy paper: Notes from contentious trustee meetings dating to the Revolutionary War; a 19th-century pastor's handwritten history of his Shinnecock parish; a genealogical tree tracing tribe members' births, deaths and marriages back to 1800.

Long Island's first residents, who have lived on the South Fork for thousands of years, lead a fiercely private existence on their 800-acre reservation, rarely discussing their lives with the outsiders they feel have so often betrayed them. But recently - with an eye toward opening a casino and reclaiming thousands of acres of their ancestral land - the tribe has applied to the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs for federal recognition of their status as a bona fide tribe.

That painstaking process has forced the Shinnecocks to prove on paper what they have taken for granted since English colonists first arrived in the early 1600s: that they are a cohesive, self-governing tribe.

In the wake of a federal judge's landmark decision two weeks ago acknowledging the Shinnecocks as a tribe, it is unclear whether the group still needs Bureau of Indian Affairs recognition to accomplish its goals. Still, the 1,300-page application, which Newsday obtained nearly three years after requesting it from the bureau under the federal Freedom of Information Act, provides a rare look at an ancient culture.

Nothing to prove

Many Shinnecocks chafe at the notion that, in filing these documents, they have been forced to prove the existence of their culture to the very people who they say have tried for centuries to dismantle it. "To me, it's degrading because we've always been here," said Eugene Cuffee, a former tribal trustee. "My mother, my father, my grandparents, their parents before them."

What happened before the first 10 settlers arrived at Conscience Point in Southampton in 1640 is not part of the tribe's application, since the Bureau of Indian Affairs requires proof only of the tribe's continued existence since "first contact" with Europeans. In fact, many of the details about the Shinnecocks' early way of life have been lost over the centuries, including their language, which died out in the early 19th century.

There is no doubt, however, that their lives changed dramatically with the encroachment of English settlers, the tribe's application shows. No sooner was Southampton officially founded in 1640 than the tribe - for a price of 16 coats and several bushels of corn - was ceded a tract of land that boxed them into an area roughly matching the modern-day boundaries of Southampton Town.

That confinement led to regular boundary disputes between the Shinnecocks and their new neighbors, and soon town members accused the tribe of killing a white woman and setting fire to local houses. It is not clear today whether those accusations were justified.

Trumped up or not, the settlers used the incidents to impose English colonial law on the Indians, and soon were installing hand-picked tribal leaders and working to convert them to Christianity.

In 1665, a generation after Southampton was founded, New York's first provincial governor, Richard Nicholls, imposed a series of laws, including a prohibition on native worship.

"No Indian whatsoever shall at any time be Suffered to Powaw to performe outward worship to the Devil in any Towne within this Government," the law declared.

As land reserved in their name diminished, the Shinnecocks were forced to give up their traditional livelihood of hunting, fishing and foraging over a wide expanse of the South Fork. In 1703, the tribe was pressured to sign six treaties in one single week, sharply reducing tribal land to about 3,600 acres.

Then, in 1859, a group of private investors asked New York State to dismantle the 1703 deal and confine the tribe to its current 800-acre reservation on Shinnecock Bay. Of the 21 Shinnecocks who allegedly signed a petition in favor of breaking the old agreement, some later claimed their signatures were forged. Others were dead at the time of the signing, according to the tribe and some historians.

Throughout this period, the Shinnecocks gradually entered the settlers' economy. Many worked as domestics on local estates, working side by side with African-American and white indentured servants, said John Strong, a historian who has studied the tribe.

Questioning 'true' Indians

Close relationships between the Shinnecocks and the local black community led to intermarriages between them, and to this day tribal members must defend against those who claim that their bloodline was diluted so much that they are no longer "true" Indians.

In a 1999 Shinnecock powwow program, one tribal member wrote in an unsigned article, "Regardless of who we choose to marry, we the Shinnecock people are still the direct descendents of our ancestors who were the first people of our Nation. We have maintained our aboriginal territories from prehistoric times to the present day."

Indeed, many modern-day tribal members ascribe their survival to their ancestors' continued resistance to the outside community. In 1884, for example, the trustees voted to hire a lawyer to "get the Hills back," referring to the 1859 deal in which they lost Shinnecock Hills, today the home of world famous golf clubs. They also encouraged members to cut firewood on the disputed land and promised that "if any person is sued that the tribe shall pay the costs of court."

The tribe returned to court in the 1950s, this time after a development company, Great Cove Realty, built homes on what the tribe said was Shinnecock property. A judge ruled in favor of the tribe.

"If it hadn't been for our ancestors standing up and resisting this, we probably wouldn't be here today," said Lance Gumbs, a former tribal trustee.

It was a recent struggle with the town that some Shinnecocks say reinvigorated their fight for self-sufficiency and federal recognition. In 2000, state police arrested three Shinnecocks who were protesting the development of Parrish Ponds, a site near the reservation that the tribe believes is sacred.

Fred Bess, 55, a former tribal trustee, said modern-day Shinnecocks are living through a momentous chapter in their history. Tribal members are now educated, many with college degrees.

"We thoroughly understand our history and what our fight is, which is to stand up and get what is duly ours," he said. "It wasn't the time or place a hundred years ago. ... I believe this is the right time and the right generation."

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Last updated on December 08, 2005