life on Manhansack-Ahaquatuwamock
a peek into the world of Shelter Island before the colonists arrive
Dear reader,
While I set out to write to you regularly, life has intervened with that, and I apologize for the gap in contact. I’ve been grappling with the requirements of life (i.e., making money) and the requirements of creativity (i.e., time). A month ago I made the (perhaps unwise, perhaps life-changing) decision to leave my job. I had thought it was the dream gig – I was leading a youth program, it was a non-profit, it felt perfect.
It turned out not to be. Job woes, though, are not why we’re here. In the meantime, as I search for my next path, I’ve found more time for writing and researching, and am excited to share with you what I’ve found.
I’ve brought both Grizzelle and Nathaniel to the island that they would call their home for the rest of their lives. Traced their journeys from London and Amsterdam to the place they thought of as the New World. It wasn’t really new, of course — it was old, very old. But the amount of information that we have on the individual Sylvesters and their paths is in stark contrast to what we know about the Manhansets, the native people of the island.
Still, I was delighted to find that volume 36 of the Northeast Historical Archaeology, published in 2007, was entirely about Sylvester Manor. Topics include field excavations, soil ‘micromorphology,’ multi-cultural interactions, paleoethnobotany, and zooarchaeology. This is more proof that the Manor is an archaeologist’s dream. But I am not an archaeologist, and I’m interested mostly in stories. Stories are something that you have to piece together, and perhaps we can use all of these -ologies and -otanies to find that story.
The Algonquian name for Shelter Island is Manhansack-Ahaquatuwamock, which means “an island sheltered by islands.” The word Manhanset is also spelled variously in different places — sometimes Menhansacks, Manhansett, Menhansick, and Manhasset. I’ve chosen Manhanset as it seems to be the one most commonly used.
Pre-contact, there were thirteen tribes on Long Island. Each was autonomous, though related by kinship; they were subject to the Pequot and Narragansett as stronger Algonquian tribes. In the early 1650s, when Nathaniel and Grizzelle arrived, the relationship between the colonists and the Indigenous people of the island wasn’t necessarily bad, but there were tensions, and right off the bat, wrongdoings. The good faith that the Indigenous people had in the relationship at first is represented by the signature of the Grand Sachem of Long Island, Wyandanch, when he came to Shelter Island to witness a land deal: it is two stick figures, or two men holding hands.
In 1651, Nathaniel and his partners purchased Shelter Island from Stephen Goodyear of New Haven. Youghco, the sachem of the Manhansets, was not part of the deal, and when Nathaniel began to clear land and build, Youghco went to the courts in New Haven, saying that his people were “threatened to be forced off the said island.” Youghco said that the Manhansets had never sold the land, but rather, what had happened was that Charles I had issued the first English patent for Long Island and all the adjacent islands in 1637. A Brit took Shelter Island as his commission, and sold it to Goodyear, who then sold it to Nathaniel and his partners. So when Nathaniel purchased it from Goodyear, the people who lived on and laid rightful claim to the island – the Manhanset – were not involved in the deal.
In 1652, New Haven was worried about the Indigenous people of Long Island rising up against the colonists, so they required Nathaniel and partners to purchase the island once again. This was done in March 1653, in a meeting between Youghco and Nathaniel. Youghco offered a “turfe and twige,” or a clump of soil and branch, to signify the consummation of a land sale as had been done since medieval times in England. The sale of the land didn’t necessarily mean that the Indigenous people left; rather, many remained, hunting and fishing as they had prior to the Europeans’ arrival. However, colonial occupation meant that these resources were used up more quickly, and the Manhanset became more dependent on the colonial economy.
What of the Manhansets, though, and their way of life prior to the Europeans’ arrival? They lived in wigwams, surrounded by tall oaks and hickories. The roofs of the wigwams were rounded, their frames made of wood with woven mats and sheets of bark lashed onto the frames. Wigwams were excellent at keeping out rain, snow, and wind. Household wigwams were fairly small, up to about 15’x20’, and from the walls and rafters hung baskets, wooden implements, nets, bags, bows, and dressed skins. In the middle of the floor was a hearth whose smoke escaped through a hole in the roof. The fires burned day and night, and the sleeping arrangements were on wide raised platforms that circled the fire and were covered with furs and skins.
Throughout the year, the wigwams’ locations were shifted throughout the village for cleanliness. Large groups would set up campsites for hunting and fishing outside of the village, so they moved location throughout the year, leading the colonists to consider them to be a less permanent society than their own. However, they, like the Europeans, had impressive preservation methods for meat, corn, and beans, which they stored in underground pits lined with clay, grasses, and mats, and sealed with earth or sand. They planted and harvested by the stars, with most everyone joining in on the farming efforts. They planted in small patches of about three feet across, a custom the Europeans would later adopt. They had a language, a government, households – in other words, their society possessed everything that the Europeans’ societies possessed. There is no logical reason to conclude that the Manhansets were any less civilized or organized, unless one were attempting to make the case that they didn’t deserve the land they lived on.
As for their belief system, Cautantowwit was the creator of mankind. He was less involved in human affairs than Hobbemok, the god of death and everyday life, who was both called upon for assistance and blamed for any misfortune. Hobbemok lived in the underworld, which opened up in the waters that were also the Manhanset’s fishing grounds. No wonder that the god of everyday life would live in the very place that provided that life, as the Manhansets were fishermen first and foremost.
The Manhanset inhabited a three-layered circular cosmos, which was made up of the sky, the earth, and the underworld. All of this was connected by a giant cedar tree. Medicine men were able to cross the thresholds between worlds using manitou, a term which generally meant spirits or gods. This happened in ceremonies that involved music, dancing, and singing, allowing the healers to go into a trance state. Manitou was present in a variety of forms, including in Cautantowwit, Hobbemok, and the natural world. Manitou was to be protected and used, as it was spiritual power.
This is the rich world that Nathaniel and Grizzelle stepped into. They couldn’t be content joining this world, though, or allowing their belief systems to merge, their ways of life to coexist. Instead, the colonial way of life interrupted and overturned Indigenous ways of life, so that today, it is much easier to find information about Grizzelle’s fecal matter buried in London than it is to find details of how the Manhansets lived. It’s a great shame.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metoac
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinnecock_Indian_Nation#cite_note-strong-3
https://orb.binghamton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=neha
https://historicipswich.org/2018/02/07/manitou-in-context/
The Manor, by Mac Griswold