Shinnecock. An Algonquian tribe or
band on Long Island, N. Y., formerly occupying the south coast from
Shinnecock Bay to Montauk point. Many of them joined the Brotherton
Indians in New York. About 150 still remain on a reservation of 750 acres,
3 miles west of Southampton, having intermarried with Negroes until their
aboriginal character is almost obliterated. Nowedonah, brother of the
noted Wyandanch, was once their chief, and on his death his sister, wife
of Cockenoe, became his successor. In Dec. 1876, 28 Shinnecock men lost
their lives in an attempt to save a ship stranded off Easthampton, since
which time a number, especially the younger people, have left the
reservation and become scattered. They have a Presbyterian and an
Adventist church; the men gain a livelihood by employment as farm-hands,
baymen, berrypickers, etc., and the women as laundresses. A few families
make and sell baskets and a sort of brush made of oak splints; there is
almost no agriculture. They have lost all their old customs, and but few
words of their native language survive even in the memory of the oldest
people, although it was in more or less general use 60 or 70 years ago.
Consult Harrington in Jour. Am. Folk-lore, XVI, 37-39, 1903
and in So. Workman, XXXII, no. 6, 1903.
