Description
The first known inhabitants of East Hampton and Montauk town were the aboriginal Montaukett — a place name spelled a dozen different ways in early records. It was not a “tribal” name, but a place name which the colonists conferred upon them as they designated them as a “tribe.” The meaning of Montaukett in William Wallace Tooker’s Indian Place Names on Long Island is given as either the “high or hilly land” or the “fort country”– both of which appear to fit Montauk topography and the presence of two fortified places. [1. Tooker, William Wallace, Indian Place Names on Long Island…, 1911, 1962, Ira J. Friedman Pub., p. 141.] The Montauketts are members of the large Algonkian language family and peoples who inhabited the Atlantic Coastal Plain from Canada to the Carolinas; they spoke a variant of the language of the Mohegan-Pequot, across the Long Island Sound from them. [1. Levine, Gaynell Stone & Nancy Bonvillain, Languages & Lore of the Long Island Indians, Vol. IV, Readings…, 1980, SCAA, p. 168.]
Artwork:Montaukett, 2016
Metal Print
