Shinnecock

Variant name of place

Shenecock; Shenecock; Shene

Geographic position

40.8744° N, 72.4317° W

Sources

"Shinnecock Nation History." Accessed 10/21/14. Strong, John. The Thirteen Tribes of Long Island: The History of a Myth. http://www.hudsonrivervalley.org/review/pdfs/hvrr_9pt2_strong.pdf. Geo coordinates at https://www.google.com/#q=geographic+coordinates+of+shinnecock+indian+reservation. Fisher, Linford. The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

General note

Shinnecock, NY, was a village within the town of Southampton, NY occupied by the Shinnecock Indians. While this village no longer exists, the Shinnecocks have preserved some of their ancestral land through the Shinnecock Indian Reservation. The name Shinnecock means "people of the stony shore," in reference to the rocky southeastern edge of Long Island where the Shinnecocks lived. Shinnecock's proximity to Connecticut by way of the Long Island Sound meant that the village and its tribe experienced more missionary activity from New England than towns in the Western half of Long Island. European settlers first encountered the Shinnecocks in 1640, when they founded Southampton after purchasing land from the Tribe. During this period of colonization, the village of Shinnecock remained an enclave for the Tribe as the rest of Long Island was increasingly divided into English towns. Unlike the Montauketts to the East, the Shinnecocks were able to retain a land base, their own distinct village. From 1749 to 1761, Occom maintained a school and mission 30 miles east of Shinnecock in Montauk and often made trips to the village on his preaching tours of Long Island and New York, where he preached to largely Indian audiences. By the 1780s, however, English encroachment on Shinnecock land led many of the Shinnecocks, with Occom's encouragement, to leave Long Island for Brothertown. Those who remained in Shinnecock were subjected to a system of tribal governance that the New York State Legislature imposed in 1792, a system that lasted until 2007, when the Shinnecocks on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation reasserted their traditional governing structure.