Before the Flushing Charter, there was the Indian Deed.
Flushing, or “Vlissingen,” was built on land previously purchased from Native Americans. The 1629 Charter for the colony of New Netherland dictated that settlers “must satisfy the Indians of that place for the land,” rather than simply squatting there or occupying it by force. The Dutch Colonial Records in the New York State Archives contain several of these so-called “Indian Deeds.” This original document, labeled “Indian Deed to the Directors of the West India Company for Land on Long Island,” is dated January 15, 1639. It conveys most of present-day Queens and Nassau County to the government of New Netherland. (The paper was damaged in the Capitol Fire of 1911 in Albany.)
ANCIENT PLACES: THE BOUNDARIES OF THE LAND
The document records that Mechoswodt, the chief sachem of Marossepinck, Sintsinck, and its dependencies, appeared in person at Fort Amsterdam to transfer his patrimonial lands on the western end of Long Island (“called in the Indian tongue Suan Hacky”) to the Dutch, with the consent of its co-owners, named as Piscamoc, his cousin, Wattewochkouw, Kachpohor, and Ketachkwawars. It describes a tract “reaching in length along the southside of said island from Reckouw Hacky to Sicketeuw Hacky, and from said Sicketeuw Hacky in width to Martin Gerritsen's Bay, and thence in length westwardly along the East River to the Vlaecks Kil.” (Suan Hacky, meaning “place of scattered shells,” refers to sewan or wampum, the prized natural resource of Long Island.)
The modern equivalents of these ancient place names remain uncertain. Marossepinck, known as Massapeague to the English, probably refers to Massapequa, off South Oyster Bay. Sintsinck, literally “stone upon stone,” was the Indian name for Manhasset Bay on the northern shore, settled by the Matinecock and dubbed “Schout’s Bay” by the Dutch. Reckouw Hacky (Rockaway) formed the south-west corner of the purchase, and presumably lay somewhere around the present-day Rockaways. Sicketeuw Hacky to the east has been translated “Secatogue,” the name of an Indian band who lived around West Islip; a 1656 map by Adriaen van der Donck shows its (very) approximate location. As for Martin Gerritsen’s Bay, the Dutch applied this name inconsistently to various bodies of water along the Sound, but here it likely means Oyster Bay, which became the recognized border between Dutch and English territory in Long Island. Finally, according to Long Island historian Frederick Van Wyck, Vlaeck’s Kil, or “Kill of the Flats,” may refer to Newtown Creek.
“Lange Eylandt alias Matouwacs”: detail from Van Der Donck’s Map of New Netherland, 1656. - Note “Sickete Wachty” on the south shore.
Mechoswodt and his people retained the right to live on their former land, to farm, fish, hunt, and generally make a livelihood there. They were promised the protection of the Dutch, presumably against New England settlers and hostile Indian tribes that might covet the sewan shells prized all the way to the Great Lakes. Both parties must have hoped this deal would bring peace and security.
[Read a translation of the Deed from the New York State Archives]
The treaty ending Kieft’s War, 1645.
SIX LOST YEARS: KIEFT’S WARS
However, instead of wooing new inhabitants Kieft almost immediately provoked a series of costly conflicts. There were attempts to exact tribute from the tribes, skirmishes over drunken tavern murders and allegations of stolen swine (the “Pig War” of 1640.) In 1642, despite the pleas of his own councilors, the Director ordered the Pavonia Massacre, an attack on several hundred Wappinger refugees who were fleeing their Mohawk attackers upriver. The massacre, which saw the murder of whole families in their sleep and the torture and mutilation of infants, sparked “Kieft’s War.” Twenty Algonquian tribes ravaged Dutch settlements in retaliation; religious dissident Anne Hutchinson and her family at their Bronx homestead were among the victims. The Long Island Indians stayed neutral- until Kieft plundered their maize stores to provision New Amsterdam for the coming siege. Then the Canarsee, Manhattan, Massapequa, Matinecock, Merrick, Rockaway, and Secatogue bands all took up arms. The newly purchased territory became depopulated, as colonists fled their farms to shelter in Fort Amsterdam. Chief Sachem Mechoswodt himself may have perished in a Dutch raid on Marrosopinc/Massapequa in 1644, for a different Sachem sued for peace on behalf of Marrosopinc the following month, while Mechoswodt himself never reappears in the record. It took the Pound Ridge Massacre outside Greenwich- in which English mercenaries under Captain Underhill fired an encampment with hundreds trapped inside- to finally bring the tribes to parley. A treaty was signed in 1645. Thus six long years elapsed between the signing of the Indian Deed and the grant of the Flushing Charter.
A BOWNE HOUSE “INDIAN DEED”?
The existence of this Indian Deed calls into question an old tradition that the Bownes purchased their land from the Matinecock for “6 silver guilders and 4 fathoms of wampum.” No such bill of sale exists in Bowne’s papers, and no mention of the purchase appears in either his Journal or his Account Book. If the Dutch already owned the land, why would Bowne need to purchase it from the Indians? However, the history of neighboring Hempstead leaves a margin for doubt. There, English settlers arriving in 1643 paid the Indians for the land, despite the existing Dutch title. (Upon discovering this, Kieft swiftly granted them a patent to bring them under Dutch administrative control.) Possibly the boundary lines of Kieft’s purchase were as unclear then as today; alternatively, the Indians may have felt that Kieft’s War had voided the deal. Some Indians may have disputed Mechoswodt’s right to dispose of their lands in the first place, or misunderstood the terms of a sale negotiated by a third party. To confuse matters further, the Indians had an altogether different cultural understanding of land ownership than the Europeans, and at least in the early days of contact they often believed that they were simply licensing the use of their land, not permanently alienating it. Indeed, after the English took over the colony they ultimately felt the need to buy out all the Dutch patents and re-purchase the town of Flushing from the Matinecock.
THE NEXT GENERATION: SACHEM TACKAPOUSHA
In 1685 Governor Thomas Dongan of New York granted the town a new Patent, with expanded boundaries. The Dongan Patent of Flushing to John Bowne and his fellow residents lists “Tackapousha Sachem, Qussaw, Wascoe, Suscanenian Ats Rumsack and Werah, Cetharum, Nimham, Shumsheweham, Nimham’s Sonne, and Oposon” as the sellers of the land, “in consideraçõn of a valuable sume...to the full satisfaçõn of the Indians.” Sachem Tackapousha was the son of Mechoswodt and the most influential leader among those Indian bands who remained in western Long Island. The Patent refers to “a further strengthening of the title” granted in the 1645 Patent, and promises “to Distroy all Cause, matters, and Pretences for controversy, or Variences that might at any time arrive from Tackapousha, [etc....] or any Person or Persons, whether Christian or Indian.” Whatever ambiguity existed regarding the claim to Flushing was settled. However, in the accompanying bill of sale, the Indians did reserve from their patrimony “the privilege of cutting bulrushes forever.”
[Explore the Dutch Colonial records in the New York State Archives digital collections]
Learn more about the Matinecock people