Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Jamaica: Native Agreements and an Expanding Colonial Town

Named Native agreements, settler farm allocations and later colonial patents reshaped southern Queens. Jamaica’s land claims expanded over decades; the 1655 deed did not transfer the entire later town or erase Native people. A deed date alone hides the people, unequal power and consequences involved. Read the promises and removal demands alongside Native perspectives and continuing Lenape presence. A landscape larger than today's downtown Jamaica The historic town of Jamaica stretched across much of southern Queens, from the inland hills toward Jamaica Bay. Its story concerns wetlands, meadow, planting ground and paths as well as the village around Beaver Pond. Native names and Native negotiators appear in the records that settlers later used to claim this land. Those documents describe a homeland already known and used; they do not describe vacant ground waiting for a town. The colonial...