Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Mica Tablet Site

In 1849, New York State received a mica plate reportedly found while plowing in Brookhaven. Engraved geometric and other figures make the object unusual, but its exact findspot, age, and cultural interpretation remain uncertain. Chief Harry Wallace's oral history connects the broader Fireplace Neck landscape with Unkechaug whaling, community life, and ancestral responsibility. Reading the tablet beside that living history preserves the object's cultural context while leaving its exact age, findspot, and meaning explicitly uncertain. An 1849 acquisition note states that Nathan Miller, a Suffolk County assembly member, sent the New York State collection a plate of mica that had been turned up by a plow about two feet below the ground in Brookhaven. The note described geometric and other engraved figures. John A. Strong later discussed the object in his study of Long Island Algonquian...