Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

North Fork: Colonial Claims and Continuing Native Rights

Southold’s English officials used confirming deeds and a colonial patent to consolidate claims across the North Fork. Native signers, reserved rights and later objections show a process of dispossession, not one uncontested sale. A colonial patent could claim town jurisdiction without proving that all Native land had been acquired. Native names, reservations and disputes reveal continuing rights and the people whose lives a broad grant could obscure. A homeland larger than one town center The North Fork is the long peninsula between Long Island Sound and Peconic Bay, running east from the Wading River and Riverhead area through Mattituck, Cutchogue, Southold and Orient. Its Native history cannot be represented by a single pin in Southold hamlet. Names such as Pauquaconsuk, Corchaug and Mattatuck appear within the colonial documents themselves. Those records describe an inhabited...