Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Oyster Bay: A Native Agreement and Expanding Colonial Claims

Asiapum/Mohenes and three English purchasers are named in Oyster Bay’s 1653 agreement. Rivers, an excluded island, settler allotments and later boundary disputes reveal how colonial claims expanded across a Native landscape whose Matinecock connections continue. A purchase date alone cannot explain the transfer of power. Named parties, excluded land, measured settler allotments and official recording show how a written claim worked, while Matinecock cultural work makes clear that the people did not disappear. Finding this landscape Oyster Bay harbor lies on Long Island's North Shore in present-day Nassau County. The much larger modern Town of Oyster Bay extends south to the bay shore facing the Atlantic. This account begins with a northern land agreement recorded in 1653; it does not treat the whole present town as one purchase or one moment of Native displacement. [1] Oyster Bay Town...