Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Secatogue Ancestral Land

Secatogue homelands are remembered along Great South Bay, east of Massapequa, across tidal creeks, neck lands, inland routes, and south shore villages. Records connect the name with Secatogue country and with neighboring Massapequa, Merrick, Setauket, and central Long Island Native histories. Secatogue Ancestral Land presents Great South Bay creeks, marshes, and inland routes as Native geography. It also connects older records to descendant community memory and the continued presence of Native families on Long Island. Secatogue is one of the names repeated in the old "thirteen tribes" list, but historian John A. Strong's critique of that framework cautions against reading the list as a complete pre-contact political map. The name is best understood as a place-based record of people living in relation to bay, creek, meadow, and inland routes, not as a complete description of government....