Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Sachem Aquash of the Montaukett

Aquash, also written Aquaas or Aquosh, was a late seventeenth-century Montaukett sachem whose recorded leadership appears in East Hampton and Montaukett land records during a period of colonial pressure on Montaukett land. Montaukett land-record sources first identify the sachem as Aquaas in 1684, and in 1687 Aquaas appears to have taken the name of his great-grandfather Wyandanch in a deed context. His life is only partly visible through surviving documents, but those records place him in Montaukett leadership. Aquash matters because even a brief record can show Montaukett leadership continuing after Wyandanch, Moshup, and other earlier sachems. His recorded name and the later use of Wyandanch show how colonial records preserved fragments of Native authority during land pressure and dispossession. Aquash, also written Aquaas or Aquosh, was a late seventeenth-century Montaukett sachem...