HomeMy WebLinkAboutPE15 INDIAN NECK ORCHARDoldSOUTHOLD LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION PE-15
Historic Building/Places Inventory
Town of Southold
54375 Route 25, P.O. Box 1179
Southold, NY 11971
Name: Town of Southold Date: 2013
Organization: Town of Southold Landmarks Preservation Commission
Inventory Update:
1. Building/Place Name/Date: Indian Neck Orchard of the Indians, (ca.1691)
2. Tax Map Number/Address: N/A, East Side of Indian Neck Lane
3. Town of Southold Identification Number: PE-14
4. Current Status of Historic Building(s) or Place(s): -N/A, area composed of
low density residential and wooded lots. Northern part of PE-15 lies behind
PE-16 (William/Wells House), just to the south of Spring Lane.
5. Evidence of Structural Modifications: -N/A.
6. Notes: -No above ground features are present, however archaeological
deposits related to this historic Native American settlement may be extant.
Indian Neck was the site of a temporary pseudo-reservation of the historic
Corchaug Tribe (ca.1691-1719). Little is know about the lifeways of the
historic Corchaug Tribe, and thus this landmark has exceptional significance
to the historic landscape of Peconic and the Town of Southold as a whole
(see additional background research on second-third pages below).
Photographic Record of Historic Building(s) or Place(S) - 2013:
East View.
Indian Neck History addendum:
Southold Town Records (Case 1884: 111, 481) refer to colonists in the
seventeenth century as having to constantly bypass poorly designated “Indian
Lands” and “Indian Necks,” and remarked that these indigenously dominated
areas impeded the flow of travel between Southold and the sought after
“Broadfields” of Cutchogue. By 1685 these remaining “Indian Lands,” roughly
120-500 acres, were either officially recognized as extant Corchaug territory,
or as is recorded in Southold Town Records (ibid.:534-536) were granted back
to the tribe by the Clergy of the Southold Colony. Apparently this was all a
loosely defined area centered around Southarbor Neck.
The Corchaug’s perpetually declining numbers and weakening political
autonomy thus prompted the forced relocation event of 1691; wherein the
remainder of the population was removed from their extant lands at Corchaug
Pond/Southarbor Neck further south onto a reserved tract or pseudo-reservation
on what is still known today as Indian Neck in Peconic (Case 1884). Little is
known about these forced-relocation events of the contact period, consistently
referred to as “removals” (Case 1884: 534). Yet these events occurred
throughout Eastern North America, and were invariably a major component to the
early history of indigenous and colonial relationships. Despite their
politically contentious historical associations, they deserve recognition to
better understand how culture’s interfaced in the Historic Period.
Consequently, this forced relocation event of 1691, which had no legal
basis or formal documentation, resulted in further legal conflict with the
colonists who in the early eighteenth century were deeded ownership of this
“reserved” area (Case 1884). By 1698, census records reported less than fifty
Corchaug were extant on the north fork, and it is plausible that the majority
were still living at Indian Neck. However this number may be offset by biased
recordation practices, and the fact that many Corchaug’s were either sold into
slavery (Case 1884: 179), had been coerced into indentured servitude for petty
offenses, had left the area for opportunities in the whaling trade, or were
working as farm hands at the large Manors like those on Shelter Island.
In 1719, the Town of Southold ordered that “Indian Neck to be surveyed
and laid out, and allotted to the freeholders entitled to it...,” from this
divisive act it is clear that the remaining Corchaug again felt marginalized;
clearly they “were not satisfied, and claimed the entire use and control of
the Neck under a grant made to them by the town on the 3rd of August 1685, for
the Southarbor Neck...” (Case 1884: 534). Although, a few English families
encouraged the Corchaug to permanently settle on their tracts at Indian Neck
and establish an orchard (ibid.). From that point until the mid-nineteenth
century, the presence of an orchard maintained by the Corchaug and also
traditional domed structures or huts were reported to persist at Indian Neck
(Case 1884:534-536).
Throughout the remainder of the Historic Period, however, the record of
the Corchaug became further obscured and buried in the literary mire of
colonial history. Nonetheless it is now known that the tribe did make
attempts to litigate their 1685 claims to the Southarbor Neck tract, even up
until the time of the American Revolution. For example, in a letter dating to
1764 a group of seventeen Corchaug’s petitioned English officials in Albany to
reinstate their land claims around Southarbor Neck; yet the English official
hired to address these claims, Parker Wickham, was subsequently forced to
abandon this effort due to his own exiling from Southold and the seizing of
his lands after the American Revolution. Regardless of these obstructed
efforts, Indian Neck was ultimately the last parcel of Long Island with which
the Corchaug could live as a distinct political entity. In his seminal work
on Fort Corchaug, Dr. Ralph Solecki (2006: 16) succinctly noted that: “One of
the last Corchaug villages was at Indian Neck...Their last stand seems to have
been made on that reservation.”