Secatogue

Who they are & the name (incl. the “Metoac” invention caveat)

The Secatogue were the Eastern Algonquian people of the central south shore of Long Island — the mainland behind the Great South Bay and Fire Island, in what is now the Town of Islip and eastern Babylon. They were “expert clammers and spear fishermen” and, like their neighbors, noted wampum-makers.

The name is a place-name. “Secatogue” descends from the Dutch-era Sicktauwacky / Siketenhacky, first on record in the 1639 deed by which the Massapequa sachem Mechowodt ceded a south-shore swath “from Rechouwhacky (Rockaway)… to Sicktauwhacky” to the Dutch (Strong). By 1644 a sachem named Gauwaroe (recorded as a Matinnecock leader) spoke for “Siketeuhacky”; by c. 1678–80 Rev. Charles Wooley’s journal lists “Sea-qua-ta-eg (south of Huntington)” among seven Long Island “tribes.” Only then did the place-name harden into a people-name. (A popular local gloss — “black/dark lands” — appears in the 1976 Wilcox town history but is unverified folk etymology; Tooker’s linguistic work treats it strictly as a place reference. Flag it as uncertain.)

The “Metoac” caveat (state it plainly): There was no “Metoac” people and no “Secatogue tribe” in the modern sense at contact. “Metoac” is a 19th-century misreading of garbled Dutch map labels (Matouwac/Metoac) for all of Long Island. John Strong (The Thirteen Tribes of Long Island: The History of a Myth, 1992) shows the “thirteen tribes” scheme was a colonial fiction imposed on fluid, kin-based villages to make their land purchasable — and the Secatogue are a textbook case: Martha Flint’s 1896 list of “chief tribes” simply dropped the Secatogue without comment, showing how arbitrary the roster always was. These were Algonquian villagers identified by where they lived, not a bounded nation.

Territory & overlay — the tie back to Fire Island / the west end

Secatogue country was the central-south mainland and the bay behind Fire Island, running (per local histories) from Sampawams Neck in Babylon eastward; main villages at Penataquit (Bay Shore) and Secatogue (West Islip), with the sachem seated at West Islip. This is the mainland directly behind the western Fire Island communities already researched in the Eastermost corpus — the Great South Bay was their larder (clams, oysters, fish, waterfowl), and the barrier beach their fishing and whaling ground.

Modern places on Secatogue ground:

• West Islip (“Secatogue”), Bay Shore (“Penataquit”), Islip, East Islip, Oakdale, Sayville, Brightwaters, Brentwood, Central Islip — Town of Islip.
• Eastern Babylon (Sampawams/Sumpwams Neck).
• Sagtikos Neck (West Bay Shore) — whose very name is a Secatogue word (see Sagtikos Manor below).

Cross-link to the Fire Island corpus (the west end / barrier beach):

• The Fire Island research corpus — ../../fire-island/ and its communities ../../fire-island/communities/
• The western Fire Island communities off the Islip/Babylon shore sit opposite Secatogue country: Kismet ../../fire-island/communities/01-kismet/, Saltaire ../../fire-island/communities/02-saltaire/, Fair Harbor, Dunewood, Atlantique, Ocean Beach ../../fire-island/communities/10-ocean-beach/
• The Secatogue are the Native floor beneath the Fire Island layer — the overlay that ties the already-built west-end research back to the people who were here first.

Overlay note on neighbors: to the west, the Massapequa (Mechowodt’s people); to the east toward Patchogue/Brookhaven, the Unkechaug (Poospatuck) → ../unkechaug-poospatuck/; overarching, the Montaukett → ../montaukett/, into whom Secatogue survivors largely merged.

History (contact, sachems, land deeds/transfers, dispossession)

• Deep antiquity. Archaeology at West Islip (Oak Neck; the 1960 beach find) indicates occupation reaching back millennia (claims of ~3000 B.C. appear in local accounts; treat exact dates as approximate). Secatogue were Woodland-era villagers at contact.
• 1639 — first documentary trace. The south-shore land including Sicktauwhacky is ceded to the Dutch in the Mechowodt (Massapequa) deed under Governor Kieft (“Kieft’s Purchase,” referenced Jan. 15, 1639).
• 1644 — Kieft’s War. Gauwaroe sought Dutch peace on behalf of “Marospinc” (Massapeague) and “Siketeuhacky” (Secatogue) — the Secatogue appearing as a protected south-shore community.
• Mid-17th-c. names in the record (Strong). Land in the East Riding was sold by, among others, “Wameas and Will Chippie of the Secatogues.” Rev. Wooley (c. 1678–80) lists the “Sea-qua-ta-eg.”
• 1683 — Winnequaheagh and the founding of Islip. William Nicoll made his first purchase from Winnequaheagh (Winnequaheah), Sachem of the Secatogue, on November 29, 1683 — the land that became “Islip Grange” (today’s Heckscher State Park area) and the seed of the Town of Islip.
• 1692 — Wamsea sells West Islip; the Sagtikos purchase. Sachem Wamsea (wife Paxqua) sold most of West Islip to brothers Thomas and Richard Willetts on September 19, 1692 (patent confirmed by Gov. Fletcher, Oct. 10, 1695). Days later, Stephanus Van Cortlandt — the first native-born Mayor of New York City — bought Sagtikos Neck from the Secatogue on October 1, 1692, building Sagtikos Manor (1697 patent “Apple Tree Wicke”).
• Patenting out the territory. The Islip patentees — Nicoll (1683/1697), Willetts (West Islip, 1695), Van Cortlandt (Sagtikos, 1697), Gibbs (East Islip, 1697), Mowbray (Bay Shore/Brightwaters, 1708) — carved up the whole Secatogue shore; the last Indian land deed in Islip was conveyed to the town in 1775.
• Erasure of the record. As with the Corchaug and Manhanset, Secatogue dispossession was gradual and paper-driven; colonial censuses ignored Native people living among settlers, so the people fade from the written record long before they left the land.

Present-day descendants (honest status; avoid “last of the tribe” tropes)

The 1976 Wilcox town history flatly states “there are no longer any full-blood Secatogues” and lists intermarried Indian–African American family names: Bunn, Green, Johnson, and Cuffee. Read that carefully and update it: the “full-blood” framing is a discredited 19th-/20th-century racial concept (Strong is explicit that “blood-quantum extinction” talk is myth, not history), and the surnames it cites are the opposite of extinction — Bunn and Cuffee are living Montaukett / Shinnecock / Unkechaug family names. John Strong documents contemporary Montaukett enclaves “in central Long Island from Bayshore to Sayville” — i.e., directly on former Secatogue ground — led in the early 1990s by figures such as Rev. Sharon Jackson, with people of combined Montauk/Poospatuck ancestry (e.g., Howard Treadwell). An early-20th-c. West Islip resident (A.C. Smith Jr.) recalled Secatogue descendants — Ike and Alonzo Bunn — still living near Higbie Lane. So: there is no organized, recognized Secatogue nation today, but the people were not “wiped out” — they merged into the still-living Montaukett and Unkechaug communities, some of whom remain in the Bay Shore–Sayville corridor. The “last of the tranquil tribe” story is a trope; the honest statement is dispossession and merger, with living descendants.

Sacred / archaeological sites

• Oak Neck (West Islip) — recorded as the main Secatogue burial ground.
• West Islip beach site (discovered June 6, 1960) — during Little League field work, 13 skeletons were uncovered in what were described as Secatogue fire pits / winter burials (possibly an epidemic event); a boulder-mounted plaque (stone donated by Mr. & Mrs. Ward Melville, 1960) marks the Secatogue Indian Village site “purchased by Thomas and Richard Willetts, Sept. 19, 1692, from the Sachem, Wamsea.” (Note: handling of these remains reflects mid-century norms; any Eastermost treatment should foreground respect and current NAGPRA/descendant-community sensibilities.)
• Sagtikos Manor (West Bay Shore) — standing on Secatogue land (bought 1692); the name “Sagtikos” is a Secatogue place-term. Oldest house in the Town of Islip (first section 1697); George Washington lodged there on his 1790 Long Island tour. Now a museum — the most visitable above-ground anchor for the Secatogue overlay (NARA/NR record below).
• Place-name survivals: Secatogue, Penataquit, Sampawams/Sumpwams, Sagtikos, Connetquot, Hauppauge, Patchogue, Nicoll’s “Islip Grange” — and Udall Road, which follows an old Secatogue north–south trail.

NARA / federal records

State the gap honestly: The Secatogue have no reservation and no recognized successor nation, so there is no dedicated federal/BIA record series for them — the catalog is dominated by unrelated hits (1940/1950 census enumeration districts for Nassau/Suffolk, naturalization files). The one solid, relevant federal thread is the National Register / National Historic Landmark program (NPS) documenting a building on Secatogue land, plus a Montaukett-missionary gravesite that carries a key descendant surname. All naIds verified live against the National Archives Catalog API v2 (Nov 2026):

Note: a direct “Secatogue” search returns 150+ hits, almost all census/naturalization noise — confirming the gap. The real record is colonial and local: Huntington and Islip town records; the Nicoll (1683) and Willetts/Van Cortlandt (1692) deeds; Strong’s deed analysis; and amateur/mid-century archaeology (Oak Neck; the 1960 West Islip find). Caveat on the Wilcox (1976) source: it is an earnest but non-scholarly town history with dated racial language and at least one invented romance (“Floating Cloud” / Sachem Keeosschok, c. 1657) that should be labeled legend, not fact; use it for dates and names cross-checked against Strong, not for interpretation.

Why it matters to the corridor story

Secatogue is the Native overlay for Eastermost’s west end — the people on whose bay and barrier beach the Fire Island story was later built. It closes the loop: the already-researched Fire Island corpus (Robert Moses, the 17 communities, the class and property-value history) gets a floor beneath it, the people of Penataquit and Secatogue who fished the Great South Bay for millennia before Jones Beach or Ocean Beach existed. It also hands the brand its clean through-line across the whole corridor — Secatogue (west) → Corchaug (North Fork) → Manhanset (Shelter Island) → Montaukett (The End) — four Algonquian peoples, one barrier-coast story, told accurately: not an extinct “Metoac” but living Montaukett/Unkechaug lineages, some still in the Bay Shore–Sayville corridor today. That is exactly the “authority that gets it right” position Eastermost is built to own.