No Man's Land, Southampton cont'd.

The earliest mention thus far found that the Shinnecocks were the reputed owners of the strip of land is a deed in 1810 from Elias Culver to Samuel Bishop. The land conveyed was the western part of Lot 39, at the southeast corner of Montauk Highway and Ponquogue Road. The southerly boundary of that land was described as "south by Indian Amendment." Pelletreau, writing in a 1902 history of Long Island, took notice of this description and said: "This shows that Amendment No. 38 must have been purchased by the Shinnecock tribe or members of it before 1810." Certainly there are a dozen deeds of various dates from 1810 to 1900 conveying various parcels north or south from the strip, some at its east end and some at the west, and each describes the appropriate boundary by referring to the strip as "Indian land' or some similar form of words. Most specific is a deed of 1838 from Hervey Danes to James Warner which says ̉north by the Indian land which is six rods wide." As previously mentioned, the disputed strip is ninety-nine feet or six rods from north to south.

In 1848 a map was made by Jonathan Fithian, who seems to have been concerned primarily with surveying and mapping an easterly part of Lot 39. He identified the property south of it by the words "Indian land," and on it he drew a building described with the words ' ndian Meeting House." The place indicated is on the strip and is about four hundred feet west from Canoe Place Road. There has been no building there for many years but the vestiges of an old graveyard can still be seen. The tombstones are fallen and most of them are so damaged that their inscriptions cannot be read. Two that can be pieced together and read marked the graves of Mary Cuffee (1783-1855), who was the wife and widow of Noah Cuffee (1778-1852), and of their son Absolom (18261858). Noah Cuffee is believed to have been a son of Reverend Paul Cuffee and was a leader of the Shinnecocks for many years.

Among the witnesses who testified before Mr. Justice Cuff in the King litigation was Charles Bunn. He was 86 years old when he testified and he had less than a year to live. He was a grand old man, feeble in body but strong in mind and integrity. He had lived on the Reservation all his life. His father was drowned in the Circassian disaster in 1876. He and his father and grandfather had served as trustees of the tribe and he had known very well its most notable members in the last eighty years. He testified about the traditions he had from members of the tribe previously deceased, and said the tribe had a church on the strip which was used for public religious services before 1859, and it was moved off one night by the owner of the land north of it.

Another witness in the litigation, Mrs. Leonice Hawkins of East Hampton, who was born in 1862 and lived as a girl in the locality involved, agreed that the little chapel not on Canoe Place Road is the same building as the "meeting house" which stood when she was a girl on the strip or immediately north of it. However she testified that in the period she remembered the church was attended by white people rather than Indians. That may well be, because it is probable that about 1870 the church did not stand on the strip, and neither did it stand close by the highway as at present. Beers' Atlas of Suffolk County, published in 1873, shows a church which must be this one but is in neither of those locations. It is as far west from Canoe Place Road as is indicated by the old graveyard and Fithian's map, but it is slightly north from the strip.

In 1859 a long history of differences between the Shinnecock Tribe and the Proprietors was settled. The Shinnecocks were authorized by the Legislature to surrender their leasehold interests in Shinnecock Hills and the Proprietors conveyed to them in fee their present reservation of about 400 acres on Shinnecock Neck. It is fairly clear that it was not the imminence of the year 2703, when their lease would end, but a long series of intrusions by their white neighbors, supposedly justified by unilateral interpretation of their leasehold rights, that caused the Shinnecocks to surrender to greater part of their lands. Incidentally the Long Island Railroad, built through the Hills a dozen years later, was already being planned and appeared as a "projected" line on at least one map published in 1858.

Jonathan Fithian (1796-1865) took an active part on behalf of the Proprietors in procurring Shinnecock agreement to the 1859 transaction. He was one of the foremost citizens of Southampton, who long held the offices of town clerk, supervisor, justice of the peace and school superintendent. He was particularly well informed on titles and Shinnecock matters. Because of those facts it is significant that he took the acknowledgment of the Shinnecock.