10 BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN MEMOIRS 



"4. Indians not to set fire to the grass before the month of March, 

 without consent of the town. In consideration of all which, the town 

 engages to pay, yearly 40 shillings to said Sunk-squa and Indians, their 

 heirs and assigns. 



"Made and agreed to before me, Richard NicoU. 



"Matthias Nicoll, Sed'y^ 



The italics are mine. 



As the town of Easthampton, which included all of Montauk, was 

 settled in 1640, it is thus only twenty-five years later that the management 

 of the peninsula becomes a matter of record, between the settlers and the 

 Indians, who were friendly. 



These records show that there was evidently a very considerable part 

 of the peninsula in grassland at that time, but as to woodland, it is not so 

 clear. There are, however, frequent references in these old records to 

 the Hither Woods, which still exists at about the place designated in these 

 early chronicles. 



By the end of the century conditions at Montauk needed to be redefined 

 and a new agreement was entered into between the Indians and the town 

 of Easthampton. It gives us such a good picture of conditions in 1702, or 

 sixty years after the first whites came to that end of Long Island that it is 

 inserted here complete. 



"The said Indians are to fence in as a general field what land they see 

 cause upon the Northneck [near CuUoden Point] which lies between the 

 Fortpond to the westward and the Greatpond to the eastward, for their 

 planting field ; and wholly to leave the land to the eastward of the Greatpond 

 unto the English ; and the said Indians shall from year to year lay and 

 keep open their field or fields for the said town's cattle to feed upon (ex- 

 cepting only some small fields which they may keep inclosed for winter 

 wheat or grass not exceeding thirty acres;) and the time of the said field 

 or fields shall be laid open is to be upon the tenth or fifteenth of October, 

 and so to continue open until the twenty fifth day of April after. The said 

 Indians making and continually keeping and maintaining a good sufficient 

 fence about all their fields at their own expense, cost and charges. 



"That if the said Indians or their posterity as long as they live upon 

 Meantauk [another old spelling] shall cause to leave that field and remove 

 to the eastward of the said Greatpond, then they shall wholly quit the 

 Northneck, and shall have liberty to fence in a field from the southward- 

 most part of the Greatpond running southward to a small round swamp 

 near the dich bars; [the present Ditch Plain] and so from thence to run in 

 at the southeast part of the oyster pond ; and to plant and improve the land 

 on the northward part of the said line of fence; and they and their posterity 

 after them shall have liberty, as often as they see cause, to exchange their 

 field from one side of the said Greatpond to the other; still sufficiently 



