1754: Montauk women who married "Mustees, or Mulattos" excluded (Montauk, 1754)

SUMMARY1754: Montauk women who married "Mustees, or Mulattos" excluded (Montauk, 1754) [Connections: Northeast & Mid-Atlantic, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDJohn Strong writes that a 1754 trustees' agreement barred Montauk women who married "foreign Indians, Mustees, or Mulattos" from living at Montauk, and barred selling grazing rights to "foreign" Native Americans or African Americans. He also writes that Montauk people "began to marry African-American people from nearby," and that Samson Occom may have worried the presence of African Americans "would be used by the whites to undermine the Montauk land claims." The 1910 opinion says the 1754 agreement's purpose was to exclude "certain half breeds from sharing in the Indian rights."

PATTERNColonial land deals made African kinship a reason to lose land rights, as early as 1754

LENS (WW9)The land rule pushed African-kin families off the rolls more than a hundred years before the census did

OPENFind the original 1754 agreement (East Hampton Town Records)

SOURCEJohn A. Strong, "Who Says the Montauk Tribe Is Extinct?" American Indian Culture and Research Journal 16:1 (1992), p. 8; Pharaoh v. Benson, 1910 opinion.