Quashawam

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Quashawam was a leader of the Montauketts in the late-17th century on eastern Long Island. The daughter of sachem Wyandanch and sister of Wyancombone, [1] she was kidnapped with other Montaukett women by the Niantics in 1653. Colonist Lion Gardiner assisted in her return and in gratitude for this and other help over the years, Wyandanch gave him 10 square miles of land in a deed also signed by Wyandanch's wife which mentions Quashawam's ransom. [2]

Quashawam inherited land [3] from Wyandanch's grandmother, [1] as well a broad web of intervillage relationships upon the death of her parents and her brother in the early 1660s. [4] English settlers recognized her as "chief sachem" over the Shinnecocks and the Montauketts in 1664; her name appears on legal documents in 1664-66 English land records relating to Montauk, Jamaica, and other locations. [2]

References

  1. 1 2 Romney, Susanah Shaw, New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014, p. 275
  2. 1 2 Naylor, Natalie A., Women in Long Island's Past: A History of Eminent Ladies and Everyday Lives (Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, 2012), p. 14
  3. ↑ https://lihj.cc.stonybrook.edu/2010/articles/in-search-of-catoneras-long-islands-pocahontas/
  4. ↑ Romney, p.277
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