Merrick (people)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Residential area of ​​the Merrick and neighboring tribes around 1600

The Merrick were one of 14 Algonquin- speaking Indian tribes on Long Island in the US state of New York and lived in the southwestern part of Long Island in what is now Queens in New York City at the beginning of the 17th century . Their identity is now considered extinct as the last survivors mixed with the neighboring tribes in the 18th century.

Residential area and name

The residential area of ​​the Merrick was around 1600 on the southwest coast of Long Island and extended in the urban area of ​​what is now Queens in New York City from Rockaway to South Oyster Bay . They sold their land in 1643 when Sachem Tackapousha signed a purchase agreement with English settlers. Today you can find the name of the tribe in the small town (English: Hamlet) Merrick in County Nassau, which is located on the site of their former main village. The early English settlers were not very sure of their spelling, so there are a number of other spellings for this tribal name: Marricoke, Meracock, Mericoke, Meroke, Merriack, Merric and Merricoke.

Culture

By the early 17th century, the Merrick lived in small settlements made up of grass-covered wigwams that resembled beehives. They had a smoke outlet at the highest point. Their villages were located in clearings and on watercourses that were exposed to the tides and provided the villagers with an abundance of food. Outside the wigwams, which were arranged irregularly, were the fields in which corn, beans, squash and tobacco were grown. Some settlements were very small, housing no more than a dozen residents. But there were also larger villages whose wigwams were scattered along the coast.

The inhabitants of these Indian villages were agricultural experts. Over a period of several thousand years, the art of growing maize had been passed on from tribes from the southwest and Mexico to the inhabitants of the east coast. The corn was planted in irregular rows, with beans and squash growing in between. Tobacco cultivation was also very common and it was smoked during smoking rituals.

Corn and beans were also the subject of myth . A crow was believed to have flown thousands of miles to bring them the seeds for corn and beans. These stories have been passed down through the generations. The life of the Long Island residents was adapted to the conditions of the salt water. The fruits of their lush gardens matched the abundance of the streams from which they gathered enormous quantities of oysters and clams and caught migrating fish, which regularly appeared in large numbers. It is known from European immigrants in the middle of the 17th century that the Lomg Island Indians caught smaller fish with nets in order to bring them to their fields together with the seeds as fertilizer. When the constellation of the Pleiades appeared in the spring , moved across the sky and sank on the western horizon in early May, the Indians set out to break up the fertile soil with hoes made from large shells and plant their corn.

From relevant excavation finds, for example in a site near Mount Sinai Harbor , we know that the Long Island Indians observed the movements in the wintry starry sky. A simple lunar calendar was also found there.

When the first English colonists set foot on the eastern end of the island in the early 1640s, they discovered another peculiarity among the indigenous people: deep, mat-covered holes in the ground that were used as storage for winter supplies. The English called this facility Indian barns and did not like it because their grazing cattle often fell through the mats.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Merokee? What does it mean?
  2. ↑ Masters of Agriculture ( Memento from August 22, 2006 in the Internet Archive )

See also

literature