Before European settlers came on the scene, the lands that make up Brookhaven Town were the realm of indigenous people who prospered on Long Island’s bounty for thousands of years. How the property developed into the suburbia that it is today involved many historical figures, one being the Indian Sachem Tobaccus, who arranged for a better deal than the ones his predecessors had bartered.
The native people did not subscribe to the concept of land ownership, the divvying up of parcels into private hands. They believed the Earth belonged to all of its inhabitants and were naïve to the intentions of the foreign settlers. This changed when the Montauk Sachem Wyandanch enlisted the help of Lord Lion Gardener to rescue his daughter from the Narragansetts, a hostile tribe from across the Long Island Sound. The Sachem sold a wide swath of land to the Englishman and began approving lots of “accommodation” to the settlers.
A deal inked by Wyandanch in 1657 included two large tracts of meadow land from the Unkechaugs Indians at Mastic. One of these was at Noccomock, a region on the eastern bank of the Connecticut (Carman's) River, and one in the southern part of Mastic along the bay front. This was the second oldest recorded deed in the Town of Brookhaven. Unkechaug Sachem Tobaccus was unhappy with the deal and renegotiated for a payment of axes, guns, powder, lead, and knives collected from the settlers. A committee had been appointed at a town meeting to approve the 1674 exchange calling it the "The New Purchase."
Tobaccus also had a hand in the "Old Purchase at South," which included parts of the communities now known as South Haven, Brookhaven, and Bellport. His asking price was four coats and six pounds ten shillings in cash ($16.25). The Sachem also cut a deal with Gov. John Winthrop of Connecticut for all the land west of the Old Purchase to the Islip Town line, including what is now East Patchogue, Patchogue, and Blue Point.
Relocating from Morocco after the failed creation of a trading port in northern Africa, Col. William Tangier Smith started to assemble tracts of this land, which he turned into an enormous estate anchored at the Manor of St. George overlooking Bellport Bay in Shirley. He was issued a Royal Patent for his holdings by King William and Queen Mary of England, a land grant that preceded the Dongan Patent, which gave Brookhaven control over the town’s bay bottoms. As part of his dealings, Smith granted the “Beach Indians” the right to use and raise crops on a 75-acre tract off Forge River, which is now the Poospatuck Reservation.
The European settlers were preceded by the native Americans by thousands of years. Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, sailing for Spain, mistakenly referred to them as Indians, thinking he had found a passage to India when he came upon the Bahama Islands. America got its name from early maps based on the explorations of Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci. Advances in DNA and genome studies trace all native Americans to nomads who came over the land bridge connecting Siberia with Alaska during the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago. Known as Beringa in honor of Vitus Bering, a Danish navigator who explored the area for Russia, the area is now completely under water.