Final Report

FINAL REPORT Ethnographic Overview and Assessment Fire Island National Seashore Setha M. Low, Ph.D. Principal Investigator Dana H. Taplin, Ph.D. Project Director and Author Andrew Kirby, Ph.D. and Mara Heppen, B.S., Field Researchers Public Space Research Group of the Center for Human Environments Graduate Center, City University of New York 365 Fifth Avenue, New York City 10016 Pursuant to Cooperative Agreement H4520030016 And Amendment 1 (Scope of Work) Between the National Park Service, Northeast Region, and the Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York July 2006 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS Fire Island National Seashore (FIIS) commissioned this Ethnographic Overview and Assessment pursuant to Park Service policies that require parks to consult with groups and communities having continuing ecological, cultural, and historical relationships with park resources. The research will have immediate and specific application in the development of a General Management Plan for the park. The Ethnographic Overview and Assessment reviews the state of knowledge and documentation on the groups and communities thought to have important and continuing cultural relationships with the Seashore’s natural and cultural resources. Part history and part ethnography, the EO&A traces the history of each of these groups and communities with regard to their use of and attachments to the lands, waters, fish and wildlife, and other resources within the FIIS boundary. Information in this EO&A will help managers evaluate requests for access to resources, as well as identify park resources that may require special treatment or protection. Research Phases and Methods The six months from October 2003 through early April 2004 constituted the ethnohistorical research phase of the project. The project team reviewed books and historical journals, Park Service reports, other published documents, literature and archival material. The project team worked to identify all materials that pertain to the history and traditional uses of the Great South Bay region. Key-informant interviews were completed with key park personnel; the Project Director also made telephone contact with Nancy Solomon, a Long Island folklorist, and other experts for guidance and advice. The EO&A included a phase of ethnographic fieldwork on Fire Island during the summer months of June and July 2004. This S-1 involved participant observation, key-informant interviews, and behavioral mapping within the 17 identified communities and at Lighthouse Beach. Research was conducted on culturally associated groups both on and off the island. Off- island groups include Native Americans, Baymen, Hunters and Fishermen, Floyd family descendants, and the Mastic Beach community. Culturally associated groups on the island include 17 discrete residential communities and the nude bathers at Lighthouse Beach. Ethnohistory Summary The original inhabitants of the Great South Bay region were Algonquian peoples who lived in nomadic, egalitarian, hunting and gathering societies. The coastal environment provided a year-round supply of food—ducks, geese, fish and shellfish, and deer. During the colonization period, Native peoples entered into many land transactions with Europeans, granting the purchasers certain rights in return for goods, foodstuffs, weapons, and other possessions. The European concept of real estate as a finite personal possession was foreign to the Native understanding of land as a common resource. This cultural difference worked to the disadvantage of Native peoples, who found themselves increasingly constrained by bounded property by the close of the seventeenth century. The Floyd family assembled its estate through transactions with other Europeans who had acquired their rights to the land from transactions with Natives. Among Native Americans, the EO&A focuses on the Unkechaug, or Poosepatuck, because that group has continuing presence in the region through its state-recognized Poosepatuck Reservation in Mastic. Specific ethnohistorical relationships of the Unkechaug to park resources include whaling, wampum manufacture from bay quahogs, and wage labor and indentured servitude for the Floyd family. S-2 Historically, few considered Fire Island a hospitable environment to live in. Native peoples never lived on the island, but would use it for whaling from the beach. Even after European settlement, the island remained mostly uninhabited until well into the 19th century. Until the resort era, rights to the beach related to the harvesting of resources. Long Island farmers used the Great South Beach for grazing cattle and harvesting salt meadow grasses; other uses included shipwreck salvage, slave running, and whaling. There is little or no evidence of settlement before the resort era began in the 1850s, partly because the unstable, ever changing terrestrial environment of a barrier tends to obliterate archaeological evidence. Resort development on Fire Island grew rapidly after the Civil War. The 19th century saw the construction of a number of hotels along the beach. Subdivision of land for house lots became common in the early 20th century. By the 1960s there were over 17 communities and private resorts on the island. Fire Island National Seashore was established in 1964 in part to preserve the island’s existing roadless character—threatened at the time by road-building forces led by Robert Moses. Moses had first proposed a parkway running the length of the island in 1930. After a series of damaging winter storms in 1962, Moses re-presented the ocean parkway as an environmental remedy for beach and dune erosion. Fire Islanders for the first time banded together to oppose the plan, eventually by bringing the island within the National Park System. Their efforts were met with a favorable policy toward national seashores at the federal level which had been building for 20 years. Summary of Current Ethnographic Relationships with Park Resources We use the term “ethnographic relationship” here to refer generally to cultural ties between groups and communities and the material resources of Fire Island and the William S-3 Floyd Estate. An ethnographic relationship does not necessarily involve a traditional association, or a traditionally associated people or community; and the resource referred to does not necessarily meet the NPS-defined criteria for “ethnographic resource.” Our research data indicate that such large-scale elements of the environment as the Fire Island beach and the Great South Bay have critical importance to the sense of place of residents of Fire Island and the region around Great South Bay. It may not be appropriate to designate them as “ethnographic resources,” which are typically precise, spatially discrete locations rather than pieces of the large-scale environment, and have cultural significance to a particular traditionally associated group. On Fire Island, beach and bay are significant to everyone, although perhaps more so to those having traditional associations with these resources. The groups considered to have ethnographic relationships with park resources were identified at the outset of the project in collaboration with NPS staff. Listed below on page 5, they include one ethnic group (Native Americans), the Floyd family, groups identifiable by traditional livelihood or recreational activity, and 17 spatial communities. Off-Island Groups Request for Privileged Access The Unkechaug are reviving wampum manufacture and clam harvesting, for which they would like to acquire a site on Fire Island within the Smith Point County Park. The Unkechaug Chief, Harry Wallace, requested privileged access to Pattersquash Island for ceremonial purposes and construction there of a sweat lodge. Naturalistic Interpretation Although the Floyd family’s use of natural and cultural resources at the William Floyd Estate has ceased in most respects, the estate continues to hold importance for the family. Based on our interview with Floyd descendant John Nichols, the state of wild nature preserved within S-4 the 613 acres is of greater importance to the family than the cultural resources contained in the house and the archive. Mr. Nichols said that the major intention in donating the estate was to preserve the terrain as a wild place amid the suburban development all around it. On-Island Groups All the Fire Island communities have ethnographic relationships with the beach, ocean, and bay. The beach and adjoining ocean water serves the widest range of activities: walking, seeing and being seen by friends and neighbors, swimming, sunbathing, and surfcasting. Adjacent to the beach is the row of primary dunes, regarded by residents as the main defense against inundation and destruction by the ocean. Many communities organize, often on an informal level, dune-protection efforts including setting out fences, planting dune grass, and scraping the beach. The Sunken Forest was an important place for more than a few community consultants, who cited it as a special place on the island, a place they enjoy visiting from time to time. The Sunken Forest is frequently a destination for people taking long beach walks. Within their boundaries the communities possess many kinds of important gathering spaces and places, including the ferry docks, the public walks, the ocean and bay beaches, the local commercial areas, local parks, ballfields, tennis courts, churches and synagogues, fire halls, and community houses. Unique Community Character The view persists that Fire Island communities are very

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