Caption on back of photograph reads: The loss of the nine full blood Shinnecock men who perished in the wreck of the Cicassion in 1876, left the females the majority in the tribe, and there were few males old enough at that time that the widows could consider as husbands. Other Eastern tribes have been faced with the same problem at times and have managed to solve it. For example, when my own people, The Catawbas of South Carolina, faced the problem of marrying close kin, some began to inter-marry with Scotch-Irish settlers. Others who wished to keep their Indian blood in tact, migrated to the Pamunky Indians of Virginia and to the Cherokees of North Carolina. The resulting marriages firmly entrenched their Indian blood. The Montauks of Long Island removed to Oneida, New York and later in 1832 to Wisconsin, and married among the four other tribes that comprised their settlement of Brothertown. The Shinnecocks apparently made no move to seek marriages with Indians of other tribes, although they could have found eligible mates among the Mohegans, Narragansetts, and Wampanoags of New England. Had they inter-married with these people, their present day descendants might still have the full blood types that these New England Indians still possess. Instead, they inter-married with free and runaway Negroes, with the result that the Iroquois tribes of New York contend today, that there is no Indian blood left among the Shinnecocks. The Montauks, who live only a short distance from the Shinnecocks, had a tribal law that forbid inter-marriage with Negroes under penalty of having to leave the reservation and relinquish all rights as Indians. When they saw how rapidly the Shinnecocks were marrying runaway slaves, David Fowler of the Montauks, and his brother-in-law Reverend Samson Occum of the Mohegans, founded the Migration Movement to upstate New York, in which the Montauks, Mohegans, Pequots, Tunxis, Narragansetts and Nehantics removed in order to avoid inter-marriage with Negroes. Those few remaining Montauks of East Hampton who represented those of the tribe who did not remove to Wisconsin, have remained aloof from the Shinnecocks and do not socialize or inter-marry among them. That in spite of the mixed status of the Shinnecocks, there were still some excellent Indian types among them can be attested by this photo of Mrs. Adeline E. Waters, a handsome full blood type. Some of the Montauks of East Hampton, in the past and present generation, have inter-married with local whites. The local status of the Shinnecocks in Southampton is that of colored people and no marriages with local whites have resulted. The fact that the Montauks and Shinnecocks have such contrasting viewpoints is interesting when one realizes that only fourteen miles separates the two groups.
