The Evolution of Long Island: ... The story actually begins tens of millions of years before the first Indians arrived ... At least twice over the past 150,000 years, ice sheets with imposing front walls that may have been 1,000 feet tall plowed across that river valley. ... The last glacier ... probably arrived on Long Island about 23,000 years ago ... As it slowly receded into New England about 2,000 years later, the glacier left in its growing wake a huge lake ... extending from Queens to Martha's Vineyard. ...Years later, the glacier left in its growing wake a huge lake ... from Newsday lihistory.com Click here for the whole story.
The Dutch and The English: Left - A copy of the deed for the 1643 purchase of Hempstead from the Indians (Nassau County Museum) - click to enlarge After (the Dutch) arrived on Manhattan Island, the settlement of New Netherlands in 1644 didn't extend ... beyond where Brooklyn is today. So, the Dutch made a deal with the English. ... Although they had driven out a group of Englishmen who built a house at Great Neck in 1640, the Dutch decided to give the English a try. That momentous decision led in 1644 to the founding of Hempstead, the first European settlement in present-day Nassau County. .. In 1643, a small English settlement in Stamford ... hoped Long Island would provide a safe haven from Connecticut's ... Indian tribes. ... they returned to Stamford with a deed signed by the Indians ... After obtaining a patent the founders extended those claims to the necks of the north shore. ... The directors of the Dutch West India Co. wrote to Peter Stuyvesant, New Netherlands' director general: ...
Left - (The Canadian Canoe Museum) - "Before the Dutch and English settled the Great Neck peninsula in the mid-1600's The Mattinecock Indians occupied the peninsula's shoreline ... They arrived via land bridge from Asia and eventually made their way from Alaska to Great Neck. ... The first residents were a branch of the Algonquin tribe. Great Neck's natives were known as builders of grand canoes, 80 feet long"... From The Ultimate Book of Great Neck.
