Monday, November 10, 2025
When Indigenous Peoples’ Day arrives each October, it is both a celebration of the vibrant cultures that predate European settlement and a reminder of the histories that were too often erased or overlooked.
In Valley Stream, the evidence of Indigenous presence may not be obvious on the surface, but beneath the paved roads and suburban neighborhoods lie stories tied to waterways, migrations and survival.
“The topic of Indigenous People and Valley Stream often comes up amongst researchers, historians and the curious-minded,” Valley Stream Historical Society Trustee Amy Bentley said. “ Our closest proximity to indigenous people were the Reckouwackys, a group of Native Americans who lived on the Rockaway Peninsula. They were part of the Algonquian-speaking Lenape people. Reckouwacky, or the modern translation, Rockaway, means “place of our own people,” “sandy place,” or “place of laughing waters” — depending on what article or book you might read.”
Their proximity to the bay, with its abundance of fish, shellfish, reeds and beavers, made it an ideal location for settlement. Though modern Valley Stream developed later, its landscape was shaped by these same waterways that sustained Indigenous communities for centuries.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the area that would become Valley Stream was known as the South Woods or Fosters Meadow, a sparsely populated woodland between Near Rockaway and Jamaica. Streams crisscrossed the land, connecting it to Jamaica Bay. While most Indigenous settlements were concentrated closer to the bay itself, the Reckouwackys are believed to have traveled north in the warmer months, following creeks and waterways for fishing and hunting. Hook Creek, which winds through what is now Mill Brook, Hendrickson Park and eventually to Jamaica Bay, was one such route.
Historical evidence places Native people along Hook Creek’s banks well before suburban streets and parks replaced natural shorelines. In 1922, an archaeological report documented the remains of a prehistoric village site and shell heap along Hook Creek, evidence of seasonal camps and fishing activity. Though development erased those sites long ago, they underscore the role waterways played in sustaining Indigenous life.
Hungry Harbor, today part of South Valley Stream and North Woodmere, was another site tied to these histories. Along Motts Creek, people fished and harvested oysters. Written accounts describe the area as home to “squatters,” both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, who lived off its abundant resources. The area’s name and its legacy remain embedded in the local landscape.
But by the time Loyalist families began migrating south from Hempstead after the American Revolution, Indigenous communities in the Rockaway and Jamaica Bay region had already been devastated.
Census records from 1790, the earliest available, list enslaved and free Black residents but make no mention of Native Americans. That absence, however, does not mean they were gone entirely. Indigenous people often married African Americans, and their presence was folded into census categories that obscured their identity.
“The Native American culture died off quickly,” Bentley said. “They had no immunity to the diseases that the Europeans brought with them. The confluence of illness, deadly battles, loss of homeland, and omission on census records effectively eradicated their existence.”
The early settlement of Valley Stream itself was shaped more by post-Revolution migration than by longstanding colonial communities. When political divisions between Patriots and Loyalists fractured Hempstead during the war, Loyalists fled south to the lightly populated woods that would become the village. These shifting populations coincided with the disappearance, both literal and documented, of Indigenous communities in local records.
Traces of that presence persisted into the 19th century. One of the most tangible is the granite monument to Culluloo Telewana in Woodsburgh, a neighboring village just south of Valley Stream. In 1888, local landowner Abraham Hewlett erected the stone marker at the site where Culluloo, remembered as the last “Rockaway Indian,” once lived.
While the historical interpretation of Telewana’s identity has been debated, some scholars have questioned whether he was Native, African American or of mixed heritage. The memorial reflects how local memory preserved fragments of a disappearing Indigenous narrative.
The marker itself has moved locations over time, from Broadway in Woodmere to the Trinity Church graveyard to its current shaded triangle at Keene and Woods lanes, but it remains one of the most visible acknowledgments of Indigenous presence in the area.
Other traces surfaced briefly in the 20th century. Oral histories collected by the Valley Stream Historical Society recount that during the construction of Sunrise Highway in the late 1920s, workers uncovered arrowheads and implements in the roadbed. The east–west route is believed to follow an older footpath once used by Native people traveling across Long Island. But development, dredging and the construction of infrastructure like the Brooklyn Waterworks dramatically altered the waterways and banks where Indigenous communities once moved seasonally.
Today, the absence of Indigenous people in official records reflects more than demographic change; it reveals how narratives of erasure took hold. The “vanishing Indian” trope, common in the 19th century, portrayed Native communities as extinct, paving the way for land seizures and dismissing ongoing cultural heritage. The story of Telewana as “the last of his people” fits this pattern, reducing a complex history to a single individual.
Yet remnants endure. They survive in the place names —Rockaway, Jamaica, Mineola, Merrick —that carry echoes of Algonquian language and livelihoods. They live in the knowledge of shared histories between Native and African American communities in early Valley Stream. And they remain inscribed, literally, in the granite monument that still stands a few miles to the south.
On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, as communities reflect on histories that predate suburban streets and colonial borders, Valley Stream’s story is not one of grand settlements or famous chiefs. It is one of the quieter presences, seasonal camps along creeks, erased names in census ledgers and traces beneath the pavement. The history may be faint, but it is woven into the landscape itself.
