ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how the past in the community of Setauket, New York has been controlled to ensure that the story of its Native American and African American residents is obscured. Rich with historical associations, Setauket is locally well known for important historic events, such as a Revolutionary War spy ring and a nineteenth-century shipbuilding industry, as well as contemporary preservation efforts to protect historic sites and districts for the enjoyment and education of future generations. The chapter argues that this exclusion is not the result of benign neglect or accident but due to the use of a constructed local history that validates essential aspects of culture and economy vital to the well-being of the white majority, which the recognition of a subaltern past would contradict. The local Native American Setalcott are introduced in the opening statement of the main section of the text: Humans are not native to Long Island, or indeed to the Western Hemisphere.
