Indian Paths in the Great Metropolis
Careful exploration of these village sites has been lacking, notwithstanding all the street grading and extensive building operations which have metamorphosed much of the surface of the present borough. Their neighbors on the Fort Hamilton tract, known as Nayack, were some of those Manhattan Indians who had sold their home-lands to the Dutch in 1626. Their territory extended on the east to the boundary of the old township of Newtown, wherein their neighbors and probably near relatives, the Rockaway, were resident.
Gabriel Furman23 fortunately recorded some early observations of sites occupied by the Marechkawick. In 1824, when the street development of modern Brooklyn was in progress, "heads of Indian arrows, beds of oyster and clam shells, denoting the former residence of the aborigines, are frequently found in different parts of the town." There were thus, in all probability, several groups situated within the area occupied by the Marechkawick, settled in favorable situations about the broad waters and marshes of the Wallabout and the Gowanus which bounded the old township.