Unkechaug Nation

Metoac was a term erroneously used to describe Native Americans on Long Island in New York state, in the belief that various bands on the island comprised distinct tribes. The amateur anthropologist and U.S. Congressman Silas Wood published a book in the 19th century mistakenly claiming that several American Indian tribes were distinct to Long Island, New York. He collectively called them the Metoac. Scholars now understand that these historic peoples were part of two major cultural groups: the Lenape and the Wappinger-Wangunk-Quinnipiac peoples, both part of the Algonquian languages family.

Modern scientific scholarship has shown that Native American peoples on the island belonged to two major language and cultural groups among the Algonquian peoples who occupied Atlantic coastal areas from Canada through the American South. The bands in the western part of Long Island were related to those Lenape who had previously settled in the territory East of the Hudson river, and were related to peoples in what is now western Connecticut. Those to the east were more related culturally and linguistically to the Algonquian tribes of New England across Long Island Sound, such as the Pequot. Wood (and earlier colonial settlers) often confused Indian place names, by which the bands were known, as the names for different "tribes" living there.

Wood may have derived his collective term from metau-hok, the Algonquian word for the rough periwinkle, which played an important role in the economy of the region before and after the arrival of Europeans. Dutch colonists, some from New Netherland, were the primary European settlers in the early colonial era. The eastern part of the island was colonized by English settlers from southern New England. Indigenous populations declined significantly within a few decades of European contact, due to new infectious diseases to which they had no immunity.

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