Total Number Of Pages: 1
Source: Scanned from the original photograph which is 10 inches in height and 8 inches in width.
Language: English
Coverage: Unknown
Creators:
Red Thunder Cloud [Cromwell Ashbie Hawkins West]
Rights: No Known Copyright Restrictions
Description: The reverse reads:
"One day, as I walked along the bluffs of Springy Banks in East Hampton with a cold January wind blowing, I spied the form of a huge man tonging for clams in Three Mile Harbor Bay. I was sure that it was "Jake" Fowler and I released a war cry. When the piercing Montauk version of the war whoop returned to my ears, on the crisp air of that wintry day in 1943, I knew that I was correct in my assumption.
George Lewis Fowler Jr. was truly the last of the Montauk hunters, trappers, and fishermen. He was the youngest son of George Lewis Fowler Sr. and Sarah Melissa Horton Fowler of the Montauks. He was born on March 14, 1889. His father was born on the old Montauk reservation at Indian Field, Montauk.
The house in which "Jake" Fowler and his sisters were born still stands, and his brother Norris still lives in it. This house stood originally on the Montauk reservation and was moved to Freetown in East Hampton after the tribe lost their reservation through fraud in 1879.
"Jake" was a woodsman and efficient hunter who knew every inch of the woods in the town of East Hampton and environs. He was a bayman who was familiar with the best spots for obtaining eels, shellfish and fish. He knew the Indian way of making traps with the figure 4 trigger and once ran a large trap line. He learned from his father, the art of making "Scrubs" that very efficient brush made of white oak splints and used for pot cleaning in Indian as well as non-Indian homes. He earned his spending money when he was a boy by selling scrubs and game to villagers in East Hampton.
"Jake" Mike Diaz, Aztec Indian and I, spent many pleasant evenings together in the home of Mike when he lived in the Montauk settlement at Freetown. Fowler always brooded over the shameful way in which his people were tricked out of their land in 1879. This was a blot that can never be erased from Long Island history.
I still remember a fish fry that the three of us enjoyed in my tepee one summer day in 1943 when Jake, Mike and I had caught 57 Bottle fish in the bay. It was a joyous occasion and one of the type of memories that remain with one forever.
In later years, the Montauk hunter became a fire watcher for the town of East Hampton."
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