EAST HAMPTON'S CURIOUS COMMERCIAL ORIGINS

Some inhabitants became partners in the Whale Design; others did not.

T.H. BREEN

If by some trick of time we could freeze East Hampton at mid-17th century, we would readily discern the outlines of a classic New England town. It seems to possess in this imagined frame all the attributes of what the historian Kenneth A. Lockridge called a "Christian Utopian Closed Corporate Community." The founding families practiced mixed husbandry, and, finding themselves in a broad, open environment, rich in native grasses, expanded their herds of livestock.

No one became fabulously wealthy on the eastern end of Long Island, but then, that was not their goal. Most original settlers did well enough. With the exception of Lion Gardiner, who fancied himself as a sort of lord of the manor, the settlers of East Hampton experienced a kind of rough economic equality.

The whites viewed the Montauk Indians largely as obstructions to the expansion of grazing rather than as potential economic partners. Since the Native Americans offered no organized resistance to the town's development, the settlers probably mistook resignation for accommodation.

Within a decade, however, the colonists would miraculously learn not only how to identify individual Indians by face, but also by name. That was not something one could have predicted at the start, for in the beginning a homogeneous, egalitarian community of Puritan farmers insisted on maintaining a clear separation of races.

Perhaps at the beginning, the goals of the farmers were modest - selling livestock and hides to traders in New England, probably. But whatever their expectations may have been, they soon discovered a source of personal wealth swimming offshore, in the form of right whales.

These oil-rich mammals did not introduce the spirit of enterprise into East Hampton - that had been present from the very first - but the whales did present some local families with sudden prosperity, a development that had a profound impact on the lives of people of three races and on the physical environment of this little community.

During the cold winter months, these slow-swimming, oil-rich mammals migrated to the waters off Long Island. No doubt they had followed the same annual route time out of mind. What transformed East Hampton during 1650s and 1660s was not the unexpected arrival of the right whales, but rather a growing appreciation among entrepreneurial white colonists that oil and bone might be shipped to distant English and Dutch markets at a great profit.

At first, the little Puritan commonwealth struggled to control the temptation to turn this natural resource into private gain. Town records chronicle the efforts of the government to organize "whale watches." Much like militia duty in other New England towns, this shared civic responsibility involved all able-bodied men. During the long winter months they took turns scouring the beaches of East Hampton for "drift whales." As everyone understood, if these animals were not quickly processed, the carcasses would rot, losing all commercial value.

In 1650, local officials divided the households of East Hampton into two groups. As soon as someone spotted a beached whale, one of the teams was supposed to turn out immediately. Harvesting the whale involved nasty, malodorous work. The men were probably cold and wet, and the town magistrates set fines for those who failed to appear.

In 1653 the town passed what might be termed a "whale code," a series of ordinances laying out exactly which residents might legally share the return on oil and bone. While every inhabitant was assigned to a whale company, only those who owned a home lot and 13 acres of land could expect to profit from the oil. This law probably represented only a minor breach in the town's sense of fair play. After all, it was the members of an entire class within East Hampton - the village householders - and not a few privileged individuals who stood to make extra income from the whales so fortuitously washed ashore.

No doubt, even in the early days of settlement far-sighted men in East Hampton appreciated that killing whales at sea would be much more efficient than waiting for the animals to beach themselves. Harvesting whales in open water seems such an obvious improvement that one wonders why it took so long for the villagers to take this step. The question, however, only betrays a profound ignorance of the complexity of the challenge. Not until James Loper arrived in East Hampton in 1666 did the local farmers learn the difficulties posed by what they came to call the "Whale Design."

First, one required a substantial amount of capital, more money certainly than an ordinary stockman would possess. A whaler not only needed a small boat, usually described in contemporary records as a "canoe," but also an expensive iron kettle in which to turn the blubber into marketable oil. These investments represented only the start. The task demanded harpoons, special knives, an array of tools, and access to tightly-fitted barrels capable of carrying the liquid product to New York or Boston, London or Amsterdam.

Second, each step in the process demanded patience and knowledge. The slightest misjudgment during the preparation of the oil could ruin the entire batch.

Although the East Hampton whalers never achieved perfection, they did quite well for themselves. The returns on capital investment were impressive. As Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, a Royal Governor of New York, explained, "A Yearling [whale] will make about forty Barrils of Oyl, a Stunt or Whale two years old will make sometimes fifty, sometimes sixty Barrils of Oyl; and the largest whale that I have heard of in these parts, yielded one hundred and ten barrils."

After the 1660s, we still encounter discussions of local whale companies in the town records, but unlike those of an earlier period, which involved every able-bodied man in East Hampton, these companies are private endeavors, associated with such familiar names as Gardiner, Mulford, Loper, and Schellinger. The rising demands of capital investment coupled with the pressure of quality control - a function of specialized skills in the workplace - meant that only a few well-positioned families could hold their own in a highly competitive international market.

The economic transformation of East Hampton had the effect of creating a new set of relationships within the community. In plain terms, some inhabitants became partners in the Whale Design; others did not. A natural resource once defined as a shared or common opportunity had generated a level of economic inequality that none of the founders had anticipated when they first moved to East Hampton in search of open grazing lands.

The town's good fortune created a sudden demand for laborers. Chasing right whales in the frigid waters of the open Atlantic was dangerous work. Rowers had to pull furiously just to keep up with the prey, and it was not uncommon for an injured animal to surface suddenly, overturning a boat and leaving the crew of four or five men to survive as best they could. Since the leading members of the private whale companies had no desire to put their lives at risk, they recruited men who would, and it was during this period in the town's history that the local Indians, who had so recently been excluded from the affairs of East Hampton, made a dramatic reappearance as whalers.

During this period of rapid commercial expansion, Europeans and Indians defined the character of race relations through an annual cycle of labor negotiations. Some months before the commencement of the whale season, representatives of the private companies approached individual Montauks with formal, legally binding work contracts, many of which were duly entered into the town records. The whale companies agreed to provide the basic equipment that the Indians would need for the hunt - a boat and harpoons, for example - and on their part, the Indians promised to "go to sea a whale killing" and to give a "true and faithful performance." The contracts often promised the Indians a portion of any whale they managed to catch.

The rigorous concern for legality in these matters seems to reveal an extraordinary commitment to equitable relations between the races. In fact, though, the legal vocabulary suggests a striking imbalance. In March 1683, for example, Hector, a Montauk, promised that "if I do not get so much by my half share this next season as will pay the said Robert Kedy what I shall be indebted to him, then I do hereby engage to go for him the next season ensuing until such time as I have paid him whatsoever I shall be indebted unto him." Over and over we encounter the phrase "from year to year." Even to enter a whaling contract the Indian had to post a bond of 10 pounds sterling. He was in debt beyond his ability to pay before he had killed a single whale.

The Montauk whale hunter found himself suspended in a kind of unfreedom, nominally an independent worker, but in fact bound to a specific Englishman for a period of years. In the 19th-century South such labor agreements have been characterized as debt peonage - an improvement over slavery to be sure, but by the same token, not a product of an open labor market.

The 18th-century local historian John Lion Gardiner protested that the Montauks had brought their problems upon themselves. In his words, the Indians' "idle dispositions and savage manners prevent the most of them from living comfortable."

Although the means to "living comfortable" may have eluded the Native Americans, the families who profited from the Whale Design prospered in the New World. In comparison to other 17th-century New Englanders, they experienced a notable improvement in the material culture of everyday life. The vessels that sailed out of the protected waters of Northwest Harbor, filled with barrels of oil and other local products such as hides and meat, wool and feathers, returned from Boston and New York laden with consumer goods.

These manufactured items originated for the most part in England. They flowed through the stores that Abraham Schellinger and other merchant-traders operated near the large warehouses where employees busily processed whale products. An inventory prepared by Schellinger lists practical household items such as guns, nails, and skillets. His shelves also contained imports that reveal how far the villagers had distanced themselves from notions of self-sufficiency. They purchased everything from colorful textiles to fine pewterware.

These goods of English manufactures traveled the roads of East Hampton to homes where they were lovingly possessed, finding their way eventually into probate records. In these documents we once again encounter imported cloth and ceramics, brass pots, and, in the case of Thomas Diament, who died in 1682, a "great looking glass."

Such a range of goods appeared at this time in the port cities of Boston and Salem, but in terms of physical well-being, the colonists of East Hampton seem to have participated fully in a vast new consumer economy some decades before the residents of other country towns throughout New England.

T. H. Green is the William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University. This is excerpted from his Oct. 11, 350th anniversary lecture, underwritten by Patricia and Douglas Mercer.