An Indian Named Pharaoh

His name was Steven Pharaoh, and he was the embodiment of everything that ever was on Long Island and everything that would never be again.

In 1879, Pharaoh lived in a small house on the high, rocky moraine at Montauk Point. On maps of the day, this place was called Indian Fields, and was home to a small number of Montaukett families whose ancestors had lived on this same spot for thousands of years. It was a place of memory and history -- for Pharaoh, it was all he had ever known.

That year, Pharaoh was 60 years old. As a child he had been bound as an indentured servant to an East Hampton family; he had worked as a hunter, fisherman and whaler. Some said he sailed to California in 1849 to look for gold; in the early 1860s, when he was in his 40s, he enlisted as a soldier in the Civil War.

He was said to have walked all over the South Fork and Long Island. He boasted of walking to Brooklyn and back in a single day. For a small fee, he'd walk letters to homes miles apart. His white neighbors in East Hampton nicknamed him "Talkhouse," for reasons now lost to history. Talkhouse Pharaoh was a local celebrity.

But he was much more than that. Tall, bone thin, his long black hair cascading over his shoulders, Pharaoh was the living symbol of Long Island's Algonquian past -- a past that by 1878 had all but faded into oblivion. That year, a suit was filed by two East Hampton residents trying to force the sale of Indian Fields. Pharaoh and his half-brother, David Pharaoh, had joined together to fight the sale in court. Then David died, leaving Talkhouse Pharaoh to fight alone.

The next year, in that place, Pharaoh sat at the intersection of fate and history. What little remained of the Algonquians' world was about to be replaced by a new and emerging Long Island. Even as the tiny Montaukett community was fighting to stay at Indian Fields, 80 miles to the west, in the Hempstead Plains, a New York City businessman had already built a planned community called Garden City. Within seven years the Brooklyn Bridge would open, and Long Island would never be the same.

Seeing Pharaoh as a unique figure, circus promotor P.T. Barnum displayed Pharaoh as "The Last King of the Montauks," as if he were the only survivor of a dead race. East Hampton businessman I.G. Van Scoy felt the same way, and in 1867 had posed Pharaoh for a portrait, which was then sold as a memento. The photograph shows Pharaoh dressed in a long frock coat, white shirt and frilly bow tie, seated in a chair, clutching a long walking stick in his right hand. Pharaoh looks like a man who has suddenly found himself lost in a familiar place.

"Talkhouse Pharaoh was born in a wigwam at a site called `Molly's Place' near Three Mile Harbor," said John Strong, a history professor at Southampton College of Long Island University. "Steven had that presence that struck everybody who met him. That's why people sought him out for photographs. He was the ideal type. So when he died, people thought there were no more Montauketts anywhere."

The name Faro appears on deeds marked by the Montauketts' Xs in the mid-1600s. Later, the name was reconfigured into "Pharaoh," probably by English settlers who wanted to give the family a regal-sounding name that would confer on them the status to sell off land.

"Growing up, I'd hear stories about Steven Talkhouse. He was quite the man, an exemplary man. No one had a bad word about him," said John Fowler, a Montaukett who can trace his lineage back to the 17th Century. "We look at him today as someone who represents what we were."

Today, the tiny Montaukett community is seeking federal recognition that would grant them what would otherwise seem obvious -- recognition that they are still on Long Island and can seek redress for what they consider past wrongs. To supporters of the effort, Talkhouse Pharaoh is an inspiration, a guiding light.

"We look at him and are inspired by his life," said Robert Cooper, the recently elected chief of the Montauketts. "In honoring our history, we honor his memory." Cooper said he dreams of a tall statue being made of Talkhouse Pharaoh that would stand at Indian Fields, which is now part of parkland owned by Suffolk County.

Over the generations after English settlers arrived, the community of Montauketts who lived at the site were gradually diminished, losing their land base and their culture. By the 1790s, very little of their language had survived, and to save what was left a word list was compiled by John Gardiner, who employed Indians on the island that bears his family's name. It is a short list, but it's all there is.

The changing character of Montauk Point can be seen in maps. Early maps of the region show the words Indian Town or Indian Fields at the place where the Indians lived. As a distinct community, Indian Fields survived on these maps well into the mid-1800s. Then the reference was gone.

That summer of 1879, Steven Talkhouse Pharaoh, immortalized in one of the earliest photographs ever taken on Long Island, was found dead on a wooded path in Montauk. It is not known who found him, or what he died of. He was buried on a plot overlooking Lake Montauk, where generations of Montauketts had been buried.

The community known as Indian Fields did not survive long after Pharaoh's death. In October, Brooklyn businessman Arthur Benson, who dreamed of deepwater ports and railroad facilities, bought Montauk Point at an auction. Needing clear title, and evidently not wanting the Montauketts living in the middle of his dream, Benson's agent offered small amounts of money to the Indians to induce them to leave.

After 500 generations of occupancy, they were the very last Montaukett families who would ever live at Indian Fields.