Abstract: From circa 1650 to the mid-eighteenth century, Native Americans were recruited by English company owners on Long Island to hunt whales along its south shore. Whale oil profits became the region’s main economic force in the global market. The “whale design,” as it was called, was characterized by a fierce competition among companies for Indian whalers. By reconstructing the careers of several Native whalers based on their extant employment contracts, this paper reveals changing patterns of labor negotiations and methods of payment. As English companies consolidated their monopolistic control over the “whale design,” however, they sought to minimize the Indians’ sphere of influence and bargaining power. Although some Indians tried to improve their situations, even to the extent of forming an independent Native whaling company, they faced diminished prospects due to growing contract enforcement and the gradual standardization of punitive labor practices. As their communities were dispossessed of their land, they looked to the sea for new opportunities, only to find themselves deeply enmeshed in debt. Keywords: whaling, whale oil, baleen, contracts, lay system, debt peonage, Indian whalers, right whales, Long Island, Algonquian, Native American Conclusion The whale was held in awe by the Native peoples of Long Island, who sacrificed its fins and tails in their rituals. Along with all the living creatures in their environment, the whale shared a spiritual essence that united human and animal beings. There was a concern for balance in nature that was expressed in rituals honoring the spirits of animals taken by the hunters. For the Europeans, however, the animals were commodities to be exploited for commercial gain. The fur trade, for example, almost wiped out the beaver population in the Northeast. The same fate befell the North Atlantic right whale during the latter half of the seventeenth century. The English also commodified the land. Land alienation on Long Island, beginning with the English arrival, was nearly complete by the end of the seventeenth century. In 1703 the last major acquisitions of their tribal lands were confirmed by the Shinnecocks and the Montauketts. The loss of their traditional hunting, gathering, and planting grounds gave them little choice but to enter the English economy. Many Indians found employment building fences and tending livestock and cultivating colonial gardens on the very spaces where they once hunted deer, gathered plants and harvested corn. Whaling, for a brief moment in time, provided some Indians with the opportunity to bargain competitively with English employers who eagerly sought their services. The Indians possessed the skills, experience, and courage required to successfully hunt whales in open boats during the winter months. The English companies recruited the Indians for their crews with offers of metal tools, clothing, shoes, kettles, and alcohol. These goods, carried back to the villages by the whalers, stimulated significant changes in material culture that undoubtedly made life easier and more comfortable. There was a dark side. Richard White, in his classic study on patterns of dependency noted that the credit system and the traffic in alcohol were “the two great banes of the Indian trade.” This “credit-liquor combination,” said White, loosened cultural restraints and undermined their resistance to English control over their labor.[80] Artor’s experience supports White’s conclusions. Artor’s indenture forced him to become even more dependent on the English economy. Although patterns of dependency emerged, there were also important aspects of traditional culture that survived, including religious concepts, family and kinship systems, and relationships with the natural environment. The whalers did not surrender passively to the oppressive labor system. They had a unique set of skills and experiences that gave them leverage in negotiating with the English company owners. Although their attempt to launch an Indian-owned company failed, they found other means to protect their interests by comparing the terms of their contracts, frequently changing companies and playing one owner against another. The Native peoples of Long Island played a formative role in the history of an iconic American institution. They were there at the beginning. The shore whaling companies depended on the Indian crews for a successful whale design. They were the first American commercial whalers, a legacy that has often been overlooked. Their descendants, David and Hugh Jacob, were among many Native Americans from Long Island who were recruited by whaling captains in the nineteenth century to hunt whales across the globe.