The name Massapequa, meaning "large shallow pond," echoes the long history of the Lenape, an Algonquian-speaking people who inhabited this Long Island area. As part of the vast Algonquian civilization that governed downstate New York, including the New York City islands and the Hudson Valley, the Lenape were deeply connected to nature, serving as its stewards before European contact. Estimates suggest a significant Algonquian population in New York centuries before colonization. Archaeological evidence confirms a much deeper Indigenous history on Long Island, stretching back over 12,500 years. The Lenape Confederacy, which emerged around 1000 BCE, comprised distinct groups like the Munsee, Unami, and Unalatchtigo, each with unique cultural expressions and animal totems across the tri-state region. Discoveries in Massapequa, such as non-local tools, point to the sophisticated trade networks that existed among Indigenous peoples in the pre-contact period (1000-1600 CE), a time of agricultural growth and settled communities.
The Lenape legacy would soon end in the late 1630s as Dutch settlers made their way onto Western Long Island from their original 1624 landing place of Manahatta, the hilly island (Manhattan). Contact with Europeans would made on Long Island as the Dutch Arrive.