[Publius6961]

There they met peaceful, resourceful people who had been in the same geographical area for thousands of years.

A remarkable, colorful and curious assertion. Without a written language, or being able to count past 100, I doubt very much that this can be substantiated.
Under the circumstances (and total hearsay), they might as well have been quoted as saying, "a million years," by the PC do-gooder who originally wrote this down.
The peaceful part, ditto.

[TheForceOfOne]

Oh, I know nothing of them. I just added some google info. I found.

http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_035800_shinnecock.htm

[Antoninus]

The peaceful part, ditto.

In all my research on the Eastern Woodland tribes, I have yet to run across a 'peaceful' one. If your tribe was 'peaceful', it didn't exist past the next spring. That was the hard truth. No modern liberal (or member of the Shinnecock tribe as it is currently constituted) would want to live how they did back then.