CONNECTICUT PAUGAUSSETT INDIANS

THE HISTORY OF STRATFORD

Golden Hill Indians
The Housatonic
The Wepawaug
Cupheags and Pequannock
Weantinock
Goodyear's Island
Indian Slaves
Indian Remnants
Indian Troubles
New Indian Papers

THE HISTORY OF STRATFORD

Wm. Howard Wilcoxson

Stratford Indians

Trouble with the Indians

Establishing Title to the Land

Indian Deeds and Relics

White Hills Purchase

FORREST MORGAN

Lifestyles, Government, Religion and War

Indian Titles and Mohegan Land Troubles

Sowheag, Uncas, and Miantonomo

Owenoco, the Son of Uncas

THE HOUSATONIC

CHARD POWERS SMITH

The Promised Land
Heathen in the Land
The Lord's Scouts

The Land and The Lord

The Next Seven Tribes

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON

Connecticut Indian History

The Pequot War

Samuel Orcutt- The History of Stratford

The Weantinocks

The method of the burial was to place the corpse sitting in the ring, down in the grave, the head remaining but a little below the surface of the ground; and in this way several burials, from three to ten, could be effected in each mound, or family plot. Hence there may have been buried on an average five bodies in each of these mounds, or nearly three hundred in all. Some burials, however, were made by laying the body in the grave, since skeletons have been found in that position. But thee mounds are not all that were there in 1707, for evidently a part of the old place has been plowed over at the edge of the grove; and besides, skeletons have been excavated in digging sand, some two hundred feet north of where the last mound is now to be seen, thus proving that the territory devoted to burials at that place was much extended beyond the present appearance.

On the east side of the river, on the bluff along on which west street is now located, a number of skeletons have recently been exhumed while persons were digging cellars. Skeletons have been exhumed also above the mouth of the Aspetuck, on the north side of the river.

It is quite doubtful if the first settlers knew of these burials on the east side of the river, for there are no traditions to this effect so far as heard, and hence these graves were made many years before the settlers came here. It is therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion that anterior to the settlement of this locality by the English, perhaps a hundred—possibly two hundred years—the Indians were located here at Weantinock under the same name, and that too in considerable numbers.

Upon the selling of the Indian Field, those who remained in the vicinity made their headquarters at the Falls, where afterwards Waramaug’s celebrated tent was located.

If we were to venture an opinion, upon the information now obtained, it would be that the Indians of this apart of Connecticut, at least. Came from Shekomeko in New York, over the hills, and made a settlement first at Scatacook, but soon discovered the beautiful location at the south end of Long Mountain and effected a settlement here, particularly because of the planting ground, and its proximity to the Falls where the fish were so abundant, and that they were called Potatucks—“Falls Indians” (the country above the falls)—because they dwelt near the falls, and that they called the river Potatuck (Falls River) and never knew any other name for it until the English gave it one. It is certain that they (the Indians) knew no other name for it when Derby first began to be settled in 1654. Hence the original name for all the Indians along the Housatonic was Potatucks, and all other names grew up afterwards, as a matter of local distinction. With this supposition harmonizes the great antiquity of the Scatacook settlement, and also the many burials in New Milford.

Some further information as to the antiquity of the settlement at Weantinock may be obtained from a deed recorded at Stratford. In 1670, the General Court granted liberty to Stratford men “to purchase Weantinock and the lands adjacent,” of the Indians, and under this grant Henry Tomlinson and others made a purchase, of those whom hey supposed were the rightful owners of a tract of land at this place of over 26,000 acres lying on both sides of the Housatonic, and received a deed with fifteen Indian names attached, which were names of the Potatuck Indians and this was the deed under which Col. John Read held his claim to New Milford lands. Where these Indians resided cannot be ascertained, although some of them may have resided at Weantinock, but of this there is much doubt. One of them, the Sachem Cheshushamack, signed a number of deeds in Derby and Woodbury. Against this sale of land a protest was made six years later by “Scantamaug of Wyantenuck,” that Henry Tomlinson had bought the land “in a private way to their prejudice,” but he does not object to the authority exercised by the Potatuck chief and his men, unless he means that “in a private way” was without authority. Here there was a settlement here at that time, and if so, there had been for a length of time previous, with the leader Scantamaug at the head, who may have been a Sachem. This indicates that all the various clans of the Potatuck Indians were one tribe, under one general government, on both sides of the Housatonic, then called the Potatuck river, to the Massachusetts line; and to this conclusion we are led by the signatures of later deeds, for some of the signers to the Woodbury deed of 1700, 1705, and 1706, and some of those to a deed of lands north of Woodbury in 1716, are the same men who signed the New Milford deed in 1703.

One of these names underwent several rather amusing changes. We find it in 1705, as Cotsure, in 1716 as Corkscrew, and in 1739, to a New Milford deed, Cocksure, which was no long afterwards changed to Cogswell, under which name some of the lineal descendants are still residing in New Milford. One of the names attached to the New Milford deeds, “Pomkinsedes,” has become local in the name Punkin Hill, a little south of Falls Mountain, which resulted, probably, from the residence of Pompkinsedes on that hill; and another name is perpetuated in connection with a locality a little southeast of New Milford in the name of Chicken Hill, as arising from the Indian “Chickins,” who created some commotion in the Colony through the Weatinock Indians in the 1720s, as will hereafter be seen. “Pinchgut Plain” is most probably abbreviated, or a change from some Indian name, as Paugassett, or Pequusset, changed in one case in Massachusetts to Pigsgussett, and from this the slide is easy to “Pinchgut.” Pawgasuck or Pagassett, means where the “narrows open out,” which is the case most emphatically as we come up the river to the falls above Falls Mountain.

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