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Who Were The
Wangunk?
by Doris Sherrow, December
1999
The Wangunk were a strong, resourceful people. Last
month's column showed their daily interaction
with the early Portland community; this month we will look at the events
which marked the early decades of their reservation in Portland.
In 1650, Connecticut's Governor Haynes issued a proclamation
assuring the Wangunk that they would have the riverbend area of the
Connecticut for a reservation. The General Assembly concurred in
October, 1664: "Ahere was a parcel of land at Wonggum reserved for
the posterity of Sowheage."
Englishmen began to settle Middletown in 1646. Before very long, they
realized that they wanted the valuable riverbank and meadow on the other
side of the "Great River." Around 1670, the Middletown Town
Votes Book noted an offer to the Wangunk of other undivided lands
"of equal value." But the Wangunk knew that there were no
other lands of equal value: much of the undivided land consisted of
Meshomasick Mountain, capable of growing little but rattlesnakes. They
held their ground-quite literally!-and in 1673, the Middletown
Proprietors granted to thirteen Wangunk Proprietors the land that Haynes
had promised them, a small parcel on Indian Hill Avenue, and a larger
parcel going from Gildersleeve back to the present day Quarry Ridge Golf
Course.
In 1675, war broke out between the colonists in Massachusetts and the Wampanoag
Indians under King Philip. The Narragansetts,
traditional allies of the Wangunk, sided with Philip, but the Wangunk
seem not to have wanted war. "The Wongham have showed willingness
to dwell peaceably in our towns..." remarked the General Assembly.
They were to "set their wigwams where the authority appoints..[to
be under] English watch and ward [and] not to go forth without Lycense
from the Authority ..." Furthermore, the Wangunk were to
"engage in friendship [and] be enemies of our enemies." To
this end, the civilized, God-fearing English offered them "two
yards of cloth for every head of our enemies ... four yeards [sic] if
alive."
The Wangunk must have been in Portland by this time, but several
notations in the 1675-76 Colonial Records show that no white men were in
this area yet: all along the river from East Windsor down to
Glastonbury, a house in each town on the east side was picked to be
fortified, so that in the event of attack, settlers could retreat to it.
This fortification may have
involved a brick or stone lower story, or simply walls around the
property. No house in "East Middletown" was so fortified,
meaning that no English settlers were living in Portland until at least
the 1680s.
Beginning in 1691, individual
Wangunks began to sell parcels of land, usually no more than an acre, to
the settlers. The earliest deeds were for meadow land, probably for
farming, rather than houselots. In their deeds the Wangunk often
explained their claim to the land, sometimes giving their ancestry in
order to justify their ownership. Towwehashque Sunck Squa, for
example, who sold that first piece of meadowland to John Clark in
1691, stated that she was the daughter of Sowheage, to whom
Haynes had vouchsafed the reservation.
There is no indication in these deeds that the English were taking
advantage of their native neighbors. Land prices ran about the same,
and, except for the Indians' genealogy notes, which the English didn't
usually include, there were no differences between the Indian-to-English
deeds and the Englishto-English deeds.
The degree of their input on their land sales becomes obvious in a 1717
deed for six acres sold to a prosperous Middletown mariner named Giles
Hall. The lot was located at what is today the northeast comer of Main
and Summer streets. The Wangunk included a right-of-way for the highway
that would become Summer Street. In the deed, they described it as
running from the brook which gurgles near Summer and Prospect streets,
out toward Main Street, that is, from their vantage point inside the
reservation, OUT toward the white man's main street! Had the words of
this deed been put in their mouths by whites, the description of that
road would have run from Main Street into the Wangunk territory.
There may have been unrest among the Wangunk. In 1726, several of the
Wangunk filed with the town clerk a record of their descent from the
Wangunk Proprietors of the 1673 deed. They were descended from Wesumsha
and Pewampskin. One of the most common names in the surviving
Wangunk documents is "Cuschoy," used by itself, with
Sr. and Jr., and with English names such as Moses, Tom, and Benjamin.
The Cuschoy were descended from Robin, also called "Doctor Robbin."
It seems as if the Cuschoy were overpowering the other descendants of
the Proprietors, hence the nervous assertion of their inherited
ownership by these several Wangunk.
Yet in many ways, the Wangunk participated in the life of the community.
In the 1720S and 1730s, they assisted in laying out the eastern parts of
Bartlett and William streets, and the section of High Street between
them. They supplied the land, and in the case of part of High and
William streets, they supplied one of the surveyors, Cuschoy.
Several of the deeds from various Wangunk tribe members refer to the
buyer's occupation: Samuel Cotton, "Housewright," Francis
Whitmore, "Taylor," and Ebenezer Prout, "physitian."
This implies that the Wangunk were availing themselves of the services
of these men.
It is hard to say what sort of problem it was to be a young, developing
town with an Indian reservation smack dab in the middle of your
territory. Last month's description of the Wangunk was intended to
convey what appears to be a definite good-neighbor interaction between
the two cultures. By the 1730s, there seem to have been forces which
wanted the Wangunk Reservation out of the heart of Portland.
(To be continued...)
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