Total population | |
---|---|
Extinct as a tribe (merged into the Schaghticoke) | |
Regions with significant populations | |
United States ( Connecticut) | |
Languages | |
an Eastern Algonquian language | |
Religion | |
Indigenous religion | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Other Algonquian peoples |
The Potatuck were a Native American tribe in Connecticut. They were related to the Paugussett people, historically located during and prior to the colonial era in western Connecticut. They lived in what is now Newtown (in Fairfield County), Woodbury (in Litchfield County), and Southbury (in New Haven County), and along the whole Housatonic River, including the Schaghticoke tribe. [1] One of their last sites of habitation, Little Pootatuck Brook Archeological Site, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. After losses due to epidemics and warfare, they merged in the early 18th century with other remnant Native American groups in the area, forming the Schaghticoke tribe.
The Potatuck have also been listed as Poodatook, Pootatook, Potatuck, Pudaduc, and Pudatuck in historical literature. [2]
Like neighboring tribes such as the Paugusset, the Potatuck were a farming and fishing culture. The women cultivated varieties of their staple crops, such as corn, squash, and beans, as well as the tobacco valued for ritual use. They also gathered berries, nuts, and other natural resources. The men fished in freshwater much of the year, and hunted deer and small game. They may have traveled to the coast of Long Island Sound to fish from saltwater in summer months. [3]
Many of the remnant Potatuck merged with survivors of the Weantinock, Mohegan, and other Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, after losses due to epidemics and warfare from European colonization pressures. They formed the Schaghticoke tribe in western Connecticut and eastern New York. The Connecticut colony granted them a 2,500-acre reservation in 1736, with territory on both sides of the Housatonic River. Through the 19th and early 2-th centuries, state-appointed agents sold off essentially all the land to the east, reducing the reservation to about 400 acres of territory on the west bank of the river. [4]
These descendants are part of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, which recognized as a tribe by the state of Connecticut, but not federally recognized as a Native American tribe by the US Department of the Interior. In 2011, the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation was recognized by a state court as the governing authority and legitimate legal successor to the historic tribe. [5]
The Pequot are a Native American people of Connecticut. The modern Pequot are members of the federally recognized Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, four other state-recognized groups in Connecticut including the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, or the Brothertown Indians of Wisconsin. They historically spoke Pequot, a dialect of the Mohegan-Pequot language, which became extinct by the early 20th century. Some tribal members are undertaking revival efforts.
The Mohicans are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe that historically spoke an Algonquian language. As part of the Eastern Algonquian family of tribes, they are related to the neighboring Lenape, whose indigenous territory was to the south as far as the Atlantic coast. The Mohican lived in the upper tidal Hudson River Valley, including the confluence of the Mohawk River and into western New England centered on the upper Housatonic River watershed. After 1680, due to conflicts with the powerful Mohawk to the west during the Beaver Wars, many were driven southeastward across the present-day Massachusetts western border and the Taconic Mountains to Berkshire County around Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
The Penobscot are an Indigenous people in North America from the Northeastern Woodlands region. They are organized as a federally recognized tribe in Maine and as a First Nations band government in the Atlantic provinces and Quebec.
The Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe with four large cultural/linguistic divisions:
The Golden Hill Paugussett is a state-recognized Native American tribe in Connecticut. Granted reservations in a number of towns in the 17th century, their land base was whittled away until they were forced to reacquire a small amount of territory in the 19th century. Today they retain a state-recognized reservation in the town of Trumbull, and have an additional reservation acquired in 1978 and 1980 in Colchester, Connecticut.
The Schaghticoke are a Native American tribe of the Eastern Woodlands who historically consisted of Mahican, Potatuck, Weantinock, Tunxis, Podunk, and their descendants, peoples indigenous to what is now New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. The remnant tribes amalgamated in the area near the Connecticut-New York border after many losses, including the sale of some Schaghticoke and members of neighboring tribes into slavery in the Caribbean in the 1600s.
Wawyachtonoc were an Algonquian-speaking Native American people indigenous to east central New York and northwest Connecticut.
State-recognized tribes in the United States are organizations that identify as Native American tribes or heritage groups that do not meet the criteria for federally recognized Indian tribes but have been recognized by a process established under assorted state government laws for varying purposes or by governor's executive orders. State recognition does not dictate whether or not they are recognized as Native American tribes by continually existing tribal nations.
Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands include Native American tribes and First Nation bands residing in or originating from a cultural area encompassing the northeastern and Midwest United States and southeastern Canada. It is part of a broader grouping known as the Eastern Woodlands. The Northeastern Woodlands is divided into three major areas: the Coastal, Saint Lawrence Lowlands, and Great Lakes-Riverine zones.
The Brothertown Indians, located in Wisconsin, are a Native American tribe formed in the late 18th century from communities of so-called "praying Indians", descended from Christianized Pequot, Narragansett, Montauk, Tunxis, Niantic, and Mohegan (Algonquian-speaking) tribes of southern New England and eastern Long Island, New York. In the 1780s after the American Revolutionary War, they migrated from New England into New York state, where they accepted land from the Iroquois Oneida Nation in Oneida County.
The Wappinger were an Eastern Algonquian Munsee-speaking Native American people from what is now southern New York and western Connecticut.
The Mohegan are an Algonquian Native American tribe historically based in present-day Connecticut. Today the majority of the people are associated with the Mohegan Indian Tribe, a federally recognized tribe living on a reservation in the eastern upper Thames River valley of south-central Connecticut. It is one of two federally recognized tribes in the state, the other being the Mashantucket Pequot, whose reservation is in Ledyard, Connecticut. There are also three state-recognized tribes: the Schaghticoke, Paugusett, and Eastern Pequot.
Nichols, a historic village in southeastern Trumbull in Fairfield County, Connecticut, is named after the family who maintained a large farm in its center for almost 300 years. The Nichols Farms Historic District, which encompasses part of the village, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Originally home to the Golden Hill Paugussett Indian Nation, the area was colonized by the English during the Great Migration of the 1630s as a part of the coastal settlement of Stratford. The construction of the Merritt Parkway through the village, and the subsequent closing of stores and factories, turned the village into a bedroom community in 1939. Aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky lived in three separate homes in Nichols during his active years between 1928 and 1951, when he designed, built and flew fixed-wing aircraft and put the helicopter into mass production for the first time.
Truman Bradley or Truman Mauwee was a Schaghticoke Native American who lived in the village of Nichols in Trumbull, Connecticut.
Aurelius H. Piper Sr., also known as Big Eagle or Chief Big Eagle, was the hereditary chief of the Golden Hill Paugussett Indian Nation of Connecticut from 1959 until 2008.
The Paugussett Trail is a 14-mile (23 km) Blue-Blazed hiking trail "system" in the lower Housatonic River valley in Fairfield County and, today, is entirely in Shelton and Monroe, Connecticut. Much of the trail is in Indian Well State Park and the Town of Monroe's Webb Mountain Park. The mainline trail is primarily southeast to northwest with three short side or spur trails.
The Zoar Trail is a 6.5-mile (10.5 km) Blue-Blazed hiking trail "system" in the lower Housatonic River valley in Fairfield County and is entirely in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown in the lower block of Paugussett State Forest.
The Kettletown Trails are a 4.6-mile (7.4 km) Blue-Blazed hiking trail "system" in the lower Housatonic River valley in Fairfield County and are in the towns of Southbury and Oxford -- primarily in the Kettletown State Park and the Jackson Cove recreation area belonging to the town of Oxford.
Waramaug succeeded Squantz in 1725 as sachem of the Potatuck Native American tribe, folded into the current Schaghticoke tribe, who lived along the length of the Housatonic River, until his death in 1735. He was succeeded as sachemship of the Potatuck after his death by one of Chief Squantz's sons, Mauwehu.