Chard Powers Smith - The Housatonic

Heathen in the Land

Of the six tribes in the Lower Valley, the Wepawaugs were centered in the region east of the mouth of the river, at the Weepwoi-auk, the Crossing-place, and the ford in modern Milford village across the little river that enters the Sound just east of the Housatonic. With its Anglicized pronunciation and spelling, the stream retains its original name.

Across the Great River, the Pequannocks were centered around the Pauquun-auk, or Cleared-land-place, a large and important cornfield in the center of modern Bridgeport. Like the Wepawaugs, the Pequannocks are remembered by the little stream that flowed through their region, the Pequannock River of the modern map.

Above the Wepawaugs on the east bank of the river were the Paugassets, whose council fire was at the Paug-as-et, suffixes in the Mohican language, one spelled -auk, -aug, -ac, -uk or -uck, the other -ut or -et. The Paug-as-et, where the river widens from the narrows into quiet, tidal water, was at Derby Neck, occupied by the modern city of Derby which was known by its Indian name until quite late in the white man?s history.

On the west bank of the river, above the Pequannocks and opposite the Paugassets, were the Potatucks, the inhabitants of the Powntuck-uck, the Falls-place, the region around Derby Falls, modern Shelton. Potatuck is the most important name in the Lower Valley, because there are so many powntuck-ucks, so many falls-place. Either the first or the second Indian settlement in the valley is supposed to have been at the powntuck-uck, the great falls, at Bulls Bridge, wherefore the tribe there also called itself the Potatucks. There was at least one other powntuck-uck that gave its name to a subtribe that inhabited not only the vicinity of future Newtown, but also, across the river, the larger region running up the Pomperaug and Shepaug rivers as far as Bethlehem and Litchfield. Though the Great River itself had other local names, its commonest Indian name in the Lower Valley was Potatuck, the River-of-the-falls-place. Certainly it retained this name for the thirteen river miles from Derby or Shelton Falls to the sea, though this reach was of quiet, tidal water. With one exception, it is the nearest to a generic name that the Indians bequeathed to the valley. It is remembered in the lower valley only in the musical little Pootatuck River that pours over its weir in Sandy Hook village in Newtown, and then its hemlock gorge to the Great River.

The fifth considerable tribe of river Indians was centered some thirty-river miles above the Paugassets of Derby and the Potatucks of Shelton. These were the Weantinocks, the dwellers at the Wean-and-auk, the Winds-mountain-place, the place where the river winds around Long Mountain in New Milford. In spite of the rich Indian association with this region, the name had disappeared from the modern map.

The sixth considerable tribe in the Lower valley, when the English came, were the Weataugs, Weataug being the name for the Salisbury region, forty to fifty miles north of Weantinock on the border of modern Massachusetts. The meaning of Weataug is uncertain.

Besides the six main tribes, there was a subtribe of the Pequannocks, with whom the earliest white settlers had intimate dealings. These were the Cupheags, who lived at Cuphe-ags, the Shut-in-Place, the harbor, modern Stratford.

In conformance with the Indians' own legends, it is generally agreed by local historians that they first entered the Lower Valley from the west at Scatacook in southern Kent, about a mile below the original Potatuck, or Falls Place, at Bull's Bridge. The Indian name was Pishgach-tig-ok, the "Divided-broad-river-place," the place where a tributary comes into the broad river, specifically the place where the modern Ten-mile enters the main stream. It is one of the richest spots in the valley for Indian relics. There is dramatic value in the supposition that the Indians first entered the valley here through the break in the mountains that lets in the Ten mile from New York State; for it was to the general reservation, set aside here by the Colony of Connecticut in 1752, that all the Indians of the Lower Valley gradually contracted, and it is certain that at this point their culture is at this moment coming to an end.

Their resounding place names, usually with the croaking locative suffix, were the most permanent contributions of the river Indians to the valley. Besides Potatuck, Wepawaug, Pequannock, and Scatacook, which have been mentioned, there are many others that survive on the modern map.

There is a historical paradox between the fact that the Upper Valley, the Massachusetts part from Canaan northward, was at one time populous and the fact that it was almost deserted when the English began to come in during the early eighteenth century. One of the largest concentrations of Indian graves and relics in the whole valley has been found in a small area on the river in Great Barrington village, an area not a specific building that was by tradition the central capital or Great Wigwam of the neighboring Indians from the earliest times down into the period of English settlement. Yet in 1694 a traveler, crossing the river at this point, wrote in his diary that the place had been formerly inhabited by Indians, implying that it was then deserted; and, forty years later, it was recorded that the sachems Umpachanee, residing with four other families at Skatecook in northern Sheffield spelled differently from Scatacook in Kent, and Konkapot, living with an equal number of families in Wnah-tu-kook, just south of present Stockbridge village, were the only Indians in the whole region between these points.

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