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CONNECTICUT
PAUGAUSSETT INDIANS
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THE HISTORY OF
STRATFORD
Golden Hill Indians THE HISTORY OF
STRATFORD
Wm. Howard Wilcoxson Establishing
Title to the Land FORREST MORGAN
Lifestyles, Government, Religion and WarIndian Titles and Mohegan Land TroublesSowheag, Uncas, and MiantonomoOwenoco, the Son of Uncas
THE HOUSATONIC CHARD POWERS SMITH The
Promised Land ALEXANDER JOHNSTON
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Chard Powers Smith - The Housatonic Heathen in
the Land It can hardly be supposed that individual colonists, who were sharp enough
in dealing with one another, would have any reticence about driving sharp
bargains with the filthy savages. But their propensities in this direction
were repressed by the wise and humane laws of the governments they
maintained. Individuals were forbidden by law to buy land from the Indians
without authorization by the General Court, and before such authorization was
given the court would look minutely into the particular colonists need of the
land, the adequacy of the purchase price, and the remaining resources for
self-support of the Indian or Indians involved. In the majority of cases it
was the Indians themselves who instigated the sales, with their usual lack of
self-control pressing deeds and mortgages on the settlers in return for
desired items, whether useful tools, useless baubles or when it could be
bootlegged to them firewater. There were, of course, scamps who circumvented
the law and imposed on the Indians childishness. But they were few, and they
were disciplined when caught. The generally conscientious treatment of the Indians by the English
was commendable in an age when Europeans of all sects recognized either the
Lord or the Devil in any unusual phenomenon, and when anyone addicted to
curious practices was instantly suspected of being a wizard or a witch, a
servant of Satan. The colonists had no doubt from the beginning that the
Indians were the get of the Devil, and they loathed them anyway for their
filth, their drunkenness and petty thievery and pilfering. Nevertheless they
tried their trespasses, larcenies and murders in the courts, giving them the
benefit of the same rules that they enjoyed themselves. They did ostracize
them socially and biologically. They did try to keep liquor and firearms from
them, for the protection of both races. And they did limit their right to
alienate land. But outside of these impositions they gave them equal rights
under equal laws, including access to the schools. The failure of the Indian
in the valley was principally his own, a dissatisfaction with his own Stone
Age culture in the presences of the wonders the white man brought, and a
desire to acquire the white mans ways, and an inability to accept the
discipline that the stronger culture implied. In consequence the Indian
experienced an increasing self-contempt and need to escape into the only
world where reassurance remained, the world of alcohol. The Indians of the valley shared with their immediate successors one
great quality, otherworldliness, and life in eternity instead of in time.
Like the Puritans, the Indians looked on this life as a vale of tears. But
their methods of dealing with the problem were different. The Indian merely
did what he could to propitiate Hobbamocko, the Evil Spirit who was
responsible for all terrestrial difficulties. The Puritan went ahead
vigorously to make the best of a bad situation. The vast amount he has
accomplished in economic, materialistic terms is now suspect. But if there is
any virtue in the activities that distinguish man from the animals, namely,
his elaborate works of the imagination in philosophy, art and science, then
the Indian culture was justly supplanted by the Puritan one that involved
equal mysticism, a more inclusive morality, a wider science, and a more
active curiosity and enterprise. The Indians should, and will, be remembered
for their religion, some of their arts and sciences, and the integrity of
many of their leaders. Yet their culture was of a scope so limited as to be
unqualified long to play a part in mans progress toward adjustment to the cosmos.
Its passing was pathetic, but in the valley of the In economic terms, the Indians were the greatest of the animals, able
to merge into the natural beauty of the valley and survive, leaving it unchanged,
the mountains still stately under their forests, the falls plunging from the
cliffs with undiminished power. The Indian lacked the mental force whether to
build or to destroy. The white man came with the power to do either, and
history?s judgment of him will depend on the final balance he attains between
these conflicting tendencies. Along most of the rivers that he has populated
he has destroyed the natural beauty and replaced it with industrial piles of
no significance in spiritual, intellectual or aesthetic terms. But along the The Indian
was part of that older dream, with its sure virtues and limitations. If the
white mans dream of religion and poetry and science proves to be a better
dream, and if it survives his dynamos and factories, then it will be well
that he has prevailed. But, it is not a better dream, or if it is forgotten
in his commerce and his greed, then his destructive tendency will have
exceeded his creative one. In that case, he is Hobbamocko, the Spirit of
Evil, who, as the Indians feared he would do, has overcome the world. |
ALEXANDER JOHNSTON
SOUTHPORT Colonial History of Pequot Swamp COLONIAL INDIAN ARCHIVES Hon. Ralph D.
Smith David D. Fields Sarah Day Woodward Winthrop’s Journal |