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

Chard Powers Smith – The Housatonic

The Next Seven Tribes

(1655-1743)

following the arrival of the first two tribes in `639, it took a hundred and thirty-two years for sixteen more separate tribes or plantations, of the Chosen People to occupy the rest of the Promised Land, which they eventually did clear to the three tips pf the irver’s headwaters in Washington, Lanesboro, and Richmond. In some of these settlements the avaricious motives of the Devil seemed to out weigh the impulse to worship the Lord. Also, increasingly there appeared the new motive of American Social individualism, the desire to move out into frontier elbowroom free from the older and already crowded settlements. But generally throughout this colonizing era the prevalent motive was the religious one. For most of the people most of the time the controlling interest of life continued to be in God and His cosmic drama.

Third Tribe, Paugasset, or Derby (1655-1665)

The third tribe consisted of five families from Milford who in 1655 drove their oxcarts ten miles up the Indian trail to settle on the hights at Paugasset. Below, the Housatonic, the Naugatuck and tidewater convened between mountainous bluffs in a titanic, slow whirlpool. In its natural state this was surely the most magnificent site on the river, as it would be today if the industrial cities of Derby and Shelton could be deleted and the Naugatuck cleansed of the sewage of its industrial wealth. Appropriate to the future of the vicinity, the plain motive of the original settlement was the Devil’s, for most or all of the five families bought shares in the trading post a;ready established there by some New Haven people. Nevertheless, they continued to make a persuasive show of being good Puritans, most of them making every Sabbath the twenty-mile round trip to attend their old church in Milford, though the law with its five-shilling fine did not require them to go so far.

It is plain that all did not go smoothly between Milford and her northern daughter. During the period of first settlement there occurred an obviously hostile though obscure event referred to in local history as “the incident of Parson Prudden’s pigs.” Also, Milford for a long time forestalled Paugasset in its efforts to get independent township, and in 1659 the “Wolf-Killer” Edward Wooster asked the General Court whether he should seek from New Haven or from Milford the bounty for seven wolves destroyed. In 1660 the Paugassetites started the shipbuilding industry, which was to flourish for almost two centuries. In 1661 Edward Riggs sheltered the regicides Goffe and Whalley in his palisaded house while they were being moved from the famous Judges’ Cave in New Haven to the house of Micah Tompkins in Milford, where they were successfully concealed for three years.

Fourth Tribe, Woodbury (1665-1685)

After the death of their first minister, the Reverend Adam Blakeman, in 1665, Stratford split in two on the issue of the Halfway Covenant, the conservatives immediately ordaining the Reverend Zechariah Walker. There followed some years of acrimonious squabbling, mostly epistolary, at the height of which one “loving brother” wrote to another in the opposite camp; “It seemeth our greatest difference is what is our difference.”

In 1670 the General Court of Connecticut enacted in dignified annoyance that “it shall not be offensive to this Court if Mr. Walker and his Company doe meet distinctly elsewhere.” Accordingly in April, 1673, the first contingent of the Walker schism, being fifteen families complete with children and worldly goods, passed Paugasset with rafts and canoes, bound for the tributary Pomperaug sixteen miles farther into the wilderness up the Great River. Four or five miles up the small stream they had bought from some Indian chiefs, sight unseen, an allegedly large and fertile valley. Early on what was probably the third day of their journey, they passed the mouth of the Pomperaug as being too small according to the instructions they had from the Indian sellers. Four miles farther up they climbed the larger Shepaug., including lofty Roxbury Falls, wandered lost for a day in the Roxbury region, and were finally led by the Lord southward through the wilderness into their excellent valley, which they immediately recognized from the top of Good Hill. What they had not been apprised of, they saw also in the middle of the valley a fortified and occupied Indian village on a natural pinnacle which they later called Castle Rock. This eld to a conference in which three conflicting views were advanced, wahc of them soundly puritanical. One proposal was that they first kneel down and thank the Lord for having led them to this valley and then await His advice. The second was to go down immediately and attack the Indians. The third was to return to Stratford and sue the chiefs who had sold them the land. The pious view prevailed, and when, after thanks, they went down into the valley they were not disturbed.