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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 War Indian Titles and Mohegan Land Troubles Sowheag, Uncas, and Miantonomo Owenoco, the Son of Uncas THE
HOUSATONIC CHARD POWERS SMITH The Promised Land ALEXANDER JOHNSTON
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Samuel Orcutt The History of Stratford Indian History under whatever circumstances
found, excites a melancholy sympathy, which partakes of an extreme loneliness
as if one were lost in an indeterminable wilderness from which there could be
no escape by the ingenuity or power of man. As we pass over the site of their
ancient wigwams, although not a stick or a stone is left to mark the place,
we seem to be traveling amid the ruins of some ancient Persian or Egyptian
city, long celebrated for its beauty and magnificence and from which,
although the glory has all faded, or crumbled to dust, we hesitate to depart,
as though expecting still to see the forms of the long departed coming forth
to newness of life, to exhibit the wonders of ancient days. Occasionally we
discover about traditional localities, some stone implement, arrowhead,
pestle or axe, that seems as a spirit resurrected by enchantment to portray
the marvelous wildlife that wrought it, for the severest needs of earth,
which is like the recovery of some long lost painting of kingly banquet or
national pride and glory. The hatchet, although of stone, was the Indians
ensign of renown; the bow and arrow, his national flag of wild but
unconquerable liberty, and his tent, because it was not immovable, declared
an inheritance in a vast continent rather than a few circumscribed acres of
walled distributions. Sometimes the rolling waters of a mighty river, or the
heights of immense mountain ranges barred his progress for a time, but no
mountain was too high and no valley too low for the unwearied feet of the Red
man in the greatness of his freedom and the inexhaustible resources of his
physical strength. Nothing but the mighty ocean ever stayed his wandering
footsteps, until the white man took possession of the rocky and sandy shores
of the Algonquin country, afterwards called New England; when "the poor
Indian" fled the inland wilderness as if pursued by a devastating
pestilence; not has yet, after nearly three hundred years, found a sure
resting place. To him the shores of Long Island Sound were an enchanted
country, in the abundance it gave to supply his wants, and the beauty of its
climate and scenery reminding him of the native tropical clime of his
ancestors. Here on these shores he had dwelt many ages, when the glittering
sails of the white man came bearing the pilgrim planters to their new life of
freedom. In the winter many of them had retired to the sheltered valleys of
the inland wilderness, where they secured their daily food by the hunter's
sport, and then in the spring they returned to their old seaside haunts, just
as their white successors now, in the same season of the year, flee from the
hot breath of the inland valley to valleys to the cool breezes of the New
England coast. These "children of the wilderness" have been called
"Red men", "wild Indians", and "savage beasts,"
but with all, they have exhibited a manliness of character and rectitude of
life, according to the instructions received, that leaves no room for
boasting by those who now inhabit the same beautiful country. To these red
inhabitants the pilgrim immigrants were rather unceremoniously introduced,
and to them in turn they gave a cordial welcome, not knowing what the final
result would be. And now, after the lapse of ages, the pen of the historian
is importuned for some memorial record, which, although inadequate to the
object sought, shall be as a brief epitaph to commemorate the greatness of
those, of whom there is now nothing but ashes and fragments left. If you
have any questions email me at: |
ALEXANDER JOHNSTON
SOUTHPORT SWAMP Colonial History of Pequot Swamp COLONIAL INDIAN ARCHIVES Hon. Ralph D.
Smith David D. Fields Sarah
Day Woodward Winthrop’s Journal |