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/pHE TOWN AND CITY OF WATERBURY, ^ CONNECTICUT. FROM THE ABORIGINAL PERIOD TO THE YEAR EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-FIVE.
EDITED BY JOSEPH ANDERSON, D. D.
0
VOLUME I. BY SARAH J. PRICHARD AND OTHERS.
NEW HAVEN :
THE PRICE & LEE COMPANY.
1896.
lOAN STACK
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1896,
By the price & LEE COMPANY, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
PREFACE.
THE publication of a new History of Waterbury was first seriously considered by the firm of Price, Lee & Co. in the summer of 1887. The undersigned was invited at that time to take in hand the preparation of such a work, but felt compelled to decline the task. He gave to the publishers, however, the names of two writers whom he regarded as well fitted for the work, and in September the following notice appeared in the public prints: "Price, Lee & Co. of New Haven announce that their His- tory of Waterbury is in course of preparation, — the first hundred years in charge of Miss Sarah J. Prichard, and the last hundred years in charge of Miss Anna L. Ward." More than a year after this (on November 16, 1888) the firm issued a circular, in which, after referring to the publication of Bronson's History in 1858 and to the remarkable development of Waterbury since then, and expressing the conviction that the time had come for a new history of the town and city, they announced that arrangements had been completed for the preparation of such a work, and solicited the cooperation of those interested in the subject. In addition to Miss Prichard and Miss Ward, "the Rev. Dr. Joseph Anderson, the Hon. F. J. Kingsbury and Mr. H, F. Bassett " were mentioned as having been engaged to contribute chapters upon special topics or periods. From that time until now the work has been going forward with but little interruption, and in addition to those already mentioned several other writers have been enlisted, as indicated in the table of contents.
Up to the date of the issue of the circular just referred to, but little had been done toward putting on record the history of Water- bury. Interesting references to the town had occasionally been made by the early writers, as for example by President Timothy Dwight in his "Travels in New England and New York"; Barber in his " Historical Collections," in 1836, had devoted to it an enter- taining chapter (prepared, by the way, by Judge Bennet Bronson); Charles Burton had published in the National Magazine^ in 1857, his articles on the " Valley of the Naugatuck," two of them relating to Waterbury; Orcutt had issued in 1875 his "History of Wolcott," covering an important section of the old town; biographies of Waterbury men had appeared in such works as the " Biographical
566
iv PREFACE,
Encyclopedia of Connecticut and Rhode Island," and the " Repre- sentative Manufacturers of New England," and in the Leaven- worth, the Benedict, the Terry and the Hoadley genealogies; special subjects had been touched upon in such books or pamphlets as those of Chauncey Jerome and Henry Terry on clock making, and those by Messrs. Kingsbury and Anderson enumerated on pages 959-962 of our second volume; the Waterbury Almanac, begun in 1853, had garnered from year to year, so long as its issue con- tinued, the facts not only of the passing time but of the earlier days; the newspapers, for nearly half a century, had been making their daily or weekly record, and — most important of all — Dr. Bronson had published his History, embodying in it materials derived by his father from documents that have entirely disap- peared. But Dr. Bronson's work was completed within five years after Waterbury became a city, and was practically limited in its scope to the period that closes with the Revolutionary war. His account of " manufacturing in Waterbury," for instance, fills less than four pages. There was a clear field for the modern historian, and much interesting material in reference to the earlier times which had not yet been made use of. The claim of the circular, that in view of the rapid growth of Waterbury, the " marvellous development of the industries by which it has became known throughout the world," and the additional facts concerning its earlier period that had come to light, the time had arrived for a new his- tory of the town and city, seemed fully justified.
The plan of the work, as indicated fiiom the start, contemplated a book divided into two volumes, embracing about a century each. After a time the accumulation of materials for the modern period was so great that it became necessary that as much as possible should be crowded into the first volume. The line separating the two volumes was accordingly drawn through 1825, the year of the organization of Waterbury as a borough, and this involved the division of the history of the First church, of St. John's parish and the cemeteries of the town into two parts, the earlier of which is to be found in Volume I and the later in Volume III.
A recognition of the successive territorial partitions of the original township involved our including in our scheme the history of Watertown and Plymouth to 1780, of Wolcott to 1796, of Middle- bury to 1807, of Prospect to 1826 and of Naugatuck to 1844. The earlier history of these derivative towns is covered substantially by the narrative in Volume I, the only important exception being the history of Salem society (now Naugatuck) from the Revolution to its incorporation as a town, which it seemed best to leave, with
PREFACE, V
the exception of the Salem church, to some future historian to reproduce on a scale commensurate with its importance.
The narrative of the colonial and revolutionary periods is the result of an independent study by Miss Prichard of the original sources, including documents that have come to light since Dr. Bronson's History was written. This study was pursued with but little reference to Bronson, although the value of his labors was known from the beginning. It ought to be understood, however, that it was not the purpose of the author or the editor to super- sede the earlier work ; on the contrary, certain subjects to which Bronson devoted special attention are in this History passed over lightly for that reason. It may be added that Dr. Bronson, to the hour of his death, was deeply interested in the present enterprise.
The outline given at the opening of the second volume indicates the largeness of the plan upon which the modern history of the town and city was projected. It has been carried out with a ful- ness of detail hardly anticipated even by the editor when he prepared the schedule of topics for the guidance of his collabora- tors. It is therefore safe to say that this History is more extended in its scope and more exhaustive in details than any town history thus far published. This is made evident in the treatment given to the several departments of the city government, and to special topics not heretofore included in local histories, as shown in the chapters on street names, corporations, inventors and their patents, college graduates, philanthropic institutions, amusements and fraternities. While the fact has never been lost sight of that Waterbury is a great manufacturing centre, while the manufactories and the men who have controlled them have had justice done to them, at the same time a serious effort has been made to represent the many other phases of the life of a prosperous modem city. By following a plan constructed with some reference to modem sociology, the History has become almost cyclopaedic in its character, and instead of being, as the prospectus proposed, a work " in two volumes, of about 500 pages each," has grown into three volumes, with a total of 2250 pages. The liberality of the publishers in furnishing to subscribers so much more than was promised deserves to be recog- nized here, and this may serve at the same time as an explanation of the delay in the completion of the work.
In view of the attention given to details, the casual reader will be surprised at certain omissions and discrepancies which he is likely to discover. The probability of the occurrence of error is increased in any work when it is accomplished by collaboration. But in the present case the chief explanation of omissions and
vi PREFACE.
irregularities is to be found in the lack of cooperation on the part of the public. For the earlier history of the town the sources are of course documentary, and were therefore at the command of the author. For the later history resort must be had to living men, as individuals or as official representatives of organizations, and in many instances repeated appeals had to be made in order to secure a satisfactory statement of essential facts. If the amount of correspondence and of personal effort on the part of the compiler required to secure the data for some of our chapters could be known, it would serve as a revelation in regard to the indifference of the great majority to matters of history, and the difficulties that beset the local historian. Should omissions, then, be discovered, it may be that others than the compiler or the editor are to be blamed for them. It may be presumed at all events that omissions are not accidental, or the result of the want of a plan, but were allowed for some good reason. In the field of manufactures and trade, for example, it was found necessary to limit the record to corporations, and not to touch upon unincorporated business firms unless inci- dentally. There was of course no intention of slighting anybody or neglecting any " interest."
In a work like this, one of the matters difficult to deal with is the biographical element. Who among the living or the dead shall be selected for biographical treatment? and who shall be omitted? In answering these questions it was found impossible to draw a line which any two persons could agree upon. It should be said, how- ever, that the classification and grouping of biographies under different departments naturally led to including persons who might otherwise have been omitted, while others, of no less value in the eyes of the community and in their influence upon it, were passed by. In some cases, in which a formal biography is not given, the significant facts of the life are mentioned incidentally, and can readily be discovered by help of the index. If some biographies seem needlessly long and others too brief, it must be remembered that most of the sketches were prepared from materials furnished by the persons themselves or by their relatives. A similar remark may be made in regard to the genealogical data. The appendix of " Family Records " in our first volume must be of the highest value from the genealogist's point of view, but our History, nevertheless, was not intended to be a genealogy, and makes no claim to be so considered. When, however, the names of a second or third gener- ation and the birth-dates of male children were furnished, especially in families fully identified with Waterbury, we put them on record almost as a matter of course.
PREFACE, vii
The authorship of our History affords a fine illustration of the modern tendency to cooperative work in literature. The original plan, which placed the first hundred years in charge of Miss Prichard and the second hundred years in charge of Miss Ward, has been substantially followed out, although in each volume a group of writers is represented. Miss Prichard, in pursuance of her task, after years of patient and loving research, contributed to the History an elaborate and vivid narrative covering the colonial and revolutionary periods, and prepared, in addition, chapters on the old highways, on early place-names, on the history of the First church and on the church in Salem society. The relation of her work to Dr. Bronson*s has been already referred to, but it would not be easy to set forth the entire newness of the picture she has painted, and the amount of well-established detail she has introduced into it. As we read her story, the Waterbury of the eighteenth century comes back to us, vital with the old colonial life and clothed at the same time in that rich and tender coloring which the past so naturally takes on at the magic touch of a pen like hers.
From the nature of the case Miss Ward's work was entirely different. As already indicated, the sources she had to draw upon were living men and existing organizations, and much labor was required in securing the cooperation even of those who were them- selves subjects of the history. The newspapers of half a century had to be searched, an extended correspondence had to be carried on and personal interviews held, for the securing of materials, and after all this came a task of preliminary editorship, ere these materials could be handed over to the writers who were to prepare the several narratives. Such work can never secure the recognition it deserves, because it is work beneath the surface; but such work as this underlies our second and third volumes throughout, and without it our history of modern Waterbury could not have come into being. Miss Ward's relations to the people of the present time made her a representative, to a certain extent, of the business aspects of the publication, and in this field also she has exhibited decided ability. The numerous illustrations with which the book is adorned have been in her charge, and the elaborate index is the fruit of her skill in a field in which she is known as an expert.
Among the collaborators there are two who ought to be specially mentioned because of the large amount of work done by them. One of these is Miss Katharine Prichard, who prepared with pains- taking labor the invaluable appendix containing a transcript, with important additions, of the records of the town in relation to births,
viii PREFACE.
marriages and deaths. The other is Mr. Kingsbury, who has not only written a number of chapters, but has served continually as a repository of genealogical and other facts, ever ready to be drawn upon and always reliable. The others who have cooperated in the production of the several narratives are designated in the table of contents prefixed to each volume. A helper who has, perhaps, done more for the work than is thus indicated is Benjamin F. Rowland, who has assisted Miss Prichard in following out many lines of re- search. Another is Professor David G. Porter. Another is Miss Mary De Forest Hotchkiss, whose services have been chiefly, but by no means exclusively, clerical. The editor takes the liberty of say- ing that he regards the men and women who have contributed to this History as constituting a corps of workers of exceptional ability — some of them filling the position of specialists in the fields in which they have labored.
With so large a variety of authors, it was inevitable that there should be considerable diversity of style and treatment, and, as already suggested, occasional repetitions and contradictions. The diversity of style and treatment is probably an advantage. As for contradictions and repetitions, they have been eliminated, so far as a laborious editorial revision could accomplish this. The editor is not responsible for Miss Prichard's narrative, but only for its place in relation to the work as a whole. As for the other chapters, he has taken it upon himself to shape them with reference to a certain editorial standard, which included such minor matters as punctua- tion and capitalization, and the omission of the titles "Mr." and " Miss," and of the name of the state after places, when that state is Connecticut. It included also, within certain limits, the literary form of the chapters.
That some parts of the History are brought down only to 1894 and others to the end of 1895 is explained by the fact that the work has been going through the press for two years. Many changes have taken place in the community in the meantime, the most important of which is probably the securing of a new charter for the city and the reorganization under it of the municipal depart- ments. (As the first volume was printed before the division into three volumes was decided upon, some of the references therein to Volume II should read ** Volume III.**)
Since this work was first projected, several books and pamphlets have appeared, relating to the history of Waterbury. Among these are: " Waterbury and Her Industries," published in 1888; " Water- bury Illustrated," published by Adt & Brother in 1889; "The Book of the Riverside Cemetery," 1889; "Waterbury, its Location, Wealth,
PREFACE. ix
Finances, etc., published by the Board of Trade," 1890; "The Mili- tary History of Waterbury," 1891; "The Churches of Mattatuck," 1892, and " The History of New Haven County" (Volume II, Chapter XV) 1892. It is pleasant to note that all these, except the last, were prepared by writers belonging to our corps of collaborators, and were not designed to supersede this work or any part of it.
A fact which ought not to pass without mention here is that sev- eral of those who have been engaged upon this work did not live to see it completed. Of the writers whose names appear in our table of contents four have finished their earthly course since the History was begun: Nathan Dikeman, Israel Holmes, 2nd, who died Feb- ruary 12, 1895, the Rev. J. H. Duggan, who died November 10, 1895, and Thomas S. Collier of New London. The widely-known en- graver, Alexander H. Ritchie, by whom most of the steel plate portraits in this History were executed, died September 20, 1895, in his seventy-fourth year. He was a native of Scotland, an artist in oil colors, and for twenty-five years a member of the National Academy of Design. He had frequently expressed a desire to com- plete this series of portraits, upon which he had been at work for seven years, and during his last illness had the satisfaction of knowing that his hope had been realized. It is to be added that Greorge S. Lester, who, as a representative of the publishers, was for some time closely connected with the History, and well-known in Waterbury, died on April 20, 1893.
The editor ventures to say a word in conclusion in reference to his own work. It was understood at the outset that the three gentlemen mentioned in the prospectus should constitute a kind of editorial board, to whom the various doubtful questions likely to arise, as well as the general shaping of the work, should be sub- mitted. This position they have not abdicated and their advice has continually been sought, but as the work advanced, its editorial management devolved more and more upon the undersigned, and became by degrees a close supervision, extending not only to the general plan and outline but to innumerable details of form and arrangement, to say nothing of the composition of entire chapters of the narrative. The duty of supervision, which the editor thought of in advance as but little else than a pastime, proved for various reasons to be a prolonged and laborious task. The plan of the History was so extensive, and the standard adopted so high, that a much greater burden of labor came upon him than he antici- pated when he accepted the position. His professional duties, of course, could not be transferred, and this special work must there- fore be performed at odd times and during summer vacations and
X PREFACE.
in midnight hours. If it is not what it ought to be, he hopes that these facts may serve to explain deficiencies. Looking back over the past four years, he is inclined to appropriate as his own the quaint language of Anthony k Wood in the preface to his History of Oxford: "A painful work it is, I'll assure you, and more than difficult, — wherein what toyle hath been taken, as no man thinketh so no man believeth, except he hath made the trial." A "painful work," but a work that has had its pleasures; and not the least of these has been the close association into which it has brought the editor with the other workers in the same field. That it has also opened up to him a richer and more detailed knowledge of this noble old town, of which he has been a citizen for more than thirty years — a town remarkable for its strong men and for its marvel- lous development as an industrial centre — is something for which he cannot cease to be grateful.
JOSEPH ANDERSON.
Waterbury, February 22, 1896.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
CHAPTKR PACB
I. PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS i
By Homer F. Basset t, M. A.
II. ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS. 14
By the Rev. Joseph Anderson, D, D, Also the three following chapters,
III. INDIAN DEEDS AND SIGNATURES 26
IV. INDIAN GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 39
V. STONE IMPLEMENTS OF MATTATUCK 56
VI. LONDON'S PLANTATION IN MASSACHUSETTS BAY, . 77
By Miss Sarah J, Prichard. This and the following chapters to Chapter XXXIV were written by Miss Prichard,
VII. MASSACHUSETTS BAY'S PLANTATION IN CONNECTI- CUT, 91
VIII. CONNECTICUT'S PLANTATION AT MATTATUCK, . 116
IX. MATTATUCK AS A PLANTATION, 127
X. MATTATUCK AS A PLANTATION 144
XI. ORDERS OF THE ASSEMBLY'S COMMITTEE, . .150
XII. MATTATUCK AS A PLANTATION 158
XIIL MATTATUCK AS A PLANTATION, 176
XIV. THE TOWNSHIP OF 1686, 185
XV. WATERBURY IN 1689 203
XVI. FROM 1685 to 1691, 215
XVII. THE FIRST CHURCH OF WATERBURY 224
XVIII. MEADOWS, ISLANDS AND HILLS. 237
XIX. DURING QUEEN ANNE'S WAR, 248
XX. THE SCOTT FAMILY 257
XXI. THE COMMON FENCE 264
XXII. TO THE CLOSE OF THE PROPRIETORS' REIGN, . . 277
XXIII. THE NEW INHABITANTS 292
XXIV. EARLY NORTHBURY 311
V
«
xii CONTENTS OF VOLUME 1.
CHAPTBR PACK
XXV. EARLY WESTBURY, 320
XXVI. EVENTS FROM 1732 TO 1741, . . - . 332
XXVII. THE SETTLEMENT AT JUDD'S MEADOWS, . , .342
XXVIII. LANDS HELD BY NON-RESIDENT OWNERS, . .353
XXIX. 1742- 1760 366
XXX. WATERBURY IN THE COLONIAL WARS 383
XXXI. WATERBURY'S LATER YEARS AS A COLONIAL TOWN. 398
XXXII. WATERBURY IN THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION, . 409
XXXIII. WATERBURY IN THE REVOLUTION. 433
XXXIV. WATERBURY IN THE REVOLUTION ... 445
XXXV. AN ERA OF RECONSTRUCTION. . . . . 488
By Arthur Reed Kimball.
XXXVL LIFE IN THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 520
By Mrs. Emily Goodrich Smith {with additions).
XXXVII. OLD HIGHWAYS AND STREETS, 548
By Miss Sarah J, Prichard and Benjamin K How land.
XXXVIII. OLD MILLS AND EARLY MANUFACTURES, . . 572
By the Hon. Frederick J. Kingsbury^ LL. D.
XXXIX. THE EARLY SCHOOLS AND THE FIRST ACADEMY, . 592
By Miss Charlotte Benedict; the First Academy by the late Israel Holmes^ 2nd,
XL. THE FIRST CHURCH TO 1825; ALSO THE CHURCH IN
SALEM 601
By Miss S. J. Prichard {pp. 601-616; 640-646) and Dr. fosepk Anderson. The biography of Dr. Samuel Hopkins by Miss Benedict,
XLI. THE EPISCOPAL PARISH TO 1830, 647
By F. J. Kingsbury, LL. D.
XLII. BURYING GROUNDS AND TOLLING BELLS, . . .666
By Miss Katharine Prichard {pp. 666-63o) and Dr. Joseph Anderson.
XLIIL ENGLISH PLACE NAMES OF MATTATUCK, . . .685
By Miss S. J. Prichard and Benjamin F. Howland.
APPENDIX. FAMILY RECORDS pp. 1-166
By Miss Katharine Prichard.
PORTRAITS IN THIS VOLUME.
Anderson, Joseph,
ON STEEL.
Frontispiece.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Bronson, Alvin, Bronson, Josiab, Cook, Lemuel, Hopkins, Samuel, D. D.,
PACB
518 515 315 634
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THIS VOLUME.
John Warner's staff, .......
Tree in the rock on the old Cheshire road, ....
A western war-club, scalp-locks attached, and old Waterbury buttons marked
" Scovills & Co. extra," ......
Pestle of Turkey hill Indians, ......
Indian pipes, ........
Implements found in Naugatuck, ......
Soapstone dish and chipped implements. Hospital bluff, Waterbury, . Dish, axes and *• Chungke stone," Waterbury, ....
Specimens found near Bunker Hill, .....
Pestle and soapstone dish from Watertown, ....
Toy implements from a child's grave, .....
Articles of agreement and association adopted by the planters of Mattatuck;
first page, ........
Articles of agreement; second page, . .
Articles of agreement; reverse, ......
The old Town Plot, ........
House lots of Mattatuck, 168 1, ......
Dr. Henry Bronson's map, .......
The oldest gravestone, .......
The Indian deed of February 20, 1684, .....
The Three Sisters, alias the Three Brothers, ....
Waterbury township of 1686; view from Malmalick hill, ]
Proprietors' book of record, 1677-1722, .....
Hop Meadow hill; the sections remaining in iEqi,
Looking down upon Steel's meadow and plain, ....
Pine meadow, looking southward from Reynolds bridge.
Jericho rock and Buck's Meadow mountain, ....
The Rock house ........
PAGE
xiv 6
25 34 38 60
65 66
67 68
71
128 129 130 132 160 161
173 192
193 98, 199
216 241 242
243 244
259
XIV
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Steel's meadow along the river,
Map of survey, 1715,
Entrance of Beacon Hill brook into the Naugatuck river at the straits,
House built by the Rev. John Tiumbull,
The valley of '* the small river that comes through the straits
Lebanon," .... Pac-simile of invitation to a ball, . House built by William Adams, Factory of J. M. L. & W. N. Scovill, 1835, Third house of worship of the First church, 1796 to 1840 Fac-simile of receipt given by Andrew Eliot, Fac simile of receipt given by Thomas Ruggles, St. John's church, 1795, Gravestone of Hannah Hopkins, . The Porter house at Union City, The house site of Ebenezer Richards, The old mill at Grey stone, . Some autographs of early settlers.
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JOHN WARNKR's staff. <DBACON JOHN WARNKK OF NORTHBURY, BORN 170O, DIED 1795.^
CHAPTER I.
THE ANCIENT TOWN — ITS BOUNDARIES — ITS TOPOGRAPHY — ITS STREAMS — ITS GEOLOGY — THE GLACIAL AGE — ITS MINERALOGY, BOTANY AND ZOOLOGY.
ANCIENT WATERBURY embraced a territory lying on both sides of the Naugatuck river and extending from the point where Beacon Hill brook joins that stream, or the southern- most limit of the town of Naugatuck, to the northern line of the towns of Plymouth and Thomaston, or even further north. The length of this tract is not less than sixteen miles and the average breadth about eight, and it contains nearly one hundred and thirty square miles. Lying near the southern extremity of the Green Mountain range, it has a surface consisting of several low, parallel ridges, with narrow valleys between, which trend almost without exception to the south. The unevenness of the surface produces numerous watersheds of limited extent, from which small streams find their way to the Naugatuck. Only one of these is called a river, and this is hardly more than a good sized brook. So numer- ous are these streams that they are supposed to have suggested the name given to the territory when it was incorporated as a town.
One of the largest tributaries of the Naugatuck is Lead Mine brook, which takes its name from a hill in the town of Harwinton, where a mine of black lead was supposed to exist. This stream enters the Naugatuck a short distance south of the present northern line of Plymouth, but there are good reasons for believing that the original boundary was further north and that Lead Mine hill was within the limits of ancient Waterbury. Northfield branch enters the Naugatuck, from the west, at the village of Thomaston. A mile south of this, at Reynolds Bridge, West branch, which rises in the town of Morris, flows into the river, also from the west. It is generally called "the Branch." The next tributary is Hancock brook, which unites with the main stream at Waterville. It drains a long, narrow valley, east of, and nearly parallel with, the Nau- gatuck. Steele's brook, whose watershed embraces the eastern and northern parts of Watertown, enters the Naugatuck from the west about half way between Waterville and Waterbury. The largest
2 HISTORY OF WATERBUBT,
and most important branch of the main stream, within the limits of the ancient territory, is Mad river. This stream has its source in Cedar swamp, which lies partly in the town of Bristol and partly in Wolcott, and was so named when it was covered with a heavy growth of white cedars. A dam of very moderate height, across the outlet, has converted it into a large reservoir, and its waters are used by the factories along the stream. Mad river, on its way to the Naugatuck, receives several tributaries. The largest of these are Lily brook, Lindley brook and Chestnut Hill brook. They furnish a large quantity of most excellent water, and are considered of great importance to Waterbury as the probable source of a future water supply. A small stream known as Smug's brook enters the Naugatuck from the east, at Hopeville, and a larger one, called Fulling-mill brook, at Union City. The next two tributaries are from the west. The first, Hop brook, joins the river between Union City and Naugatuck, and the other. Long Meadow brook, at the lower end of Naugatuck village. Beacon Hill brook, the south- ernmost tributary within the limits of our territory, is historically interesting as the ancient boundary between Waterbury and Derby. It unites with the Naugatuck just where the hills converge to form the gorge below the village of Naugatuck. It is thought that during the glacial period this gorge was closed by ice or other obstructions, and that a lake occupied the valley for many miles above.
The Naugatuck itself is formed by the union of two streams which come together at Torrington. The eastern branch rises in the town of Winchester and flows nearly south ; the western rises in Norfolk and flows southeasterly. Besides the streams we have mentioned there are numerous unnamed brooks which, after a brief course, fall into the main river. All the streams are fed largely by springs of pure water and were, in earlier times, the trout fisher's paradise.
There are no lakes in this territory, although Quassapaug is at one point only ** eighty rods " from the line that bounded ancient Waterbury on the west. Neither are there any large swamps. There are many small ones and not a few pools and temporary lakelets that disappear in the dry season. These are formed in the slight depressions in the underlying mica -slate and, as many of them have no visible inlet or outlet and are slowly filling up with vegetable and other matter falling into them, they make a sort of rude gauge by which we may roughly estimate the length of time that has elapsed since these basins were formed. Some of them are filled with peat moss, and attempts have been made to use
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS. 3
the peaty deposits for fuel, but with unsatisfactory results. A few have been drained and reclaimed and are now productive lands.*
One very important feature of this region remains to be noticed. It is the alluvial deposits along the Naugatuck river and some of its branches. At the time of its settlement by the whites these were natural meadows. They were not peculiar to these streams, but it was their existence here that led the settlers to choose this territory. They are of limited area, and the fertility of the soil caused the natives to destroy the forests which covered them, if such ever existed.
The geological history of Waterbury is short but interesting. All that the surface reveals, even to the eye of the geologist, is the existence of the same mica-slate and semi-crystalline rock that forms the foundation of the entire Green Mountain range, a super- ficial deposit of drift and the insignificant alluvial deposit already referred to. The two formations first named, though in contact are widely separated in time, but how widely geologists do not tell us, as the age or relative place of the Green Mountain mica-slate is a question on which they fail to agree. All admit that it is one of the oldest of the stratified rocks, but whether it antedates organic life on the planet, or is among the earliest of the formations that bear traces of life is not definitely settled. At some time in the history of the strata, either before they had become hardened, or if later when they had been made plastic through the agency of heat they appear to have been subjected to a lateral pressure so intense that they were curved, crinkled and twisted into the strange forms they now present. Later, when they had reached their present solid condition, they were, by the same internal force, raised up, tilted, broken and, in parts, completely overturned as we see them to-day. Striking illustrations of the tilting of vast ledges of these rocks can be seen on the west side of the Naugatuck river at Hinchliffe's bridge. The effects of lateral pressure on a large scale can be seen in the gorge below the old clock factory at Hoadley's station on the New York and New England Railroad. Veins of granite occur in many places. They are supposed to have been forced up through rifts in the slate rock from underlying molten masses. Some of these veins are of such extent and the granite is of so fine a quality that they are worked as quarries. The be'st quarries thus far opened are near the Naugatuck, one at
* The names attached to many of the hills, valleys, streams, and swamps are commemorative of persons or events, and such localities as Spindle hill, Buck's hill, Breakneck hill, Withington hill, Woodtick, Mill plain and Wooster swamp are chiefly interesting in connection with the circumstances which gave them name. They are located and described in the history which follows.
4 HI8T0BT OF WATERS UBT,
Rattlesnake hill, the other a mile above Reynolds bridge and known as Plymouth quarry.
It is evidently a long time, even as geologists measure time, since changes of position or serious disturbances of any sort have taken place in the rocks that form the Green Mountain range. How much they have been changed on the surface by the slow action of the elements, how often, through repeated subsidences and upheavals of the crust of the earth, they had been submerged in ancient seas and raised again above their surface before the ice age began, can never be known. Some conception of the length of time that elapsed between the completion of the mica-slate forma- tion and the beginning of the ice age can be gained from the fact that at least fifty distinct formations were begun and finished within that period. The possibility that some of these were contemporaneous is admitted, but the relative position of most of them is such that this could have been the case in only a few instances. Standing, as one may in many places on our hills, with one foot on the ancient slate rock and the other on the drift that partially covers it, one becomes a sort of Colossus of time, and the immensity of the period thus spanned quite overpowers the mind.
It is probable that much of the rounding and polishing of the boulders, pebbles and gravel which constitute so large a portion of the drift, was done by water before the glacial era began. The ice in its course took up this material, but deposited much of it unchanged. Long ago, as we reckon time, but quite recently, if we reckon by geologic eras, seas washed the base of the Green Mountain range and sandstone deposits of considerable extent were formed. In these, remains of animal and vegetable life are found which show that the higher forms of both lived on the land in great numbers and for a long period. But, if they lived within the limits of the territory we are describing, all traces of them have disappeared.
The loose, unstratified deposit of clay, sand, gravel, cobble- stones and boulders that covers nearly all the northern part of North America is known as "drift." It is a heterogeneous mass of material that has been transported by some means from places often hundreds of miles away, and always from points northward of its present location. The study of glaciers as they exist to-day in various parts of the world shows that the drift, whatever the history of the parts of which it is composed may be, has come into its present position through glacial agencies. So well are these agencies now understood that an explanation of most of the feat- ures presented by the drift in this region is not difiicult.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS, 5
The ice age was formerly looked upon as a completed period in the geological history of the earth, but it is no longer so considered. It may be nearing its close, for ice fields cover far less territory than they covered in the past, or it may be that the recession of the glaciers to higher altitudes and polar latitudes is only tem- porary, and that they will, sometime, reoccupy their former limits. Evidence is accumulating which shows that the advance and retreat of the ice fields occurred once or more than once before. Vast regions in the polar zones are covered with ice, and glaciers fill the higher valleys in many mountain ranges in the temperate zones, and in the aggregate millions of square miles are to-day undergoing a grinding and smoothing process precisely like that which smoothed and polished our hills of mica-slate. The study of existing glaciers shows them to be moving bodies and recent observations on some of the Alaskan ice fields prove that their velocity varies from a few inches to more than sixty feet in a day. Without stopping to consider the cause of this motion, it is suflScient for our purpose to say that the moving fields of ice trans- ported innumerable boulders far from their original beds (leav- ing them in many instances on the summits of high mountains), formed kames, drumlins and kettle holes,* and on melting left the general deposit of clay, sand, gravel and loose rocks that covers all our hills and valleys. At almost any point where the removal of the drift has laid the rocks bare, grooves and striae can be seen that were made by the slow but resistless movement of the ice and the sand and the fragments of rock imbedded in it. They are parallel and can often be traced for a long distance. Their direction in this region is a few degrees east of south. It is an interesting fact that, although their course is rarely, if ever, deflected to the right or left by any obstacle, they follow vertically every elevation and depression except the most abrupt. This was explained when it was found that glacial ice is not the rigid solid it seems to be, but yields under its own weight to all the inequalities of surface beneath it. It would be easy to show that this pressure must mani- fest itself vertically and not laterally. On all our hills of slate rock the easy acclivities are almost invariably on the northern side, and the cliffs, where such exist, are as constantly found on
* A ** drum " or " drumlin " is defined as a long narrow ridge or mound of sand, gravel and boulders; a name given by Irish geologists to elevations of this kind, believed to have been the result of glacial agencies. A " kame " is a peculiar elongated ridge made up of detrital material. A ** kettle-moraine " is an accumula- tion of detrital material with kettle-like depressions. These depressions are called kettle -holes. (A fine example of this sort is the north Spectacle pond on the Meriden road near Silver street.) The chief differ- ence between drumlins and kames is in the arrangement of the materials composing them and the time of their formation, the kames being of more recent date. It is only in the kames that the kettle-holes are met with.
The explanation here given of these terms seems called for, as they have but recently appeared in geological writings.
6 HISTOBT OF WATERBUUr.
the southern or southeastern side. This shows not only that the denuding; force which smoothed the hills came from the north and expended its energy against the rocky obstacles in its course, but that, being a semi-fluid, it did not accommodate itself to sudden and abrupt changes of level as readily as a fluid would have done. Boulders are found everywhere. They belong to various geological formations, but always to such as may be found at some point further north. This may be near at hand or hundreds of miles away. Some are rounded as if water worn in pre-glacial seas. Others are angular as if they had been subjected to little more than the ordinary action of the elements. Their situation often indicates very clearly the means by which their removal was effected. They are as often found stranded on the highest points of our hills as in the vales below — left there when the sea of ice melted away. One of the largest of these stray rocks, in this re-
gion, stands southeast of ton Hitch- Waterbury judge from mineralogi- a great way from its ori- ginal bed. So nicely balanced are some of these bould- ers that they can be moved by the hand, are called rocking stones. A remark- able bftulder is st.cn on the old Cht^shiru road, near the tl";!- denceof John Mix It is above the ordinary size, and out of a rift on its highest point a large and wide spreading white oak tree has grown.
a little distance to the
idence of Shel- i k, on the road from Southington, and, to i angularity and its .1 character, it is not
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS, 7
During the last thirty years several hills within the city have been leveled. Others, especially along the line of the railroads below the city, are fast disappearing. Very few remain intact. Their removal has afforded to those interested an excellent oppor- tunity for studying their structure. They are composed of sand, gravel and boulders, and are unquestionably of glacial origin. So also are the similar deposits that skirt the hillsides along the Naugatuck and its principal branches. The peculiar arrangement of the material composing them is not easily accounted for. It is not stratified, in the sense in which that term is usually understood, nor is it without a kind of stratification. Sorted, expresses best the arrangement of the sand, clay, gravel and boulders. The hills have usually a linear arrangement in the line of the glacial movement, and in this locality they are always found where some valley, large or small, opens out into a plain. South of West Main street two parallel ranges of hills exist; the range nearest the river consisting of material brought down the Steele Brook valley, and the other and much longer one, of material brought down the Naugatuck valley. Each of the brooklets that flow from the north through the city has its hill of drift, or terminal moraine, as they were formerly called, at the point where the stream enters, or formerly entered, the plain. The moraine of Little Brook valley was the hill (now removed) that extended from where Dr. Alfred North's residence stands to the fountain at the east end of the green. Spencer hill and the hill on which the High School building stands, mark the termination of Great Brook valley. The entrance of Carrington Brook into Mad River valley is marked by an exten- sive deposit of drift of the same general character as the others we have named, and similar examples may be seen in many other places.
As already remarked, the transportation of earth and boulders by glaciers is going on in many parts of the world to-day, but I do not find that any observer has satisfactorily explained the pro- cess by which the different materials in our hills were sorted and deposited. A careful study of their structure, based on observa- tions made while some of them were being removed, has led to the belief that they were formed near the close of the ice period, not by river currents but in temporary lakes. The closing of the gorge (already referred to) below Naugatuck would have resulted in the formation of a lake where Waterbury now stands, deeper than the height of the highest drift hills in this region. Admitting the existence of such a lake, we may suppose that the field of glacial ice extended over its entire surface, and that glacial rivers carried earthy materials across the ice. A deposit must, of course.
8 BISTORT OF WATERS URY.
have been formed at the termination of the ice field, the same as if it were on the land, and, as by irregular stages the ice retreated, a line of hills would have been left. The sorting would depend upon the volume and strength of the currents of water flowing over the surface of the ice, and these would vary with the seasons and from various other causes. The structure of the hills is just what it would be if a feeble current bearing clay or sand for a time^ till a hillock of such materials was formed, had been succeeded by a flood strong enough to bear along the heavier matter that had been left behind. The advance or retreat of the ice field even for a few feet, or any variations in the course of the currents, would change the place of the deposits, and bring about just such an arrangement as we actually find. This explanation accounts for the limited area covered by the several deposits and their great, relative thickness; also for the varying inclinations they present. As a rule they dip to the north or in the direction from which the material must have come, but it is not rare to find the inclination towards other points of the compass, and occasionally a deposit caps the cone-like hill, falling down to the base on every side. How far the features here described are local I am unable to say, but there are, in several geological works, cuts showing sections of drift hills in various localities, and in some of them the structure is apparently the same as in our hills.
One other feature of these hills is to be noted. Over the entire surface of most, and perhaps all of them, there is a thin layer of drift, rarely more than one or two feet in thickness, which differs from the layers beneath it in that the sand, gravel and boulders of which it is composed are intimately mixed and without any stratification whatever. As river currents capable of moving this material would have demolished the hills themselves, it is probable that it was formed from detritus from floating ice after the glacier had retreated to the northern shores of the lake.
On the road from Waterbury to Meriden, not far from Silver street, there were a few years ago two deep holes, partly filled with mud and water, known as the Spectacle ponds. One of them still remains, but the other has been drained by the removal of the bank of drift which separated it from Mad river, and the peat has been carried away. They are very near together, there being only a narrow roadway between them, and their small diameter, circular outline and great comparative depth suggest the name of kettle holes, which is now generally given to similar depressions every- where. The kettle hole on the north side of the road does not exceed three hundred feet in diameter at the top and its depth is
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS. 9
between thirty and forty feet if we include the water and mud which fill the bottom. The steep bank is composed of drift, but a ledge of rocks approaches very near to it on the northern side. The kettle holes were, for a long time, a puzzle to geologists, but it is now generally believed that they mark places where detached masses of ice of moderate extent but of great thickness were sur- rounded by and covered over with drift at the close of the ice period. As the ice melted, the debris on the surface would fall outward from the middle, and when all was gone a kettle hole would remain. This explanation does not militate against the theory that a lake covered this region at the time these were formed, for beds of ice of immense thickness are often covered with drift to the depth of many feet and of sufficient weight to strand the whole mass. Few regions illustrate better than ours the principal features of the ice age.
No rich deposits of the metals have ever been found within the limits of ancient Waterbury. It is said that traces of gold and silver exist in several places, and indications of copper are not rare, but the eflEorts that have been made at mining for these metals have not been successful. Early explorers of the region reported the discovery of graphite, and samples of the mineral seem to have been carried away, but the location of the mine, if there was one, was lost and has never been re-discovered. There are traces of graphite in our mica slate in many places, but nowhere in such quantity as could be called a black lead mine.*
A list of the trees and plants growing in Waterbury at the time of its first settlement would be interesting as showing how many of the native plants have become extinct. No such list exists, and there are very few references in ancient records to particular species even of the useful forest trees. Sometimes a particular species is mentioned as marking a boundary, but that is all. The original forests have been cut down and, though there are more acres of woodland than there were even thirty years ago, the trees are everywhere of recent growth. Probably the chestnut (Castanea
* As remarked in the description of the geological features of this region, the country is dotted all over with boulderSf and it is plain that these came from places north of where they now lie. Now it is well known that graphite is abundant at Hinsdale, Mass., at Brandon, Vt., at Ticonderoga on the west shore of Lake Champlain, and at many places north of the Naugatuck valley. Is it not quite probable that a boulder containing graphite from some of these places was found on Lead Mine hill, and that the small quantity thus secured was taken as an indication of a large deposit ? There is a boulder on a hillside half a mile south of Bristol, Conn., that contains a small amount of pure graphite. This rock must have come from a long distance to the north, as there are no other rocks of the same kind in that vicinity. A limestone boulder containing a vein of sulphate of strontia, was found a few years ago in the drift overlying the clay slate at Middleburg, Ohio, although the nearest locality where strontia is found in place is on Strontian island in Lake Erie, nearly one hundred miles from where the boulder lies.
lo HISTORY OF WATERBURT.
vesca) was then as now the most abundant species. This, with the white pine (Pinus strobus), the sugar maple (Acer saccharinum) and four or five of the eight or nine species of oak found here, formed the greater and more valuable part of the forests. Two species that were sparingly found here thirty years ago have since become extinct, — the black spruce (Abies nigra) and the paper or canoe birch (Betula papyracea). The former once grew in the swamp south of the Middlebury road, and the latter was found in several deep ravines. One species, the common locust (Robinia pseudacacia), has become naturalized in a few places.
Inasmuch as complete catalogues of the plants of this state, or of special districts, are easily accessible to botanists, it is quite unnecessary to attempt a full list here. What follows relates mostly to plants that are believed to be extinct or are becoming so, and to others that are interesting because of their habits, their beauty or their rarity, although not, perhaps, rare in other places.
Hepatica (Hepatica triloba), is becoming rare, being much sought after for its beautiful and very early flowers. Gold thread (Coptis trifolia), a plant in some repute for its medicinal properties, and abundant a few years ago in the vicinity of Waterbury, has become rare through the clearing up of its habitat — boggy swamps and wet thickets. The tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), the whitewood of the western states, is occasionally met with, but the finest specimens are dwarfs beside the majestic trees of this species found in the west and south. Canadian moonseed (Menispermum Canadense), never common here, seems to have entirely disap-
m
peared. The May apple or mandrake (Podophyllum peltatum) grew not many years ago, within a limited area, a short distance above Waterville. Sarracenia purpurea, best known as the pitcher plant or the side-saddle flower, was once very abundant in the peat swamp south of the Middlebury road, but disappeared when the fire overran the bog a few years ago. It is doubtful whether it can now be found within our limits, though very plentiful in localities not distant.
The climbing fumitory (Adlumia cirrhosa), often cultivated for festoons and bowers, was for several years common along the rocky banks of Hancock brook, above Waterville. The pale corydalis (Corydalis glauca) is sometimes met with on the bare summits of the hills, where it finds root in the seams and rifts of the rocks. We have ten or twelve species of the wild violet. The round-leaved (Viola rotundifolia) is the rarest of these, being found here only in cool, springy places. It is abundant further north, and this is its extreme southern limit, unless it be met with in the
PHYSICAL CIIABACTEBI8TIC8. ii
Alleg^hany Mountains. The violet wood-sorrel (Oxalis violacea), often cultivated, grew wild for a time on the hillside near the resi- dence of Wallace H. Camp. Rhus typhina, the stag horn sumach, is rare in this region, a few specimens being found in the rocky vallej' of Hancock brook, below Hoadley's station. The bladder nut (Staphylea trifolia) grows at the base of the hill in the meadow west of the Waterbury Brass Company's mill, and in a few other places.
The striped maple (Acer Pennsylvanicum) and the mountain maple (A. spicatum) are found in the ravine at the foot of Eagle rock, near Reynolds Bridge. The fringed polygala (Polygala paucifolia) sometimes called flowering wintergreen, is one of the most beautiful of our early spring flowers. It is not a rare plant, but is always a puzzle to young botanists. The prickly pear (Opuntia vulgaris) is common on the summit of Beacon Hill, just south of the line of ancient Waterbury, but does not, so far as I know, occur within our limits. The bristly sarsaparilla or wild elder (Aralia hispida) is found in the ravine between Waterville and Hoadley's station. It is very abundant further north on the Green Mountains. Four other species of this genus are found here. Flowering dogwood (Comus florida) is met with in all parts of our territory and is quite abundant on ihe hills west of Thomaston. The dwarf cornel (Comus Canadensis) grows in a swamp half a mile northwest of the Spindle Hill school-house in Wolcott. It is very common on the hills further north. The cranberry tree (Viburnum opulus) was found, a few years ago, on the hill west of the Waterbury Brass Company's mill, and the hobble-bush (V. lantanoides) grows in the ravine at Reynolds Bridge. The com- mon May-weed (Maruta Cotula), introduced from Europe, was formerly one of the most common weeds seen by the roadside. A few years ago it almost disappeared from this region, and for several seasons could scarcely be found. Lately it has reappeared, but is still rare.
The ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), that beautiful foreign pest which some have named as the national floral emblem, is so common that when it is in blossom in June, our hills are as white as if covered with snow. The creeping snowberry (Chiogenes hispidula) was quite abundant in Cedar Swamp before that was made a reservoir; but it is doubtful whether it can be found within our limits. The trailing arbutus (Epigea repens), once common, has almost disappeared through the ravages of Mayflower hunters, who take it root and branch, flowers or no flowers, wherever they can find it. Jamestown weed (Datura stramonium), not rare thirty years ago, is rarely if ever seen now. The fringed gentian
12 HISTORT OF WATEBBUBT.
(Gentiana crinita) is rather common, but is certain to share the fate of the arbutus, as its very pretty flowers are just scarce enough to be sought after. The five-flowered gentian (G. quinqueflora) occurs in Litchfield and in Bristol, and should be found in Plymouth and Thomaston. A thrifty patch of buckbean (Menyanthes trifolia) was found, a few years ago, by J. G. Jones (who has detected several rare plants in this region), in a muddy pool, beside Chestnut Hill brook, in Wolcott. It has since disappeared. Wild ginger (Asarum Canadense) was once common along the banks of Hancock brook, above Waterville.
A tree that, whether cultivated for shade or growing wild, exceeds all others in luxuriance, is the American or white elm (Ulmus Americana). It flourishes everywhere, on high lands and on low, in wet and dry soils alike. Its winged seeds take root and grow in every thicket, in cultivated fields, in gardens and even between the paving stones of gutters and sidewalks. It is a favorite shade tree throughout New England, and it thrives nowhere better than in the Naugatuck valley. The slippery elm (U. fulva) is rather rare, and seldom reaches a large size in this region. The hop (Humulus lupulus), introduced from Europe, grows spontaneously along the Naugatuck river. The family of oaks is represented by the following species: Quercus alba, Q. montana, Q. bicolor, Q. prinoides, Q. ilicifolia, Q. tinctoria, Q. coccinea, Q. rubra, and Q. palustris. The pine family is represented by the pitch pine (Pinus rigida) and the white pine (P. strobus). The latter seems to have been abundant here in early times and to have furnished much valuable timber. The hemlock and the black spruce grew here. The former is now quite rare and the latter exists only as a shade tree around old homesteads. The tamarack or black larch (Larix Americana), once common, is now nearly extinct. The white cedar (Cupressus thyoides) was once abundant in Cedar swamp, and a few scattering trees of small size still grow on the borders of the reservoir which occupies its place; but it is not, so far as I know, found within our limits.
The Indian turnip (Arisaema triphyllum) is very common, but the dragon root (A. dracontium) is rare. It was growing, a few years ago, along the Naugatuck, just below the Watertown railroad bridge and, in a gully now filled up, near the New England station in Waterbury. The water arum (Calla palustris) grows in Wolcott, in a swamp northwest from the Spindle Hill school-house, also in a swamp near the Middlebury road. Three species of lady's slipper (Cypripedium pubescens, C. parviflorum, C. acaule) occur in this territory. C. acaule is quite common, the others are very rare. At
PHTSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.
13
least twenty-five species of ferns are found in this region. One species, the walking-leaf fern (Camptosorus rhizophyllus), has dis- appeared from the only locality where I have found it growing. This was in Watertown, near Nonnewaug river, almost due west from the Watertown fair grounds.
In nothing else does the subjugation of a wilderness by man work such change as in its zoology. The larger wild animals are killed or driven away, and domesticated species, either useful or otherwise, take their places. The smaller animals change their haunts and to some extent their habits. Waterfowl desert the lakes and rivers, and other game birds become scarce and shy, and, though a few species of small birds may increase in numbers, most of them grow scarcer and some disappear, and the birds of prey follow the kinds they subsist upon. Fish are taken to an extent that exceeds their increase, and their homes are poisoned by sewage or closed by obstructions, till they die out, or they are only saved from extinction by a re-stocking of their haunts. Reptiles, from their habits, are less aflEected than other orders, but these also suffer through the reclamation of waste places and the war of extermination that is ever waged against the noxious kinds. Among the lower orders, especially among insects, these changes mean the destruction of many of the original tribes and the intro- duction of others.
We have no complete lists of the animals living here at the time of the first settlement of the country, but we know that many changes have taken place. Bears, deer and wolves, once common, are no longer found. Wild geese and ducks and other waterfowl, though formerly here in countless numbers, are rarely if ever seen on the ponds and running streams, and grouse and quail would long ago have become extinct had not the law given them protec- tion. The streams, poisoned by factories, are destitute of fish, and it is only in the small spring brooks among the hills that the trout now finds refuge. Civilization and cultivation mean extermination to the aborigines, whether wild animals or wild men. All give way to civilized man, for not his " rights " but his ambition and selfishness ** are paramount," and they have " no rights that he is bound to respect." In enlightened man the cruel instincts of the savage have not yet died out, and he gloats over his more perfect devices for destroying helpless creatures that while living are harmless, and when dead are of no value to him.
CHAPTER II.
Aboriginal Mattatuck — The Indian Race— The Algonkian Stock IN New England — Indians of Connecticut River, of Long Island Sound — Mattatuck claimed by both — Aboriginal Life — The Tribe and the "Gens" — Tribal Ownership of Land — Employments — Useful Arts — Implements of Stone — Language — Character.
THE history of Waterbury begins with its settlement by white men. But there are certain well known or ascertainable facts concerning its condition previous to the earliest visits of Europeans which some readers will expect to find included in the narrative, and which for the sake of completeness ought to be put on record. These facts relate not only to the topography, the geology and the natural history of the region formerly called Mat- tatuck, but to its aboriginal inhabitants.
These inhabitants belonged, of course, to the American Indian race. It is possible that the Naugatuck valley was at some far oflE time — say during the last glacial period — occupied by a prehistoric people, represented, as some think, by the Eskimos of the present day. But in the absence of any remains which can be positively assigned to such a people, it is unneccessary to take this possibility into account. The only inhabitants with whom we need concern ourselves are the Indians of whom the first settlers purchased the territory and their predecessors.*
At the time of the discovery of America, and at the settlement of Connecticut a hundred and fifty years later, the entire North American continent was overspread by a people constituting quite certainly a single race. With the possible exception of the Eskimos, they possessed physical and linguistic peculiarities which differ- enced them from other races of men and set them apart as a people by themselves. At the same time this widely extended race was divided into distinct stocks or peoples, separated from one another not only by geographical position but by the possession of totally distinct languages. There are those who, like Roger Williams in his " Key," speak of " the language of America " as if there were
* Chipped implements have been found in the gravel of the Delaware river, at Trenton, N. J., which from their position must apparently be assigned to a glacial era. (See Abbott's "Primitive Industry," chapter xxxiii.) But no great antiquity can be claimed for any remains thus far discovered in the Naugatuck valley.
ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS.
15
only one American Indian language, apparently ignorant of the fact that the Indian languages are numbered by hundreds, if not thousands. But, as in other parts of the world, these languages are not all distinct from one another, nor is the relationship between one and another in all cases the same. Some are as closely related as Spanish and Portuguese are, others as remotely as English and Welsh, and others are as completely separated from one another as are Greek and Hebrew. As in Europe and Asia there is an Aryan family of languages descended with all their diversities from a common parent language, and a Semitic family descended from an- other common parent, so is it with the languages of America. They exist in larger or smaller groups, each group entirely distinct from the others, and each consisting of several languages having a com- mon parentage, and characterized by certain close affinities. There is, for example, an Iroquois group, numbering seven or eight lan- guages, a Dakota group, numbering eighteen, a Shoshonee group, numbering thirty-two languages and dialects, and an Algonkin group numbering seventeen. The seven or eight members of the Iroquois group are evidently sister tongues, possessing to a large extent a common vocabulary and other common characteristics; the same is true of the seventeen members of the Algonkin group. But between the Mohawk language of the Iroquois group, and the Mobegan language of the Algonkin group, although the two ex- isted for a long time side by side, there was no more relationship than between English and Hungarian. There was a certain resem- blance between them in structure, but between their respective vocabularies, that is, between the stock of words used by a Mohawk and the stock of words used by a Mohegan, no resemblance or rela- tionship can be discovered.
It may not be strictly scientific to divide oflE and classify the peoples speaking these various languages according to the group- ing which the languages suggest, but it is very natural to do so, and is not likely to be seriously misleading. While therefore we speak of the American race as one, we speak of it as divided into " races " or peoples. Of all these, the Algonkians — that is, the tribes speaking the various languages of the Algonkin stock— were geo- graphically the most widely distributed. They extended "from Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, and from the Churchill River of Hudson Bay to Pamlico Sound in North Carolina."* Some of these — for example, the Crees, Chippeways and Delawares — were numer- ous and were spread over wide regions. But in the territory now known as New England the population was broken up into compar-
* J. C. Pilling's " Bibliography of the Algonquian Languages," p. iii.
1 6 HISTORY OF WATERBUR7,
atively small divisions, — the various tribes or bands speaking closely related languages, or dialects of the same language. In Southern New England the tribes best known to us were the Mas- sachusetts, the Nipmucks, the Narragansetts and the Mohegans, to whom the Pequots were closely related.*
Taking our position on the western bank of the Connecticut, say at Hartford, we find ourselves in the midst of an Algonkian people extending for some distance up and down the river, divided into tribes or bands, and perhaps loosely organized into a kind of con federacy. We can not accurately define the nature or extent of their organization, but we learn from the records of the time that at the first coming of the English a certain sachem named Sequas- sen sold land to them extending as far west as the country of the hostile Mohawks. The tribe of which Sequassen was a sachem must have included the Indians of the Farmington river, some of whom had their principal seat at Poquonnock, a dozen miles to the north of Hartford, and others at the bend in the river, eight or ten miles to the west, where Farmington was afterward settled. From this bend in the Farmington river, or from the name of the place at which the bend occurs, these Indians were called the Tunxis. f In Barber's " Connecticut Historical Collections " they are spoken of as "numerous and warlike," but Mr. J. W. DeForest in his " History of the Indians of Connecticut '* estimates their number at "eighty to one hundred warriors, or about four hundred indi- viduals." The first Poquonnock chief known to the English was Sehat, who was succeeded by Nesaheagun, whose name has been perpetuated in that of the first Waterbury lodge of Odd Fellows. J The Farmington Indians had a camping-ground at Simsbury also, some miles west of Poquonnock, and claimed ownership of the lands west of there, as far as the Housatonic river. All the ter- ritory comprised within the original bounds of Mattatuck was included in their claim.
* By some writers the lutme Mohegan is used to designate all the Indians between the Narragansetts and the Hudson river. " The Muhhekantew or Stockbridge Indians, as well as the tribe at New London, are by the Anglo-Americans called Mohegans. . . . This language is spoken by all the Indians throughout New England. Every tribe, as that of Stockbridge, that of Farmington, that of New London, has a different dia- lect; but the language is radically the same. Mr. Eliot's translation of the Bible is in a particular dialect of this language." P. 5 of Dr. Jonathan Edwards's '* Observations on the Language of the Muhhekaneew Indians. New Haven, 1788."
t ** The locality to which the name originally belonged was the * bow ' or * turning ' of the river, where * it bends' {wui-funJksAau) from a southeasterly to a northerly course." Dr. J. H. Trumbull's ** Indian Names of Places," p. 74.
The name " Tunxis " survives in the designation of a " tribe " or lodge of the " Order of Red Men/* in Waterbury.
t The old-fashioned e of the early scribes having been mistaken, as it often is, for an Oy the name has been transformed into " Nosahogan.'*
ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS.
n
Leaving the centre of the state and going southward to the shore of Long Island sound, we enter the country of the Quiripi Indians, who were known around New Haven harbor as the Quin- nipiacs. Their territory extended from the Connecticut river to the western bounds of the state. To the west of the New Haven Indians was another Quiripi tribe or band claiming ownership on both sides of the Housatonic. Their territory extended from West river (which flows between New Haven and Orange), or at any rate from Oyster river (which flows between Orange and Milford), all the way to Fairfield. Those who lived to the east of the Housa- tonic, whose chief seat was near the mouth of the Wepowaug (or Milford) river, were known as Wepowaugs; those to the west and north were called Paugasetts or Paugasucks.*
On the west of the Housatonic the Paugasucks claimed the terri- tory now comprised in the towns of Stratford, Bridgeport, Trum- bull, Huntington and Monroe, and on the east of that river lands extending northward beyond Beacon Hill brook, including what lies between the Housatonic and the Naugatuck, and embracing the Mattatuck bounds. Although their well-known sachem Ansanta- way t is said to have had his wigwam on Charles Island, the chief seat of the Paugasucks was at the mouth of the Naugatuck. On the tongue of land between the two rivers, about three-fourths of a mile above their junction and close to the Housatonic bank, they had a kind of fortress to which they were accustomed to resort in times of danger.
It appears, then, that at the date of the settlement of Mattatuck, the country lying to the east and northeast of it was occupied by an Algonkian tribe, having for its natural eastern boundary the Con- necticut river, and claiming jurisdiction far to the west, while the country lying to the south was occupied by another Algonkian tribe, having for its natural southern boundary Long Island sound, and claiming jurisdiction far to the north. Mattatuck itself — as any one may see by a glance at the map of Connecticut — lay at the intersection or overlapping of the two claims, and was the common meeting-ground of both tribes. If the tribes had been hostile rather than friendly, the meeting-ground would have been a battle-ground; but not only was there a good understanding
* Ifi the records of New Haven colony, the name appears as Paugasset ; in the records of the Connecticut colony, Paugasuck. It designated the lands '* by Derby ferry and about Derby neck," and was superseded by the English name Derby by vote of the General Court in May, 1675. It denotes, according to Dr. Trum- bull ('* Indian names," p. ^6) *'a place at which a strait widens, where the narrows open out," and is descrip- tive of the junction of the Housatonic and Naugatuck rivers. The name was applied, naturally enough, to the Indians who had their chief seat there.
i Like Nesaheagun, his name is perpetuated in that of an Odd Fellows' organization in Waterbury— the Ansantawae Encampment. 2
i8 HISTORY OF WATERS URT.
between them, there are indications in the various deeds of land signed by their representatives, that some of them were inter- related.
At the time of their first contact with Europeans, the American Indians in different regions were found in different stages of devel- opment. Those of Central America, Mexico and New Mexico lived in villages (pueblos) and depended almost entirely on horticulture for subsistence. There were other tribes that did not cultivate the ground, but depended entirely upon fish, game and bread-roots. Between these two extremes there were tribes which combined both these modes of life in different degrees. They depended partly on horticulture for subsistence, but could not be considered village Indians. To this class belonged the Indians of the Atlantic coast, including those of Connecticut. They had their established camp- ing-grounds, but they were a roving people. This was true of those from whom the territory of Waterbury was purchased. The Farm- ington river Indians had their camping-grounds at Poquonnock, Farmington and Simsbury, and the Paugasucks at the mouth of the Naugatuck. But we must not think of them as dw^elling perma- nently at these places, but rather as frequenting the entire region which they claimed as their own, establishing a temporary camp now at one place and now at another, according to the season of the year and the opportunities afforded for hunting and fishing, — an annual visit to the salt water being a matter of course even with those who lived at a considerable distance from it.* Dr. Bronson says: f '* It is believed that at the time of its discovery no Indian settlement existed within the limits of ancient Waterbury." Even if this was the case, it does not follow that the region was not occu-
* " They remove house upon these occasions :From thick warm valleys, where they winter, they remove a little nearer to their summer fields. When 'tis warm spring, then they remove to their fields where they plant corn. In middle of summer, because of the abundance of fleas, which the dust of the house breeds, they will fly and remove on a sudden from one part of their field to a fresh place. And sometimes, having fields a mile or two or many miles asunder, when the work of one field is over, they remove house to another. If death fall in amongst them, they presently remove to a fresh place ; if an enemy approach, they remove into a thicket or swamp, unless they have some fort to remove unto. Sometimes they remove to a huniing- house in the end of the year, and forsake it not until snow lie thick, and they will travel home, men, women and children, through the snow, thirty, yea fifty or sixty miles. But their great remove is from their sum- mer fields to warm and thick woody bottoms where they winter. They are quick ; in half a day yea, some- times at few hours' warning to be gone, and the house up elsewhere, especially if they have stakes ready pitched for their mats. I once in travel lodged at a house, at which in my return I hoped to have lodged again there the next night ; but the house was gone in that interim, and I was glad to lodge under a tree." (Roger Williams's " Key/' pp. 46, 47.)
" Towns they havfe none, being always removing from one place to another for conveniency of food, some- times to those places where one sort of fish is most plentiful, other whiles where others are. I have seen half a hundred of their wigwams together in a piece of ground, and they show prettily; within a day or two, or a week, they have been all dispersed. They live for the most part by the seaside, especially in the spring and summer quarters ; in winter they are gone up into the country to hunt deer and beaver." (John Jossclyn's "*'Accouni of Two Voyages to New England, made during the years 1638, 16*^)3," p 99 of reprint.)
+ " History of Waterbury," p. 2.
ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS. 19
pied, in the way already indicated. As we shall see (in the follow- ing chapter), there are remains which go to show either that it was more widely occupied than we are wont to suppose, or else that the period of its occupancy extended over hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
What kind of people were these aboriginal inhabitants of Mat- tatuck ? The ordinary reader doubtless believes that he has a toler- ably correct conception of them — although his views may be derived from newspaper estimates of the present-day Indians of the west- ern plains. But concerning the essential facts of aboriginal life and character most of us are thoroughly ignorant. This is not the place for elaborate dissertation or minute description; but there are important facts — some of them bearing directly upon the trans- fer of the territory from barbarian to civilized hands — which ought to be placed on record in such a history as this.
Among the Indians as first known to Europeans a tribal organ- ization was universal. Whatever classification into groups or lin- guistic families may be suggested by a study of their languages, we must not fail to recognize their division into tribes, each tribe claiming possession of a territory of its own, having a name of its own, and distinguished by a special dialect, the result of its separa- tion in area from others speaking the same mother language. It is not generally known, but it is a well established fact, that within the limits of every tribe was another organization —perhaps we should say, an " institution " — which has received the name of clan or gens. The gens is a very ancient form of social organization, which can be traced in nearly all parts of the globe among savage and barbarous peoples, and which existed in full development among the American aborigines at the time of the discovery. A gens consisted originally of a group of persons related by ties of kindred, who "traced their descent from a common female ancestor through females, the evidence of the fact being their possession of a common gentilic name. It included this ancestor and her children, the children of her daughters, and the children of her female descendants, through females, in perpetuity; while the children of her sons, and the children of her male descendants through males, would belong to other gentes^ namely, those of their respective mothers."* Every tribe, therefore contained at least two gentes, while in some tribes the number had increased by subdivision to more than twenty. Each gens was distinguished by its name and totem (usually the name of some animal or bird) ; its members pos- sessed certain rights in common and were bound together by cer-
* L. H. Morfran's "Ancient Society," pp. 67, 68.
20 HISTORY OF WATERBURT.
tain mutual obligations, the most important of which was the obli- gation not to marry in the gens. It was to the gens, and not to the tribe, that the right belonged of electing sachems and chiefs. The office of sachem (whose duties were confined to affairs of peace) was hereditary in the gens, that is, it was filled by election as often as a vacancy occurred; other chiefs were elected in recognition of per- sonal bravery, wisdom or eloquence. In these elections all adult persons, both men and women, had a right to take part, so that the organization was on a purely democratic basis. The gens held the right also of deposing those whom it had elected, so that the term of office was practically " during good behavior." It ought to be added that the office of sachem, in order to remain within the gens (the line of descent being on the female side), must pass from brother to brother or from uncle to nephew, never from father to son. Property also was hereditary in the gens, and under a similar law.
There is good evidence that these forms of organization — the tribal and the gentilic — existed among the Indians of Connecticut no less than among the other aborigines of America. We have already pointed out certain lines of tribal division and centres of tribal life. There is no doubt (in view of modern investigations) that through these various tribes the existence of three ancient gentes (the Wolf, the Turtle and the Turkey), which belonged to the Indians of Connecticut in common with the Delawares dwelling further to the south, could have been traced, and that these had in the course of centuries been subdivided until they numbered eleven, each having its special name. Among the modern descend- ants of the Mohegans the division into eleven gentes still exists.*
A fact of more importance (not intrinsically, but in order to a correct understanding of the relations of the aborigines to the first settlers) pertains to the ownership of property. Among people in the " lower status of barbarism," the amount of personal property is always small. It consists of one's personal effects, together with possessory rights in garden-beds, and, among some tribes, in joint- tenement houses. Among the Indians, the ownership of these was hereditary in the gens. But, except among the Aztecs, who had advanced somewhat further than the northern tribes, the owner- ship of lands inhered not in the gens but in the tribe. The condi- tion of things existing among the Cherokees and other tribes of the Indian Territory to-day, was universal among the aborigines — namely, tribal ownership of land and no ownership in severalty. The territory of a tribe "consisted of the area of their actual
♦"Ancient Society," pp. 173, 174, 100.
ABORIOINAL INHABITANTS. 21
settlements and so much of the surrounding region as the tribe ranged over in hunting and fishing, and was able to defend against the encroachments of other tribes." Outside of this area was a margin of neutral ground, separating the tribe from other tribes, and claimed by neither. When the neighboring tribe spoke a different language, this neutral area was likely to be broad; when they spoke dialects of the same language, it was narrower and less clearly marked.* The fact that there were no definite boundary lines may serve to explain the rival claims of different bands which the settlers of Mattatuck had to recognize, involving repeated purchases by them of the same territory.
The kind of life which the aboriginal occupants lived may be partly inferred from what has been said in regard to their means of subsistence. Their chief dependence was upon fishing and hunting, which were the sole employments of the men; the cultivation of the ground was left entirely to women. Whatever pertained to in-door life — the wigwam with all its belongings — was under the care of the women; the men, when not occupied in the chase, or engaged in war, lived a life of leisure, diversified by the manufac- ture of bows, arrows, axes and pipes.f
It must be remembered that these people belonged to what has been termed the stone age, and had not emerged from the lower level of barbarism. They knew nothing of iron, and almost noth- ing of copper. But the number of things which they could do, without metals of any kind, is greater than any one would imagine who had not made a special investigation of the matter. They possessed the art of striking fire; they made bows and arrows — the bowstrings of sinew, the arrow-heads of stone or bone; they manufactured various other stone weapons and implements (some
♦*' Ancient Society," p. X 12.
^ Roger Williams, in his **Key," says that the men ** commonly get and fix the long poles, and then the women cover the house with mats, and line them with embroidered mats which the women make,— which amongst them make as fair a show as hangings with us " (p. 32, first edition.) He says in the same chapter : *^ Their women constantly beat all their corn with hand " in their pounding mortar ; ** they plant it, dress it, gather it. barn it, and take as much pains as any people in the world. . . . It is almost incredible what burthens the poor women carry of com, of fish, of beans, of mats, and a child beside." '* Generally all the men throughout the country have a tobacco-bag, with a pipe in it, hanging at their back. Sometimes they make such great pipes, both of wood and stone, that they are two foot long, with men or beasts carved, so big or massy that a man may be hurt mortally by one of them ; but these commonly come from the Mau- quauwogs [Mohawks], or the men eaters, three or four hundred miles from us" (pp. 37, 38, 44, 45.)
Wood, in his *'New England's Prospect,^' says that the women in their care of the cornfield,'* exceed our English husbandmen, keeping it so clear with their clam-shell hoes, as if it were a garden rather than a cornfield, not suffering a choking weed to advance his audacious head above their infant corn, or an under- mining worm to spoil his spurns." He adds that '^ in winter-time they are their husbands' caterers, . . . and their porters to lug home their venison, which their laziness exposes to the wolves till they impose it upon their wives' shoulders." "They are often troubled, like snails, to carry their houses on their backs, sometimes to fishing- places, other times to hunting-places, after that to a planting place, where it abides the longest " (part 2, chapters 19, 20.)
22 HISTORY OF WATERBVRT.
of them chipped, others ground), such as axes, hammers, chisels, knives, drills, fish-spears, net sinkers, mortars, pestles, pots, pipes, ceremonial and ornamental objects, and implements for use in athletic games. They made vessels of clay mixed with sand and hardened by fire. They had learned how to cure and tan skins, and of these made moccasins, leggins and other wearing apparel. They made nets and twine and rope from filaments of bark, and wove the same material into belts, sashes and burden straps. They made baskets of osier, or cane, or splints; canoes of birch bark or skins, or dug-out logs, and houses of poles covered with skins. They had also invented musical instruments, such as the flute and the drum. They cultivated maize, beans, squashes and tobacco, and made unleavened bread of pounded maize boiled in earthern ves- sels.* Of the various objects manufactured by the aborigines of Connecticut only those made of stone have escaped the tooth of time, with the exception of a few specimens of pottery, most of them fragmentary. The stone implements, however — especially the small implements made by chipping — are numerous, and are valu- able as indicating the kind of life which the primitive man lived and the various places occupied by him in the course of centuries. Within the bounds of ancient Mattatuck, as everywhere else in America, we can trace the red men by the stone " relics" they have left behind them. We can see them moving from place to place, establishing their camping-ground now on the river-bank, now by the brook-side, now on some commanding bluff, and again at some perennial spring. The arrow-maker's hut had its place in each camp, and the chips which he made still testify, in many a quiet spot, to his industry and skill. f That there were well-worn paths across the tribal territory, made by these roving bands in the course of centuries, is altogether probable, and it is also probable that some of the roads of the present day follow the trails of our aboriginal predecessors. To what extent during their long occu- pancy they had carried the task of clearing the land of forests, it is impossible to say. Perhaps they had done more in this direction — especially at certain tribal centres — than they usually receive credit for.
Our outline would be very imperfect, did we make no reference to the language of these aborigines. As already indicated, the dia- lects spoken on the Connecticut and on Long Island sound, were dialects of an Algonkin language common to all the tribes between the Kennebec river and the Hudson. This language has been pre-
* L. H. Morgan, '* North American Review," October, 1868; "Ancient Society/* pp. 69, 70. t Compare Abbott's " Primitive Industry,'' pp. 455-459.
ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS. 23
served to the present day in John Eliot's Indian Bible and other translations, in Roger Williams's " Key into the Language of America," and in Abraham Pierson's "Some Helps for the Indians." The work by Pierson, who was the father of the first rector of Yale College, is " a catechism in the language of the Quiripi Indians," and represents "a dialect having a place between the dialects of Massachusetts, Narragansett and eastern Connecticut, and those of the middle states; showing nearer affinity than other New Eng- land dialects to the true Delaware or Renapi of New Sweden." *
This is the dialect which was spoken by the Paugasucks of the Naugatnck river, who claimed ownership of the lands to the north, including the territory of Mattatuck, and must have differed some- what from that spoken by the Farmington Indians. The nature of the differences between the dialects is indicated by Roger Williams in his " Key," under the word anum^ meaning " a dog." He says: ** The variety of their dialects and proper speech within thirty or forty miles each of other is very great," and illustrates this by the differ- ent forms of this word. In the Cowesit dialect it is anum, in the Nipmuck alum^ in the Narragansett ayim^ and in the Quinnipiac arum. " So that," he adds, " although some pronounce not / nor r, yet it is the most proper dialect of other places, contrary to many reports." f Eliot in his " Indian Grammar Begun " refers to the same variations: "We Massachusetts pronounce the «, the Nip- muck Indians pronounce /, and the Northern Indians pronounce r;" and we have a further instance in the different forms of the name by which the Indians of southwestern Connecticut are designated. " Quinnipiac {quinni-pe-auke) means * long- water land ' or country. . . . In the Mohegan and Narragansett dialects the first syllable was pronounced quin^ by the Connecticut river Indians quil, and by the Indians west of the * long water' quirJ' J Similar dialectic peculiari- ties can be traced in the names signed to the deeds given to the set- tlers of Mattatuck by the Paugasuck Indians, who were undoubt- edly Quiripis, when compared with the names of the Indians of Farmington river. Of the dialect actually spoken in the Naugatuck valley, a few words have been preserved by Mr. J. W. DeForest, in the appendix to his "History of the Indians of Connecticut." In this brief list the same dialectic differences can be traced. For ex- ample, the word for " man," which in the Narragansett was nnin, was in the Naugatuck dialect rinh; the word for " fire," which in the Massachusetts was nootau and in the Narragansett note or yote, was in
♦Dr. J. H. Trumbull's reprint of Pierson (Hartford, 1873), p. ii.
+ " Key," p. X07.
X Dr. J. H. Trumbull's " Indian Names," p. 61.
24 HISTORY OF WATERBURT.
the Naugatuck ruuhiah. The other Naugatuck words are, wenih^ woman, keesoop, day, toofku, night, nuppehy water, tookh^ tree, awaususo, bear, and sepu, river, — for each of which a corresponding word, closely resembling it, may be found in the related dialects. *
The language of which this was one of the dialects has been carefully studied in modern times by DuPonceau, Pickering, Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, and others; its structure has been examined and its grammatical characteristics have been placed on record. Its peculiarities can not be here explained, but it may be worth while to mention that in its structure it was " polysynthetic," like all the Algonkin languages (perhaps we may say, all the aboriginal lan- guages of North America) ; that its vocabulary, contrary to the pop- ular impression, was abundant rather than scanty, and that it was as completely subject to strict grammatical laws as the languages of the civilized world. Any one who fancies that the aboriginal occupants of Mattatuck were poorly furnished with means of inter- communication by speech, or had to make use of a rude and form- less dialect, would do well to examine the paradigms of the verb in Eliot's grammar, or the vocabularies in Williams's " Key," or the questions and answers in Pierson's catechism. A close study of these remains of an extinct speech would inevitably result in height- ening the respect of the student for the mental characteristics of the people upon whose lips, in the course of ages, it developed into a symmetrical, copious and expressive language.
Of the Tunxis and Paugasuck Indians, as they were at the time of the settlement of Mattatuck — their numbers, their condition as a people — we have little or no information, except that which may be drawn from the deeds by which they conveyed their lands to the settlers, the signatures attached to those deeds and the very slight personal allusions connected therewith, or found in the colonial records. We have no description of these people from the pen of any early traveller, nor record of them in any journal of trader or missionary. Any one threading his way through the elaborate metaphysical definitions of the catechism prepared for the Quiripi Indians in 1658 would be justified in inferring that the Quiripis,
* The following is the Quiripi version of the first three petitions of the Lord's prayer, as given in Pier- son's catechism (p. 59 of the reprint), with Dr. TrumbuH's literal translation into English. The translation is here made interlinear, to indicate the order of the words in the Indian rendering. " Noushin auseqiiamuk terre,
" Our-Father the-place-of-light in, Werrettepantammunatch kowesewunk.
Let-it-be-well-regarded thy-name. Peamoutch' kukkussootummowunk.
Let-it-come-hither thy-great-rulership. Knrantammowunk neratch sket' okke nenar auscquamuk terre." Thy-thinking bc-it-so on-the-face-of earth even-as the-place-of-light in."
ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS.
"5
and therefore the Paugasucks, must have been a people of great intellectual ability. But the more correct inference would be that the devout Pierson had sadly misconceived the method to be employed in evangelizing a barbarous and ignorant race. There is nothing to indicate that the Indians of Mattatuck differed in any important respect from the other aborigines of New England with whom the early writers have made us acquainted. They had the virtues and the defects of other barbarous peoples. If their virtues were not developed, certain it is that new vices were superadded, as the result of their contact with Europeans. But this is not to be wondered at. When we consider the red man's nature and dis- position, the stage of development he had reached and the severe ordeal involved in his being brought suddenly in contact with an aggressive civilization, his conduct in this trying period of his his- tory seems upon the whole worthy of high commendation. How- ever cruel and bloodthirsty he may have been by nature, it is cer- tain that in his intercourse with peaceable white men he was peace- able; if they showed themselves friendly, he was their faithful and useful friend.*
•The gradiial wilhdnii»l ind dJH^purance uC ihi Paugaiucli and I'lmiii Indians before the advance of
17 uid Febniary ij, iSj* and publiihed Id the '■ Waterbury American ■' (weekly edition) of Febniary ^ and Uanh ;. These leelura were aftcmard embodied in Ihe " Indian Hiilory" prefiied lo Orcutt'a " History
CHAPTER III.
ABORIGINAL REMAINS — INDIAN DEEDS — LAND SALE OF 1658 — TKE THREE DEEDS GIVEN BY THE FARMINGTON TRIBE — DEED GIVEN BY THE DERBY INDIANS — PERSONAL NAMES ATTACHED TO THE SEV- ERAL DEEDS — RELATIONSHIPS INDICATED BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS AND BETWEEN TRIBES.
OF the aboriginal occupants of Mattatuck the traces that remain are of three kinds: First, the deeds which record the transfer of their lands to the early settlers; secondly, the Indian place- names which under forms more or less disguised have survived in the town records or in tradition, and some of which are in common use at the present day; and thirdly, the stone implements scattered over the region, many of which have been found and have passed into the hands of collectors. What follows is an attempt to describe these several kinds of remains.
The author of "Good News from New England," writing of Indian customs, says: " Every sachem knoweth how far the bounds and limits of his own country extendeth; and that is his own proper
inheritance In this circuit whosoever hunteth, if they
kill any venison, bring him his fee." It was natural for Europeans familiar with the institutions of feudalism and royalty, to suppose that among the barbarous tribes found occupying the new world government was monarchical, as among themselves. To them a sachem was a petty king, the people of the tribe were his subjects, and the tribal territory was, as in the passage just quoted, " his own proper inheritance." But if this was true at all, it was only in the narrowest sense. The territory belonged to the sachem simply as the official representative of his people. An Indian tribe was a democracy; the sachemship was an elective office, and the lands belonged no more to the sachem than to the others. They belonged to the tribe. The true state of the case — however the early settlers may have misunderstood it — comes to view in the large number of Indian names usually attached to an Indian deed. The list may not in any case have included all the adult males of the tribe, but as a rule the tribe was well represented, and the sachem's name seldom, if ever, stood alone. The settlers had no real-estate transactions with individual Indians, and on the other hand they did not allow
ividual white men — in Connecticut, at any rate — to buy of the
INDIAN DEEDS AND SIGNATURES, 27
•
Indians, either directly or indirectly, land or timber "or candle- wood or trees of any sort or kind," without authority from the Gen- eral Court.* The first purchase of land within the limits of Matta- tuck with reference to a settlement was made by a committee of the General Court in behalf of the settlers, and subsequent purchases were made through a committee appointed by the settlers them- selves, or rather, by a company known as the " proprietors of Mat- tatuck."
The Indian deeds relating to the transfer of Waterbury terri- tory from the aboriginal owners to white men are six in number. The earliest of these antedates by seventeen years the first regular purchase with reference to a plantation at Mattatuck. It appears that two of the inhabitants of Farmington, Stanley and Andrews by name, in their excursions westward had somewhere discovered a deposit of graphite, or something which they mistook for that valuable mineral. f Their discovery attracted some attention and doubtless led to what appears to have been the first purchase of land lying within the Naugatuck valley. In the curious deed that relates to it, dated February 8, 1657 (O. S.), and recorded in the town records of Facmington, the purchase is described as " a parcel or tract of land called Matetacoke [Mattatuckok'e'], that is to say, the hill from whence John Stanley and John Andrews brought the black lead, and all the land within eight mile of that hill on every side,'* — making a circular area, sixteen miles in diameter. The pur- chasers were William Lewis and Samuel Steele of Farmington, and the grantors were Kepaquam, Queromus and Mataneg. It appears from a deed of 17 14, relating to the same tract of land, that a con- siderable part of it was "comprised within the bounds of Water- bury." But such were the terms of the grant, and such was the action of the General Court in the final disposal of the territory, that this earliest purchase need not be further considered here.J When, on August 11, 17 14, this same tract was conveyed anew to Stanley, Lewis and their associates and successors, the deed was signed by Pethuzo and Toxcronuck, who claimed to be the succes- sors of Kepaquam, Queromus and Mattaneag, and in October fol- lowing it was signed by four other Indians, Taphow the younger and his squaw, Awowas (or Wowowis) and Petasas, a female grand-
* See Colonial Records of Connecticut, Vol. I, p. 214 ; New Haven Colony Records, Vol. II, pp. 593, 594. There are cases on record like this, under date of May 12, 1679 : '* This Court grants liberty to Lieutenant Samuel Steele to purchase of Nesahegen one acre of land in Farmington meadow." (Conn. Col. Records, Vol. Ill, p. 29.)
^ See Chapter I, p. 9, and note.
X The history of this tract, which was for some time a bone of contention in the colony, is given in some detail in the lecture entitled ** Footprints of the Red Man in the Naugatuck Valley," referred to on p. 25.
28 BISTORT OF WATERBUR7.
child, probably of Awowas. Some of these names we shall refer to subsequently.
Of the four deeds obtained by the proprietors of Mattatuck from the aboriginal owners, the first is dated August 26, 1674. It con- veyed a tract of land lying on both sides of the Mattatuck river, measuring ten miles from north to south, and six miles in breadth. The second deed was given ten years later— April 29, 1684 — and nearly doubled the area of the town by the addition of a tract lying on the north of the previous purchase. The third deed, given December 2, of the same year, refers to the purchase made by the committee of the General Court in 1674, and in consideration of nine pounds received from the agents of the proprietors, conveys certain lands additional. These three deeds were given by the Tunxis or Farmington Indians; the fourth, dated February 20, 1685, was given by the Paugasuck or Derby Indians, and conveyed twenty parcels of land, designated in the deed by their Indian names, probably most of them comprised in the first and third purchases from the Farmington tribe. A sufficient explanation of these purchases of the same territory from two different tribes within the space of three months, is afforded by what has been said with regard to the limits of tribal territory and the conflict of claims concerning the " neutral area."
Of two of these deeds — that of December 2, 1684 and that of February 20, 1685 — the original autographs were discovered in 1890, bearing the names of the aboriginal proprietors (representatives of their tribes), and over against their names their respective "marks," made with their own clumsy fingers. Copies of these deeds and of the other two are preserved in the Waterbury Land Records, and they bring before us the red man at his point of closest approach to us. In the light of these interesting documents we see him standing for a little while upon the threshold of our history, and then turning away to vanish into darkness.*
It is not our object just now, to set forth the relations of these deeds, or of the purchases which they represent, to the settlement of Mattatuck; but rather to obtain from an examination of the names attached to them, and from any slight hints they contain, as definite a conception as possible of the Indians from whom the lands were purchased, who may with some propriety be considered the aboriginal occupants of Waterbury. In a deed given by the Farm- ington tribe to the town of Farmington, May 22, 1673, we read, " These are the names of the Indians that are now present, the day and year
♦The four deeds are recorded in Vol. 11. of the Land Records, pp. 224-231, but not in chronological order.
INDIAN DEEDS AND SIGNATURES,
29
aforesaid." At the several sales of Mattatuck territory the red men atid their squaws were doubtless present — assembled at some one place — and if the modern photographer could only have been stand- ing near with his camera we should now have representations of the aboriginal grantors which would enable us to estimate them more correctly. But we have only their names and some few indi- cations of their relations to one another, and there are reasons why the names of persons and of relationships should both be mislead- ing. The place-names which have come to us from the red man were so constructed that they can be analyzed and interpreted; with their personal names the case is different. Even if we could trans- late them into English, as we do the names of the modern Indians of the west, they would probably be to us without significance; and as regards relationships, their mode of designating them was so different from ours that even the commonest terms were liable to be misunderstood. In the system of consanguinity which prevailed among our aboriginal predecessors (and which prevails to-day throughout the American race)* a man called his sister's children nephews and nieces (as with us), and they called him uncle; but his brother's children he called sons and daughters, and they called him father. A woman called her brother's children nephews and nieces (as with us), but she called her sister's children sons and daughters, and they called her mother. My father's sister's chil- dren and my mother's brother's children are my cousins; but my father's brother's children and my mother's sister's children are my brothers and sisters. And these designations represent an elabo- rate scheme, no part of which corresponds closely to our own. It is obvious, therefore, that if in the several deeds not only the names but the relationships of the grantors were invariably given (as they are in some instances), this would not greatly aid us in reconstruct- ing the aboriginal tribe or band; we should still have only a list of names before us.
But notwithstanding the scantiness of our material, it may be worth while to see what we can do with it.
Unfolding before us the first of these Indian deeds — that of August 26, 1674 — we find that the persons designated as the "own- ers and proprietors " of the " tract of land called by the name of Mattatuck " are fourteen in number, and bear the following names: Nesaheagin, John Compound, Queramouch, Spinning Squaw, Tap- how, Chere, Aupkt, Caranchaquo, Patucko, Atumtucko, James, Uncowate, Nenapush Squaw, Allwaush. The order in which the
* See L. H. Morgan^s '* Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family," Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Vol. XVII ; " Ancient Society,*' pp. 435-452.
30 HISTORY OF WATERBURT,
names are here given is that which is followed in the body of the deed; the order in which the grantors affixed their marks to trie original document may have been different, and we find among the signatures the statement that " Patucko promises for James," from which it is natural to infer that James was not present with the others. Among the witnesses is mentioned " Robin, the Indian."
In the second deed, — given nearly ten years later, that is, April 29, 1684, and relating to the northern purchase — three of these names appear again, namely, Patucko, who signs " in the name and behalf and by order of Atumtucko," and Taphow. To these may probably be added AUwaush, although somewhat disguised under the form of Wawowus. These are the four that come first in order, and follow- ing these we have Judas, Mantow, Momantow's Squaw, and Mary or Mercy, who is describeji as Sepus's Squaw,* — making eight in all. Among the signatures we find the additional name of Quatowque- chuck, Taphow's son, with the statement that " though Taphow's son's name is not in the deed above, yet he doth agree to the sale with the rest, this 30th of April, 1684." Among the witnesses to this deed is named " Momantow, Indian," whose squaw is mentioned among the grantors, and who must therefore be distinguished from Mantow, also one of the grantors. These persons are described in the body of the deed as " Indians now belonging to Farmington."
In the third deed, the original autograph of which is preserved — that of December 2, 1684 — the names of John a Compowne, Man- tow, Atumtucko and Spinning Squaw reappear, and in addition to these we have Worun Compowne, and instead of Patucko, Patucko's Squaw, who is designated Atumtucko's mother (which, however, may mean his aunt), and, second in the list, a new name, Hachatow- suck. The name Sebocket, which appears among the signatures under the form of Abuckt or Abucket, is probably the same which occurs in the first deed as Aupkt. The names given in the body of this third deed are seven in number; among the additional signa tures at the end are " James's daughter, by Cockoeson's sister," " also Cockocson's sister's daughter, as also Abuck." We learn from another memorandum that Cockoeson's sister was "Patucko's squaw," and that Warun Compowne was " Nesaheg's son," perhaps his nephew.
Counting the several distinct names that appear in the three deeds given by Farmington Indians, we find that they number twenty-five. Mr. J. W. De Forest has been quoted as assigning to the Farmington tribe a population of " eighty to one hundred war-
♦ Sepus's name is preserved in Waterbury (but in incorrect form) in Sequcses Council, Degree of Poca- hontas, of the *• Improved Order of Red Men."
INDIAN DEEDS AND SIGNATURES. 31
riors, or about four hundred persons." But Mr. De Forest frankly confesses * that his estimate is " based upon nothing,'* and in all probability it is too large. There must have been at this time a good many Farmington Indians besides these; in the deed already referred to, given to the town of Farmington in 1673, the following names are found in addition to those already enumerated: Nona- wau, Onkawont, Skerawagh, Wauno, Seacut, Wonkes, Aslanaugh, Wasamock, Cochemhoote and Nocimamon. The number of signers on that occasion, including two sons of James and several squaws, was twenty-five. But the tendency of the latest investigators is to the belief that our estimates of the Indian population have hitherto been entirely too high, and sympathizing with this view we venture the opinion that the twenty-five men and women who signed the Mattatuck deeds constituted a fair representation of the Farmington tribe. If we are to distinguish in any way between the signers of the deeds and others who did not sign, we may sup- pose that the signers (excepting, of course, the sachem and perhaps members of his family) belonged to a band that had from time to time occupied a camping ground within Mattatuck bounds and thus secured a special claim to the territory.
Examining the names themselves, what do we find ? John Jos- selyn, in his "Two Voyages to New England," f says that the Indi- ans "covet much to be called after our English manner, Robin, Harry, Philip, and the like." In each of these deeds we find this preference illustrated. Among the names mentioned in the first are included (besides the witness, Robin) a John and a James; in the second we find a Judas and a Mary or Mercy, and in the third John appears again. The first deed mentions also a Chere (written afterward Chery), which may possibly stand for Cherry, and in both the first and the third deed Spinning Squaw holds a prominent place. We may readily believe that the English proper names were attached to the Indians who bore them in a hap-hazard way; but the designation "Spinning Squaw" invites inquiry. Is it to aboriginal spinning (making thread from filaments of bark) that reference is made? or had this woman learned to spin from her white neighbors of Farmington, and become so devoted to that kind of work that it gave her a name ? It is interesting to learn that this woman's name became connected at an early day with a locality in the northern part of the town. The purchase described in the deed of April 29, 1684, is spoken of as having upon its southern boundary
♦ •' History of the Indians of Connecticut," p. 52.
+ " An Account of Two Voyages to New England, Made during the Years 1638, 1663. By John Jossclyn, Gent.;" reprint of 1865. p. 100.
32
HISTORY OF WATERS UB 7.
"that which was formerly Spinning Squaw's land;" in other words, her land was at the northern end of the purchase of 1674. But how this case of individual ownership came to pass (if such it was) there is nothing to indicate.
Of the Indian names in the deed of 1674, the first in order, and doubtless the first in importance, is Nesaheagun. The name is spelled in a variety of ways, and seems to be identical with Neesou- weegun, a name found attached to an agreement with the towns- men of New London in 1651.* But the bearer of the name (known also as Daniel) could scarcely have been the same person. Nesahea- gun seems to have been the successor, and, in accordance with Indian law, the nephew of Sehat (Seocut ?) who was the first sachem of the Farmington tribe with whom the English became acquainted. Nesaheagun is spoken of as " sachem of Poquonnock in Windsor," and about the year 1666 sold a tract of land measuring twenty-eight thousand acres to certain agents of that town. His name does not reappear in the second and third deeds; but the first name in the third deed is John a Compound, which, by the way, stands next to Nesaheagun's in the first, and the fourth is Warun Compound, who is described as " Nesaheg's son," which may mean his nephew. If John a Compound was also a nephew of Nesaheagun, or his brother, he may have been his successor in the sachemship. This name. Compound, if not of English origin, has been forced into a strange resemblance to English; but there is reason to suspect that it is an Indian name in disguise, possibly a place-name. In the third deed — that of December 2, 1684 — the full name is given as John a Com- powne. The chief who figures most prominently in the early his- tory of Virginia was named Powhattan, from the falls in the river {pauat'hanne) near which he lived. Is it not possible that the " Indian proprietor " who here comes before us may have been named in a similar way from the "other-side falls," wherever these may have been ? At all events, acompown-tuk (if there were such a name) would mean " the falls on the other side," and might easily have been transformed by " otosis " into " a-Compound." The name Compounce, attached to a pond in the north-western part of Southington, is usually regarded as a corruption of "Compound's;" but in this latest form it resembles more closely the name as it appears in the Farmington deed of 1673, where it is given as Com- paus.
The third name in the deed of 1674, Queramouch, is interesting as being identical with one of the three Indian names already men- tioned in the curious deed of 1657, where it appears as Querrimus
• President Stiles, First Series Mass. His. Coll., Vol. X, p. xoi.
INDIAN DEEDS AND SIGNATURES. 33
or Queromus. His associates in the deed of 1657 were Kepaquamp and Mataneag. This last name may afford another instance of the naming of a chief from the place where he lived. There was a place called Mattaneaug, or Matianock, near the mouth of Farmington river in Windsor. In the Colonial Records of 1640 it is called Mat- tanag. Arramamet, described in 1636 as " sachem of Matianocke," lived near the present line between Windsor and Hartford, and twenty years later — in 1657 — the same sachem or his successor may have been designated by the name of the place at which he resided.*
Of the names Uncowate and " Nenapush Squaw " we know nothing further. But Patucko, whose name is the first in the deed of April, 1684, and who is superseded in the deed of December following by " Patucko's squaw," ought to interest us especially as the source of one of the place-names that have survived to the pres- ent day. One would hardly suspect a connection between Tucker's Ring, in the northwest corner of the town of Wolcott, and this Indian " proprietor," but such a connection exists. A suggestion of it is found in the name Ptuckering Road, and in a deed of 1731, cited in Dr. Bronson's " History of Waterbury," Potucko's Ring is definitely mentioned. If the story is true that he " kindled a fire in the form of a large ring around a hill, in hunting deer, and per- ished within it," that may account for the place-name. At the same time it is worthy of mention ihQX potucko (in the Narragansett dialect puttukki^ in the Massachusetts, /<f/«>^^///) means round. Dr. Trumbull calls attention to the fact that " a Patackhouse, sister of Nessahe- gen of Pequannoc, signed a deed to Windsor in 1665."! If Potucko lost his life (in the way indicated by tradition, or otherwise) between April and December, 1684, the substitution of his squaw's name for his in the later deed would readily be explained.
Attention has already been called to the fact that while Moman- tow's squaw is named as one of the grantors in the deed of April, 1684, Momantow himself was among those who witnessed it. This would indicate that the wife had certain rights in the second grant of land in which the husband did not share. Whether this was the case with other squaws who are named in the deed as grantors, it is difficult to say; but this can hardly be the explanation of the substi- tution of Potucko's squaw for Potucko himself in the deed of Decem- ber, 1684, because the land therein described is substantially the
*S€e Trumbuirs '* Indian Geographical Names," p. 27.
t *' Indian Geographical Names," p. 57. In several of the Algonkin versions of the Lord^s prayer, Petukkentag ox woxci^ cognate word is used for "bread,'* meaning *' something round/' In the Mohegan dialect it is ^tqw>ffk: in the Virginia tuckahoe^ whence the modem " hoe-cake."
Potucko^s name is perpetuated in another way in Waterbary — in Potucko Assembly (No. sag) of the ** Royal Society of Good Fellows," an insurance fraternity.
34 HISTORY OF WATEBBUBT,
same as that which Potucko, with others, deeded ten years before. It is nevertheless true that a study of these names and relationships inevitably suggests that the grns^ as distinguished from the tribe, had come to be somehow recognized in the ownership of land as well as of personal property. The rule which (as we have seen) had become well established among the Aztecs may have begun to operate among the Indians of Connecticut.
The only other names in the three Farmington deeds that require notice are Quatoquechuck, who has already been referred to as Taphow's son, and Hachatowsuck. This last name, under the form " Hatchetowset,*' occurs frequently in the Woodbury and Litchfield records, but evidently as designating another person. He is mentioned in the Litchfield Land Records as buying and selling land as late as 1736, and in 1741 he petitioned the General Court to help him to a division of the Indian lands at Pootatuck, at which date his eldest child was aged sixteen. It is evident from these facts that the Pootatuck Indian could not be identical with the signer of the deed of 1684. One who was sufficiently prominent at that date to stand second among the native " proprietors " of Mattatuck, would hardly be speculating in land fifty-two years afterward. Besides, there is no reason to doubt that the same name frequently belonged to persons of different tribes. If we could analyze Indian personal names, we should probably find it to be a matter of course
I'BSTLB OF TURKEY HILL INDIANS.* (sEK NEXT I'AGE).
that there should be a Hachetowsuck in the Tunxis tribe and an Atchetouset among the Pootatucks. But it illustrates the curious changes to which Indian names were subject on European lips, to
* This " pestle *' was found in 1883, in a cave (afterward destroyed by quanryinfi:) at Turkey Hill, near Turkey Brook, Derby. It is 17 inches long and 2>^ by s^i inches in diameter at the middle. The mate- rial is a compact mica slate. It is worn smooth on one side, but not at the ends.
INDIAN DEEDS AND SIGNATURES. 35
find that the Pootatuck Atchetouset, in his petition to the General Court, appears under the guise of ** Hatchet Tousey." Many years later a squaw of the Turkey Hill band, near Derby, bore the name of Moll Hatchet. She was said to have been so called from the fact that she habitually carried a hatchet with her; but the name seems to have belonged to her family and was very probably a remnant of some such genuine Indian name as Hatchetowsuck. In " Hatchet Tousey " the transformation may be seen taking place.
When we turn to the deed given by the Paugasuck or Derby Indians, we find an entirely new set of names before us, represent- ing another and for the most part a distinct tribe. The names mentioned in the body of the deed, and at the end of it, are as follows : Awawus, Conquapatana, Curan, Cocapadous, Cocoeson, Tataracum, Kekasahum, Wenuntacun, Wechumunke, Weruncaske, Arumpiske and Notanumhke. Of the twelve persons thus desig- nated the first eight appear to have been men, the other four were women. Of the relations of the grantors to one another and to other Indians, there are some slight indications. Although the name of Awawus comes first in the list, it is Conquepatana who is designated "sagamore," that is, sachem.* But Awawus, as the position of his name indicates, must have been sufficiently promi- nent among the grantors to hold a representative place; for in a memorandum attached to the deed by Governor Robert Treat of Mil- ford, he calls him "the Indian proprietor." "Awawas, the Indian proprietor," he says, " appeared at my house and owned this deed above mentioned to be his act, and that he has signed and sealed to it." On the i8th of April, Conquepatana made a similar acknowl- edgment of the deed before the governor, "and said he knew what was in it, and said it was weregeny f The relation between the name
*The impression is prevalent — based upon the positive statements of some of the earlier writers — that the terms " sachem" and *' sagamore" designated two distinct offices, the second inferior and subordinate to the first. But there seems to be no good ground for such a representation. Dr. J. H. Trumbull, in his edition of Roger Williams's ** Key," note 392, says that a comparison of the several forms of the word as found in different Algonkin dialects "establishes the identity of sachem with sagamore."
In the Massachusetts vocabulary attached to Wood's *' New England's Prospect,'* published in 1635, sag- amore and sachem are said to be the same, although Wood says elsewhere (in the monarchical phraseology so generally adopted) that '*a king of large dominions hath his viceroys or inferior kings under him, to agitate his state affairs and keep his subjects in good decorum. Other offices there be," he adds, " but how to distin- guish them by name is something difficult " (p. 90, reprint of 1865). Daniel Gookin, on the other hand, writing about 1674, seems to make a difference between the two terms. He says, speaking of the Pequots : ** Their chief sachem held dominion over divers petty sagamores." (First Series Mass. His. Coll., vol. I. p.
M7)-
f W'eregen means "a good thing.''* In the form Wauregan the w^ord has been appropriated as the name of a manufacturing company and a village in eastern Connecticut. Dr. Trumbull ('* Indian Names,** p. 79) says: ** It was doubtless suggested by a line in Dr. Elisha Tracy's epitaph on Sam Uncas in the Mohcgan
burying-ground in Norwich :
' For courage bold, for things wauregan
He was the glory of Moheagon.* '*
36 HISTORY OF WATEEBUBT,
of the sagamore and the fourth name in the list, Cocapadoush, is not apparent at first glance, but comes to view when we give them as they are given in another deed (April i, 1709), where they are written " Cockapotanah," and " Cockapotoch." The sagamore ig known in later records as Konkapot, and he who stands fourth in the list was Konkapot-oos, perhaps Little Konkapot. It may be worth while to mention in this connection that Konkapotanah lived until 1731, and that on June 28, 1711, he and his son "Tom Indian** deeded to the proprietors of Waterbury, for a consideration of twenty-five shillings, "a small piece of land" north of Derby bounds, west of the Naugatuck river, and south of Toantuck brook.* In a deed given by Nonnewaug and other Pootatuck Indians, in 1700, to the people of Woodbury, Konkapotana's son is included among the signers, and also another of the grantors we are just now considering, Wenuntacun; from which it would appear that close relationships existed between the Paugasucks and the Poota- tucks similar to those between the Paugasucks and the Tunxis. Of the other four men in our list, namely Curan and Cocoeson, two are represented not only personally, but by the women whose names follow. One of these, Arumpiske, is said to be Curan's squaw, and another, Notanumke, Curan's sister. The other two women, Wechumunke and Weruncaske, are designated as Cocoeson's sis- ters.
By the mention of Cocoeson's sisters we are brought to a consid- eration of the relation of this fourth deed to the other Waterbury deeds, or rather, the relation of these Paugasuck Indians to the Farmington tribe in the ownership of Mattatuck territory. It has already been suggested that Wawowus of the second deed (April 29, 1684) was identical with Alwaush of the first. Is it not proba- ble that Awawus, whose name comes first in this Paugasuck deed — the " Indian proprietor " who appeared before Governor Treat — is the same person ? It is possible, too, that the Curan of this fourth deed is identical with Caran-chaquo, of the first, and the position of his name, between Conkapotana and Conkapotoos, suggests a relationship between him and them. But, however this may be, we
* It would b« interesting to know whether there was any relation of kinship between Konkapotana and Captain Konkapot, who figures so prominently among the Stockbridge Indians of the upper Housatonic. A deed of the territory comprising the ** upper and lower Housatonic townships,'* made in ^1724, was signed by Konkapot and twenty others. He received his captain's commission from Governor Belcher, in 1734, was baptized in 1735, and died previous to 1770— one of the first fruits of the mission to the Housatonic Indians, of which the Rev. Samuel Hopkins, born in Waterbury, was the founder.
The name is perpetuated in Konkapot river in North Canaan, and in Konkapot's brook in the southeast- em part of Stockbridge, Mass. This latter stream has become in the mouths of the people " Konk's brook," and latterly, with the help of " otosis " has been degraded into " Skunk's brook.'* Thus is the stately name of the sachem of the Paugasucks reduced to an offensive monosyllable!
INDIAN DESDS AND SIGNATURES. 37
may feel certain that the sisters of Cocoeson mentioned here are identical with the " Cocoeson's sisters " who signed the deed of December 2, 1684. And this being the case, we are in a position to make still further identifications. We learn from the deed of December 2 that Cocoeson's sisters were James's daughters, and that one of them was Patucko's squaw and Atumtucko's mother. This establishes the fact, suggested by his name, that Atumtucko was Patucko's son; it also explains why, in the deed of 1674, Patucko "promised for James," and suggests to us that we are to look for this James among the Paugasucks. In a deed of 1659, by which the Paugasucks sold to Lieutenant Thomas Wheeler the land between the Housatonic and Naugatuck rivers, we find the name of " Pagasett James." It is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that this Paugasuck James was the James who was the father of Cocoeson and his sisters, and that the sister who in the fourth deed is desig- nated a squaw, that is, Wechumunke, was Patucko's squaw and Atumtucko's mother. At the sale of December 2, it would appear that "Atumtoco's mother, Jemes's dafter," was not present, but was represented by the other sister^ Werumcaske. " Cockeweson's sister's dafter " is also mentioned as among the signers.
It is impossible to say to what extent these twelve grantors were representative of the Paugasuck tribe, or whether there were any other connections by marriage between the Paugasucks and the Tunxis than the two deeds reveal to us. Besides, in attempting to interpret and estimate the very slight data afforded us, we must remember what has been said in regard to Indian systems of con- sanguinity, and the risk of our being misled by English terms, mis- takenly applied to Indian relationships. If our supply of facts were larger, we might find among the aboriginal proprietors of Mattatuck unquestionable evidence of the existence of the gens, of inheritance through the mother (as in so many of the Indian tribes), and of the descent of the sachemship not from father to son, but from uncle to nephew. Such facts as we have brought to view seem to point in that direction.
The results of such an examination as this of old records must seem trifling and unsatisfactory. But it will be worth while to have labored over them if the aboriginal owners and occupants of Waterbury are thus brought more distinctly before us. It gives us a somewhat firmer hold upon these flitting forms of the wilderness to know their names and some of the ties which bound them to one another. We see them roaming the forests and threading their way along the river banks, and when the white man comes with his money and coats and axes and hoes we see them gathering from the " long
38 HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
river "on the east and the Housatotiic on the south for a confer- ence and a sale, and after the deeds have been drawn up and signed, and marked with the red man's "marks," returning to their camping-grounds little aware of the meaning of the bargain they have made. When Governor Treat made his memorandum on the Pangasuck deed that Conquepatana had appeared before him and acknowledged it, he added that the sagamore "said he knew what was in it and said it was jveregen " [good]. But how little he knew ! How little he appreciated the far-reaching significance of the trans- action that had taken place a few weeks before on the banks of the Naugatuck. But it was a peaceable and friendly sale, and so were the others that had preceded it. The rival claimants were not hos- tile but friendly tribes, and the friendship of both of them for the white man remained unbroken to the end.
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CHAPTER IV.
ABORIGINAL PLACE-NAMES OF MATTATUCK — OBSOLETE NAMES IN THE PAUGASUCK DEED OF 1685 — NAMES WHICH STILL SURVIVE — NAMES, NOT INDIAN, CONTAINING REMINISCENCES OF INDIAN OCCUPANCY.
OF the several deeds referred to in the preceding chapter, the fourth, given by the Paugasuck Indians on February 20, 1685, is of peculiar interest for two reasons— because of the vari- ous memoranda which accompany the signatures, and because of the remarkable list of Indian place-names which it contains.
This deed conveys to the settlers of Mattatuck ** twenty parcels of land, by their names distinguished;" but the "parcels" were evidently small, and they are designated only by their Indian names, and with one or two exceptions are not "distinguished" otherwise. The names seem to have been recorded with unusual accuracy (as were also the personal names in the deed), and, taken as a whole, present an inviting but unproductive field for linguistic and topographical investigation. The tract conveyed lay on both sides of the Naugatuck river, so that the " twenty parcels of land " are in two groups. The eastern section is described as follows :
"[i] Wecobemeas, the land upon the brook or small river that comes through the straits northward of Lebanon, and runs into Naugatuck river at south end of Mattatuck bounds, called by the English Beacon Hill brook, and [2] Pacowachuck or Asawacomuck, and [3] Watapecke, [4] Pacoquarocke, [5] Megunhuttake, [6] Mus- quanke, [7] Mamusqunke, [8] Squapnasutte, and [9] Wachu ; which nine parcels of land lie on the east side of Naugatuck river, south- ward from Mattatuck town ; which comprises all the land betwixt the forementioned river, or Beacon Hill brook, and the brook at the hither end of Judd's Meadows, called by the name Sqontk ; and from Naugatuck river to run eastward to Wallingford and New Haven bounds ; with all the lowland on the two brooks forementioned."
And this is the account of the western section :
"And other parcels on the west side; the first parcel called by the name Saracasks ; the rest as follow : [2] Petowtucke, [3] Weqarunsh, [4] Capage, [5] Cocumpasucke, [6] Mequenhuttocke, [7] Panootan, [8] Mattuckhott, [9] Cocacocks, [10] Quarasksucks, [11 J Towantucke ; and half the Cedar swamp, with the land adjacent from it eastward; which swamp lies northward of Quassapaug pond ; we say, to run
40 HISTORY OF WATERBURT,
an east line from thence to Naugfatuck river ; all which parcels of land forementioned lying southward from the said line, and ex- tend or are comprised within the hutments following : From the forementioned swamp a straight line to be run to the middle of Towantucke pond (or the Cedar swamp a south line), which is the west bounds toward Woodbury, and an east line from Towan- tucke pond to be the butment south, and Naugatuck river the east butment, till we come to Achetaquopag or Warunscopage, and then to but upon the east side of the river upon the forementioned lands."
The general outline of this tract of land — at any rate, of that division of it lying on the east side of the river — is not difficult to trace ; but to distinguish the ** twenty parcels," and to identify them at the present day, is quite impossible, and would probably be impossible even if we knew the meaning of their Indian names. The southern boundary of the eastern section is distinctly stated to be Beacon Hill brook, and the northern boundary "the brook at the hither end [that is, the northern end] of Judd's Meadows, called by the name Sqontk," which must be the stream known to-day as Fulling Mill brook, which empties into the Naugatuck at Union City. The limits of the western section are not clearly stated, but it seems to have been bounded on the north by a line running easterly from Cedar swamp (** which swamp lies northward of Quassapaug pond") to the river, and on the south by a line running from Towantuck pond to the river, and on the west by Woodbury. The west bank of the Naugatuck was to be the eastern boundary of the upper part of this western tract, but below Achetaquopag (or Warunscopag) it was " to abut upon the east side of the river, upon the forementioned lands." In other words, the native proprietors, claiming ownership on both sides of the river below Fulling Mill brook, claimed ownership also of the river itself.
By observing closely the indications thus given, we are enabled to " locate " a few of these parcels of land with some certainty. We know " Towantuck " because the name has survived to the present day — the only one of these twenty names that has not become obsolete. The pond with which it is here connected, is now better known as Long Meadow pond (in Middlebury, near the Oxford line), but the name has become attached to a station on the New England railroad, and has also been selected as the designation of a " tribe" of the *^ Improved Order of Red Men," organized in Waterbury in 1892. We know also the land designated by the name " Wecobe- meas," because it is distinctly described as "the land upon the small river that comes through the straits northward of Lebanon
INDIAN GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 41
Improbably where Straitsville is now situated], called by the English Beacon Hill brook."* And there is another name, although not in- cluded among the twenty, which the language of the deed enables us to fix somewhat definitely. In the phrase, "the brook at the hither end of Judd's Meadows, called by the name Sqontk," the name seems to belong to the stream rather than the meadows, and in that case, as has already been said, represents the well-known Fulling Mill brook of the present day. If it refers to the meadows, its identity is equally well established. In this neighborhood, apparently, we must fix other two names. According to the inter- pretation already given, the eastern boundary of the tract on the west side of the Naugatuck was the west bank of that river down to a certain point, and below that the east bank of the river was the boundary. The point at which the boundary-line crossed the river is named " Achetaquopag or Warunscopage ;" and if the claim of the Paugasucks on the east side of the river was bounded on the north by Fulling Mill brook, as seems evident, then must the spot designated by these two names have been near the mouth of that brook. Whether the " Copage " which is mentioned among the twenty parcels of land is identical with one or both of these, must be considered further on. Of the other names in the list of twenty there is none that can be positively identified, and only a few whose meaning can be ascertained with any certainty. Foremost among these is "Wachu," the ninth name in the first group. Wadchu always means mountain or hill, and we should, as a matter of course, connect it with Beacon Mountain, were it not for the indications in the deed that Beacon Hill brook, which flows north of it, was the southern limit of the eastern tract. There are other heights on the east side of the river in that vicinity, but none to which the name ** Wachu " could be so fittingly applied. Although there is nothing in the deeds to help us to further identifications, there are, never- theless, two or three points worth noticing. There is, for instance, a " Megunhuttake " (Mequenhuttocke) in both groups of names ; but it does not follow that there were two distinct and widely separated parcels of land thus designated ; the name was doubtless applied to a tract bordering on the river and extending along both banks. A connection between "Copage," which stands fourth in the second
*}. W. Barber, writing in 1836, or earlier, says: ''About fourteen miles from New Haven the main road to Waterbury passes by Beacon Mountain, a rude ridge of almost naked rock, stretching southwest. At this place is Collins's tavern, long known as an excellent public house, and the Straitsville post office. About half a mile south of Mr. Collins's the road passes through a narrow defile formed by a gap in the mountain [doubtless the ** straits" referred to in the deed], barely sufficient in width for a road and a small but sprightly brook which winds through the narrow passage. On both sides the cliffs are lofty, particularly on the west ; on the east, at a little distance from the road, they overhang in a threatening manner." (*' Con- necticut Historical Collections," p. x86, fi^t edition).
42 HISTORY OF WATEBBURT.
group, and the two names " Achetacopag " and " Warunscopag " has* already been suggested. The close connection between the sixth and seventh names in the first group—" Musquanke " and " Mamus- qunke " — is obvious ; and the same is true, so far as the structure of the words is concerned, of " Pacowachuck " and " Pacoquarocke." The piece of land known as " Pacowachuck " was known also by another name entirely different, " Asawacomuck."
As regards the meanings of these names, it would be interesting to know them, even if the places to which they belonged could not be identified. Every Indian name had a meaning, and was "so framed as to convey that meaning with precision ; " every place- name "described the locality to which it was affixed."* But the names in the list before us are in the Quiripi dialect, and do not readily lend themselves to any such analysis as can now be made. The most that can be done is to throw out a few suggestions and to adduce an occasional parallel.
The first name in the list of twenty— "Wecobemeas" — bears a close resemblance to "Wecuppeemee," the name of a small river in Bethlehem and Woodbury, one of the three streams which unite to form the Pomperaug. The stream seems to have derived its name from an Indian chief (Wickapema, Weekpemes) who is on record as a witness to certain Woodbury deeds. The name means "bass- wood" or "linden." But whether Wecuppeemee, the chief, called himself "the Linden," or was so denominated by the English because he lived at a place where lindens grew, is, as Dr. Trumbull remarks, doubtful. The name which in Woodbury is connected with a stream is applied in the list before us to "the land upon Beacon Hill brook." It probably designated a spot where bass- wood trees grew, and which could easily be distinguished in this way. In the second name, " Pacowachuck," one readily recognizes wachu, "mountain" or "hill," as a component part, and \i paco is a variation of pahque^ as it frequently is, the entire word must mean "at the clear (or open) mountain," and the reference must be to some hill divested of woods. A similar analysis would give us as the meaning of Pacoquaroke " clear long place," referring perhaps to some strip of meadow on the river-bank, or some smooth place in the river itself. The alternative designation of "Pacowachuck," which is " Asawacomuck " (ashaway - commok) seems to mean "an enclosed place between." In the name " Musquanke " a resemblance may be traced to Massacunnock {Mas/iequanoke), the Indian name of Falcon Island, south of Guilford, which means " place of fish-hawks,"
* Dr. Trumbull, " Composition of Indian Geographical Names," in V^ol. II. of " Collections of the Conn. His. Society," pp. 3, 4.
INDIAN OEOORAPHWAL NAMES.
43
or the root of the name may be m'squammaug^ meaning "red fish," that is, salmon. But the name ** Mamusquunke " which is associated with the other, suggests a derivation different from both of these. In the third name on the west side of the river, " Wequarunsh," the prefix wequa is a familiar one, meaning "at the end," and thence "a point." It is possible that in the remainder of the word we have the inseparable generic - ^w/j>& ("a standing rock"), in which case the name would mean "at the end of the ledge," or would designate some place or point with an "upright rock at the end."* In "Pan- ootan," one can hardly help suspecting that the n of the first sylla- ble ought to have been written «, in which case we should find in the word a reminder of our old friend Powhattan and the " falls " which gave him his name.f Pauat-han means "falls in a rapid stream ;" but whether there are falls or even rapids in the Nauga- tuck, within the limits indicated by the deed, of sufl&cient import- ance to justify such an appellation, may be open to question. In the name which follows this, " Mattuckhott," the first syllable may represent matta^ "without," which appears again in "Mattatuck," or the whole word may stand for nCtugk-ut^ meaning "at the tree." The only other name of the twenty, of which anything definite can be said is "Capage." It is substantially the same as Cupheag, the old name of Stratford, (the same as Quebec also) and means " a place shut in," "narrows" or "a cove." The writer of this chapter suggested, in the Rev. Samuel Orcutt's "History of Derby," J that the name designated "possibly the narrows in the river at Beacon hill." If this "Capage" is identical with the copage in "Acheta- quopag or Warunscopage " — the point at which the eastern bound- ary line crossed the Naugatuck — then must we locate it at the north- ern rather than the southern end of the eastern section of the Paugasuck grant — that is, at Fulling Mill brook, rather than at Beacon hill. But there is no good reason for insisting on their identity. As for "Warunscopage," perhaps we have here a personal name associated with a place-name in a quite unusual way. Among the signers of the deeds given to Waterbury, Warun Compound holds a leading place. May not this spot at which the boundary line crossed the river have been known as Warun's Copage ? and in
*In the a]^eeraent made May 22, 1674, between New Haven, Milford, Branford and Wallingford wiih reference to their bounds, in the memorandum attached to the New Haven and Milford section, we read of ^*a straij^ht line up into the country, which line shall run upon the rock or stone called 'the beacon,* which lieth upon the upper end of the hill called Heacon hill, and from thence to the end of the bounds" (Conn. Col. Records, Vol. Ill, p. 233).
t See p. 32.
X *• Indian Names of Places," pp. xciii— xcvii. of Orcutt's " Derby ;" see also Dr. Trumbull's " Indian Geographical Names," pp. 8, 23.
44 HISTORY OF WATERS UR7.
Acheta-copag may we not recognize another of our signers, Achetowsuck ? These, however, are mere possibilities.*
In our interpretation of the deed, we have brought these last mentioned names into close association with " Sqontk," a name attached, apparently, to "the brook at the hither end of Judd's Meadows," which we^have identified as Fulling Mill brook. The name, "Squaniuck," is attached to a tract of land on the east bank of the Housatonic river, at the mouth of Four Mile brook, in Sey- mour, and to a settlement of a dozen houses at that point. In a Derby deed of 1678 it is described as "a certain tract called and known as Wesquantook and Rockhouse hill," whence it appears that ** Squantuck" is an abbreviated form of the original name, the meaning of which. Dr. Trumbull says, "is not ascertained.** It is doubtful whether the name "Sqontk," which we have connected with Fulling Mill brook, is to •be considered etymologically the same as the Squantuck in Seymour, or is rather to be identified with Scantic, the name of a stream in another part of the state — between East and South Windsor. The latter Dr. Trumbull derives from peska-tuk, "where the river branches'* — a meaning which would be sufficiently applicable to the place at which Fulling Mill brook empties into the Naugatuck. In this connection it is worthy of remark that in Pierson's Catechism, which represents the dialect of the Paugasuck Indians, the word squanta is used as the rendering
for "gates.** t
We have given our attention thus far to the obsolete place- names in the Paugasuck deed. But besides these, and besides " Towantuck,*' to which reference has been made, there are other geographical names mentioned here, which are by no means obsolete, but are in daily use and have attained to no little import- ance. These are " Naugatuck '* and " Quassapaug," and we may add " Mattatuck.**
" Mattatuck " is mentioned in the deed, first as the name of the "township** which the grantees represent, and secondly, as an alter- native name of the river. The stream which was known in the lower part of its course as the Naugatuck, was known further north as the Mattatuck, and afterward also as the Waterbury river. By the help of early records, the history of the name can readily be
* By mistake of the copyist, the name Waninscopage appears in the Waterbury Land Records as Marusco- pag, the initial W having been taken for an M. In this incorrect form it was transferred to the list in Orcutt's " History of Derby," p. xcv, and thence into Dr. Trumbull's " Indian Geographical Names/' pp. 3, 8, 23. In the original deed (the discovery of which is referred to elsewhere) the name is plainly ** Wanins- copage.*' In the list in Orcutt's ** Derby," the name Quarasksucks— the nineteenth in our list of twenty — was given as " Gawuskesucks," having been incorrectly deciphered.
t ** Some Helps for the Indians/' p. 65 of Dr. Trumbull's reprint.
JNDIAN QEOORAPHIGAL NAMES,
45
traced. Its first occurrence is in the deed of February 8, 1657-8, already referred to, by which certain lands in the upper part of the Naugatuck valley were granted to William Lewis and Samuel vSteele, of Farmington. The deed reads, " A parcel or tract of land called * Matetacoke,' that is to say, the hill from whence John Stanley and John Andrews brought the black lead, and all the land within eight mile of that hill on either side." " Matetacoke " evidently stands for Matuhtugk-ohke^ meaning a "place without trees," and was probably an accurate description of the hill referred to, or of some spot in its neighborhood. If applied to a hill, it must have been a bare and treeless hill, and might with equal propriety have been described by the name " Pacowachuck," referred to above. The next occurrence of the name is fifteen years subsequent to the deed to Lewis and Steele. It is in a document embodying the report of a committee of the General Court sent out in behalf of the people of Farmington to inquire in regard to a place for a new settlement in the Naugatuck valley. They say they " have been to view Matituc oocke in reference to a plantation," and "do judge it capable of the same." The Farmington people immediately petitioned the Court for permission to make a settlement, and in their petition they speak of " having found out a tract at a place called by the Indians Matitacoocke^ which we apprehend may sufficiently accommodate to make a small plantation." As the reference here is unquestionably to the meadows of Waterbury, we must suppose that an Indian name belonging to a place a number of miles further up the river was used by a kind of accommodation, or that during the interval of fifteen years the scope of the name had been gradually enlarging until in popular use it covered the entire region, or else that the same name was independently given to two distinct localities — to the place where the black lead was found, because it was a bare and treeless hill, and to the Waterbury meadows for a similar reason, because they were destitute of trees. Since every Indian place- name was a description of the locality to which it was affixed, such a coincidence as this might easily happen.
In each instance of its occurrence thus far, the name appears in its larger form, terminating in oke or oocke. It occurs in this form in the petition to the General Court in October, 1673. But in the record of the action of the Court on this petition, the name is given in the shortened form, " Mattatock," and this form came immedi- ately into use. The committee appointed to explore the region speak in their report, made in April, 1674, of having "viewed the lands upon the Mattatuck river," and in the record of the Court, May 18, the expression used is "a plantation at Mattatuck." From
46 HISTORY OF WATEHBURY.
this time onward until 1686, the place and also the river were known by this name. In the records for May 13, 1675, we read of "the new town going up at Mattatuck," and a little further on, Mattatuck is mentioned in connection with Derby and Woodbury (whose names had recently been changed) and Pottatock and Wyantenuck (whose names were afterward changed to Southbury and New Milford) as towns whose boundaries required to be immediately ascertained and established. In the record for May 15, 1686, we read : "This Court grants that .Mattatuck shall be and belong to the County of Hartford; and the name of the plantation shall be for the futuie Waterbury. ''*
Although " Mattatuck " was not retained as the name of the town, and has been superseded by " Naugatuck " as the name of the river, nevertheless it has not become extinct. It was duplicated on Long Island as early as 1658,! and survives there, in the form "Mat- tituck," as the name of a pleasant little village, situated between Long Island sound and Great Peconic bay. It has survived also in the upper part of the Naugatuck valley almost to the present time ; at all events, it was customary a few years ago to speak of East Litchfield as Mattatuck. The name is attached to a street in the city of Waterbury — that which runs northward from West Main street along the eastern channel of the Naugatuck river ; also to a local Historical society, organized in 1878, which has for its field the territory embraced within the ancient town. The "Mattatuck Manufacturing company," established in 1847, has become extinct; but the name is connected with other organizations. There is a Mattatuck Council of the "Royal Arcanum" (an insurance frater- nity), and a Mattatuck Drum Corps. The name occurs, finally, in the title of a book published in 1892 — "The Churches of Mattatuck" — which contains the record of the celebration of the bi-centenary of the First church in Waterbury (November 4 and 5, 1891), with sketches of all the Congregational churches within the ancient domain.
The name " Naugatuck," which appears in the Paugasuck deed as the established designation of the Mattatuck river, was originally used in a very restricted sense, but is now the most frequently
♦Conn. Col. Records, Vol, II, pp. 210, 224, 249, 253; Vol. Ill, p. 197.
According to Dr. Bronson (*' History of Waterbury," p. 67), the new name was selected as descriptive. ** The new town took its name of Waterbury on account of its numerous rivers, rivulets, ponds, swamps,
* boggy meadows' and wet lands." '* It is a pity," adds Dr. Bronson, *' that the beautiful old Indian name
* Mattatuck ' was not retained. But our Puritan ancestors regarded these native words as heathenish, and were in haste to discard and forget them.*'
t New Haven Col. Records, Vol. II, pp. 233, 302, 462, 463: "A parcel of land called Mattatuck and Akkabawke" [Aquebogue].
INDIAN QEOORAPHICAL NAMES, 47
mentioned and most widely known of all the aboriginal names in the valley. The first instance of its occurrence is in the Records of the Jurisdiction of New Haven for May 27, 1657. Among the conditions proposed by the inhabitants of Paugasuck, upon which they were willing to "submit themselves to the Jurisdiction," the first was in these words : " That they have liberty to buy the Indians' land, behind them, that is over Naugatuck river, and not toward New Haven bounds, and also above them northward, up into the coun- try/'* In a deed to Thomas Wheeler, the same year, the name occurs again ; and again in a deed to Joseph Hawley and Henry Tomlinson, of Stratford, August 16, 1668, and frequently afterward in the Derby records and the colonial records of New Haven and Connecticut. This was the name by which the river was known in the lower part of the valley. Yet in a report made to the General Court by a Derby and Mattatuck committee, in May, 1680, it is designated once as " Mattatock river,*' and twice as the ** Nagotock or Mattatock." When the plantation of Mattatuck became the town of Waterbury, the name Waterbury was also applied to the river, but did not retain its hold upon it.f Of course it is impossible to say at what date the name " Naugatuck '* achieved a complete vic- tory, but it appears to have had the field to itself for more than a hundred years past. And being used to designate the river, it came to be applied as a matter of course to the valley through which the river flows.
This was the only use of the name until 1844, when it was adopted as the name of a new town. At the May session of the General Assembly in that year, that part of Waterbury embraced within the society of Salem, with portions of Bethany and Oxford, was " incorporated as a distinct town, by the name of Naugatuck." \ A year later (May, 1845), the legislature incorporated the ** Nauga- tuck Railroad company," and from that time the old aboriginal name became a household word to thousands who might not other- wise have known it.
Besides the larger uses of the name thus far indicated, it is applied to several organizations in the town of Naugatuck. These are the Naugatuck Electric Light company, the Naugatuck Electric
* New Haven Col. Records, Vol. II, p. 223.
t For example, in the petition of the people of Westbury (afterward Watertown) for " winter privileges," in October, 1733, they speak of being separated from the meeting-house by '^ a great river which is called Waterbury river, which for great part of the winter and spring is not passable." In the Litchfield records this is the name generally used.
$ Resolutions and Private Acts, pp. 86-89. Dr. Bronson says, in his "History of Waterbury," p. 67 : " Our friends down the river showed their good sense when they called their new town Naugatuck (another beautiful name)— where the second settlement in the vallcv was made."
48 HISTORY OF WATERBUR7.
Time company, the Naugatuck Malleable Iron company, the Nauga- tuck Water company, and the Naugatuck Musical Union. It may be added that since 1870, the name "Naugatuck Valley" has been applied to a newspaper — the " Sentinel," published at Ansonia. In 1879 the same designation was given to a newly organized Associ- ation of Congregational ministers, and in 1883 to a new Conference of Congregational churches.
As regards the meaning of this name, the traditional derivation is given in Dr. Bronson's "History of Waterbury."* Naukotunk^ the original form of the word, is there said to mean " one large tree,'* and to have been the original name of Humphreysville (now Sey- mour), which was so called from a large tree formerly standing near Rock Rimmon at Seymour. The same derivation is given in a letter from Stiles French of Northampton, Mass., formerly of Sey- mour, who received it from the Rev. Smith Dayton, whose authority was Eunice Mauwee, the daughter of " Chuce." Mr. French says : " She told Mr. Dayton that the name Naugatuck meant * one big tree,* and was pronounced by the Indians Naw-ka-tunk. This * one big tree' stood about where the Copper works in Seymour now are, and afforded the Indians a shade when they came to the Rimmon falls to fish." This tradition is apparently direct and authentic. It was probably the foundation for the statement of Mr. J. W. DeForest (a native of Seymour) in the preface to his " History of the Indians of Connecticut," that " Naugatuck was not anciently the name of the river to which it is now attached, but of a place on the banks of that river." In Mr. DeForest's brief list of words in the Naugatuck dialect the word for "tree" is tookh ; in Pierson's Catechism it is p'tuk. The usual form in the vocabularies is mihtuck or mektug, but the initial m does not belong to the root. The last syllable of Nauga-tuck may therefore very well stand for "tree/* but the remainder of it is not so easily identified. Dr. Trumbull accepts the traditional derivation, /Mr«^£7/-/««^>^, meaning "one tree;" but in so doing he seems to disregard an important verbal distinc- tion upon which he has elsewhere laid stress. f There is documentary
♦ p. 15, note. A writer in the " Watcrbury American" of May i, 1879, mentions two entirely distinct interpretations which he has met with : '* Some say that ' Naugatuck ' means ' rushing water,' others, * beauti- ful vale.* '* There is no foundation for either of these.
+ In his reprint of Roger Williams's " Key,'' Dr. Trumbull says: " The primary signification of nquit seems to be * first in order,'— the beginning of a series or of progression not yet rDmpleted ; while pavasuck denotes ' one by itself,' a unit, without reference to a series ; " and this seems to be sustained by Pierson's Catechism, which translates, '" first " by negonne, but when it refers to the '* one true God " renders "one" hy pasuk. (Trumbull's *' Indian names," p. 36; Williams's "Key into the Indian Language of America," Trumbull's reprint, p. 50; " Some Helps to the Indians,'^ pp. 11, 13.) One would suppose that if the distinction was ever a real one, it would be made in such a case as this, that i«, in designating a well known and apparently isolated tree.
INDIAN QEOQRAPHIGAL NAMES.
49
evidence to sustain the statement that "Naugatuck" was at first not the name of the river, but of a place on the river ; for in the report of a committee appointed by the General Court (February, 1676) "to order the settlement of the lands at Derby," we meet with the expression, "the river that cometh from Nawgatuck." The phrase reveals the process by which the place-name, more than twenty years before this, had come to be attached to the river. But whether the derivation of the name received from the Squaw Eunice, a hundred and fifty years later, was anything better than an etymological venture on her part, is perhaps an open question. Dr. Jonathan Edwards, in hi^ " Observations on the language of the Muhhekaneew Indians," informs us that the Indian name of Stock- bridge, Mass., was WnogquetookokCy and Dr. Trumbull says that this means a " bend-of -the-river place." In view of the decided bend in the river at Seymour, why may we not suppose that it is this that is represented in the name "Naugatuck," rather than some tree standing by itself — especially when Naukot-tungk would have meant not "a single tree," but one of a series of trees? Waiving this objection, we should have had in the one case Naukot-tungk-oke, and in the other, Wnogko-tuck-oke, The oke is dropped in either case, and there are numerous instances of the dropping of the slight sound represented by the initial W, In a Derby deed dated April 22^ 1678, "the fishing place at Naugatuck" is definitely mentioned; and there can be no doubt that this ancient "Naugatuck "which gave the river its name, was at or near the spot where Seymour now stands. But it is quite as likely to have been designated the " fishing-place at the bend in the river," as " the fishing-place at the one tree." When "Chuce" went there, with his band, about 1720, it was the only piece of land in the town of Derby which the Indians had not sold. Because of its value as a " fishing place " they clung to it to the last.
Another geographical name found in the Paugasuck deed is "Quassapaug" — applied to the beautiful lake which lies just west of the western boundary of Mattatuck, part of it in Middlebury and part in Woodbury. In a Woodbury deed of October 30, 1687, it is spoken of as " the pond called and commonly known by the name Quassapaug," and the eastern boundary of the town is said to be " four score rod eastward of the easternmost of the pond." Although it does not lie within Waterbury territory, it has long been a place of resort for Waterbury people, and its name is mentioned more frequently, perhaps, than any other of the aboriginal names belong- ing to the region. It is drained by the Quassapaug river, or Eight Mile brook, which empties into the Housatonic at Punkups. Mr.
4
so
BISTORT OF WATEBBURY,
William Cothren, in his "History of Woodbury," speaking- of Captain John Miner, says : " To the lovely lake on the eastern borders he applied the name Quassapaug, or * The Beautiful Clear Water.' This pleasant sheet of water, so cosily nestling among the verdant hills, furnished one of the first fishing places to the new settlers, cut off as they were from the seaboard by the bound- less forests lying between them and the sea." On a subsequent page, Mr. Cothren suggests another interpretation of the name — "Rocky pond"* — on the supposition that the first two syllables represent qussuky meaning "rock" or "stone." But this word for " rock," Dr. Trumbull says, is seldom, perhaps never, found in local names, the " inseparable generic " - omfsk being used instead. Be- sides, there would seem to be no special appropriateness in such a designation. In regard to the meaning of paug there can be no doubt. It denotes "water place" {pe-auke)y is used for "water at rest," or "standing" as distinguished from "flowing" water, and is a frequent component of names of small lakes and ponds throughout New England.f But the proper interpretation of the first part of the word is somewhat uncertain. The Rev. Azel Backus, in 1812, in his " Account of Bethlem," interpreted the name as signifying " Little pond," apparently deriving it from okosse-paug; but in Dr. Trumbull s judgment "he certainly was wrong;" for " Quassapaug is not a small, but the largest pond in that region." The author of this chapter, in his list of place-names in the Rev. Samuel Orcutt's " History of Derby," suggested that the name might possibly represent quunnosu-paug^ that is, " Pickerel pond," and found incidental support for this opinion in Mr. Cothren's refer- ence to the good fishing which the lake furnished to the early settlers. Dr. Trumbull, in his " Indian Names of Places in Connec- ticut," rejects this interpretation (but on insufficient grounds) and proposes another. J He says it " may have been denominated k'che- paug^ that is, * greatest pond' — a name easily corrupted to Quassa- paug.'* Such a change does not seem an "easy" one, but there is documentary evidence in support of this interpretation. In a report concerning boundaries, made by the agents of Woodbury and Matta-
* Colhren's Woodbury, pp. 844, 877.
tDr. TrumbuU's "Composition of Indian Geographical Names," p. 15.
t He says : '^ Dr. Anderson, in Orcutt's ** Derby,'* proposes qunnosu-paugy ' pickerel pond,* to which the only objection is that after names of fish, maugy 'fishing place,' was used, instead of Paug^ *pond,' or tuck^ * river.' " But if Noosup-paugy '* Beaver pond,** is allowable (see p. 40), why not QuunnosH-^augf Besides, in his paper on the " Composition of Indian Geographical Names," Dr. Trumbull suggests the very analysis which is here proposed. He says (p. 43) : ** Quinshepaug or Quonshapaug^ in Mendon, Mass., seems to denote a * pickerel pond ' {quMnasu-paug).^* The opinion expressed in his ** Indian Names in Con- necticut " may be the result of later investigation ; but may it not be possible that maug was used of fishing- places in rivers^ rather than in ponds ?
INDIAN GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 51
tuck, June 29, 1680, we find the expression, " the great pond, com- monly called or known by the name of Quassapaug." It would seem as if here the Indian name and the English translation of it had been brought together.*
Mr. Cothren, in the "History of Woodbury," speaks of "the care with which our fathers gathered up and applied the beautiful Indian names which abound in our territory." He says elsewhere that " no town of equal dimensions within the writer's knowledge has retained so many of them,*' and refers to the fact that in the neighboring town of Watertown not a single Indian place-name reraains.f Ancient Mattatuck, taken as a whole, has not been quite as unfortunate as that part of it now known as Watertown ; but the real Indian place-names which have come down to us, in addition to those included in the Paugasuck deed, are very few, — not more than a half dozen, all told.
The first to be mentioned (following the alphabetical order), and perhaps the most interesting, is "Abrigador." This is the name of a high hill half a mile southeast of Centre square, Waterbury, — now a thickly settled district of the city. The residents of the district sometimes speak of it as " the Abligator," and the transition from this to " Alligator " is occasionally made. In the list of place-names in Mr. Orcutt's " History of Derby," the opinion was expressed that this name was not of Indian origin, but was a Spanish word {abri- gadd) meaning "a place of shelter." That it was not an Indian name was formerly the opinion of Dr. Trumbull also ; but in his " Indian Names of Places in Connecticut " he derives it from ahigad or abiguat^ meaning " covert " or " hiding place," and quotes from the list of names in the "History of Derby "the statement that ** there is a cleft rock on the southwest side of the hill which used to be called the Indians' house." That it should be an Indian name in disguise is not remarkable ; but it is certainly a remarkable coincidence that in the form in which it occurs in Waterbury it should correspond so closely to a Spanish word having the same meaning.J
♦ Bronson*s Waterbury, p. 74.
tCothren*s "Woodbury," pp. 844, 58-60. He attributes the preservation of the aboriginal names in Woodbury in part to Captain John Miner, " the leading man among the colonists," who had been educated as missionary to the Indians, understood their language, and was the surveyor for the town (p. 844).
tOrcutt's "Derby," p. xcvi ; Trumbull's " Indian Names," pp. i, 2. Dr. Trumbull points out that we have the same Indian word in " Abagadasset " ("at the place of shelter "), a name found at Merry-meeting bay, Maine, and probably in the name " Pictou " also. Another instance which he gives illustrates in a striking way the changes through which Indian place-names sometimes pass. The bay of Castine, Me., was called by the Abnakis Matsi-abigivadoos^eky which means " at the bad small shelter place " or " cove." This long descriptive name was shortened to " Chebeguadose," and finally corrupted to " Bigaduce," and then its origin was traced by process of the imagination to a supposed ("rench officer. Major Biguyduce, said to have come to Maine with Baron Castine. See also " Composition of Indian Geographical Names," pp. 38, 39.
52
HISTORY OF WATERBURT.
The name " Compounce," attached to a pond in the northwest part of Southington, has already been referred to. This pond also, like Quassapaug, is a place of summer resort for Waterbury people. That it derived its name from one of the "native proprietors," John Compound, or a-Compaus, is unquestionable ; but the origin and significance of the personal designation is, as we have seen, a matter of uncertainty.*
Between two and three'miles southwest of the centre of Water- bury is a high ridge or knoll, close to the road which runs parallel to the Town Plot road, some distance to the west of it, known locally by the name of "Malmalick" or ** Malmanack." In 1882, the Rev. Eli B. Clark (since deceased) wrote of it as follows : " My father, Eli Clark, owned and for more than fifty years lived upon a farm in the southwesterly portion of the town, nearly three miles from the centre, embracing within its limits what was then known as Malmanack hill — the highest ground for miles around, and com- manding a fine prospect in all directions." This hill is supposed to have been the site of an Indian camp, and Mr. Clark in his letter speaks of the numerous arrow heads and other chipped implements which used to be found there in considerable numbers. The name is probably of Indian origin, but so disguised that its derivation cannot be traced with any certainty. It may possibly mean " barren place."
In the Waterbury records for November, 1729, mention is made of the lay-out of a highway towards Westbury (now Watertown), which is said to have begun " at the road on the hill against Manhan meadow." "The Manhan" is a name which is still in common use in Waterbury, designating a locality about half a mile west of Centre square, and generally applied to the canal or mill-race which supplies water to the mills of the Waterbury Brass company. The manufactory itself is also popularly known as "the Manhan." In the record referred to, "Manhan meadow" means " island meadow," and is a precise designation of the piece of land lying between the line of the Naugatuck railroad and the main channel of the Naugatuck river. Dr. Bronson in his " His- tory " says : " There are indications (or used to be) that Manhan meadow was once an island, and that a part of the river, at a not very distant period, ran down upon the east side next the hill, in the course of the canal of the Water Power company, continuing through the old * Long cove * and along the line of the Naugatuck railroad till it met Great brook. This was low ground, and through- out its extent there was (in the writer's memory) a chain of minia-
• See pb 32.
INDIAN GEOORAPHICAL NAMES, 53
ture lakes or ponds."* The same name occurs in Easthampton, Mass., applied now to a river, and is readily recognized in such names as Manhannock, and Manhasset (or Munhansick), but not so readily in Montauk, Manhattan and the Grand Menan. In recent years, it has been aiBfixed to a Waterbury street — that which runs northward from West Main street, between Fairview and Mattatuck streets. It is to be regretted that it was not given to the street which runs nearest to the " canal," and thus nearest to the " island " from which it derives its name.
Another genuine Indian appellative has survived in the name of one of the school-districts of Waterbury, "Oronoke." In the final syllable, we recognize the familiar terminal, meaning " place," but what particular place within the region extending from West-side hill to Middlebury furnished the name which now designates the entire district, it would probably be impossible to discover. The name occurs in other parts of the state under the varied forms, Woronock, Waronoco, and perhaps Orenaug (in Woodbury).
The only Indian place-name that remains to be mentioned is one that belongs to the present town of Wolcott and has been already referred to.f On March 31, 1731, John Alcock, of New Haven, bought a piece of land in the northeast quarter of Waterbury which is described (in the record of that date) as "near Ash swamp or Potucko's ring." In an entry in the Land Records for December 3, i795> ^ certain boundary line is described as "crossing Ptuckering road, so called," at two different points. This road is now called "Tucker's Ring road," and the Indian origin of the name would hardly have been suspected, were it not for the connecting links which the local records furnish. As we have already seen, Potucko was one of the first signers of the first Waterbury deeds ; but whence comes the name " Potucko's ring ? " and what is its significance ? The traditional explanation is given in Dr. Bronson's "History:" " So called from Potucko, an Indian, who having fired a ring of brushwood to surround and catch deer and other game, was himself entrapped and consumed." J There is nothing essentially improb- able in the story, and some slight support for it may be derived from the fact (already referred to) that while Potucko's name appears among the signatures attached to the deed of April 29, 1684, it is not among those in the deed of December following, but is substituted by that of Potucko's squaw. The fact of the close
* Branson's *' History of Waterbury," note to p. 96.
+ See p. 33.
$*' History of Waterbury," note on p, 462. Sec also the Rev. Samuel Orcutt's " History of Wolcott," note on p. xP?.
54
HISTORY OF WATERBURT,
connection of the name with the word petukki^ which means "round," becomes specially interesting in the light of the tradition concerning Potucko's death in a ring. Did the Indian derive his name from a practice of hunting deer in the way the tradition indicates — as if he were known as "the man of the ring"? Or was the story, like some other traditional tales, invented to account for the name ?
To this brief list of names in the Indian language should be added some others which, although not of Indian origin, contain reminiscences of the Indian period and of Indian occupancy.
Following again the alphabetical order, we begin with " Jack's cave." The old Indian trail between Farmington and the Nauga- tuck valley, which afterward became a travelled road, passed through the northwest corner of what is now Wolcott. According to tradi- tion the road ran close to the place where the dwelling of Mr. Levi Atkins now stands, but the Indian trail passed a little further to the north, "near a large, shelving rock called Jack's cave." In Mr. Orcutt's "History of Wolcott" it is added that "the Indians en- camped under this rock at night, in passing between Farmington and Woodbury," and that near it stood a large chestnut tree from which Mr. Timothy Bradley cut two hundred bullets, shot into it by Indians while shooting at a mark. * This does not prove conclusively that the Jack of Jack's cave was an Indian ; but, all things considered, it is a name which ought probably to be included in this list.
"Spinning Squaw's land," a locality mentioned in the early deeds, and apparently well known in the early days of Waterbury, is sufficiently described in the preceding chapter.f
" The Wigwam " is the name given to a strip of land, a mile long, lying on "West branch," which empties into the Naugatuck near Reynolds bridge. It is said to have been occupied by an Indian in recent years. A small stream which empties into West branch is known as "Wigwam brook."
There is another locality in which the memory of a wigwam sur- vives. In 1684 the proprietors of Mattatuck granted to Daniel Porter " four acres in the Wigwam swamp, as near the lower end as may be, so as to have the breadth of the swamp." In a deed bearing date a hundred and ten years later (December 3, 1795) we read : "Land in the sequester at the west end of * Wigwam swamp,' so called, on the brook which runs out of said swamp into Hancox brook " ; and in a later deed : " Land in the northern part of the
•Orcutt's " Wolcott," p. 197 and note.
t Sec pp. 31, 3a.
INDIAN OEOQRAPHICAL NAMES,
55
sequester in the First society of Waterbury, at the western end of 'Wigwam swamp/ so called, and lying upon the brook which runs out of said sw^amp into Hancox brook/'* It has been suggested that Spinning Squaw's land was here, and that it was Spinning Squaw's wigwam which gave its name to the swamp.
" The Old Canoe place " is the name applied to a spot in the Nau- gatuck river below Hopeville, behind the house which stands nearly opposite the residence of the late Isaac M. Thomas. There are rapids above and below, but here the water is smooth and compara- tively deep. It is supposed to have been a place where canoes were kept, or where the river was crossed by canoes.
It may be added in this connection that Mattatuck seems to have had its Indian burying ground. It was situated on what is now Johnson street, north of Sperry street.
Reference may be made, in conclusion, to another spot which has aboriginal associations connected with it of quite recent date. A few rods south of the city line (in Simonsville), on the east side of the highway, which here runs close to the river, there is a bit of elevated meadow, formerly surrounded by a wood, some trees of which still remain. Within the memory of persons now in mature life it was the site of a wigwam and the home of a solitary squaw. There was a kind of dam across the Naugatuck at this point, and it was a good fishing place, f
* Land Records, Vol. XXV, pp. 30a, 407 ; Vol. XXVI, p. 427.
t Reference has been made to the fact that in the town of Watertown, which belonged to ancient Mat- tatuck, there is an entire absence of Iildian local names. An Indian name has recently been introduced which is likely to secure a permanent foothold in the town. The proprietors of ** Wattles Pond," desiring to give it a more euphonious name, in connection with a plan to make it a place of resort for summer visitors, applied to the writer of this chaiAer for aid in selecting one. Instead of resorting (as is usually the case) to borrow- ing, a name was made to order, according to the laws which govern the construction of Indian place>names. The pond being a *^ fine fishing-place " was called IVinnitftaug^^ and is likely to be known by that name in the time to come. Some future explorer, failing to light upon this statement respecting its origin, may regard it as a genuine survival of the aboriginal period.
( The author cannot refrain from adding here that while the proofs of this chapter were passing through his hands, tidings were received of the sudden death of Samuel McLean of Watertown, who is referred to in this note, and also of the Rev. Samuel Orcutt, whose '* History of Derby" and ** History of Wolcott*' are quoted above, and who was the author of other voluminous town histories. Both of these gentlemen were killed by railroad trains at Bridgeport, within a few days of one another — January 10 and 14, 1893. )
CHAPTER V.
THE "stone age" IN CONNECTICUT — STONE IMPLEMENTS, CHIPPED AND GROUND—USES TO WHICH THEY WERE APPLIED, IN PEACE AND IN WAR — PLACES WITHIN MATTATUCK TERRITORY WHERE REMAINS OF THE STONE AGE HAVE BEEN FOUND — ACCOUNTS OF VARIOUS " finds" between BEACON HILL BROOK AND LITCHFIELD — IMPLEMENTS DESCRIBED.
IN Europe the long prehistoric period has been roughly divided by archaeologists into three ages — the Stone age, the Bronze age and the Iron age. This division, based upon the charac- teristics of the prehistoric remains that have been collected, is not entirely applicable to the western hemisphere, yet we may speak of the aboriginal population of America at the time of the Discovery as belonging to the Stone age, and some tribes or families as having passed upward into what may be designated the Copper age. The Indians of New England were still in the Stone age at the coming of the first settlers. They seem to have used to a very limited extent implements and weapons of hammered copper, obtained through traffic with other tribes, and there is evidence that they had learned to make pottery. But their dependence for useful implements, for weapons of war and for cooking utensils was almost entirely upon stone and wood.
We should hardly expect articles of wood to resist decay until modem times (although in a few instances wooden objects have survived), but implements of stone in large numbers lie scattered on the surface of the ground to the present day, or imbedded in the soil, and are still found, by those who have eyes to see, in ploughed fields, on the banks of rivers, along roadsides and in places where no one would expect to discover them. These stone imple- ments may be divided into two general classes — those made by chipping, such as the well-known arrow heads, and those made by pecking and grinding, such as celts, axes and pestles. Of these two classes, the former is by far the more numerous, although the num- ber of ^es and other ground implements which have been picked up in New England and over all the Atlantic slope during the past two hundred years must be immense.
If we knew precisely to what uses the various implements were applied, we should be able to reproduce quite fully the life of the
STONE IMPLEMENTS OF MATTATUCK, 57
aboriginal tribes. But concerning many of the remains there is still much uncertainty, after all the study which archaeologists have bestowed upon them. We know what the universal needs of the Indian were, — to provide for himself and his household sustenance and clothing and shelter. We know that the men hunted, that the women tilled the ground, that certain games and other amusements were indulged in, that religious rites were practiced, and that tribes made war upon one another. The remains that have been gathered consist of utensils or weapons which had to do with this simple but varied round of life; but what particular uses they served it is not always easy to say. To the various kinds of stone implements names have been confidently attached by collectors, but in all prob- ability those names are in many cases erroneous and misleading, — although as a matter of convenience they have to be used. In meet- ing the simple wants referred to, trees had to be felled (by burning or otherwise), posts had to be trimmed and driven, canoes had to be dug out, fire-wood to be prepared, deer and smaller game to be shot or trapped, fish to be caught in summer and in winter, flesh and fish to be boiled or roasted, bones to be cracked for the marrow in them, corn and beans to be planted and the ground tilled, skins to be scraped and cleaned, enemies to be slain, by arrow or club, and their scalps removed, and the dead to be disposed of by burial or otherwise. The stone implements that are found were used, either mounted in wood or otherwise, for these various purposes — some for one kind of work and some for another; but there was of course no such strict application of the tool to its specific purpose as we find to-day among skilled workmen. The celt, for instance, or the grooved axe, or the large chipped implement, may have been applied, like the modern jack-knife or hatchet, to a hundred differ- ent uses.
To a people whose chief means of subsistence were hunting and fishing, a region of rapid water-courses and of forests must have been specially attractive, while at the same time " interval lands " and clearings at the mouths of streams must have had great value in their eyes. We can readily believe, therefore, although there may have been no tribal seat or central camping-ground within the limits of ancient Mattatuck, that the territory was quite constantly occupied by wandering bands or family groups, who settled down here or there for a season, and then departed to some more prom- ising fishing-place, or some bluff commanding a better view of the river. At any camping-ground likely to be occupied for a few weeks in succession, wigwams would be erected, cooking would be gone through with, fire-wood would be provided, soapstone dishes
58 HI8T0RY OF WATBBBURT,
would be used, fish and game would be got ready for the pot, arrows and fish-spears would be made, to take the place of those that had been lost or broken, and arrow-heads and spear-heads chipped, to supply the constant demand. There are doubtless many spots up and down the Naugatuck valley, at the mouths of streams and on such bluffs as that on which the Waterbury hospital now stands, where these various processes were carried on, year after year, for centuries. Some of these spots have already furnished large har- vests to the collector of " relics *' or to the farmer-boy, while others have yet to be discovered. In some parts of our country — notably in New Jersey and in Ohio— the collecting of stone implements has been engaged in by so many, or systematized to such an extent, that definite opinions may safely be expressed in regard to their abundance and their relations to different localities. But nothing of this kind has been accomplished in the Naugatuck valley; it would be impossible to indicate on a map of the region, except in the most imperfect way, where camping-grounds were situated, or where the arrow-maker's hut may have stood, or where a battle with some hostile tribe may have been fought. The abundance of small chipped implements at a given place might be explained by one collector as the result of a battle, and by another as indicating the site of an arrow-maker's workshop, according to the scientific training of the collector, his accuracy as an observer and his caution in drawing inferences. Kilboume, in his " Sketches and Chroni- cles of Litchfield," comments in this way upon the chipped implements found on the shores of Bantam lake :
That such battles [between the Litchfield Indians and the '* intruding Mohawks "] have been fought on the now quiet rural shores of our beautiful lake and for a mile or two northward, is clearly indicated by the stone arrow-heads which are scattered in such profusion in the soil. It is true they are found in other parts of the township, but nowhere in such abundance as in the locality described. The writer remembers, as one of the pastimes of his childhood, following in the furrows behind the ploughman, on the West plain, for the express purpose of picking up these interesting memorials of a by-gone race — then of course regarded simply as playthings. These arrowheads are of various shapes and sizes, and are made of different kinds of flint — black, white, red and yellow — showing them to have been manufactured by different and probably distant tribes. *
To the untrained collector it may seem almost a matter of course thus to explain the abundance of arrow-heads at a given place by supposing a battle to have been fought there; but it may be entirely unscientific to do so. There are other hypotheses which must be brought into careful comparison with this ere a safe
* pp. 64, 65, of " Sketches and Chronicles of the Town of Litchfield. ])y Payne Kenyon Kilbourne, M. A.,'* Hartford, 1859.
8T0NE IMPLEMENTS OF MATTATUCK.
S9
decision can be reached. So, too, it may seem a natural inference from the variety of materials represented in a collection of arrow- heads that they were "manufactured by different and probably distant tribes,** but no such inference can be sustained ; indeed there are various facts which go to show that the material of which these implements were made was sometimes transported in considerable quantities from place to place, and manufactured afterward.
Not only has no systematic exploration of Waterbury territory with reference to archaeological traces been made ; it is quite impos- sible to give any full account of the remains which have been gathered up in the present and in previous generations. The very miscellaneous data which follow are simply those that have come to the writer's knowledge within a few years past, representing no effort at an exhaustive search for "relics" in the field, nor any serious attempt to ascertain what may be treasured in private collections, or lying around in the garrets and cupboards of farm- houses. These memoranda, however, will serve to show how wide- spread and general was the aboriginal occupancy of the region, and how closely conformed was the life of our Mattatuck predecessors to the typical Indian life.
Beginning at the southern boundary of Mattatuck, that is, at Beacon Hill brook, a mile and a half below Naugatuck centre, we find traces near the mouth of the brook of what some have called an Indian village. The brook is famous as a trout stream ; indeed for rods above and below its mouth the Naugatuck river used to be "black with fish," and it was with reference to the fishing that the " village " was established there. This camping-ground was situ- ated on the northern bank of the stream, about forty rods above its mouth. Certain details in regard to it were furnished to the writer by the late Josiah Culver of Naugatuck (born in 1799), whose father, Amos Culver, settled near the mouth of Beacon Hill brook previous to 1780. At that time, corn-hills — remains of aboriginal planting — were plainly visible, and there were Indians living in the neighborhood. Numerous traces of an arrow maker's work- shop existed there, and some years ago, in digging a cellar, a large quantity of stone " chips " was unearthed. Josiah Culver found a stone pipe on this site, and a soapstone dish that would hold two or three quarts. In his later life he found a rude " pestle " and a few white quartz arrow-heads near his dwelling, on the west side of the Naugatuck river.
About a mile back from the river rises Twelve Mile hill, known also as Straight mountain. Here, on a plateau overlooking the
6o HISTORY OF WATBRBUBT.
Naugatuck valley, is the residence of H. N. Williams. On the level surface, ten rods back from the declivity and near a peat swamp,
^_. Mr. Williams found one
of the axes figured in the accompanying cut. It is six and a half inches long and three ' and a half wide, nar- rowing to the cutting edge. It is flat on one side, but the groove runs entirely around it. It has
I been carefully ground in
the groove and near the edge, but not elsewhere. Mr. Williams found near the same spot a mallet-like stone, having a very artificial look ; but it is probably a natural object.
The other axe here figured was found in the village of Nauga- tuck, and was preserved for many years in the family of the late Willard Spencer, of Waterbury. Its length is six inches. It is very slightly grooved, except on the edges, and bears few traces of work. It was evidently a natural wedge of fine sandstone, selected because of its axe-like shape, and mounted in its handle with as little labor as possible.
The large chipped implement figured in the same cut was also found in Naugatuck village, near the river. It is of dark brown flint (more properly, chert), and is seven inches long, and seven- eighths of an inch thick at the middle, tapering on both sides to a nicely chipped edge.
In the writer's collection are three other implements found in Naugatuck, near the river. One of them (presented by the late Cal- vin H. Carter) may be regarded as a pestle, although it approxi- mates to the form of a blunt chisel. It is eleven inches long. Three of its sides are flat; the fourth side rounded. Lying with its rounded side up, its heighth is two and a quarter inches, its thickness one and three-quarters. One of the ends is rounded, the other wedge-shaped, but blunt. The material is a fine sandstone, very similar to the axe last described. The second specimen is a chipped " hoe " of white quartzite, five inches long. The " blade " is three and a half inches wide, the " stem " two and a quarter. It is very rough and evidently unfinished. What it would have become in the finishing process it is difficult to say. Still more interesting than this is the third implement, which may be described as a small
STONE IMPLEMENTS OF MATTATUCK. 6i
"adze" or a "gfouge " designed for mounting in a handle. On one side it is flat, except that it is gouge-shaped at the cutting edge. The other side is convex, and midway there are two projections, with a hollow between them, evidently made to receive a withe handle. The tool is five inches long and an inch and three-quarters in width. It is of very hard stone, but is symmetrically shaped and carefully ground.
At Bradleyville, northwest of Naugatuck, stone implements have been picked up by John Bradley, Isaac Scott, Enoch Newton and others, but no details can be given. *
Through the kindness of Dr. Isaac N. Russell the writer's col- lection contains a stone axe found at Piatt's Bridge on the Nauga- tuck, three miles south of the centre of Waterbury. The stone is very compact and heavy and almost black. The length is seven and a half inches, the breadth five inches; the thickness above the groove two inches and a half. The groove is shallow, and although the axe is of a well-defined type it has been made such without the expenditure of much labor. The part below the groove is wedge- shaped and tapering, and the cutting edge is very nearly a semi- circle. Along with the axe came a few arrowheads, and additional arrowheads of white quartz were received from the Misses Cowell, residents of the Piatt's Mills district.
At Malmanack (or Malmalick), a hill referred to in the previous chapter, numerous chipped implements have been found. The Rev. Eli B. Clark, in a letter already quoted, says :
In my youth, while cultivating the fields on the sides and top of that hill, we often found Indian relics, chiefly arrow-heads of greater or less perfection. I should judge that they were from three to five inches in length, some very slim and sharp, others larger and more blunt, intended probably for larger game. We often found them broken, but some were apparently as perfect as when used by the red man in slaughtering his game.
It was very pleasing to us boys to find these relics of a former race, and we carefully treasured them up, for the time being, as curiosities. I have a vague recollection that something we called the Indian hatchet was occasionally found, but of this I could not affirm positively.
The locality of the arrow-heads was confined chiefly to the hill; I scarcely recol- lect finding any on other parts of our farm, which extended quite a distance in all directions. I do not think that the question why the arrow-heads were confined to that partictilar spot was much agitated in those days. Whether the Indians came there for the outlook, or for game, or for some other reason, was not satisfactorily settled, if indeed it has been since, or ever will be. The hill was evidently a favorite camping ground, where much time must have been spent; otherwise it is not easy to account for the loss of so many weapons of the chase.
As far to the east of the Naugatuck as Malmanack is to the west, rises the height known as East mountain, near the bounds of
62 BISTORT OF WATERBURT.
Prospect. This is represented in the writer's collection by a hand- some black spear-head. At Prospect centre, on ground high enough to command a view of Long Island sound, the writer secured an interesting stone "mortar," probably of aboriginal manufacture, which now rests under a tree near his cottage at Woodmont. The material is a compact, yellowish brown sandstone. It is without definite form, but approximates to an oval. It is twenty-three inches in length, eighteen in breadth, and six in thickness. The excavation is three inches at its greatest depth and slopes gradually to the top. The longer diameter of the excavation lies across the stone and measures seventeen inches. Its width is fourteen inches, so that there is a flat margin on one side* of it, measuring several inches across. This may have been a mortar in which to grind com. If so, the "pestle" must have been used horizontally, that is, rolled. But the excavation does not afford much evidence of use. *
Returning to the Naugatuck river, a little above the point at which Mad river empties into it, we find a spot productive of arrow- heads where the office of the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing company now stands. Here was the home of the late Joseph P. Somers, from whose daughters, Mrs. Stephen E. Harrison and Mrs. Douglas F. Maltby, the writer has received collections of arrow and spear-heads — the arrow-heads, as usual, being mostly of white quartz. They were picked up, years ago, in the garden connected with the old homestead.
In the autumn of 1892, some laborers who were digging a cellar near the corner of East Main and Silver streets in Waterbury came upon a number of arrow-heads. A short distance to the east of this, on the Meriden road, are two curious depressions, formerly filled with water, known as the Spectacle ponds.f Some years ago, in one of these ponds or " kettle holes" — that on the south side of the road — a curious and interesting discovery was made, not only represent- ing aboriginal life, but bearing upon the question of the antiquity of man in this region. The workmen of Mr. D. G. Porter, while digging muck and peat from the bottom of the pond, came upon a number of pieces of wood bearing unquestionable evidence of hav- ing been cut with a blunt instrument. Some of the sticks were pine.
* The writer recalls with no little amusement the prolonged effort put forth to secure this " relic " from its putative owner. It lay at the time in a barn yard, filled with ice, having been set apart as a watering trough for fowls. But the farmer's son, as soon as he was asked to sell, conceived a strong attachment for it. " My grandfather," he said, ** found it and brought it home a hundred years ago, and people have come miles to see it." When finally persuaded to name his price, he said, with much deliberation, ** I shall have to ask you twenty-five cents for it." "Well, I am willing to give you twenty-five cents for it," the col- lector quietly replied ; and he then and there began to appreciate for the first time the high estimate which the hill-top farmer puts upon a quarter of a dollar.
t These are described and their origin explained in chap. I, pp. 8, 9.
STONE IMPLEMENTS OF MATTATUCK. 63
some white birch, and measured two inches in diameter. Others showed unmistakable traces of fire, as did also the stones that were found with them. The remarkable thing about these remains (now in the writer's possession) is that they were found at a depth of fif- teen feet below the surface. To establish approximately their date, we must not only go back to a time when the Spectacle ponds were dry ground, but must reckon the rate at which black earth is formed by the annual deposit of leaves, and the rate also of the formation of peat through the growth and decay of peat -moss. It has been estimated that in a country overgrown with forests of beach, oak and chestnut, where there is annually a vast deposit of dead leaves, the increase in the depth of the soil is " one one-hun- dred and twenty-eighth of an inch per annum," or one inch in a hundred and twenty-eight years.* At this rate, to deposit a stratum of soil fifteen feet in thickness would require more than twenty- three thousand years. Such estimates are of a hap-hazard character at best; but even if such a rate as this could be established for a wooded region and a level surface, it would serve but poorly as a measure of the time required for the deposition of earth and muck and peat in a glacial "kettle hole." We must make large allowance for the accumulation of fallen leaves in such an excavation; and for the washing in of sand and refuse by heavy rains. But after all such deductions are made, the depth at which the remains at Spec- tacle pond were found is remarkable. A variety of hypotheses might be suggested to account for their position; but those who believe that man existed in North America during the last glacial period or soon afterward, will find here new evidence in support of their opinion.
Coming westward again to the centre of the city, and going a short distance up Prospect street, we are at the residence of Mr. Luther C. White — the house next north of Trinity church. In dig- ging the cellar of this house, some years ago, a "relic" was found more interesting than any other that has thus far been discovered in ancient Mattatuck. It is the pipe with a face and figure upon it pictured on page 38. This pipe is of fine, dark green steatite, so dark that it is almost black. The stem is four and a half inches long, half an inch wide, and five-eighths of an inch thick. The bowl is two inches and three-quarters in depth; the diameter across the top is seven-eighths of an inch, and the diameter of the bore three-eighths. On the upper side of the stem is a recumbent female figure, the right arm alongside of the body, the left arm across the chest. Each hand has three fingers which are spread apart
*Dr. C. C. Abbott on the ^'Antiquity of the Indians of North America," in Thf American Naturalist for February, 1876 (Vol. X, p. 67).
64 HISTORY OF WATERBURT,
like the claws of a bird. The figure is three inches and a half in length, and a little broader than the stem upon which it rests. On the tipper part of the bowl, facing the smoker, is a carefully carved man's face, an inch and three-eighths in length. The ears are per- forated, and the eyes are either closed or directed downward to the recumbent figure on the stem. There is a slight projection or ring around the top of the bowl, and another similar ridge around the stem, half an inch from the end. The pipe is carefully carved and beautifully polished throughout, and taken as a whole is far superior to the average handiwork of the New England Indians. Artistically and in its workmanship it bears some resemblance to the pipes of the Ohio valley Mound Builders, — although if it were a mound pipe, it might not be easy to explain how it reached the Naugatuck val- ley during the aboriginal period. But if we may judge from what some of the early writers have said concerning the skill of the New England Indians, such work as that displayed in this Waterbury pipe was not altogether beyond their reach. John Josselyn, in his " Two Voyages to New England," enumerating articles of Indian manufacture, mentions " tobacco pipes of stone, with images upon them;"* and Wood, in his "New England's Prospect," speaking of the things which the Massachusetts Indians obtain from the Narra-
gansetts, says :
From hence they have their great stone pipes which will hold a quarter of an ounce of tobacco, which they make with steel drills and other instruments. Such is their ingenuity and dexterity that they can imitate the English mold so accu- rately that, were it not for matter and color, it were hard to distinguish them. They make them of g^een and sometimes of black stone. They be much desired of our English tobacconists for their rarity, strength, handsomeness and coolness. f
So closely does this description correspond at some points with the Waterbury pipe that we might easily suppose the author had it before him while he wrote. Very probably its Mattatuck owner obtained it by traffic rather than by manufacture, but with such facts before us as these furnished by Wood we need not suppose that it came from the Ohio valley or from any tribe more remote than the Narragansetts. And what Wood says in regard to the use of steel drills suggests that this and other articles of aboriginal manu- facture may belong to the period subsequent to the first coming of Europeans. At any rate, it is difficult to believe that such work could have been done without metal tools — without the "steel drills " of the English, or the copper instruments of the Mound Builders.
The streets next west of Prospect street, namely. Central and Holmes avenues, run northward across land formerly owned by the late Samuel J. Holmes. On that part of the land now crossed by
♦p. Ill, reprint of 1865. + Part 2, chap. 3 ; p. 69, reprint of 1865.
urONE IMPLEMEHTB OF MATTATUCK.
6S
Central avenue there were formerly several places which afforded evidence of early (perhaps aboriginal) excavations. The several depressed areas varied in extent from six to twelve feet square, and in two of them charcoal was found, with other traces of fire and also ilat stones. Near the centre of the land, where Holmes avenue now is, was formerly a low bluff, with springs at its base. Mr, Israel Holmes reports that arrow-heads, mostly of white quartz, used to be found here in considerable numbers.
Mr, Israel Holmes's present residence, "Westwood," stands on a beautiful plateau on the west side of the river, overlooking the extensive meadows of the Kaugatuck. Here also many arrow- heads and larger chipped implements have been found, and on the north side of the house traces of an arrow-maker's work-shop are constantly occurring, Mr. Holmes's collection of "relics" picked up about the house and in the garden contains twenty or thirty white quartz arrow-heads, several of flint and of red sandstone, two "pestles," two interesting fragments of soapstonc dishes and two implements evidently designed to be mounted as hoes and probably used in cultivating corn.
On the bluff next north of Mr. Holmes, where the house of Mr. Loren R. Carter now stands, arrow-heads are still picked up. On Hospital bluff, a little distance to the south, some interesting pieces have been found, among which are those here represented.
The soapstone dish was given to the writer some years ago by the late C. B. Merriman. Its general outline is triangular, but the corners are rounded off so much that it is almost circular. Its length, not reckoning the projecting