History
We the People Called Quinnipiac
The Historical Period
In June of 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed past the Bays of the Piedmont and landed at Block Island (Manisses) off the coast of what is today Massachusetts. He described the Algonquians of Long Island Sound this way: “They exceed us in size, they are of very fair complexion; some of them incline more to a white, and others to a tawny color…” This sounds almost identical to the descriptions of the Beothuk and is why Algonquians are often called the White Indians of the Dawnland.
The men mixed red ochre with bear fat to color their skins and to repel insects and the elements; and they tattooed clan and status signs on their faces, arms, and legs. The women did this, too, as John White’s portraits of Algonquian women in the Piedmont demonstrate. Algonquians of the Hudson River in New York were still wearing facial tattoos in the late 1800s.
In the year 1614, Adrian Block, a mariner employed by the Dutch West India Company sailed his 49 foot ship, the Onrust (Unrest) into the harbor at New Haven, CT. He dubbed this region Rodenberg, after the twin shale-backed trap-rock mountains, known today as East Rock and West Rock, because of their unique blood-red coloring.
When the Dutch arrived they were greeted by a delegation of Algonquians from Long Island Sound. The Monsey, Mahicanni and Quiripey (Quinnipiac) were mentioned by name in Dutch journals and on maps. When this meeting took place the Quinnipiac/Quiripey Sachemdoms covered some 750 square miles. The NE boundary of these domains was Mattabesek (Middletown), the SE boundary was Pasboushanke (Old Saybrook on the Connecticut River), the SW boundary was Wepawaug (Indian River in Milford), and the NW boundary was Mattatuck (Waterbury). This was where the seven Quinnipiac Sachemdoms dwelled; and in the center, running north and south, is the Quinnipiac River. This name Quinni-pe-auke, means, literally “long-water-land,” and in the ancient R-dialect of our ancestors it was pronounced/spelled Quirri-pe-okke. The Dutch shortened this to Quiripey.
The Quinnipiac bands fished for shellfish and scale fish on the coast and rivers to the south during the spring and summer. They smoked their meat and piled clam and oyster shells in heaps to be used later for the precious wampum shell beads. In the fall they went upriver in dug-out canoes, called mishoon/ash, along the Quinnipiac River to where it ends in a salt marsh at Tunxis (Farmington). Just below this area in Meriden and Cheshire is where the bands camped for the winter.
The name Quinnipiac is only a place name. There were several names used by our ancestors as phrases of self-identification. The first is Eansketambawg, which means roughly, “We, the surface dwelling people.” Animals, plants, rocks and trees were considered people, too; so this was a way of distinguishing from those others. The prefix ean- is used to indicate only those of the same nation. Another name is the word Rennawauk which is similar to the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) name indicating the “Real People” or “True Humans.” There are many variations in the other dialects.
The Wampano Confederacy is an extension of the Quinnipiac domains which reached to the west at Mahicannituck (Hudson River). J. Hammond Trumbull verified that the Quinnipiac domains reached past the borders of the CT/NY line in his Introduction to the Bilingual English/Quiripey Catechism of Rev. Abraham Pierson of Branford in 1658.
This confederacy included the Munsee’s Esopus Sachemdoms, the Mahican Sachemdoms and it became known as the Wappinger and the Wampanoo. In the Algonquian dialects this is an appellative indicating the “Dawnland.” The Wompanoag and the Wabanaki are similar names meaning “Dawnlanders.”
Graphic courtesy of The WAMPUM (TUELN Newsletter)
When the English arrived on April 24, 1638, they found a virtual paradise when they landed at the Quinnipiac’s mawiomi. The Puritans described our ancestral summer camps: “These camps were all on sunny hillside clearings; surrounded by a thickly wooded country, convenient to springs of fresh water, and near their corn and bean plantations, the cultivation of which was done by the squaws; and were bordering on the harbor and rivers, which offered an abundant supply of shell and scale fish within easy reach.”
These “plantations” also included nut and berry bushes, squash, etc. — a totally integrated plantation. Yet, contrary to the writings of most observers, the Quinnipiac were not farmers in a true sense. Maize horticulture did not develop at Long Island Sound until after 1000 AD and this was only added to their plantation regimen. The diet was mostly fish.
The Algonquian conception of a plantation or Reokkechanotan is ancient. New research conducted by ACQTC scholars shows that the Ohio Valley mound complexes were integrated plantations where plants such as sunflowers, maygrass, nettles, goosefoot, knotweed and squashes were cultivated. In the Connecticut Valley, prior to maize and beans, our ancestors cultivated many forms of weeds, e.g. amaranth, purslane, yarrow, smartweed, goldenrod, pokeweed, dogbanes, goldenseal and wormgrass for food, beverages, medicine and dyes, for their survival and lifestyle.
Our Quinnipiac ancestors entered into three primary Treaties with the English in the years 1658 and 1659. The first Treaty set up a 1200 acre parcel of land to be “reserved” for our ancestors, and, as Richard G. Carlson notes, “is often referred to as the first Indian reservation in what is now the United States.”
In these Treaties our ancestors agreed to be allied with the English in commerce and the military. Wampum beads, a prestige goods commodity became the legal tender in Connecticut. Both the Quinnipiac and Mohegan nations were required to provide a quota of fighting men in all battles. When King Philip’s War (Metacom’s Revolt) broke out and the final battle was set in motion on December 18, 1675, the troops from Connecticut numbered 500, with 300 English and 150 Indians of equal Mohegan and Quinnipiac sachemdoms. Quinnipiac warriors also fought in the Canadian War of 1690, the Cuban Expedition of 1740, and the Lewisburg Expedition of 1745.
Around this time a second epidemic (1630s) wiped out another portion of the Quinnipiac people, and after Metacom’s Revolt many nations were forced into exile. Those who did not convert (and this meant giving up the Algonquian way of life) into Rev. Eliot’s “Praying Indians” were either forced into hiding (many of our ancestors survived by hiding in one rock shelter after another just as the famous Regicides did at West Rock and other places) or were banished from one missionary camp to another.
The Quinnipiac Bands split in the late 18th Century, “one part going to live with the Tunxis in Farmigton, the other remaining in a remote region of Guilford…” The group that went to Tunxis left later for Stockbridge, MA, where they joined the Munsee and Mahican. These all left together for a long “trail of heartaches” in the 19th Century, taking them to Oneida, NY, to Indiana, and finally to the Menominee Thunder Clan of Wisconsin.
History
