Shore View Friday, November 28, 2008
Thanksgiving before the Puritans
by Mike Michaels
Right about now, you're probably facing a mountain of Thanksgiving leftovers. A turkey carcass and the sliced remains, remnants of the sweet potatoes and grandma's green bean casserole.
When surveying this bounty by the light of the open fridge at midnight, it may be hard to picture the earliest Thanksgiving. Before cur Puritan forefathers even stepped foot in New England. Long before Butterball and Pepperidge Farm.
Let’s go back aways.
It is a crisp autumn day, late September. We are looking over that parcel of land now occupied by the former Griswold Airport where the Hammonasset River flows into Long Island Sound in Madison. But it is the early 1500s and instead of pavement, we see a park-like vista which includes two Native American villages. And in fact, the area at the mouth of the Hammonasset River, particularly the current airport site, once had the highest concentration of Native American camps and villages than any other place on the Connecticut shoreline.
Here, on this abundantly fertile land, the original shoreliners are in the process celebrating their spiritual Harvest Festival giving thanks to the One Creator for the bountiful food provided. In about 100 years, further north in what is now Massachusetts the storied “First Thanksgiving” will take place and Native Americans from the same Algonquin culture as our shoreliners will share their bounty with new European neighbors. But by then, the population of Native Americans in “New England” will have already gone into serious decline from the diseases spread by the settlers.
Before the Quinnipiac villagers begin their feast, a medicine man or shaman cleanses himself with the smoke of ceremonial tobacco and then blesses this food with a prayer of thanks to that One Creator, “Ketanit,” or “One Who Made It All.” After the feast the celebration will continue with drumming, singing and dancing.
This festival also marked the end of the season when the warmer weather permitted plantation farming as well as maritime activity --- fishing and shellfish gathering, along the shoreline. With the approach of winter, the Quinnipiac people will migrate north to the forested regions now known
as North Guilford and North Madison where trees protect them from winter winds and game for hunting is plentiful.
The story of the Native American spiritual harvest feast was originally told to us by Gordon (Fox-Running) Brainerd while sitting at his table at the Dudley Farmer’s Market in North Guilford. The Fox-Running part of his name refers to his position as a Quinnipiac shaman carrying on the spiritual traditions of his descendants.
At Dudley, you will see a modest looking man of slight build with a mustache wearing khaki work pants, a red plaid flannel shirt and a baseball cap covering long, somewhat tangled graying hair. Fox-Running maintains immense pride and articulate knowledge of his heritage combined with a wry and
ready wit.
But Fox-Running has yet another moniker, Ike, a nickname that comes from his childhood and one that fits a Native American.
Ike grew up in Stony Creek during the Great Depression. Times were hard and to feed his family, his father hunted small game and ran a series of trap lines along the shore form Branford to Old Saybrook. When little Gordon accompanied his father to check on the traps he would complain about the winter cold and his father took to calling him “Icicle Ike!”
As Fox-Running recounts, “My father’s traps brought us muskrat pelts and also skunk. The fat from skunks had a very penetrating quality which made it quite useful at the time to the people who made Vicks VapoRub, our customers.”
As Fox-Running had explained to me, the name Quinnipiac translates as “people of the long water land” and evidence does exist that indicates that
the original “long-water-land” related to the entire shoreline along Long Island Sound. But another spelling of this word is Quinneh/tukq/ut which of course can be pronounced as Connecticut. in fact, the central location of the Quinnipiac people was our home state with some settlements in western Massachusetts and western Long Island. The Quinnipiac people also refer to themselves as, “People at the Dawnland,” who live near the sea where the sun rises.
The Harvest Festival was only one of many Quinnipiac festivals. The major village of the Quinnipiac people was in the New Haven area and the primary chief or sachem from there would send runners out to gather people together at a designated place for equinox and solstice festivals or others such as a festival celebrating the ripening of strawberries or the plentifulness of the lobster catch.
Fox-Running’s path to shamanism began with an early interest in Native American spiritualism and he was instructed and led through the process of becoming a shaman by Iron Thunderhorse, whose title is, “Grand Sachem of the Thunder Clan of the Algonquian Confederacy of the Quinnipiac Tribal Council.”
As Fox-Running explains, “An important step in my initiation was a ‘Vision Quest’ in which I went to a sacred place in the forest and sat in the middle of a circle marked by four white quartz stones placed at the four points of the compass. Then, praying and chanting, I asked the Creator to send me a spirit guide. After sitting there for several hours, I fell asleep and at about three in the morning I instantly woke up to find an imposing figure standing in front of me. The figure was draped with a black bearskin robe. His face was painted one half red and one half black. He stood there with his arm raised pointing at me but never said a word. This lasted about one minute and then the figure faded away.
"I consulted with Iron Thunderhorse about my vision and he explained to me that this meant I should follow ‘the good red road,’ meaning that I should follow Native American tradition. Since then, that has been my goal in life.”
This article is part of the Thanksgiving Collection:
