History
We the People Called Quinnipiac
Disenfranchisement
In the winter of 1770 the last male Sachem of the Quinnipiac, Charles, passed away, frozen to death. In 1773 the last 30 acres of Quinnipiac Reservation land was sold to the public through an intermediary named Samuel Adams. Adams was said to be Quinnipiac but he was living in Farmington and so was either a Puritan who gave up his Quinnipiac rights or a Tunxis.
In Algonquians of the East it also explains that: “…In the 1870s, Massachusetts joined Rhode Island and Connecticut in seeking to sell off Indian lands and disband the tribes that where living there.” As the lands were auctioned off the names of our once-strong nations were crossed off the “Record” in the legislatures. So the Quinnipiac became known as the “New Haven Tribe of Indians.” This was ironic since the original name of New Haven is Quinnipiac.
After the U.S. Constitution was initiated, Algonquians began to return to our ancestral domains. Some had been hiding in plain sight all along, pretending to be English and holding down jobs as whalers, fishermen, hunting guides and laborers. The women sold baskets, brooms and baby rattles.
Several families had moved to Derby (Naugatuck Sachemdom) and married in with the Paugussett. One of these women was Sarah, who married Joseph Mahwee, the son of the founder of Schaghticoke Gideon Mauwee. Under Algonquian custom that traces lineal descent matrilineally, most of the Schaghticoke are of the Quinnipiac lines and several Schaghticoke agree.
In the 1850s there were still descendants of the Quinnipiac living along the shores in the Guilford/Branford region. Jim Soebuck was one of them and we traced other lines to survivors as well. My Great Aunt Elizabeth Sakaskantawe Brown lived in Branford from the 1850s to the 1960s, when she passed away over a hundred years old. She had married three husbands, the last of which was James Skeezucks, a descendant of an Algonquian family who had been at Brotherton, Wisconsin, and had returned to Connecticut. Friends of Gordon Fox-Running Brainerd also remember a Quinnipiac in school named Charlie Killfeather. Little Owl (Ruth Thunderhorse) has a family tree of English and Algonquian descent that dates back to 1635; and her ancestors are directly rooted in Guilford and Farmington. There are many more as well.
By the 1920s, Coastal Algonquians were caught up in the Pan-Indian movement. Tribes in the northeast formed the Indian Council of New England and came up with a motto that resonated deeply, “We Are Still Here.”
During this period the Mohegan Indian League grew into the Council of the Descendants of the Mohegan Indians, Inc. and other “non-reservation” groups formed into corporations such as the Pennacook/Sokoki Inter Tribal Nation, Inc., the New Hampshire Indian Council, Inc., and the Ramapough Mountain Indians, Inc. (NJ).
The nations in Connecticut gained state recognition in the 1960s and in the 1970s a law was passed creating CIAC (Connecticut Indian Affairs Council). Ed Sarabia, a man not even Algonquian, let alone a member of the bands of CT, was appointed as Indian Affairs Coordinator. The CIAC has not met in years and the Indian policy in Connecticut is the subject of jokes and ridicule. ACQTC went its own way and we are glad we did.
History
