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We the People Called Quinnipiac
by Iron Thunderhorse - Thunder Clan Grand Sachem
Excerpts from CHAPTER 2
Journey to the Long Water Place
WE THE PEOPLE CALLED QUINNIPIAC arrived in the Long Island Sound Region about 10,000 years ago (at the end of the Paleo Indian Period) when the glaciers began to recede. In terms of Algonquian tradition this was the third phase of creation known as the Third Sacred Fire.
What our ancestors found in the Connecticut Valley was nothing short of awe-inspiring. They found an ancient fresh-water lake with a giant, thundering waterfall 300 times greater than Niagara Falls. It extended from Fisher’s Island to Orient Point, an area over 100 miles long. To our ancestors this was the prophetic holy ground.
The geological process that created this phenomenon began millions of years ago — when the dinosaurs roamed free in the Connecticut Valley. Geological upheavals created this special place, as Floyd M. Shumway and Richard Hegel describe the process in “New Haven: A Topographical History”:
“[D]uring the Triassic period two hundred million years ago. An enormous north-south depression extending from the shoreline to Massachusetts developed in Connecticut. A large tract of rock dropped below the level of the surrounding area, a kind of action that creates what is known as a fault and is often referred to as a trench fault… In this way the central valley lowland of Connecticut was created. It occupies a belt up to twenty miles in width and is essentially a lowland in late maturity.” [Shumway/Hegel 1988:4].
This is indeed interesting since one of the aboriginal names for Long Island Sound was ‘Hobbomock’s belt’ (sash, i.e. ‘thing that circles the upper body’). Heavy rains during this period washed large amounts of sand and other matter into the central valley.
Ice Age Ancestors (The Paleo-Indians, 18,000 - 8,000 years BP)
Scientists have found evidence of humans who lived in the Americas during the Ice Age for more than a century. Ancient spear points have been found imbedded in the bones of mammoths, a giant elephant-like creature with long tusks and lots of hair. So we know that humans were hunting these giant beasts… others included the giant bear, giant beaver, three toed sloth, pterodactyl like birds etc. But the big question is this. Did this include our ancestors?
For the past 25 years James Adovasio has been excavating the Meadowcroft Rockshelter near Avella, Pennsylvania, where he has uncovered over 300 fireplaces, 20,000 stone tools, and lots more. Radiocarbon dating shows the activity dates back between 14,000 to 17,000 years BP.
On the banks of the Shepaug River, at site number 6LF21 artifacts dated back to a period known to archaeologists as the Paleo Indian Period, well over 10,000 years BP. Tools for hideworking, woodworking, plant processing, boneworking, hunting, tool making and ceremonial artifacts were found. This camp covered some 150 meters where a small band of about twenty people stayed. Clovis style points used in big-game hunting were found here.
During the Paleo Indian period natural and man-manipulated rock shelters and shelters made on rock ledges with overhangs with lean-tos attached were the norm. Lithic implements such as points and bi-faces go back as far as 3400 to 2600 BC at Sylvan Lake Rock-shelter in Connecticut, and to 4350 BC at the Binette Site.
The Paleo Indian Period, as Edward J. Lenik of Sheffield Archaeological Associates remarks in his book Indians of the Ramapough, “includes the time from the final retreat of the Wisconsin glacier from the region to the development of modern Holocene environments. Following deglaciation the landscape consisted of tundra-like vegetation including sedges, mosses and lichens. This was succeeded by open parkland vegetation characterized by a mosaic of grasslands and coniferous forests…” [Lenik 1999:10]. This is about when our ancestors migrated to the region.
Stone Age Ancestors (The Archaic Indians, 7,000 - 3,000 years BP)
The next phase is known as the Archaic Period. At College Woods just below East Rock artifacts from 10,000 years BP were found and at the Burwell-Karako site artifacts from 8,000 years BP were found some evidence of Indian occupation of New Haven from the Paleo-Indian Period over into the Archaic Indian Period exists in terms of scientific evidence.
During this period the climate changed drastically, tools were found for the felling of trees, fashioning dugout canoes which became the primary means of transportation. This is the period when the Maritime culture flourished. Fishing technology became more sophisticated. Nets, spears, hooks, and traps are abundant here. The hammerstone is also found here and was used to crack bones for marrow. The mortar and pestle once made from stone slowly began to be fashioned from wood.
Soapstone (steatite) quarries were plentiful here and in the western half of Connecticut soapstone quarry sites are common. Bowls and pots were made from this stone because it conducts heat well and could be placed directly over the fire.
Wild plants, seeds, roots, stalks, shoots, nuts, and berries became plentiful. Many of the plant life considered weeds today were vital to the survival of our ancestors. Amaranth and purlsane were used for food, yarrow for medicine, smartweed for smoking, goldenrod as a beverage, pokeweed as a dye, and milkweed for mats.
Watercraft & Seafaring
The manufacturing of dug-out canoes was improved here with the use of fire, and shells from the sea. This is how the Quinnipiac process for dugout canoes or mishoon (pl. mishoonash) was done. A stout tree was scouted and selected and the bark was removed a year in advance. Such a tree had to be at least 24 to 26 feet high. It was left standing so that fire on torches could be applied to the trunk. In this position the fire was easier to control. One side was roughly hollowed out, and then the base was burned all the way through. The charred wood was scooped out with seashells and then rubbed with a hard smooth stone frequently dipped in water. This is how the bow and stern were also fashioned after the interior was gouged out. The finished canoe was about 20 feet long and 4 foot wide. Broad bladed paddles were then made to propel the craft which used no oarlocks.
Courtesy of
Ancient American
Iron Age Ancestors (The Woodland Indians, 3,000 - 1,000 years BP)
The Algonquian peoples of Long Island Sound have been characterized by many observers as ‘agriculturists’, but in a strict sense this is not entirely true. In the QUINNIPIACK INDIANS AND THEIR RESERVATION Townshend quotes early explorers who had witnessed the character of the Quinnipiac 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…” [Townshend 1900:62].
These “plantations”, described as park like fields, were the Quinnipiac summer camps, occupied from the early spring when the geese returned and the fishhawk began building their nests at Kuttomquosh (Thimble Islands) and the fish runs of spawning fish started in the harbor estuary up into the fresh water rivers. The men fished at weirs while the women planted. Horticulture, or maize and bean cultivation was added to the ancient Algonquian gardening plots and replaced the tedious gathering process of the Archaic Period. [Bragdon 1996:37]. In winter, or actually late fall, the bands moved inland during rutting season when deer and wild turkey sought their staple diet acorns, and under protection of the forest trees they trapped beaver, rabbit and other small game [R. Williams 1936:46].
Algonquian Plantations
This depiction by Theodore de Bry, an engraving from a John White painting, shows what the first European explorers saw all along the Atlantic and the eastern half of the United States — great integrated “plantations” where corn or Indian Maize, beans, squash, sunflowers, amaranth, milkweed, nuts, berries, etc., were part of a very organized and sophisticated society/culture. Dutch and English planters described the Quinnipiac plantations as park-like havens. (Courtesy of The London Museum)
The concept of an Algonquian plantation (Reokkechanotan in the Quinnipiac r-dialect) is deeply rooted in our traditions. Bradley T. Lepper, Curator of the Ohio Historical society with his colleagues have found that astronomy played an integral part in these planting traditions. The Dutchman Nicholas Wassenaer (Circa 1621-32) made notations on how the Algonquians of Long Island Sound used the sun, moon, and stars to determine the ceremonial feasts they gave in thanksgiving for their abundant stores of plants and vegetables. Verrazzano also noted that the Algonquians of the same region used the Pleiades rising and setting on opposite horizons as a calculation for the northeastern frost-free cycle. [Bragdon 1996:125 citing Lynn Ceci].
The ancient earthworks of the Hopewellian Period moundbuilding phase are now seen as having been more than just colossal fortresses. They were carefully integrated plantations, plazas and trade centers. The plantations cultivated dozens of varieties of squash, sunflowers, maygrass, nettles, goosefoot, knotweed and, as time moved on other things were added later such as maize and beans, fruits and nuts.
The embankments of the Reokkechanotan were set in a way to help irrigate crops high enough so flooding was not a serious threat but still low enough to channel irrigation. [Lepper 1999; Romain 2000].
Maize horticulture was introduced in the northeast about AD 1000, but it was not adopted as part of the Reokkechanotan summer camp complexes until AD 1300. This is when the “farmsteads” had emerged in the region. [Bragdon 1996:86]. Bragdon also argues that: “horticulture was still only one subsistence strategy among many” used by our ancestors. [Bragdon 1996:89].
Hundreds of years ago Indian women all over America ground acorns, nuts, and later maize (corn) with a stone pestle and a mortar made by grinding a hole in the bedrock. (Photo courtesy of Southwest Museum)
A corn mill found in the West Woods Complex in Guilford, CT which was part of the Quinnipiac’s Menunkatuck Band Sachemdom. Similar mills have been found at Turkey Hill between Orange, CT and Naugatuck, CT, and many other locations as well. (Photo by Forrest Helander, Guilford, CT)
