Recent Research on Nipmuc and Eastern Pequot Lifeways

The following master's theses on Nipmuc and Eastern Pequot lifeways have kindly been donated by the UMAss Boston Historical Archaeology Department. We would like to thank program director Stephen W. Silliman, Ph. D., whose past work includes archaeological field research on the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation’s historic 225–acre reservation.

Cipolla, Craig N. 2005
Negotiating Boundaries of Colonialism: Nineteenth-Century Lifeways on the Eastern Pequot Reservation, North Stonington, Connecticut.

Fedore, Michael A. 2008
Consumption and Colonialism: A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Two Eighteenth-Century Sites on the Eastern Pequot Reservation.

Jacobucci, Susan A. 2006
Constant Changes: A Study of Anthropogenic Vegetation Using Pollen and Charcoal on the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation Reservation, North Stonington, Connecticut.

Law, Heather 2008
Daily Negotiations and the Creation of an Alternative Discourse: The Legacy of a Colonial Nipmuc Farmstead.

McNeil, Julie A. 2005
Potsherds and People: Considering the Connections between Ceramics and Identity at the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation Reservation, North Stonington,Connecticut.

Pezzarossi, Guido 2008
Consumption as Social Camouflage: “Mimicry” and Nipmuc Survival Strategies in the Colonial World.

Witt, Thomas A. 2007
Negotiating Colonial Markets: The Navigation of 18th-Century Colonial Economies by the Eastern Pequot.

New Tribal Website

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation has published its first public website.

http://www.mptn-nsn.gov/

Question & Answer: Berry Preservation

Question: I have read that berries were a important part of the Native American diet. How were berries preserved by Native people, who had no means of canning or refrigeration?

Answer: There are materials here in the library that suggest that a common method of preserving the berries was to dry them and then ground them into a flour type of consistency. The dried and ground berries were then used in recipes.

"Although we now have many ways of storing foods for use out of season, the Indians usually had to rely on just one method - drying. This is what they did when they found more chokecherries than they cared to eat fresh.

The Jicarilla Apaches ground the berries and made the meal into round cakes approximately 6 inches in diameter and 1 inch thick. These hard, blackish patties could be stored and reconstituted when they were needed by soaking in water. The seeds contain a fair percentage of cyanide, but this poison is volatile and drive off by cooking. The soaked cherry cakes were boiled and the juice strained and sometimes sweetened for use as a beverage, or the juice was combined with other ingredients."
Source--Niethammer, Carolyn. American Indian Cooking: Recipes from the Southwest. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999


"Berries, both fresh and dried, were important in the diet of Northwestern tribes. According to Skokomish chef Bruce Miller, the wild cranberry, about a quarter of the size of those sold commercially, is only one of the many varieties of berries available in the Northwest.

Traditionally, fresh berries were cooked by placing alternating layers of berries and heated stones in a special cedar cooking box or a tightly woven basket. After the stones were removed, the cooked berries - depending on the variety and the desired use - were either left to sit and thicken or were thickened more quickly by an addition of dried powdered berries or powdered skunk cabbage leaves. Thickened berries were formed into cakes and placed on wooden drying racks lined with skunk cabbage leaves. After drying over a hot alder-wood fire, the finished cakes were stacked and tied with soft shredded cedar bark and stored in a warm, dry place for future use."
Source--Cox, Beverly and Martin Jacobs. Spirit of the Harvest: North American Indian Cooking. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, Inc., 1991.

Email your questions to: reference [at] mptn-nsn.gov

Online Tables of Contents & Indices to Key Journals Related to Northeast Native American Studies

Archaeology of Eastern North America
http://www.esaf-archeology.org/publicationstofc.html

Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeology Society
http://www.massarchaeology.org/bulletins.htm

Bulletin of the Archaeology Society of Connecticut
http://www.connarchaeology.org/html/body_tocs.html

Connecticut History
http://asch.ccsu.edu/CT_History/Table_of_contents.htm

Papers of the Algonquian Conference
http://anthropology.uwo.ca/firstnations/AlgonquianPAC/cumulativeIndexByAuthor.html

New England Quarterly
http://www.northeastern.edu/neq/issues.html

Northeast Anthropology (formerly Man in the Northeast)
http://www.albany.edu/northeast_anthropology/toc.htm

William and Mary Quarterly
http://oieahc.wm.edu/wmq/?svr=www

2010 American Indian Youth Literature Award

The 2010 American Indian Youth Literature Award winners were announced at the American Library Association Mid-Winter Conference in January 2010. Author Thomas King and illustrator Gary Clement were the recipients of the Picture Book Award for their book A Coyote Solstice Tale. The Middle School winner is Meet Christopher: An Osage Indian Boy from Oklahoma by Genevieve Simermeyer. Between the Deep Blue Sea and Me by Lurline Wailana McGregor took the Young Adult prize.

The American Indian Youth Literature Awards recognize excellence in books by and about American Indians. By identifying and honoring outstanding writing and illustrations in the field of youth literature, the American Indian Library Association encourages authors, illustrators, editors, publishers and tribal entities to create materials that “present Native Americans in the fullness of their humanity in the present and past contexts.”

Please visit the Children’s Library to read the 2010 winners!

The 2010 Award Winners

Picture Book

A Coyote Solstice Tale by Thomas King, illustrated by Gary Clement. (Groundwood Books, 2009)

The universal lesson that sharing and being together are more important than things comes from a human child and Coyote in this humorous book.


Middle School Book

Meet Christopher: An Osage Indian Boy from Oklahoma by Genevieve Simermeyer. (National Museum of the American Indian/Smithsonian Institution in association with Council Oak Books, 2008)

Meet Christopher and spend some time with him as he combines his family’s Native traditions with popular 21st century activities.



Young Adult Book

Between the Deep Blue Sea and Me by Lurline Wailana McGregor. (Kamehameha Publishing, 2008)

Torn between her career as a museum curator in California and her family in Hawai’i, Maona Kawelo must make some difficult choices.

Two Old Women Reading Circle

Director of Public Programs, Trudie Lamb Richmond led a group discussion of the book Two Old Women by Velma Wallis, January 16 2010 at the Mashantucket Pequot Research Library.

Shkook: Snake Stories in Pequot Country

The following text and images are taken from a vitrine display currently on exhibit directly outside the Research Library.

As Museum staff prepared for the summer 2009 exhibit “Pequot Lives in the Lost Century,” we began to identify key issues in Pequot history – resistance to encroachment, protection of sovereignty, military service, community ties, the urban experience, and life on the reservation. We were also on the lookout for good stories for future exhibits. As staff conducted new oral histories and reviewed older ones, a particular theme emerged. There were lots of Pequot stories about snakes. Inspired by the richness of the oral histories, the research team began to dig a little deeper. What we found was remarkable.

One of the first European accounts of Pequots (in 1626) involved a ritual offering at a snake den along the Connecticut River. During the following century, two Pequot sachems, Robin Casacinnamon I and II, both signed documents with snake “marks.” Local histories recount and exciting tale of rattlesnake extermination. In a passionate plea for the restoration of their lands, auctioned illegally in 1856, Pequots were concerned that they would “perish without bread or water in a den of red snakes [copperheads].”

By the early 20th century, one Pequot family (Martha Hoxie and her husband Napoleon Langevin) set up a platform at the bottom of Lantern Hill and conducted “snake dances” with copperheads, while serving ice cream and hotdogs. Other Pequots, including Earl Roy Colebut, earned an income by collecting copperheads for the Bronx Zoo as the zoological garden was expanding its poisonous snake collection and producing anti-venom. Martha “Aunt Matt” Langevin, who lived next to the copperhead den at Mashantucket, was well known for being able to shoot and kill these snakes from a considerable distance with her gun. Away from home some Pequots were known as “copperheads,” a reference to the snakes at Mashantucket and for others it was part of their personal identity including the late Clifford “Copperhead” Cyrus Sebastian, Sr. -- Dr. Jason Mancini, Senior Researcher, MPMRC

Image credits: Top, Signatures of historic Pequot leaders, Cassassinamon I & II. Courtesy of MPMRC Archives & Special Collections. Bottom, Three men with snakes - From left: Napoleon Langevin, George Von Buehren, “Ben” Guebert at old Warren House near Warren Pond and Rattlesnake Lodge Center Groton. Photograph May 30, 1915. Attributed to Cornelius Terry. Image courtesy of MPMRC Archives & Special Collections.