Wangunk Tribe

Wangunk Peoples in Connecticut

The Wangunk peoples as encountered by English colonists occupied present-day Middletown, Haddam, Portland, and East Hampton Connecticut. Originally located around Hartford and Wethersfield but displaced by settlers there, they relocated to the land around the oxbow bend in the Connecticut River. Before English settlement, there were at least half a dozen villages around the area on both sides of the river. The Wangunk are also sometimes referred to as “the River People” because of their positioning within the fertile Connecticut river valley.

When the English settled and established Middletown on the west side of the river, the designated Wangunk reservation land was mainly on the East side of the river bend, with a small parcel on the West side, an area near where Indian Hill is today. Wongunk is also used to describe a meadow in Portland that was part of the Wangunk reservation. As the Wangunk felt pressure from the settlers for the land, they sold off portions of this land and joined either neighboring tribes such as the Tunxis (Farmington, CT), many of whom later moved with other communities of Christian Indians as far as the Great Lakes, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma.

Lake Pocotopaug is a site that has been mentioned in many different accounts of the Wangunk people as an area that they frequented for fishing and hunting. It is located in what we now call The Town of East Hampton, and is approximately 9 miles in circumference. Many arrowheads have been found along the banks of the river, and while there is little record of what the site meant to Wangunk people, settlers have spread many “Indian stories” about the lake since the 1700s, but these stories are uncorroborated.

A Rich History in Connecticut

The Indian tribes of Connecticut were some of the first inhabitants of the area that is now the state of Connecticut. There are currently two federally recognized Indian tribes in Connecticut: the Mohegan Tribe and the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe. The Mohegan Tribe is located in southeastern Connecticut, and the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe is located in the northeastern part of the state. In addition to these two tribes, there are also several state-recognized Indian tribes in Connecticut. State-recognized tribes are not recognized by the federal government, but they do have a government-to-government relationship with the state. Indian reservations are located on both tribal and non-tribal land in Connecticut. The largest Indian reservation in the state is the Mashantucket Pequot Indian Reservation, which is home to the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. Indian Reservations are sovereign nations, which means that they have their own laws and governments. However, they are also subject to the laws of the state in which they are located.

Native American’s in Connecticut

Did you know the name “Connecticut” is an Algonquian Indian word? It means “long river” and refers to the Connecticut River.

There were originally many small American Indian tribes in the Connecticut area, including the Mohegan, Pequot, Niantic, Nipmuc, Mattabesic, Schaghticoke, Paugussett, and others. Though all of them spoke related languages and shared many cultural similarities, each tribe had its own leadership and its own territory. However, European epidemics and warfare devastated the Connecticut Indians, and the survivors had to merge with each other to survive. Soon there were no longer clear distinctions between the groups, and today most Native Americans of Connecticut have heritage from more than one of these original tribes, regardless of which tribe they officially belong to. All of their languages have been lost, but native people continue to preserve their cultural heritage in Connecticut today.