Connecticut Water Trails Association
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Connecticut Water Trails Association |
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Connecticut Water Trails Program
History Of Connecticut's Water Trails
Connecticut and The Sea
Connecticut
Native Americans & The Sea
Native people in Connecticut
from the earliest days looked to the sea for sustenance, transportation
and culture. In the beginning, they believed that the earth came out of
the sea upon the back of grandfather turtle, Guganous Tuapas, great sea
turtle. Since that time they’ve looked upon the turtle and the sea as
the birth and origin of our beginnings and the grandfather turtle as the
most sacred of all beings. In
ancient times one of the reasons that the Mohegan’s chose to live in
this area were rumors of the great fishing, particularly the shellfish
beds which were supposedly in this area.
The earliest year ‘round settlements that were
identified in New England are always in coastal settings. These areas
provided the mechanism and the opportunity to settle year ‘round,
establish permanent villages and sort of really establish a very complex
life ways very closely tied to the sea. 50 percent of the ability for
these native people to survive were tied, directly to the ocean.
Oystering was extremely important to the Mohegan
people in ancient time’s right up to the present. On all their
traditional tribal lands you’d find huge heaps of what they called
middens or oyster piles. Oyster piles were used not only for food
garbage dumps but also in the wintertime when people couldn’t be buried
beneath the Earth – Native Americans were buried in these huge heaps.
The shells were also used as a form of currency called Wampum. It was a specific type of bead made from these shells which was used.
Purple bead was made from Quahog and a white bead was made from the whelp and the only suppliers of this material were the coastal peoples of Long Island Sound. Wampum was one of the most sacred commodities that the Mohegan people drew from the sea. When belts are created in ancient times, they were traded but they were also used as a medium of preventing spiritual infection. It’s a token of honor. A token of esteem.
More Info On Wampum
Native American Whaling Activity
Native Americans engaged in whaling near the shore. They used canoes to drive the whale into shallow waters where it would run aground and could be killed with harpoons of wood and bone with floats attached. All members of the tribe shared the meat and could use the bone. The right whale provided food, tools, and weapons.
The Europeans Arrive
When Europeans arrived they noticed the importance
of this shell to the native people and how they were used in there
commerce system. The Europeans
found that they could
exchange goods with the native people for furs and they would take these
furs, ship them back to Europe where they made into felt.
Natives in the interior of Connecticut not only
desired the European trade goods in exchange for their furs but more
importantly they began to demand wampum.
Very quickly these beads became such an important commodity in the
fur trade that unless you had access to these beads you couldn’t compete
very well in the fur trade.
The first place that Europeans chose to settle
tended to be those areas along the coast and along the rivers because of
access for transportation and communications for their ships and they
slowly pushed the native people into the interior. So the history of
native people in this region is directly tied to the – to the coast,
both prior to European contact and after European contact.
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