CWTA - Resources - History Of Connecticut's Water Trails



Connecticut Water Trails Association

Take only what you need and leave the land as you found it.

- Arapaho

Table Of Contents

Connecticut Water Trails

Basic Concepts

History Of Connecticut's Water Trails

Native Americans

Connecticut Water Trails Program

History Of Connecticut's Water Trails

Native Americans

The Agawam

The Agawam tribe was a Native American tribe in New England at the arrival of the English colonists in the early 17th century.

Location

Name Origin

Agawam - meaning fish drying place

The name is an Anglicization of the native name assigned to the territory of a sovereign state consisting of the tribe. The English named the tribes after their native place names; therefore it is likely that the natives did also; i.e., Agawam is an English exonym based on a native endonym. The territory is written as Wonnesquamsauke, from wonne, "pleasant," asquam, "water" and auke, "place."

Language Spoken

Algonquian-speaking. All the natives of the east coast of the United States and Canada from Nova Scotia to South Carolina spoke Eastern Algonquian, a language group belonging to the Algonquian family, but separated from the rest of it by the Appalachian mountains.

Connecticut Village Locations

Population

Culture

The Agawams were a mobile, or nomadic people, settling inland during the winter months and moving to the shores of the lakes, ponds, oceans and estuaries during the warmer months.

Each Algonquian language marks the range of a sovereign state, or tribe, ruled by a hereditary sachem, or chief. He had additional chiefs to assist him. The basis on which the position of sachem was defined was economic. He personally was considered to own all the lands used for common food gathering and production. He distributed the use of these to groups of families under sub-chiefs at his discretion, an arrangement that facilitated the disposal of native lands to the English by negotiation with a single sachem, who may not have understood that the purchased land was being permanently removed from the commons of the tribe. The sachems reigning at the time entered history with the arrival of the English in the early 17th century. The sachem of the Agawam was Masconomet.

History

Relations between the local Indians and the settlers were relatively peaceful. By 1617 European diseases nearly wiped out the Agawams (300 fighting men survived from 30,000).

Decimated by pestilence shortly before the English colonization and fearing attacks from their hereditary enemies among the tribes of Maine, they invited the English to amalgamate with them on their tribal territory. Colonial law promulgated by the General Court of Massachusetts protected them, their land rights and their crops. The English defended them against further attacks. They had an open invitation to enter Puritan households. Often a small number would show up as dinner guests and were fed.

Eventually, differing religious, trade, and ownership beliefs caused a friction between all Indians and Europeans, resulting in a hatred erupting into violence.

By the time of King Philip's War in 1675 they had been assimilated. They played no part in the war.