Petuquapaen – Cos Cob – Sachem Mayn Mayano – most powerful tribe – numbered 500 – Mianus River – destroyed by dutch and English 1644 during Keift War after attacking settlers.

Asamuck – South Beach – Sachems Omogerone and Oenoke

Patomuck – South Beach – Sachems Rammatthone and Nawhorone

Siwanoy – Sachem Ponus – Mohegan – Byram River

Weeckquesqueecks – friends of Siwanoy – Mohegan – Byram River

Miossehassaky - Greenwich

Asamuck – South Beach

The Miossehassaky worked at hunting, clamming, and fishing

History

On the present main road passing through the town of Greenwich, about mid-way between Stamford and the New York boundary line, was situated this Indian village. The plain, now called Stricklands, is divided by a small brook bearing the same name, which enters the western bank of the Mianus River and is thus emptied into the Sound.

On the west side of this brook, were built three rows of closely collected Indian huts made of bark. The three rows were some- what more than eighty yards in length, stretching along under a high bluff covered with tall oaks which sheltered the them from the chilling northwest winds.

On the plain, east of the hamlet and between it and Strickland's brook, the wood and underbrush had been cleared away and the ground fitted for raising Indian corn. This brook then ran more clearly than now, as a distillery has since cast in its refuse and helped the formation of a miry, creek mud. Here the Indians drew up their canoes, after a fishing excursion upon the Mianus or the neighboring waters of the Sound. To the north, far away for hundreds of miles, extended the Green Mountains, abounding in game, which the Indians residing at the very foot of that beautiful range of hills, hunted both for plea- sure and subsistence. To the southwest lay an extended swamp, a part of which still exists as such, which afforded a safe retreat to the inhabitants when attacked by their enemies, the Mohawks, a much stronger and fiercer tribe of the northwest.

Northeast from this Indian village, and about a mile north of the present village of Dumpling Pond, was an Indian fort, known to them as Betuckquapock, to which they could retire when any danger approached from across the Sound. In such a situation, and one seemingly so desirable for savage life, these aborigines lived for centuries, unknowing and unknown by European nations. It is not wonderful that, in time of trouble, the Indians should congregate here in great numbers, raising their tents by the side of the more permanent ones constituting the village.

The tract of land about Petuquapaen, extending from the Patommuck brook (now a part of the boundary line between Stamford and Greenwich) westward to the two streams now known as the Brothers, was called by the same name. West of this was Miossehassaky, extending from the Brothers to the Byram River, which was called Armonck or Cokamong.

On the west bank of the Byram River was another though smaller village, called Haseco. This was not far from the present village of Portchester.

On the sixteenth day of July, 1640, or twenty-five years after the discovery of Greenwich by Adrien Block, Captain Daniel Patrick, a distinguished English pioneer, accompanied by Kobert Feaks, landed upon Greenwich Point, by the Indians called Monakewego, and finally concluded a bargain with Owenoke, one of the sons of Ponus, for that part of Petuquapaen lying between the Asamuck (the next small stream east of the Mianus River) and the Patommuck River.

For Four Years after the first Dutch and English families began to settle Greenwich in 1640, they had a terrible time with the Indians (and vice-versa). In part, the problem was the result of a comparatively large population of native Americans who called Greenwich home. Altogether, it has been estimated, between 500 and 1000 members of the Miossehassaky, Petuquapan, Asamuck and Patomuck tribes permanently occupied the southern portion of the present Town of Greenwich. Here they fished the Sound or the Mianus River, hunted the mountains far away to the north and raised their children in small villages scattered from Cos Cob to the Byram River. Since they rather enjoyed their pleasant life-style, the Indians were understandably reluctant to stand around and cheer as Europeans, in increasing numbers, cleared and built houses on their ancestral lands.

Another reason for the "Indian troubles" was the very considerable consumption of rum by the native population. The "cussed firewater," as the Indians allegedly called it, was sold to them by the Dutch in New Amsterdam, always to the advantage of the sellers and the detriment of the buyers. Not only did the Dutch city-slickers build a lucrative furs-for-rum business for themselves, but the liquor also made the Indians so crazy that they were easily "skinned" in business deals or, often enough, robbed of their valuables while under the influence. The story is told, for example, of one Greenwich Indian who was hastily stripped of his prized beaver-skin outfit, after two Dutch traders had plied him with rum until he fell unconscious. This time, however, the red man had the last laugh. After he sobered up, he tracked down the Dutch fur thieves, planted his tomahawk in each of their heads and then fled to a distant tribe. 

But the most significant contributor to the bad blood between whites and native americans was neither European encroachment nor New Amsterdam rum. Rather, it was William Kieft, the governor of New Netherlands, a dictator who prided himself on his ability to outsavage the "savages" any day of the week. Unlike his good-natured predecessor, Wouter Von Twiller, who took a live-and-let-live attitude toward the natives, Kieft was cruel and revengeful in the extreme. Having selected a half-dozen like-minded advisors, director Kieft dealt with Indians in somewhat the same way as Hitler handled those he didn't like.

The high point of Kieft's career probably came in 1643, after the Mohawks from upper New York State attacked two of the small Hudson River tribes, killed their warriors and forced the survivors to scatter in utter destitution to find food and shelter among the Dutch of New Amsterdam and vicinity. Secretly, the governor called his advisors in and together they plotted a proper welcome for the starving Indian refugees in their midst. Dutch soldiers were sent out in the dead of night to locate as many sleeping Indians as possible and to bash their heads in with clubs before they knew who or what hit them.  

Kieft's caper was enormously successful. Not only were more than a hundred Indians sent to the happy hunting grounds, but also the massacre was conducted so secretly and with so much strategy that the Indians believed for some time that the Mohawks had carried out the cold-blooded killings. Even the Dutch population was, for a time, so deceived. However, public misconceptions about who was responsible for the bloody affair did not remain for long. 

Within a week or so after the mass slaying, local tribesmen learned that at the time of the murders, no Mohawks had been within a hundred miles of Greenwich. It soon became evident to the Indian population that whites, not reds, were behind the mindless massacre. The Indians reacted with a vengeance. With incredible speed, warrior pledged to warrior, and clan to clan, revenge against the white man. Within a very short time, an army of 1500 Indian fighting men, representing a confederation of eleven Connecticut and New York tribes, was prepared to search out and destroy their common enemy, wherever he or she could be found. Then, from Manhattan to Stamford and from Long Island to the Hudson River, a fierce war raged. Coastal Connecticut was ravaged, as Dutch and English alike answered for the genocidal act of Governor Kieft and his bully-boys.

Soon after the Dutch first settled New York, a few English families migrated from other parts of Connecticut into an eastern section of Greenwich. Here they began a settlement on high ground which commanded an extensive view of the shoreline and Long Island Sound. The names of those pioneer settlers have long since been forgotten, with the exception of a man named Laddin, who, with his wife and sixteen-year-old daughter, had located a short distance easterly from the main settlement. For a time, people in the little hamlet lived in peace and security, but only a few years passed before their quiet life was seriously disturbed by hostile Indian neighbors, stimulated by the Dutch to deeds of violence and revenge against the English.

One day, when Laddin was off clearing and cultivating a field away from his farmhouse, he was surprised to see dense clouds of smoke rising from the area where the village was located. He knew Indians had struck. Realizing that they would not rest until every house in the area was torched, he dropped his plow and ran, sometimes stumbling in his haste, back to his own home, prepared to defend it and his family to the last breath.

Scarcely had Laddin rushed inside, barricaded the doors and loaded his trusty musket, when the Indian war party arrived. Their passions aroused by the English blood already spilled that day, they surrounded the house, yelling and whooping, expecting to watch with great delight the easy destruction of yet another white man's home and family. But they didn't count on the fierce determination or the splendid marksmanship of the English farmer.

As Laddin blazed away at the Indians from one front window, they hung back in momentary confusion and even huddled to plan their next move. Finally, one of their fiercest warriors began a stealthy advance toward the house, a lighted torch in his hand. When he was only a few feet away, Laddin dropped him with one shot from his musket. The torch fell harmlessly to the ground and went out.

But the Indians would not be denied the satisfaction of seeing more palefaces writhing in flames, as their burning home crumbled around them. Another warrior volunteered to follow in the footsteps of his fallen comrade. With one shot Laddin sent him reeling backward, with a heavy groan, upon the body of the first victim. Another quickly followed, then another, and another; all shared the same fate. Finally, with unearthly yells, the remaining warriors charged the intrepid farmer's house en masse. When a half-dozen finally reached the house, they banged away at the barricaded door with frenzied screams and unbridled fury.

In the midst of the incredible confusion, Laddin's wife and daughter begged him to save himself and leave them to the mercy of the Indians, but he refused, saying he preferred death with them and for them to a possible life without them. Finally, though, Laddin was persuaded to make an escape attempt, believing that there was a faint chance the Indians would respect the women and spare their lives, if he were not there with them.

As the Indians began to move the barricade at the front door and Laddin's wife and daughter struggled to brace it against the onslaught, he realized that the back door was momentarily unguarded. With extreme reluctance the despairing man sprang softly through the rear entrance, making his escape, just as the front door gave way to the savage attack of the Indians. Then, while Laddin watched from hiding in nearby undergrowth, the Indians dragged his wife and child from the house by their hair, tomahawked and scalped them. There was nothing he could do to help.

Quickly, Laddin made his way to his horse, which he had concealed a short way off in an alder thicket, and mounted, ready for flight. However, in some confusion about what direction to take, he waited too long to spur his steed and was spotted by the Indians running from the scene of the massacre, after setting fire to his house. With despair etched on his face, Laddin suddenly turned the horse's head toward the high, sheer precipice which fell away below the smoldering remains of the village, resolved to deny the pursuing warriors the satisfaction of one more white victim -- or die in the effort. Boldly, he galloped into the grove of trees which concealed the edge of the steep precipice below. Finally he stopped, as if to dare the fast-closing Indians. Turning toward them he shouted, "Come on, ye foul fiends, I go to join your victims." Then he dug his heels into the horse's flanks -- and plunged over the brink.

Before the Indians realized that they had been lured to the summit of a hundred-foot drop, it was too late. In their lust for English blood, four of the pursuers followed Laddin off the high cliff and crashed to their deaths on the rocks below. They say that a fifth pursuer managed to grab a tree at the fifty-foot level and thus save his life.

Despite what he had just been through, however, Laddin knew exactly what he was doing when he dove over the edge of the rock wall. Since he knew the cliff intimately, he had at the last second urged his horse far to the left, where he could expect to land on soft, swampy ground rather than on ledge and boulders. While his mount was killed, Laddin did survive his daring leap, although many of his bones were broken and, according to some who knew him, his mind was permanently affected by the fall.

Thus, it remained for the one Indian survivor of the incident to return to his tribe and tell the story of the crazy white man who jumped off a hundred-foot cliff and, in so doing, helped in a small way to even the score with his enemies.