They had encamped in different places on the river, where they could hunt and fish.

History

Mowehue, a sachem, who a few years before had removed with his Indians from Newtown to New Milford, about the year 1728, and built a hunting house at Scatacook, in the northwest part of Kent, on the west bank of the Housatonic River.

He invited the Indians at New Milford, from Oblong, in the province of New York and from various other places to settle with him at Scatacook; and it appears that he was so popularity among the Indians that about the time when the town was settled, he could muster one hundred warriors. The whole number, probably, was about five or six hundred

These, like the other Indians in this state, and in most other states, have been greatly diminished. Their whole number, at this time, is not more than forty.

The Moravian missionaries visited these Indians about the time of the great religious concern [revival] in this country. They came first in the year 1740 and visited the Indian village called Chekameka, in the Oblong, in the province of New York. They, about the same time, came and preached to the Scatacook Indians, and in 1743, according to their account, the Scatacook sachem was baptized by them. In this place they formed a church, and had a flourishing congregation. They baptized 150 of the Kent Indians. It is universally testified, that these missionaries were very inoffensive people; that they were well esteemed and kindly treated by the people of the town while they tarried. They, however, complained of themselves as ill treated, persecuted and imprisoned; but it could not be by the people of Connecticut. What became of the Indians who were first on the ground, before the English had any settlements there is not known. When they moved away, or to what place, cannot be ascertained. The probability however is, that they were connected with Philip’s Indians in the war against New England; and that in the slaughter which the Connecticut troops made of the Indians on the Housatonic, at the close of the war, numbers of them were slain, and that the rest were so alarmed, that they removed into Canada, as many other Indians did about the same time.”

They were in strict alliance and friendship with all the tribes along by this river [the Housatonic River], from its source to the sea; and that by means of certain sounds made on their guarding heights, an alarm might be spread in the space of three hours, through the whole line of tribes, a distance of near 200 miles. The natives were generally very friendly, and serviceable to the first settlers, by defending them from hostile attacks and by supplying them with any provisions as they could furnish.