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Mashantucket Pequot Tribe

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File:Bandera Mashantucket Pequot.PNG
Flag of the Mashantucket Pequot

The Mashantucket Pequot are a small Native American tribal nation in Connecticut. The Mashantucket Pequot operate Foxwoods Resort Casino, the world's largest resort casino, which is currently undergoing a $700 million expansion, to be completed in summer 2008.[1]

Geography

The Mashantucket Pequot reservation lies within the borders of Ledyard, Connecticut, in New London County, in the Norwich-New London metro area, and on the Pequot River, now known as the Thames River. The Pequot reservation was created by Connecticut Colony in 1666. Over time it had been reduced to less than an acre (4,000 m²), and the Pequot population reached its nadir of 20 or 30. After a successful lawsuit initiated in 1976 which contested the illegal appropriation of reservation lands by the state of Connecticut, the Mashantucket Pequot expanded their reservation, and placed repurchased lands into trust with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Demographics

According to the 1990 census, the Mashantucket Pequot population was assessed at 320, comprising 3.51% of Ledyard, Connecticut's total population of 14,687. By 2005, tribal membership grew to 785.

Government

The Mashantucket Pequot tribal council includes:

  • Chair - Michael Thomas
  • Vice-Chair - Kenneth M. Reels
  • Secretary - Charlene Jones
  • Treasurer - Rodney Butler
  • Councilor - Richard E. Sebastian

The current administration's seven-member council has publically stated that the tribal nation's priorities are protecting tribal sovereignty, focusing on the educational, emotional and physical well being of tribal members, and working to leverage the tribe's financial and economic strengths through partnership initiatives, both locally and abroad. Mashantucket Pequot's most recent efforts include investment in North Stonington. Tribal development there, such as the recently opened $80 million Lake of Isles golf resort, has proven to be a welcome addition to the town's tax base.[2]

Council terms are three years. There are roughly 350 eligible voting members of the tribal nation.

Economy

Since 1992, the Mashantucket Pequot have operated the largest resort casino in the world. The Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, a research center at the University of Connecticut, performed an analysis of the casino's impact on the Connecticut economy. Their report stated that the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and its Foxwoods casino have had a positive economic impact on the neighboring town of Ledyard and the state of Connecticut.[3]

History

See Main Article: Pequot

The Mashantucket Pequot are descendants of the Pequot who at one time held dominion over the coastal area between the Niantic River of present-day Connecticut, the Wecapaug River in what is now western Rhode Island, to the border of Long Island Sound. Today, there are two descendant groups of those Pequot who survived the Pequot War: the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, and the Western Pequot, better-known as the Mashantucket Pequot.

Early History

Debate still exists as to whether the Pequot migrated toward central and eastern Connecticut sometime around 1500, from the upper Hudson River Valley. The theory of Pequot migration to the Connecticut River Valley rather than originating in the region can be traced to Rev. William Hubbard who, in 1677, claimed that the Pequot had invaded the region sometime before the establishment of Plymouth Colony. In the aftermath of King Philip's War, Hubbard had sought in his Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England, to explain the unmitigated ferocity with which New England's Native peoples responded to the English. Seeking answers not in Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay Colony's own failed diplomacy and the colonial rapacity for Native lands, Puritan divines such as Hubbard may have projected their own situation and behavior onto the Pequot by defining the Pequot as "foreigners" to the region-- invaders not from another shore, but "from the interior of the continent" who "by force seized upon one of the googliest places near the sea, and became a Terror to all their Neighbors." [4]

On the other hand, much of the archaeological, linguistic, and documentary evidence now available clearly reveals that the Pequot were not invaders to the Connecticut River Valley; that they were in fact indigenous to it.[5] Certainly, contemporaneous to the establishment of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, the Pequot had already assumed a position of poltical, military, and economic dominance in what is now central and eastern Connecticut. Occuping the coastal area between the Niantic River of present-day Connecticut and the Wecapaug River in what is now western Rhode Island, the Pequot numbered some 16,000 persons in the most densely inhabited portion of southern New England.[6]

Disease

The smallpox epidemic of 1616-19, which killed roughly 90% of the Native inhabitants of the eastern coast of present-day New England, failed to reach the Pequot, or the Niantic and Narragansett. But a subsequent epidemic in 1633 devastated the entirety of the region's Native population. Historians estimate that the Pequot suffered the loss of 80% of their entire population. At the outbreak of the Pequot War then, the Pequot may have numbered only about 3,000.[7]

Warfare

See Main Article: Pequot War

In 1637, Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay colonies overwhelmed the Pequot during the Pequot War. When the military forces of the two colonies, led by John Mason and John Underhill launched a genocidal assault on the Pequot stronghold at Mystic, a significant portion of the Pequot population was killed.[8] Those who survived the massacre were enslaved, with some forced to become household servants of the Puritan English. More were sent to the West Indies, and others to the Mohegan and Narragansett, enemies of the Pequot who had allied themselves with the English colonies.[9] Eventually, a few Pequot managed to return to their traditional homeland, not as suzerains, but as marginal inhabitants of a once populous, politically powerful territory.

Federal Recognition

In 1983, the Mashantucket Pequot gained federal recognition as an American Indian tribe through congressional approval.[10] By contrast, in 2005, the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation of Lantern Hill, North Stonington, Connecticut lost their bid for federal recognition following a challenge by the State of Connecticut that left the Mashantucket Pequot as the only federally recognized Pequot tribal government.

The Mashantucket Pequot Today

In 1992, the Mashantucket Pequot opened their enormously successful resort casino, Foxwoods. Central to New York City, Boston, and Providence, and with 4.7 million square feet (440,000 m²) of space, Foxwoods is the largest resort casino in the world. Since Foxwoods opening, the Mashantucket Pequot have used its revenue to continue expanding their reservation to about 1,800 acres (7 km²).

Proximate to Foxwoods, the small tribal nation maintains the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center which charts Pequot history and culture of several millenia. The museum acts as an education center frequented by school children and adults. Visitors come from all over the globe. As a tribute to the diversity that makes up Indian Country, the museum hosts local and international indigenous artists, musicians, as well as artifacts throughout the year.

Notes

  1. ^ Jessica Durkin, "Mashantucket Election Returns Council Incumbents," Norwich Bulletin (7 November, 2005).
  2. ^ See again Durkin, "Mashantucket Election" Norwich Bulletin (7 November, 2005).
  3. ^ See "EconPapers Online," CCEA Studies from University of Connecticut, Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis Website: http://econpapers.repec.org/scripts/redir.pl?u=http%3A%2F%2Fccea.uconn.edu%2Fstudies%2FMashantucket%2520Final%2520Report.PDF;h=repec:uct:cceast:2000-08.
  4. ^ William Hubbard, The History of the Indian Wars in New England 2 vols. (Boston: Samuel G. Drake, 1845), vol. 2, pp. 6-7.
  5. ^ For archaeological investigations disproving Hubbard's theory of origins, see Irving Rouse, "Ceramic Traditions and Sequences in Connecticut," Archaeological Society of Connecticut Bulletin 21 (1947): 25; Kevin McBride, "Prehistory of the Lower Connecticut Valley" (Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1984), pp. 126-28, 199-269; and the overall evidence on the question of Pequot origins in Means, "Mohegan-Pequot Relationships," 26-33. For historical research, refer to Alfred A. Cave, "The Pequot Invasion of Southern New England: A Reassessment of the Evidence," New England Quarterly 62 (1989): 27-44; and for linguistic research, see Truman D. Michelson, "Notes on Algonquian Language," International Journal of Smerican Linguistics 1 (1917): 56-57.
  6. ^ Dean R. Snow and Kim M. Lamphear, "European Contact and Indian Depopulation in the Northeast: The Timing of the First Epidemics," Ethnohistory 35 (1988): 16-38.
  7. ^ Refer to Shelburne F. Cook, "The Significance of Disease in the Extinction of the New England Indians," Human Biology 45 (1973): 485-508; and Arthur E. Speiro and Bruce D. Spiess, "New England Pandemic of 1616-1622: Cause and Archaeological Implication," Man in the Northeast 35 (1987): 71-83.
  8. ^ For Mason and Underhill's first-person accounts, refer to John Mason, A Brief History of the Pequot War: Especially of the Memorable taking of their Fort at Mistick in Connecticut in 1637 (Boston: S. Kneeland & T. Green, 1736); and John Underhill, Nevves from America; or, A New and Experimentall Discoverie of New England: Containing, a True Relation of their War-like Proceedings these two yeares last past, with a figure of the Indian fort, or Palizado (London: I. D[awson] for Peter Cole, 1638).
  9. ^ Refer to Lion Gardiner, "Relation of the Pequot Warres" in History of the Pequot War: The Contemporary Accounts of Mason, Underhill, Vincent, and Gardiner (Cleveland, 1897), p. 138; Ethel Boissevain, "Whatever Became of the New England Indians Shipped to Bermuda to be Sold as Slaves," Man in the Northwest 11 (Spring 1981), pp. 103-114; and Karen O. Kupperman, Providence Island, 1630-1641: The Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 172.
  10. ^ Mashantucket Pequot Indian Claims Settlement Act (1983), S. 366.

See also

Sources

Primary Sources

  • Hubbard, William. The History of the Indian Wars in New England 2 vols. (Boston: Samuel G. Drake, 1845).
  • Mason, John. A Brief History of the Pequot War: Especially of the Memorable taking of their Fort at Mistick in Connecticut in 1637/Written by Major John Mason, a principal actor therein, as then chief captain and commander of Connecticut forces; With an introduction and some explanatory notes by the Reverend Mr. Thomas Prince (Boston: Printed & sold by. S. Kneeland & T. Green in Queen Street, 1736).
  • Mather, Increase. A Relation of the Troubles which have Hapned in New-England, by Reason of the Indians There, from the Year 1614 to the Year 1675 (New York: Arno Press, [1676] 1972).
  • Underhill, John. Nevves from America; or, A New and Experimentall Discoverie of New England: Containing, a True Relation of their War-like Proceedings these two yeares last past, with a figure of the Indian fort, or Palizado. Also a discovery of these places, that as yet have very few or no inhabitants which would yeeld speciall accommodation to such as will plant there . . . By Captaine Iohn Underhill, a commander in the warres there (London: Printed by I. D[awson] for Peter Cole, and are to be sold at the signe of the Glove in Corne-hill neere the Royall Exchange, 1638).
  • Vincent, Philip. A True Relation of the late Battell fought in New England, between the English, and the Salvages: VVith the present state of things there (London: Printed by M[armaduke] P[arsons] for Nathanael Butter, and Iohn Bellamie, 1637).

Secondary Sources

  • Benedict, Jeff. Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World's Largest Casino (New York, NY: Perennial, 2001).
    • The National Indian Gaming Association has criticized Benedict's book, accusing it of being a work of fiction which attempts to undermine the tribe's status as an Indian nation. [1]
  • Boissevain, Ethel. "Whatever Became of the New England Indians Shipped to Bermuda to be Sold as Slaves," Man in the Northwest 11 (Spring 1981), pp. 103-114.
  • Cave, Alfred A. "The Pequot Invasion of Southern New England: A Reassessment of the Evidence," New England Quarterly 62 (1989): 27-44.
  • ______. The Pequot War (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996).
  • Eisler, Kim Isaac. Revenge of the Pequots: How a Small Native American Tribe Created the World's Most Profitable Casino (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
  • Fromson, Brett Duval. Hitting the Jackpot: The Inside Story of the Richest Indian Tribe in History (New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003).
  • Hauptman, Laurence M. & James D. Wherry, eds. The Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of an American Indian Nation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993).
  • McBride, Kevin. "The Historical Archaeology of the Mashantucket Pequots, 1637-1900," in Laurence M. Hauptman and James Wherry, eds. Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of an American Indian Nation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), pp. 96-116.
  • ______. "Prehistory of the Lower Connecticut Valley" (Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1984).
  • Richter, Daniel K. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
  • Simmons, William S. Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and Folklore, 1620-1984 (Dartmouth, NH: University Press of New England, 1986).
  • Spiero, Arthur E., and Bruce E. Speiss. "New England Pandemic of 1616-1622: Cause and Archaeological Implication," Man in the Northeast 35 (1987): 71-83.
  • Vaughan, Alden T. "Pequots and Puritans: The Causes of the War of 1637," William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Ser., Vol. 21, No. 2 (Apr., 1964), pp. 256-269; also republished in Roots of American Racism: Essays on the Colonial Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
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