Reconstructing the Wangunk Reservation Land System: A Case Study of Native and Colonial Likeness in Central Connecticut

Timothy H. Ives, University of Connecticut

Abstract. This article brings land systems into dialogue to explain the successful coexistence of the Wangunks, a native community of central Connecticut, and their Eng lish neighbors during the colonial period. Using the interpretive research focus of likeness, structurally similar aspects of Wangunk and Eng lish land tenure are compared, including diversified landholdings extending from a village center, cooperation of individual and common rights, and a gendered proprietorship. This discourse suggests that the character of Wangunk ethnicity resonates from the values that motivated their land system more than from its structures. Furthermore, distinctive elements of the Wangunk Reservation land system, as hereby reconstructed, contribute to an emerging sense that articulations of native and Eng lish land systems are not only dynamic but locally distinct across New Eng land.

Introduction Every land system is structured to accommodate both collective and individual needs. Keeping this principle in clear view is especially challenging when interpreting colonial pasts in the United States, where the paradigm of native collectivism versus Euro-American individualism stands historically rooted in the cultural dynamics of the westward migration (Anderson 1995), the development of the reservation system (Rodriguez et al. 2004), and twentieth century romanticism. This paradigm influenced mid- to latetwentieth-century histories that describe precolonial native land systems as centered on communal principles, qualifying the concept of individual property ownership as culturally antithetical (see Baldwin and Kelley 1965: 208; Hughes 1983: 110; Nash 1989: 118), and it is seemingly logical within the broader thematic context of acculturation, which charts colonial pasts
Ethnohistory 58:1 (Winter 2011)DOI 10.1215/00141801-2010-064 Copyright 2011 by American Society for Ethnohistory

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as gradual processes of adaptation that caused natives to become more like Europeans. Postcolonial anthropologists have critiqued acculturation in recent years on several fronts, with a prime complaint being that its recognition of cultural similarities between Europeans and Indians often implicitly denies the latter indigeneity (see Rubertone 2000; Silliman 2009). From a similarly critical angle, this case study of land tenure in a pocket of colonial New Eng land explores striking similarities in Eng lish and Indian land systems without denying any degree of indigeneity to the Indians. Its results and interpretations provide several modest contributions to the understanding of colonial-period land systems in this region, while the international readership may find its method and theory useful for reading the past in any colonial context. Most important, it shows how a research approach that thoroughly evaluates fundamental similarities between colonizer and colonized is particularly well positioned to isolate the qualities that distinguished these groups from one another, and it shows that ethnicity may resonate from the values that motivate social institutions more than from their structures. The Wangunks, a native community of central Connecticut, managed their reservation land base according to a system that was, in several ways, strikingly similar to that established by their Eng lish neighbors, and this likeness facilitated a lengthy coexistence. Both land systems featured diversified landholdings extending from a village center, cooperation of individual and common rights, and a gendered proprietorship. Despite culturally distinctive values underlying these structures, their overarching similarities formed the basis of a common ground within the broader colonial sphere. Likeness, as an interpretive research focus, is adopted from Shoemaker (2004), who characterizes shared beliefs and perceptions held by natives and colonists in eighteenth-century North America to reveal phenomena largely forgotten in the historical advance of racial stereotypes. This focus is valuable for ethnohistory because it counterbalances a tendency to distinguish cultural uniqueness over similarity. Silverman remarks that scholars have failed to explore how natives and colonists in New Eng land managed to arrive at mutually acceptable processes of land transfer because of the disproportionate amount of attention paid to the disjunction between their conceptions of land use and ownership, which ultimately limits our ability to understand how natives were dispossessed of their land (2005b: 2). In addition, Leavenworth notes that this tendency prevents an adequate understanding of how natives successfully maintained their livelihood and self-identity in the face of cultural assault (1999: 276). The mere existence of mutually acceptable processes of land transfer between natives and colo-

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nists in this region demonstrates that they found common ground. This ground is herein explored. Distinguishing likeness facilitates two modes of interpretation, as this case study demonstrates. First, it provides a substantive basis for explaining how different culture groups living in immediate proximity achieved lasting coexistence. Land systems, institutions that structure cultural landscapes, are specifically examined under the assumption that many of the social harmonies and discords of native-colonial histories derive from cooperation and conflict within and between particular land systems. Second, it provides a context in which the distinctive, and sometimes subtle, aspects of cultural subsystems are clearly apparent. Contributing to scholarship on native land use and management in colonial New Eng land, this article further explores trends already identified by others, including the enduring authority of women and the use of corporate landholding to resist dispossession (see Bragdon 1982; Mandell 1996; OBrien 1997; Silverman 2005a), while offering insights into inadequately studied phenomena. Namely, it explicitly documents that Indians tended to hold upland communally while village plots and scattered meadowland plots were held in severalty, and that individuals sometimes had the liberty to sell plots held in severalty while communal plots were subject to collective oversight. Revealing these trends among the Wangunks in turn supports an emerging view of the vernacular character of common ground (see Leavenworth 1999) discovered by natives and colonists across the region (see Leavenworth 1999; Little 1990; Mandell 1996; OBrien 1997; Silverman 2005a). Additionally, this article contributes to recent scholarship on Connecticuts lesser-known Indian communities, including Pachgatock (Dally-Starna and Starna 2004), Paugussett (Rudes 1999, 2005), Weantinock (Weinstein and Heme 2005), Schaghticoke (Crone-Morange and Lavin 2004) and Wangunk (Hermes 1999). By reconciling the documentary record with a rich native heritage, this scholarship vitally diversifies our vision of a shared past. In this article, I first present a background that establishes the successful coexistence of the Wangunks and their Eng lish neighbors and explains my approach to interpreting Indian land deeds. Next, I present an outline of the early Eng lish land system in central Connecticut according to scholarship, followed by a reconstruction of the Wangunk Reservation land system according to primary documentary evidence that establishes its likeness to the former. Last, I compare my findings against those of other studies in New Eng land to link Wangunk land use to native values and further illuminate the vernacular character of common ground.

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Background By and large, the Wangunks and their Eng lish neighbors enjoyed a long and peaceful coexistence throughout the Wangunk Reservation period (ca. 16731785). Recognized as a sociopolitical entity by the Connecticut Colony, the Wangunks cultivated fruit trees on their uplands and corn on their meadowlands, on plots interspersed among those of the Eng lish. Though not permitted to vote, they participated in the festivities of Election Day, the most important holiday throughout Puritan New Eng land (Earle 1894: 225).1 Their Eng lish neighbors even sought their talents. In 1730, Reverend William Russell of Middletown wrote to a colleague about the Robbins, a Wangunk family renowned for their ability to cure Eng lishmen of tuberculosis where the most skillful Eng lish physicians have not been successful (Trumbull 1895: 27980). And, when the Connecticut Colonys native peoples were placed under the supervision of the governor and council by enactment in 1725 (De Forest 1853: 343), the Wangunks were trusted to manage their affairs without an overseer. Furthermore, when Middletowns Third Society extended a road through the heart of the Wangunk Reservation, the survey team included Sachem Cushoy (Tom Cushoy) on behalf of his people (Sherrow 1999). These circumstances speak to a sustained compatibility between Indians and colonists living in immediate proximity, but what is the basis of this compatibility? Scholarship on native-colonial relations in New Eng land has increasingly turned toward an interpretive emphasis on cooperation and negotiation, recognizing that cultural gaps are not unbridgeable (Silverman 2005a: 78). In accordance with OBriens view of land as a common language where cultures might otherwise have been untranslatable, (1997: 9798), this study brings land systems into dialogue. A particular benefit of grounding this dialogue within the conceptual framework of likeness is that it bypasses assumptions about the origins of cultural traits formulated according to binary opposite structures, which form a limiting condition of an acculturation framework. The Wangunk Reservation land system, as this dialogues principally featured entity, is unconditionally qualified as an indigenous cultural institution based on its use by people with an Indian ethnic identity, regardless of its colonial context. This qualification allows the character of Wangunk ethnicity to resonate not so much from the structure of their land system as from the cultural values that motivated and sustained its operation. The subsequent analysis assumes the Wangunks held core principles regarding land tenure that are reflected in historical documents. Wangunk affairs are frequently featured in Connecticuts General Court records

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and Middletowns land records, which provide most of this studys data, while additional sources are enlisted to enhance context and interpretation. Because native principles of land tenure are rarely discussed directly in colonial records, land deeds present the best source of inference (Springer 1986: 31). Native societies of central Connecticut were entirely oral until the late 1730s, when a successful school for Indian youths was established at Farmington (Ives 2001); thus, the Wangunks could not read most of the records cited and were doubtlessly limited in their ability to influence the records content beyond essential facts. Nonetheless, while land deeds are seemingly mundane, especially by the early eighteenth century when recording practices became standardized (Silverman 2005b: 1), they contain data categories useful for identifying elements of native land tenure, such as how land was used at the time of recordation, the geographical distribution of land, and how land access was socially regulated. These categories are persistently reflected in both native and colonial land deeds; therefore, reviewing collections associated with either group to identify patterns constitutes a basis for defining cultural institutions. Through such review, the Wangunk Reservation land system is reconstructed from the documentary record. The Early Eng lish Land System in Central Connecticut (ca. 16341700) The first colonial settlements in this region were organized around a distinctive land system (Mead 1906) manifesting a threefold pattern (Meinig 1986: 103) of diversified landholdings, where nucleated town centers featured rows of residential house lots (Lewis 1981: 44) bordered by field lots and then more distant tracts of outland. While some historians note that this pattern is rare in early New Eng land (Bowden 1992; Nissenbaum 1996: 4346; Wood 1997), it accurately characterizes early settlement in the Connecticut Valley (Lewis 1981; Meinig 1986), particularly in the towns of Hartford (est. 1636), Middletown (est. 1650), Wethersfield (est. 1634), and Windsor (est. 1635). Both private and common land rights existed, with plots held in severalty in village centers and communal lots held in meadowlands and outlands. While this threefold pattern facilitated a mixed subsistence base for town members, it was designed primarily to accommodate capitalist interests. The majority of town lands were initially owned by proprietorsmen from the mainstream of colonial society who administered the distribution of lands to town residents. After purchasing land from local Indians, they promoted the arrival of settlers to increase the capital value of land while restricting corporate membership (Martin 1991). They divided the wilder-

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ness into fixed shares that were perpetual, divisible, transferable, and traded on a nascent land-share market that operated independently of changing town demographics. Rights to undivided lands entitled proprietors to share in repeated land divisions while new settlers typically received simple land grants. The profit motive of this land system is evidenced by absenteeism, sizable acreage, and multiple landholdings. Though many proprietors lived and worshiped within the town, Connecticut tax policy was structured to exempt unimproved lands, of which nonresident proprietors were frequently owners. This land system perpetuated misogynist principles of Eng lish common law (Main 2001). Land brought by a woman into a marriage was managed, though not owned, by her husband, and rights of inheritance belonged to her children. So while a widow could claim one-third of her husbands estate, she was powerless to determine who would inherit it after her death. The practice of excluding widows from controlling family estates persisted into the eighteenth century. At the close of the seventeenth century, much of the common lands of Connecticuts central valley had been parceled out, and the establishment of outlying farmsteads obscured the nucleated village settlement pattern. Serial town founding driven by land speculation (Jaffee 1999) expanded to the interior as fears of Indian raids and the quality of the local militia declined (Daniels 1979: 133). The land policies of Sir Edmund Andros brought the legitimacy of New Eng lands colonial land systems into question, stimulating a long-term movement to divest towns of landownership to protect colonists titles, which contributed to the expansion of proprietorships (Martin 1991: 26066, 291). Though it may seem fitting to characterize this evolving colonial land system as distinctly Eng lish in structure, we risk overlooking its resemblance to the Wangunk Reservation land system that persisted into the eighteenth century. Bear in mind that while the early Eng lish land system and the Wangunk Reservation land system are presented as simplified, temporally sequential models for the convenience of discussion, in practice they temporally overlapped to some degree. The Wangunk Reservation Land System (ca. 17001750) This analysis centers on data from the first half of the eighteenth century, when local native land tenure practices are sufficiently visible in the documentary record. Core features of the Wangunk Reservation land system during this period were structurally similar to those of the early Eng lish land system. Both systems featured a diversified land base that included a

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Figure 1. Native and colonial settlements of Middletown in the mid- to late seventeenth century. Figure by the author

village center where individually owned plots could be bought or sold. Individual land rights were heritable, and corporate rights to undivided lands were governed by a gendered proprietorship. Exploring these similarities allows us to apprehend, in concrete terms, the basis of the neighborly and lengthy coexistence that the Wangunks and their Eng lish neighbors maintained within the broader colonial sphere. The Wangunks responded to the pressures of colonial expansion by defining the bounds of their reservation. Wangunk is a locality on the east side of the Connecticut River within the bounds of seventeenth-century Middletown (fig. 1). In the 1640s, Governor John Haynes secured permis-

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sion from Sowheag, an influential Connecticut Valley sachem, to settle in this vicinity of the Connecticut Valley. Middletown was established in 1650 with the settlement of two compact village communities (Dudley 1884: 243) on the west side of the river known as the Upper and Lower Houses. In a few short years their proprietors looked toward the rivers east bank to define their landholdings and expand town development, but the Indians who looked back presented a significant complication. Middletown authorities revealed an agenda to crystallize Wangunk property rights within the Eng lish legal system by 1665 (Trumbull and Hoadley 185090: 2:14) and deployed a committee in 1670 to assess their landholdings.2 The committee reported a thirty-three-acre parcel of upland by the Connecticut River abutting on two highways, one to the south and one to the east, which describes the Indian Hill locality. Wangunks also held nine acres of scattered plots in Wangunk Meadow intermixed among plots claimed by Middletown members. An unspecified six or seven acres lay elsewhere, later confirmed to be at Deer Island, also known as Wangunk Island (Bayne 1884: 495). Middletown agents pressured the Wangunks to clearly define their land base and acquit all claims and title to any lands within our [Middletowns] bounds.3 They suggested bestowing a single allotment of the towns choosing or, alternately, any lands the Wangunks selected. Shortly thereafter, thirteen Wangunk proprietors coordinated with Middletown agents to define the boundaries of their reservation.4 Rather than accepting a single allotment, the Wangunks defined two differently shaped and sized upland parcels. The smaller parcels boundaries encompassed Indian Hill while the larger parcel sectioned off the northern face of a larger hill, eventually called Meeting House Hill, set back from the river. These are hereby referred to as the Indian Hill and Meeting House Hill parcels, respectively, for the convenience of discussion (fig. 2). These were not economically marginal properties by any means, and their value as colonial real estate would be fully realized by the mid-eighteenth century when shipbuilding entrepreneurs sought to acquire the Indian Hill parcel and Middletowns Third Society selected the Meeting House Hill parcel as the site for their new meeting house (Ives 2001). The Wangunks retained scattered plots of meadowland as well. Like Eng lish proprietors, they desired a diversified land base, and they translated one into the Eng lish legal system. The Indian Hill parcel, originally estimated to measure fifty acres, was the seat of the Wangunk village. Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century historians note the location of a council lodge in addition to a plot by the rivers edge known locally as the hot house lot where a sweat lodge once stood (Bayne 1884: 496; Neff 1911: 181). In 1725, Governor Talcott reported

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Figure 2. Sketch map of land divisions at Wangunk, ca. 1673. Figure by the author

the Wangunk population as thirty-two individuals settled at a place called Wingogg on ye east side of the river of Connecicut by ye river side (Talcott 1896: 397), though children were probably not included in this figure, as colonial observers rarely counted them (Mandell 1996: 85). Accounts from the 1730s note apple trees at Indian Hill (Talcott 1896: 483),5 which was also used as a burying ground (Porier, Bellantoni, and Aganstata 1985: 67). The Wangunks settlement at Indian Hill is geographically analogous to the early settlements of the Connecticut Valley, as they all were established on upland settings by the riverside adjacent to meadowlands.

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By the 1730s, Wangunks held plots in severalty at Indian Hill as did the Eng lish in their early villages. Boundary descriptions in a 1731 deed illustrate this trend. Moses Indian sold to colonist Thomas Wells of Glastonbury two plots, situated upon the place called the Indian Hills one piece Containing Three Acres & abutts South upon land of Simon Indian. West upon unimproved lands East. & is Thirty Rods long North & South & Sixteen Rods Wide East & West, the Other piece Containing one Acre & is Thirty Rods long East & West & five Rods & one half Wide North & South & abutts North upon land of Jose Robin South upon Land belonging to One Penny Hannah West upon land which did belong to Peter Sanchews Deceased & East upon land of Coschawit an Indian.6 In 1740, Tom Robbin sold John Coschaw, a fellow Wangunk, a quarter-acre plot according to a deed that also lists abutting properties with individual Indian owners.7 Apart from the reservation proper, Wangunks retained plots in Wangunk Meadow where they worked alongside their Eng lish neighbors. Like most floodplains of the central valley, Wangunk Meadow was ideal for crops and pasture. Middletown authorities originally estimated Wangunk holdings there as approximately nine acres mixed among the Eng lishs land,8 and Middletown residents from the west side of the river had been using this meadowland since the 1660s, when they found it necessary to appoint a pounder to keep livestock off the improved lands (Van Beynum 1966: 2). The establishment of the Wangunk Reservation did not fully clarify use and ownership rights to this meadowland. During King Philips War (ca. 167576), the General Court reported that the Wangunks raised some of their corn on town land and ordered them to forfeit half of that crop to Middletown (Trumbull and Hoadley 185090: 2:374). Wangunks legally transferred several plots of meadowland to local colonists by the early eighteenth century at Wangunk Meadow and Deer Island (Ives 2001: 5455). These small-scale fee-simple transactions and debt payments provide the first evidence of land commodification among the Wangunks. While the General Court forbade citizens to purchase Indian-owned lands without its direct approval (Springer 1986: 36), it made one exception. In 1697, it granted permission to any one of the inhabitants of Midletown to purchase of the Indians there inhabiting, claiming propriety of land in Wongunck meddowe, about one acre of grasse land in the said meddowe (Trumbull and Hoadley 185090: 2:374). Thus, Wangunk Meadow became both a literal and a metaphorical field of cooperation and exchange in the colonial economy.

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Little is known about how the Wangunks used the Meeting House Hill parcel, originally estimated to measure 250 acres. It is described in 1741 as in the woods Separate from that which is Called Indian Hill by the River9 and in 1756 as unimproved.10 In 1749, James Sasepequan purchased a plot there from Mamooson, a proprietor, who granted him permission to fence and clear if he pleases;11 thus the Meeting House Hill parcel may have been available to community members for improvement if they wished. As it was generally wooded, Wangunks probably exploited this parcel for fuel, consistent with colonial woodlot conservation practices. It afforded them limited revenue during the second quarter of the eighteenth century through leasing arrangements; thus, the capital value of this land was exploited to some degree. In 1728, Middletown built a road through this parcel with a survey team consisting of two Middletown members and Sachem Cushoy. By 1756, the Wangunks sold approximately fifty acres at Meeting House Hill, which significantly exceeds the minor acreage sold to colonists on Indian Hill by that time (fig. 3). However, despite leasing and sales of some land, this parcel was successfully conserved by the community into the mid-eighteenth century. Wangunks owned the Meeting House Hill parcel corporately. In 1732, Moses Bartlett, a Middletown member, purchased forty acres from a contingent of proprietors, consisting of Mamoson, Betty, Cuschoy, Moses Moxon, James, Charles Robbin, young Sean, Long Simon, young Betty, Sary, Mesooggosk, Shimmoon, Moses Comshot, Jacob, Tom Robbin, young Squamp, Mukchoise, John Robbin, Metowhump, and Mequash hesk (Bayne 1884: 496). In this instance, collective oversight governed the permanent transfer of a lot of substantial size out of native possession, though the motivation behind this sale is unknown. Common rights to the Meeting House Hill parcel were salable to other Indians. In 1741, Ben Cushoy purchased such a right from Tom Robbin, a proprietor in Wangunk in Middletown who was living with the nearby Hockanum community. Cushoy received right title and Interest in one Certain piece of Land near Wongunk aforesaid Containing near two hundred acres in the whole be it more or Les butting on Sundry Lotments of Land Round Called Indian Land in the woods Separate from that which is Called Indian Hill by the River.12 Wangunks also sold common rights to reservation lands without specifying any particular portion, but, again, only to Indians. In 1742, Ben Cushoy purchased such a right from Luse Numps, who inherited it from her mother. The right is defined, in conspicuously general terms, as all the Said Luse had or ought to have had of in or to all & Every part of the Indian Land at or about Wongunk.13 The following year, Ben Cushoy purchased

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Figure 3. Survey map of Wangunk Reservation. Drawn by William Welles, 1756. On file at the Connecticut State Library (Indian Papers 16471789: Vol. 2, Doc. 140)

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another common right from Tawomp that included all the Right title and Interest that I the S. Tawomp Indian had or ought to have had in any or all the Indian land at Wongunk.14 As was the case throughout native central Connecticut, Wangunk women held authority regarding land rights and their transference. The parallel between Eng lish male-centered and native female-tethered proprietorships is, admittedly, loosely drawn but presented as a dimension of likeness. We may safely assume that colonial administrators drafting Indian land deeds, all of whom were male, sometimes downplayed or omitted native female authority according to cultural biases. Yet the fact that they often did record it in some form suggests that native women strongly asserted their interests in the governance of land, as did men among the Eng lish. Documents subtly reflect these assertions when Indian men refer to a mother, sister, or wife during land transactions. Sachem Cushoy conducted several minor land transactions, the first of which he co-petitioned with his wife and Maussecups widow (Trumbull and Hoadley 185090 5:213). Maussecup, who held affiliations with various native communities during the mid- to late seventeenth century, also held land rights in association with women, likely secured through polygynous marriage bonds (Ives 2010). Though he was a son of Miantonomi and brother of Canonchet (Love 1935: 96), he never became a sachem among the Narragansetts. He did, however, achieve social prominence in central Connecticut, evidenced by his captivity at Hartford during King Phillips War as a hostage to ensure the goodwill of local natives. Listed as an original proprietor of Middletown, he secured rights to the Wangunk reservation by marrying into the community (Ives 2001: 39), where his wife independently sold a plot in Wangunk Meadow to a colonist in 1693 (Trumbull and Hoadley 185090: 4:98). Maussecup also held a land right among the Tunxis of Farmington in association with a son, which presumably implies an affinal bond (Gay 1901: 6; Porter 1886: 169). Maussecup was also the first signatory of the Deed of Hartford (Manwaring 1995: 6568), though his kinship tie to the local Saukiaug community may only be inferred. Female authority in the Wangunk land system was clearly demonstrated when community members asked Middletown authorities to protect their land interests by recording their descent from original Wangunk proprietors of 1673. The resulting genealogical record reflects the heritability of land rights along matrilineage: May 2nd 1726 Seueral Indians desired a Record of their names & decent from the Indians which ware the propriators of Lands in Midletown Mamooson: fifty years old the 15th day of Last April son to kickemus and

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Sarah: his mother. daughter to Pewampskine & sunks squaw. Long Symon Son to Sarah aboue sd 28 years old the 16th of Last march and his Son Symon born Nouembr 28th 1723 Peter Sanchuse: son to sarah aboue sd was: 33: years old : May 2d 1726. as the sd Indians gaue account to me Joseph Rockwell Registr James Sase pequan: Grandson to Old Bette & Son to Debora old Bettes Daughter born June 7th: 1719 James Sasepequan son to James Sase pequan born Sept. 22d. 174715 A local trend of matrilineal inheritance is further indicated in the case of Townhashque, the Saunks Squaw of Haddam. In 1662, she and her daughter, Pampenum, sold Thirty Mile Island to Samuel Wyllys (Bates 1924: 137), though the transfer appears to have been nullified, perhaps through continued Indian residency. In 1697, Pampenum was the islands sole proprietor, and, with no children of her own, she eventually passed the title of Saunks Squaw to Cheechums and willed her land to a number of relatives (Hermes 1999: 15153). Revealing an affiliation with the Wangunk community, Townhashque also sold a plot in Wangunk Meadow to John Clark of Middletown in 1692.16 Circumstances of the mid- to late eighteenth century enabled the dispossession of the Wangunk Reservation. First, the reservation was largely vacated in the wake of a community diaspora that may have begun during the 1740s, as suggested by several Indian-to-Indian land sales during that time (Ives 2001: 6366). The motivations behind this diaspora are largely unknown, but it is reasonable to speculate that some Wangunks who moved to Farmington did so to take advantage of educational opportunities at the Farmington Indian School, built in 1737 (63). By the 1760s, Wangunks had joined Indian communities at Farmington, Hartford, Mohegan, and New Hartford, which does not necessarily signify the end of a Wangunk identity but does evidence dynamic reintegration within a broader, preexisting social network. Among those who left the reservation were several Christian Indians who would participate in the Brothertown emigration of the 1770s. Second, Middletowns Third Society achieved demographic dominance and in 1754 petitioned the General Court for permission to purchase Wangunk Reservation land.17 In a gesture of political dominance, the society purchased a plot in the center of the Meeting House Hill tract for their new (second) meeting house, which they erected by 1756. That year, a committee reporting on the circumstances of reservation land touted the value of Indian Hill for shipping.18 During the mid-eighteenth century, Cushoy, largely abandoned by a community heavily invested in futures away from Wangunk, fell into debt

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obligations that catalyzed the reservations demise. In 1756, he agreed to divide and sell it to Eng lish purchasers under pressure from five Middletown selectmen, who submitted a letter and an expense account to the General Assembly demonstrating that they had supported him for nearly a year.19 Their account lists a variety of supplies, consisting primarily of food, valued at slightly over fifty-nine poundsa substantial sum the selectmen wished to collect in real estate, if not in pounds. Approximately 250 of the original 300 acres of reservation land were still in Indian possession at the time. Cushoy, infirm and aged beyond seventy years, claimed the descendants of the original proprietors were so dispersed that they could not be found without great Difficulty, and was willing to personally accept all sales proceeds after his debts were settled. Though geographically dispersed, the greater Wangunk community learned of these intentions and challenged Cushoys exclusive claim over the reservations destiny. Richard Ranney, a Wangunk and Christian living in Newtown, petitioned the General Assembly individually in 1757 to grant him title to ten acres of the Wangunk Reservation to inhabit and improve.20 Simultaneously undermining and bypassing Cushoys authority, he identified himself as the only Son of One of the Daughters & CoHeirs of Doctor Robbin, the last Sachem of the Middletown Indians. The General Assembly granted Ranney his request in 1758, after an investigative committee verified his claim.21 Cushoy, in his final days, was cared for by Dr. Aaron Roberts, who was later compensated through the avails of Wangunk land.22 During the 1760s and 1770s, the Wangunk community authorized division and sale of their reservation to Eng lish purchasers to settle debts and, for many, to fund their futures elsewhere. They did this under the corporate governance of their proprietorship, and proprietors emerged in contingents to coordinate with Middletown selectmen. The first contingent, mostly women, consisted of Samuel Robbin, Moll Wife of Sam, Thankfull Cushoy, Susannah Pochomogue, Hannah Mamanash, and Prudence Hubban, all of whom lived off-reservation as of 1760.23 Others soon joined the initiative, and by 1764 Middletown agents determined that the heirs of the original Wangunk proprietors numbered about forty men, women, and children living off-reservation (Trumbull and Hoadley 185090: 12:320 21). Five still resided at Wangunk: an unnamed woman, Cushoys widow, and her three children. Cushoys widow fell blind and under the support of Middletown selectmen generated a debt of seventy pounds before her death in 1771.24 Her debt would be settled with the proceeds of land sales. In the final decisions of their geographically scattered proprietorship, the Wangunks irreversibly sacrificed their corporate identity as Middletowns familiar neighbors. By 1785, Middletown agents had divided and

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sold the Wangunk Reservation and were left to grapple with reimbursing proprietors who had left Connecticut in the Brothertown emigration.25 Those who remained on or near their ancestral land no longer presented a public front that appeared well ordered to the dominant culture. In the early nineteenth century, assertions of native identity in local land transactions became rare; however, Indians have continued to inhabit the Wangunk vicinity into the present and recognize it as a dimension of their native identity. Discussion Mindful of the vast gulf between native and Eng lish cultural values, Cronon (1983) qualifies early Eng lish land use patterns as bearing only a superficial resemblance to that of natives (74). While that is true in certain places, this case study illuminates a resemblance that is more than superficial. Strong structural similarities are apparent, and these are proposed as forming, in part, the basis of the long and peaceful coexistence cultivated by Wangunks and colonists in central Connecticut. By considering the results of this analysis in light of regional scholarship, we gain further insight into the distinct values underpinning native land tenure in addition to a richer vision of the vernacular character of common ground among Indians and Eng lish across greater New Eng land. It should be noted that while this use of the term common ground generally accords to Richard Whites middle ground (1991), the latter term is avoided to minimize the risk of emphasizing the search for enhanced intercultural compatibilities above the possession of fundamental compatibilities. As practiced by the Eng lish, corporate land ownership reflected a view of land as capital in a developing market economy, which accorded to the broader Puritan view of the natural world and its resources as being mere commodities (Main 2001: 31; Springer 1986: 31). Commons, after having fulfilled their primary purpose of accruing value through town population and development, were gleefully sold off and re-created in more profitable frontier settings (Jaffee 1999). Thus, defining commons was not so much an expression of communal solidarity as a temporary precondition to generating profit. Within the colonial sphere, Indians upheld corporate management of their greater landscape toward an opposing purposeto defend it from dissolution in the market economy. Bragdon first identified this landholding strategy among several eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indian communities of southeastern New Eng land (1982: 164). As seen among the Wangunks, corporate ownership of the Meeting House Hill parcel helped

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preserve most of their reservation land into the mid-eighteenth century. Common rights to reservation land were salable, but the fact that they were sold only to other Indians reveals a defensive pattern against individuals not closely connected to the community. And while the Wangunks sold and leased a fraction of land to non-Indians by the mid-eighteenth century, thus exploiting its value as real estate, they were by no means capitalists. Selling the remainder of the reservation to non-Indians was anything but gleeful, requiring prolonged negotiations among a geographically dispersed community under social and economic pressures. OBrien (1997) identifies a related trend among the Naticks, who effectively asserted corporate ownership of Praying Town lands in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to defend them from external pressures. As the mid-eighteenth century approached, native landowners, frequently under debt obligations, increasingly turned to the land market for much-needed capital. This was facilitated by individualizing their land system through dividing commons among the proprietorship. Subsequently, some Indian proprietors amassed more land than they could use and sold it to gain material goods and, sometimes, to build Eng lish-style farms (151). This transformation, while intending to ensure the future of landownership in Natick, eroded corporate ownership practices and accelerated the dissolution of native landholdings. In the absence of a profit motive, individual ownership of plots, as seen among the Wangunks, need not be interpreted as a compromise of core native values or identities. The animistic perspective New Eng land Indians held toward the natural world (Jaffee 1999: 26) did not conflict with the usufruct principle that families should possess what land they could use. After all, no society has a laissez-faire attitude toward spatial boundaries (Kelly 1995: 185), as each has a method of assigning its members particular areas of land. Among contact-period Indians of southern New Eng land, land was allotted to individuals and families by the sachem, though no specific boundaries were laid out (Bragdon 1996: 137; Goddard and Bragdon 1988: 185:18). Individual land rights periodically shifted according to the requirements of a subsistence system centered on slash-and-burn agriculture, but as long as community members remained tributary to the sachem, and defended his or her legitimacy as their community leader, some received allotments that were long-lasting (Goddard and Bragdon 1988: 185:17; Bragdon 1982: 121). Sachems frequently bound their descendants to honor allotments and guaranteed their validity as long as the grantee had descendants. Thus, the concept of individual, heritable land rights appears to have existed among local natives on the eve of colonization. Early land sales to the Eng lish were doubtlessly fraught with misunder-

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standings (Cronon 1983; Grumet 1978; Jennings 1975; Silverman 2005a: 125). Many misunderstandings were due to language barriers and the native view that land cannot be possessed in an absolute sense (Parker 1989: 10; Rudes 2005: 34). However, people learn quickly. According to his analysis of land deeds, Baker (1989) argues that Indians of Maine clearly understood the market value of land, and the permanency of sales to Eng lish buyers, by the mid-seventeenth century. Furthermore, the fact that so many seventeenth-century land deeds of the Connecticut Valley record multiple Indian witnesses has been interpreted to reflect an early awareness of Eng lish property concepts among natives (Banner 2005: 60). Considering that the Wangunks defined their reservation a generation after the Connecticut Valley was colonized, they were no doubt savvy to the implications of communal and individual land rights in the evolving colonial economy. Their Reservation-period land system may not represent a major leap of adaptation but rather a tailoring of lasting ideas and practices to accommodate new circumstances. Bragdon has similarly argued that some Indian communities of southeastern Massachusetts altered their land systems in an outward fashion during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries while maintaining a relationship to the land that was consistent with older patterns (Bragdon 1982: 102). Native land tenure was markedly distinct from that of the Eng lish by virtue of womens power to hold land in their own right, as documented among the Wangunks and Naticks (Mandell 1996: 65; OBrien 1997: 100101). Generally speaking, women assumed authoritative roles within southern New Eng lands land tenure systems throughout the seventeenth century, commonly marking deeds from Connecticut (Ives 2010) to Maine (Baker 1989: 23942). In sedentary to semisedentary horticultural communities, they held considerable social influence, as attested to by a residence pattern that was, at the least, matrifocal if not matrilocal (Baker 2004: 94). Turbulent demographics and misogynistic Eng lish cultural influences did not extinguish womens roles as landholding authorities in some parts of colonial New Eng land. In other parts, such as mid-eighteenth-century Hassonimico, it did. Indians taking up landholding in severalty there also refused to leave their land to female heirs, which resulted in lands being left to white male friends instead of female relatives, accelerating dispossession (Mandell 1996: 120). A novel contribution of this study is that it reveals complex and underdocumented dimensions of native land tenure in New Eng land. None to date has so explicitly shown Indians tending to hold upland communally while village plots and scattered meadowland plots were held in severalty, or demonstrated that individuals sometimes had the liberty to sell plots held

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in severalty while communal plots were subject to collective oversight. The ability to recognize these trends may in part be attributed to their fortuitous visibility in the documentary record, though I suspect that the Wangunks tailored their land system to local geographic and historically particular circumstances. This seems to be the case in other parts of New Eng land, where articulations of native and Eng lish land systems as common ground are locally distinct. Silverman (2005a) reports such distinction among the Aquinnah Wampanoags of Marthas Vineyard, who also upheld communalism as a core value to resist pressures of the colonial economy (183). As they witnessed other sachemships on the island experience overwhelming land loss, enabled by sachems independently selling land, the Aquinnahs deposed their sachem and established a proprietorship to guard against encroachment by a neighboring Eng lish farm (14748). They instituted a sheep right system by the 1730s in which every native received the privilege of grazing ten sheep or their equivalent, with the option of taking in colonial cattle. This not only preserved a corporately owned native land base while providing opportunities to generate capital, it presented the Eng lish with a vision of Indians as civilized in their shared orientation toward animal husbandry. On nearby Nantucket Island, Little (1990) portrays a convergence of native and colonial land tenure practices in horse commons, a flexible and nuanced institution that operated ca. 16601760. Her interpretation of land deeds suggests that Daniel Spoto, a local sachem, and James Coffin, a representative of local Eng lish proprietors, combined Eng lish customs of rent and commons with native customs of tribute and usufruct when they instituted the horse commons. Fundamentally, each horse common signified the right to herbage or pasturage for one horse on the Nantucket commons. In operation, these formed the basis for a dynamic social and economic redistribution system on the island, as horse commons could be issued, given, sold, purchased, and rented by both the Eng lish and the Indians within and between their communities, and may have even afforded the right to build a house (Little 1996: 207). By revealing the distinctly vernacular flavor of land use and management in this pocket of New Eng land, Little alerts us to the potential of focused case studies of Indian land deeds. The praying Indians of Natick established a common ground with the Eng lish to preserve their autonomy in the face of seventeenth-century colonial expansion (OBrien 1997: 6263). In a convergence of ideology, they embraced Eng lish religious beliefs and governmental structure while establishing a settlement with bounded geography. Mandell (1996) remarks that their town contained a fascinating amalgam of Eng lish and aboriginal customs manifested in highly visible ways (15). Natick residents erected a

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meeting house, a fort, and an arched footbridge across the Charles River, all in an Eng lish fashion. And though house lots were laid out in the traditional Eng lish manner, families constructed wigwams instead of clapboard houses. Thus, while preserving their Indian identity, Natick inhabitants rendered themselves familiar to the Eng lish, to their social and political advantage, in both the design of their cultural landscape and improvements thereon. Leavenworths (1999) analysis of Penacook-Pawtucket land transfers in the seventeenth century shows natives comprehending colonial land tenure principles and colonials contradicting tenets of Eng lish common law, revealing common ground in the balance. Usufruct agreements were negotiated and renegotiated between Indians and Eng lish as necessary so that boundaries between cultures were self-consciously porous to their mutual advantage (284). The Eng lish rights enjoyed by natives had traditional Indian usage, not the least of which was inheritability and natives easily made the transition to realizing their entitlements within the white system (278). Furthermore, the Eng lish resorted to purchasing Indian lands without documentation via turf and twig transactionsmedieval Eng lish legal agreements forged in mutual trust and consecrated through brief rituals (29091). Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this reconstruction of the Wangunk Reservation land system is that it bolsters an emerging sense that the articulation of native and Eng lish land systems is not only complex and dynamic but distinctly vernacular in its expressions across colonial New Eng land. As scholars contribute additional works that explore this dimension of the past, we will be even better equipped to appreciate the sophisticated strategies, both shared and unique, that natives used to manage their cultural landscapes. Notes
This article draws heavily on primary source material featured in my unpublished masters thesis (Ives 2001). My thesis committee, consisting of Norman F. Barka, Kathleen J. Bragdon, and Marley R. Brown III, provided valuable guidance toward its completion, earning my enduring gratitude. This thesis languished on my bookshelf until Nancy Shoemaker prompted me to critically reexamine its data. With her advice and encouragement, I developed an early version of this paper for presentation at the 2006 American Society for Ethnohistory meeting in Williamsburg. I have refined the current version according to the advice of my colleagues Akeia A. Benard, Kevin A. McBride, and Betsy Peterson. I also wish to thank general editor Michael Harkin and three anonymous reviewers from Ethnohistory for their generous advice in the final revision process. I am solely responsible for the views presented here and for any errors or oversights.

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1. Ecclesiastical Affairs, Connecticut Archives, Connecticut State Library, Hartford (hereafter EA), 1st series, vol. 5, doc. 9 (16581789). 2. Indian Papers, Connecticut Archives, Connecticut State Library, Hartford (hereafter IP), 1st series, vol. 2, doc. 137 (16471789). 3. Ibid. 4. Middletown Land Records, 16401767 (microfilm), Archives, Connecticut State Library, Hartford (hereafter MLR), vol. 1, p. 214. 5. Apple trees at Indian Hill are also noted in MLR, vol. 22, p. 24. 6. Ibid. 7. MLR, vol. 10, p. 546. 8. IP, 1st series, vol. 2, doc. 137 (16471789). 9. MLR, vol. 10, p. 546. 10. IP, 2nd series, vol. 2, docs. 12022 (16661820). 11. MLR, vol. 13, p. 612. 12. MLR, vol. 10, p. 546. 13. MLR, vol. 10, pp. 54647. 14. MLR, vol. 10, p. 547. 15. MLR, vol. 1, p. 214. 16. MLR, vol. 1, p. 61. 17. EA, 1st series, vol. 9, doc. 287 (16581789). 18. IP, 1st series, vol. 2, docs. 13032 (16471789). 19. Ibid. 20. IP, 1st series, vol. 2, doc. 133 (16471789). 21. IP, 1st series, vol. 2, docs. 13435 (16471789). 22. IP, 1st series, vol. 2, doc. 145 (16471789). 23. IP, 1st series, vol. 2, doc. 141 (16471789). 24. IP, 1st series, vol. 2, docs. 13435 (16471789). 25. IP, 1st series, vol. 2, doc. 236 (16471789).

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