o^^^^^^^^ oooooooooooooooooooooooooocx>oocooooooo o o Q o o o o o o o o o o o 8 o o o o o o o POGONNUGK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS o o o o o NUMBER TWO § INDIANS OF THE WEBUTUCK VALLEY BY I MYRON B, BENTON jKqoOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO® POGONNUGK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS NUMBER TWO INDIANS OF THE WEBUTUCK VALLEY BY MYRON B. BENTON liAKBVILLE JOURNAL 1912 Gift Association MW 8 1«I4 y^y^ /^^^^s.^- POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY S COLLECTIONS To my friends of the Sharon Literary Club : The paper which my friend Mr. Dyer has very kindly undertaken to read for me before you this evening was written last winter, and it was under the expectation, as you all know, of the meeting being at my own house. It is consequently written from that view-point. It has seemed to me better than to now make any change of the wording of the papep, as then written, to ask you, when any reference occurs tS locality, to the points of the com- pass, for instance, etc., to place yourselves in imagination in the spot where, unfortunately, I am a prisoner for the time being. It is a great regret that you cannot be here with me on this occasion in bodily presence. I looked forward to the time when I should have, not only the pleasure of so many of my friends being assembled beneath my roof, but also to make the "function" a sort of Aboriginal Symposium — a meeting of the Club which should pay a memorial tribute in various ways to the vanished dwellers of our beautiful valley. This, not only by what our members can com- municate, and what we trust we shall hear from visitors who favor us with their presence — those who have made a special study of this fascinating subject — but also by the display of contributions from various hands of many rare and choice relics of that mysterious race, so near to us in the imperishable traces they have left for our curiosity and wonder, and yet so far in the "Dark backward and absym of time" — and, still more obscure in the dim mists of a divergent development and evolution. 4 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY S COLLECTIONS M}' disappointment remains; but, with friendly and cordial remembrances to its members, 1 send my greetings to the Club this evening, wishing it success and prosperity in its future course, and hoping some time to "lend a hand" in the promotion of its laudale objects. Myron B. Benton. Troutbeck, Nov. 3, 1902. THE INDIANS OF THE WEBUTUCK. Gilbert White, the world-famous author of "The Natural History of Selborne," pursued his investigations beyond the birds and quadrupeds and other wild life of his native parish. He afterwards wrote a little work on "The Antiquities of Selborne." He began this with the state- ment that the Selborne Church could make no pretensions to antiquity, as it dated back only to the reign of Henry VII. The American reader is rather taken aback by this first sentence; we feel brought up, as it were, with a "round turn." Dating back only to the reign of Henry VII ! Really what does it take to make an antiquity? We certainly want to think that a period previous to the Re- formation ; previous to the reign of "good Queen Bess," before the Spanish Armada was scattered in desolation and ruin, between the wrath of God and of true hearted Protest- ant Englishmen ; before even Henry VIII had conceived his grand matrimonial religious project — a period as far back in history as this, must have some flavor of antiquity. But then everything is relative. We turn to our Webutuck instead of Selborne. Even the "Round topped Meeting House" of Amenia Union, where the Rev. Ebenezer Knibloe preached his long anti-Revolutionary sermons, and where he continued POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 5 stoutly to pray for tlie King and Royal family altogetlier too long to suit the sentiments of his restive congregation — even were this curious building still standing, it would be a crudely new structure by the side of the Selborne Church. Our most ancient houses are scarcely one hundred and fifty years old ; though we dote on the venerable antiquity of the Penoyer House, known as Dr. Tiffany's; on that fine Gubernatorial mansion near it; on the quaint lettered Huguenot gable of the Delamater House, here across the brook from us! I can fancy the kindly, derisive smile on the withered face of the old Selborne clergyman at the mention in his presence of such structures as these as antiquities! "Oh smile among the shades," good Gilbert White ! Yet I will aver that even here in the Webutuck Valley we have possibly antiquities which would by far outrank those which you unearthed in old Selborne. Our ploughs turn them up from the soil; we find them scattered over wide surfaces in every nook. They are un- dated — unsigned. We know not under whose reign they were wrought and carved with infinite labor and skill from the stubborn mineral "core." But we have every reason to believe that many of tiiem made, as they are, of almost imperishable niaterial — are of great antiquity. They may be coeval with the weapons with which the Heptarchy were fighting their bloody battles before the coming of the Danes and Saxons to English shores! These trophies which we pick up in our fields — who knows but that they were being fashioned at various long separated epochs covering the stretch of what we know as history — these memorials in our secluded valley; our valley which was known to the white race but little more than two hundred years ago. 6 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS All! The charm of coming upon these relics to-day. Only those who have experienced the sensation know the delight — as one is strolling over one's home field, thinking of the landscape beauties, or perhaps of the prospects of the coming crop, of whether the cut-worm and the crow will graciously spare a trifle of the corn for the autumn harvest — of having the eye suddenly arrested by a clean-cut shapely arrowhead beaming upon the surface of the soil. Crops are forgotten — let insect and bird pursue their work — here is something altogether more important. It must be confessed that this thing becomes some- what of a fad. We all know some shamrock -inspired, four-leaved clover-finder. He never comes in from a wiilk but with liis trophies. There were no four-leaved clovers for others of his party, not one ; but he had but to stoop down anywhere along the path to be able to flourish a handsome specimen in their baffled faces. By some such process of unconscious cerebration one who frequents the arrowhead fields comes to find that he has a sort of second sight all the while on the lookout for him. Not the slightest hint of the fragmentary shape, or of the texture of the hornblend, which is the usual material, this survitor. The material is of all shades of gray, some- times of green, yellow or red, and, when you take it in hand and compare it with the indigenous minerals of the field you can scarcely distinguish them. But somehow your reflex action imp knows all about it. His success is of course the better for favoring circumstances of soil and weather. A bright morning and a freshly turned field ; and if there has been a shower over night, the first rays of the sun dry the small mineral surfaces while the soil is yet moist and dark. Oh ! Then it is that the early bird catches the worm. POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 7 Scarcel}' ever, under favoring conditions in the spring time, do I stroll across any of these fields immediately near the spot where I am now standing that I do not return home with a genial glow in my pocket of flinty trophies jingling more merrily than coins. What if the specimens are just like former finds. What if they are imperfect, as the greatest share always are. They are valuable, and ever afterwards treasured with most miserly care. In these fields whose soil has been turned and over- turned for one hundred and fifty years, where our modern, complex civilization seems as fixed and immutable as that of the older settlements of the world, we have the domestic animals, and many species of plants which have followed us — not from Europe only, but from Asia, when Europe was a wilderness; we have arts and skills of handicraft, as old, that have clung to our race; and here, right at our feet, in our daily paths, lie these momentoes of an age and a race separated from us by a vast space. There may or there may not a great length of time have intervened; but what a gulf is that between us and a race which knew the use of no metals. Ah ! What indeed had they for imple- ments and personal use, but the saplings of their forests, the bones and skins of the animals they had slain, and the crude, stubborn stones which they must shape with their hands as best they could fashion and mould with hands and fingers like ours. The chasm which separates us is indeed vaster than any figure of time can express — the chasm between the age of electricity and the stone age. It is easy then to under- stand the growing magical fascination of this little link in our hands between two such different phases of human development. 8 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY S COLLECTIONS But right here is an important point for us to note. We are not separated from the Indian by a great mental chasm. It is one of condition ; of environment. Possibly the famous Neanderthal skull is of the exact pattern of that of certain ancestors of ours of the pithecoid type; possibly that simian, half erectile skeleton found in recent years in Java, of which Ernst Haeckel and other naturalists make so much is that of our remote ancestor. If all this be true, still the Indian of the American conti- nent, as we know him, is practically as far removed from such ignoble origin as we. He is human; and much higher up in the scale, too, than many a people whom we find in remote quarters of the earth today. The Indian is educable; and not a small share of the higher sentiments could be awakened in his breast it was found; but, alas! not too often was the flower of humanity brought to bloom in the arctic moral atmosphere of the early days of the settlement. The Indian undoubtedly lacked a certain hereditary discipline of character which rendered him a weak com- petitor in the stern struggle for existence between the races; but that which made the great chasm between them was, as I say, not a fundamental difference in character — not a matter of the stage of moral evolution as seemed to he in- dicated by the respective civilization of the two races. The physical condition and environment of the aborigines for ages — their nomadic wandering life, had deprived them of those accunuilations of experience, that storing of acquirements from generation to generation which are really what make civilization. Thus it happens that a race that could, a Logan, a Teoumse, a King Philip, a Red Jacket; who as Titz Greene Hallock, the poet, tells us had POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS « -The monarch mind, the mystery of commanding, The birth-hour gilt— the art Napoleon Of winning, fettering, moulding, weilding, banding, The hearts of millions till they move as one" -a race that could at intervals produce such noble and brilliant figures was still, as a whole, in the dim, far back- ground of the Stone Age. It is pleasant to reflect that here in our smihng Webu- tuck Valley there was no collision between white and Indian- the whole record is one of peace and good will. Capt Garret Winnegar, the earliest settler of this region- at least, the earliest after Daniel Boone, the solitary pioneer, Richard Sackett-the Winnegar who located m what is now known as Amenia Union, we learn from Mr. Reed s -Early History of the Town of Amenia," lived on the most friendly terms with the Indians, by whom he was re- garded with the greatest respect, and whom he several times defended against the injustice of their white neigh- bors- and it is said that he gave his children charge at his death that they should never allow the Indians to go from their doors in want of food. , ,, n ., But who were these Indians of the Webutuck Valley i What is their history? "The short and simple annals of the poor "-how applicable to them is the verse of the poet ; "The short and simple annals oi the poor!" "Brief indeed is the story," gather all we may of ab- original life here, they have left the silent mementoes of their skill in our fields, and a few picturesque names which we cherish. . . , . Mrs. Sigourny, in her long life of verse writing, lef us little that we value as poetry ; but there are two lines of hers which have always clung in my memory. Speaking in one of her poems, of the names which the Indians have 10 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 's COLLECTIONS given to so many of our ])eautifnl lakes and rivers, slie exclaims: — "Their uaiue is on your waters" "Ye cannot wash it out." Webntuek, is it "Beautiful Hunting Grounds?" This is what Eunice Mauwee, the last of the Schaticooks, told me many years ago. Shegave me, too, as I remember, its liquid, flowing Indian pronounoiation, from which our Webutuck is not a little abbreviated. To my regret I have never been able to recall it: as unfortunately no phonetic record was made on the spot. Wassaic, too, with a simihir variation of the modern form, she sold me signified "hard work," from the tumultous course of that stream through its rocky gorge. But for Webutuck, my friend Mr. Isaac Hunting, has made considerable study of Indian sources, has an- other signification. He connects it with Peaked Mountain near South Amenia, the Weputting of the Indians — from Weepe-tooth, literally "Tooth Mountain," which certainly would be an appropriate name for that isolated sharp cone. All who are familiar with the topography in that vicinity know of that singular pass through the mountains of Bog Valley; a narrow way between steep ranges, some five or six miles in length, practically level throughout its extent. This was the favorite trail of the Indian fishers and hunters — an easy short cut from the Housatonic to the Webutuck. As you come westward tin-ongh the monoto- mous pass, and are just about to be ushered into the We- butuck Valley, suddenly rises before you that sharp pic- turesque cone— that "Wolf Tooth," the Webutting. What more natural than that the Indians, those residing on the Housatonic side at least, should have named our stream the "Tooth Mountain River?" So Mr. Hunting reasons. POCONXUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 11 I am no aboriginal linguist ; but to me the resemblance in sound is scarcely close enough for identity. We know at any rate that the Indians found our valley ■'Beautiful Hunting Grounds". The short and simple aunals of the poor Indian are quickly recited. The race, already subdued, was despised by the early white settlers. The useful, if also despised negro, was rated higher. The Indians, who were settled all along our valley from the lakes to the junction of the Webutuck with the Housatonic, were Mohicans of the great Algonquin divis- ion ; and they were undoubtedly the early possessors. But in the early part of the 17th century, long before white occupation, there was an invasion among the primitive Mohicans, of which there is another story. Very early in Connecticut history the inevitable con- flict between white and red came on. There were frequent encounters. To this day a well-known summer resort on the coast, some fifteen miles east of New Haven, is known as "Sachem's Head." Here in 1637, so early as that, during the first three or four years of the coming of the whites — a Pequot Sachem was pursued, and his retreat cut off upon this promontory. He was slain, and his head was set aloft in the crotch of a tree where it remained a ghastly terror for many years. So "Sachem's Head" has com- memorated this tragedy for over two and a half centuries; and has commemorated, no less, the barbarism of our own race in that age ! The great Pequot battle, of Groton, had occurred just previously the same year, 1637. There were six hundred Indians killed, and they were completely routed. I am not at all proud that one of my ancestors was in the thick of that fray; though there was afterwards a special grant of land made to him for his valor in the fight. 12 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS The battle of Groton practically settled the war problem in Counecticut though tlie terrible contest went on for nearly forty years longer in the Narragansett region, only to end when King Philip was slain in 1675. The Pequwts, overcome and scattered, at least a small band of them pursued their way westward, and here, at the foot of our valley, among the mountains, became known as the Shaticooks. Connecticut set off a liberal reservation for them in the town of Kent, where they remain to this day, what there are left of the tribe. It is long, since there was an individual of unmixed lineage — red, white, black blood. The mixture was found not to be uplifting. To these Mohicans and Shaticooks, at that time, how far off it seemed they were from their white foes. Would they ever be discovered in this secluded nook? It was not possible that tlie whites would ever get so far into the wilderness. Ah! Little were they aware of how surelj' the slow, heavy tread of those ox teams of the Yankee farmers were creeping westward, and were occupying every inch of the ground as they advanced. Yet we must remember that there was a period of well towards a century of respite for the Indian between the battle of Groton and the time when our valley was settled. It seems now a long interval, when we survey the rapidity with which, on the whole, the continent has been overrun. There were the Dutch of the Hudson River on one side, and the New Englanders on the other; still kept at bay by the primeval forest. Here was an Elysian retreat indeed for the failing and hunted Indian. The valley, as we know from tradition, was to a large extent treeless in its central plains, but skirted by groves of gigantic sycamores, white oaks and tulip trees. The deer, the bear, and otlier noble game rOCONXUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 13 roamed through this stately park. The river, then a much hirger stream — for which statement we have undoubted authority — was teeming with fish. There were the beaver, the otter, tlie mink and the musk-rat for their fur. What more could the heart of our brothers of the Stone Age desire? They must have thought there was a foretaste of the Happy Hunting grounds. Can we imagine the sensation which was kindled among this sequestered people, one August day in 1694, when Capt. Wadsworth, at the head of sixty dragoons, con- ducting a body of commissioners, swept suddenly into their view. These were the Massachusetts and Connecticut deputations which had met other Indian commissioners, from other states, for a grand conference at Albany : and they were now on their homeward way. They came, as I have elsewhere given some account, in at the very head waters of the valley, through the moun- tain gateway of Boston Corner. In the company was the Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth, afterwards the president of Harvard College, and to his meagre journal we owe what little knowledge we have of this notable expedition — the earliest record, so far as I am aware, of the white man in the Webutuck Valley. Their course must have been along the small stream, such as the Webutuck is in its course through the town of North East, down to the Indian settlement at Wequognock; but this was long before the coming of the Moravian mis- sionaries. B\om Sharon Valley they proceeded southward, undoubtedly following the Indian trail within a few rods of the spot where we are assembled, but on the other side of the river. Very likely they saw the smoke ascending from the wigwams of a busy village upon this side — upon the plateau in the orchard here, where marks of its situa- 14 rOCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS tion are very manifest to-day. Thence the commissioners and their military guard proceeded down the valley to a point below South Amenia, where they took that conven- ient cross-cut of Bog Valley, still on the Indian trail — through the mountains to the Housatonic. We may be sure no circus cavalcade ever entered a rural precinct with the sensation aroused by this mounted company of soldiers and dignified commissioners, I do not imagine there was any fear of them; rather open-eyed wonder and amazement. How the squaws must have run, with papooses bobbing on their shoulders, to get a nearer view. The fisherman must have dropped his bone spear ; the hunter slung his bow with slackened thong; and no doubt the old arrow maker, in the village behind the spring here, just in the rear of the house, dropped for once his nugget of horn blend and curious tools and ran to the bank of the stream to gaze upon the wondrous spectacle. But the strange vision vanished as quickly as it had come. The Indians' happy respite continued; it may have been still a few years before he saw another white face. But the white faces appeared at last, and thickly enough. The reign of the Indian was soon over. His history is not written — very little of it pertain- ing to this locality remains in tradition. Some of the old men of my boyhood used to tell me of the times when the Indians still followed the stream on their fishing excursions, mingling peacefully with the white inhabitants; and in the spring time they were sure to come along with their win- ters' work of baskets for sale. Their residence in all the later years was in Shaticook. I have always been glad that I was so fortunate as to have an interview with Eunice Man wee, where I saw her In her little cottage in Schaticook about the year 1859 POCONNUCK HISTORCAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 15 This was a few months before lier death; and, though her exact age was not known, there were records in connection with incidents of her life, such as her baptism and connec- tion with the Congregational church in Kent, which showed that she was between 103 and 104 years of age. I found her tenderly cared for by a bright middle aged woman, her granddaugliter; and I happen to remem- ber that this woman's grandchild was playing upon the floor while I was talking with the aged woman. She was propped up in bed and, though feeble, her mind seemed to be perfectly clear. Pier granddaughter said she almost lived on strong tea. So the aboriginal races have fallen before the vices introduced by civilization. How much l)eyond the age of 104 this Indian princess might have lived, had it not been for the poisonous decoction, is a mat- ter of conjecture. I call her a princess, for she was tlie granddaughter of the old Sachem of the tribe, Gideon Mauweesemum. Her features were a strongly marked type of the race. In my short interview she related some in- cidents pertaining to her people, and the signification of the names which they have left us. A few years earlier, what a long panorama of Indian history in our locality she might have unrolled befm'e me. We have among us a d(>scendant of Eunice Mauvvee, one whom we all know. This is Edward Paret <>f Sharon. Though of mixed blood, he has striking traits of Indian ancestry; not alone in his complexion, for the "red man," as we all know, was only red when he had his war paint on, but in his features; and particularly we note a certain look in his eyes; not in their exj)ression, which is manly and straight forwan't, but in a peculiar indefinable glitter, a purely physical trait that is quite distinct from the appear- ance of the eye in either the negro or the white man. 16 POCONNUCK HISTORCAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS Edward Paret is, I believe, the great-great grandson of Eunice; and Eunice, as I have said was undoubted!}' the last of unmixed blood. So the race has vanished ; and for their history we must turn to the soil beneath our feet. This record shows that their occupation of the Webutuck Valley was numer- ous and extended over a long period of time, And it is to the valley -situations, and the shores of our lakes that this population was mostly confined. The area was very limited ; they roamed the liills and mountains on every side; but when it came to building the wigwam, it seems always to have been within a stone's throw of the water; lake or river. You have all probably noticed the singular geologic formation of the Webutuck Valley, characterized by suc- cessive level plateaus bordering tlie stream on botli sides, and with an abrupt steep terrace. They are higher and higher with every step down stream. These tablelands first appear at the "Twin Bridges," which I need tell no one, at least a Leedsvillian, are the bridges always known by that name, on the old Turnpike, near the Morehouse place. At this point they are only some two or three feet high ; but the down cutting of the river gives them an altitude of 20 to 25 feet at Leedsville Brick Mills— looking westward across the river. The hamlet of Leedsville, itself, is upon one of them; and the plain-lots, to the front and rear of this house, as well. Just below South Amenia, is the largest and most striking of these. There are there a hundred acres or more of the perfect level plateau with the sharp outlines of the terrace higher than the like terraces at this point, which rises above the meadows and stream for the stretch of a mile. POCONXUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 17 These plateaus were tlie the favorite haunts of the Indians, especially for their villages. They are of a dry gravelly loam, the most sanitary, as well as convenient localities he could have chosen . I could point out at least five village sites on this farm. How do we know them? It is the stone record, as ever, the village is known by its chips. These are partly their slivers of the arrow makers work of the indigenous white quartz; but in larger proportion are the chips of the dark flint, or hornblend, which had been brought from a distance. Sometimes there is a "core" of the latter, a solid chunk, which has the potentiality of several more implements than were ever realized. You find many im- perfect implements, very seldom a perfect one on the ground of one of these prehistoric villages. If such a "find" occurs, you may be sure that there was one day an accident in this cluster of wigwams. Perhaps a papoose, to keep him quiet, was given an arrowhead to play with ; with the result inevitable in the case of papooses, red or white. There is one village site to which I have already alluded, very circumscribed in area, but very rich in indi- cations of occupation, on the plateau here back of the spring; and it is eas}' to guess that the spring was the potent attraction . On the face of the terrace, some years ago, I came across a collection of fire stained stones, which gave a hint that they may be the remains of one of those curious steam-bath arrangements, well known among the Indians, the public bath of the village. Perhaps their ablutions were not very frequent; but they were sometimes very thorough. The fields further back, those lying along the Turn Pike, have always been rich in stone remains; and the 18 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS same may be said of the wide plateau in front of this bouse. But in any field outside of this valley table-lands the find- ing of remains is rather infrequent. These plains too, I imagine, were the maize fields for the tribes as they are for us. The finding of stone hoes and other implements scattered over them is not infrequent. I have a collection of some hundreds of these Indian remains of a wide variety. It is perhaps unique in the fact that so large a number were all gathered from one farm, Among these are some of the rarer forms; but of course the larger portion is of such as can be duplicated in any collection. I know of no parallel, for instance, to one found in my strawberry bed a year or two ago. This is a fragment of a fossil of .some extinct animal, of smooth cylindrical form-here, be it noted where no fossils belong; and it must have been brought from a long distance. It was evidently used for a pestle in grinding war-paint Some of the very paint yet remains in the cellular interstices of this unique implement ! There iiave been two or three soapstone dishes, im- perfect, found upon the farm. One I have, and there is one in the hands of my friend, Mr. J. Joyce Smith, who, I must say, within the past few years, has been reaping a rich harvest from my fields. The material for these rare specimens was undoubtedly found in a small deposit, wliere both Indians and white men have quarries on the moun- tain east of Amenia Union. There is variety, certainly, in my little collection, knives, darts, hoes, spears, drills skinners, celts, battle- axes, etc.; but the arrow-heads outnumber all the rest. Here, for instance, is a mace, or banner-stone, as some archeologoists classify it. It is an implement of no mater- POOONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 19 ial use; it served only a symbolic one, liaving been used, as is believed, in the religious ceremonies of the Indians. Tlie most remarkable feature is that it has a hole through it; and this is bored in the stone with as perfect precision as if it had been done by a machinist of to day. So far as I know this specimen is unique. I have heard of no other found in this region ; though it appears ill collections gathered in other places. Nor do I know^ of any other stone implement here which is pierced by a hole. The greater part of the Indians' weapons and tools are pro- vided with notches or with grooves by which wood or bone handles could be affixed, from the tiniest arrow-head to the heavy battle-axe; but never with a hole for the inser- tion of a handle or helve. The peculiarities of this mace give great probability to the theory that it was not of home manufacture but was brought from a distance, perhaps even so far as one of those wonerdful structures of the Mound Builders of Ohio. That people were much higher skilled in the arts; and it is believed that their country was over run at some period by the more barbarous tribes of the Atlantic coast. The Indian settlements at Wequagnock, or Indian Pond as more commonly called, is well known; and the story of the devoted Moravian missionaries has often been told. They labored but a short time among them before, through white rapacity and injustice, they were scattered and dispersed. It is not so generally known that there was a very populous settlement at the outlet of Silver Lake, that largest of our beautiful lake-groups and the only one among them, very singularly, whose Indian name has not been preserved. The proofs are plentiful of the site of this village in the field east of the small pond of Benedict's Mills. 20 POCONNUCK HISTORCAL SOCIETY S COLLFX'TIONS Ml". Hunting is strongly of the opinion that this was tho chief settlement of the Indians to whom tlie Moravians came. He says it was always the custom of the mission- aries to build their houses and establish their head-quarters at some point outside of the native village, yet within easy reach of it; as would be the case here. There is less known about the pottery of the Webutuck Indians than of their art in other materials; yet there is no reason to think they were lacking in this branch. It seems at first thought, a mystery that nearly all the re- mains of it have vanished. In one instance, many years age, there was pottery found upon this farm. This was a portion of an earthern dish, and it had a decorative figure on the exterior, apparently made with a sharp stick or bone in the soft clay. With the scarcity of these remains we must take into account the effect of the elements. All unprotected wood or bone implements would of course quickl}' perish; and wherever rain and frost could reach a piece of native pottery the preservation of that, too, must have been brief. It was not hard and well baked, and, above all, had no glaze. I believe that our garden spots to distant ages will furnish specimens of the Yankee black-jack teapots. Now, with their one or two centuries in the soil, fragments of them flash out their jet as lustrous as if they had always been kept upon the dresser. Not so the Indian teapots, whatever the herb was which the ancestors of old Eunice steeped in them over the wigwam fire. The pottery, of which there were doubtless large quantities, has nearly all vanished. But exceptional con- ditions for preservation in some cases bring a great boon to the antiquarian, as they do also, in his field, to the geolo- gist. One such piece of good fortune has fallen to us. POCONNUCK HISTORCAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS 21 You have all heard of that remarkable discovery made two or three years ago by Mr. Charles Dakin, by which a little treasure-trove came to light at the foot of Indian Mountain near the lake. The accident of preservation here was a great overhanging rock which has slieltered a nook at its base from the destroying work of rain and frost. This cradle under the rock was a jewel casket in- deed ! Here among a few stone implements, were others of the else perishable bone, as well as many bone, sliell and tortoise fragments, stones showing the marks of fire, charcoal, etc. But above all was the wonderful revelation of the potter's skill ! Here were fragments of considerable size of vessels and dishes. Among them I counted five or six dis- tinct patterns, showing there must have been as many different vessels, most of theni good size, but the parts to complete them were lost. The thing which gives one the liveliest impression in looking over this broken mass of decorated pottery, and a real glow of interest in the works of our brother of the Stone Age, is the beauty of these designs. They are elaborate, and wrought out with great care for studied effect! They might well furnish hints for a modern decorator. Oh! how interesting to discover that it was not alone the stew that was cooked and served in these vessels which dominated the motives and work of these far off, mysteri- ous people. Ah! there was something else; they had thought for something other than food even with the crav- ings of hunger pursuing them, there was the ideal, the be- ginnings of the love of beauty, and gropings toward art for art's sake. Such a discovery sheds a rainbow tint upon these fragments of brown pottery ! 22 POCONNUCK HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS But I will leave this part of my subject for some of our friends who were intimately concerned in the bringing to light of this unique store of mementoes, to give us now, as I hope they will, some more accurate account of it than I can. I only wish to refer, in closing, to the very singular fact that there were discoveries, it happened, of just such aboriginal remains about the same time in the southern part of Westchester County; and the unearthing of the treasures there was so nearly simultaneous with the opera- tions going on under just such cave-like ledges not far from the shores of Long Island Sound and the boundaries of Greater New York that, really, some of the accounts at the time in the daily papers seemed like an attempt of the reporters to give a graphic pen-picture of Mr. Dakin, Mr. Newell and Dr. Bassett digging for dear life under that picturesque rock-shelter, on the east side of Indian Pond ! LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 076 275 1