Samson Occom, one of the Mohegan tribe’s most famous members and a direct descendant of the great 17th century tribal leader Uncas, was born in 1723 in southeastern Connecticut. As a teenager, he converted to Christianity after attending one of the many revivals held throughout Connecticut as part of the first Great Awakening religious…
Tag: native american history
July 18: Connecticut’s Largest Shoreline Park Opens to the Public.
Hammonasset Beach State Park, Connecticut’s largest public beach and one of the state’s most popular attractions, first opened to the public on this day in 1920. Located in Madison, Hammonasset features a continuous two-mile-long stretch of sandy beaches that line a shoreline peninsula that juts southward into Long Island Sound. Before opening to the…
June 22: The Assassination of Elias Boudinot, Cherokee
The Cherokee leader Elias Boudinot first came to Connecticut in the 1820s to seek a formal western education at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall. Born as Gallegina Uwati into a prominent Cherokee family in 1802, he was sent north with the permission of tribal elders in hopes that his western education would help…
June 15: Honoring Gladys Tantaquidgeon, Mohegan Culture Keeper
June 15, 1999 was officially declared “Gladys Tantaquidegon Day” by Connecticut Governor John Rowland in honor of the 100th birthday of a remarkable medicine woman who became one of the most influential cultural and spiritual leaders of the Mohegan Nation. Born on the Mohegan reservation in southeastern Connecticut in 1899, Gladys Iola Tantaquidegon was…
May 26: A Deadly Attack on the Pequot Fort at Mystic
Today in 1637, a month after a combined Pequot And Wangunk attack on the small colonial town of Wethersfield that left nine dead and crippled the town’s food security,, a group of 77 English soldiers and hundreds of their Mohegan and Narragansett allies retaliated by attacking and burning a Pequot village at Mystic Fort,…
May 1: The Pequot War Begins
On this date in 1637, Connecticut colonists formally declared war against the Pequots, the Native American tribe whose territory covered approximately 250 square miles of land in southeastern Connecticut and Rhode Island. Relations between Connecticut colonists and the Pequots had been tense ever since the first permanent English settlements had been established along the…
January 25: The Mohegan Tribal Nation’s Quest for Federal Recognition
Today in 1994, members of the Mohegan Tribe in southeastern Connecticut saw their fifteen-year-old petition for federal recognition move forward, as the 103rd Congress convened in Washington D.C. and legislators, for the first time, began crafting the act that would formally recognize the Mohegan Tribe on the highest (and most highly-coveted) federal level. While…
December 3: The Barkhamsted “Lighthouse”
The Connecticut shoreline is home to many beautiful, historic lighthouses that have steered ships in Long Island Sound to safety for hundreds of years. One of the state’s most historically significant “lighthouses,” however, is located over sixty miles inland — and refers not to a navigational structure, but to a unique settlement established on…
October 19: Meriden’s “Perfect” Silver Wins First Place
Today in 1876, the craftsmanship of the silver pieces produced by the Meriden Britannia Company of Meriden, Connecticut found itself in the national spotlight after the New York Times published a glowing write-up of the company’s wares at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Noting the “peculiar excellence” of both the company’s highly detailed figural…
September 21: The Treaty of Hartford Ends the Pequot War
On this day in 1638, an “agreement between the English in Connecticutt and the Indian Sachems” was signed in Hartford, marking the end of the Pequot War which had ravaged both the English and Indian inhabitants of the colony of Connecticut for sixteen bloody months. On May 1, 1637, leaders among the English settlers…
July 24: Hiram Bingham III “Finds” Machu Picchu
Hiram Bingham III was, without a doubt, one of the most colorful people to grace the annals of Connecticut history. Born in 1875, over the course of his lifetime he became an Ivy League-educated scholar of Latin America, pilot, amateur archaeologist, Yale professor, United States senator, best-selling author, and Governor of Connecticut (although only…
July 22: Mohegan Minister Samson Occum Tours England
Samson Occom, one of the Mohegan tribe’s most famous members and a direct descendant of the great 17th century tribal leader Uncas, was born in 1723 in southeastern Connecticut. As a teenager, he converted to Christianity after attending one of the many revivals held throughout Connecticut as part of the first Great Awakening religious…