Niantic (tribe)

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The Niantic were a tribe of New England Native Americans, who were living in Connecticut and Rhode Island during the early colonial period. The tribe appears to have been split into two regions by the intrusion of the Pequot.

The Niantic were an Algonquian speaking people. The tribe's name "Nehantic" (Nehântick) means "of long-necked waters" believed by local residents to refers to the "long neck" or peninsula of land now known as Black Point that is just out into Long Island Sound. The Nehantics were supposed to have spent their summers there fishing and digging the shellfish which were once abundant there. They lived on corn, beans, and squash, supplemented by hunting, fishing, and collecting.

Conflict broke out between the Niantic and their colonial neighbors, leading to punitive military expeditions that dealt out massive destruction in contrast to the rather limited incidents that had provoked the conflict. As the violence became more widespread it evolved into the Pequot War in 1637. This conflict resulted in almost total destruction of the Western Niantic, some did survive... As there were still Nehantic people living in the Lyme and Middletown areas in the early 1800s, the Native Americans were systematically removed from their land.

Following King Philip's War, surviving Narragansett fled in such numbers to the Eastern Niantic and merged with them so that the amalgamation was sometimes referred to as the Narragansett tribe.

It is believed that the last living member of the Nehantic/Niantic tribe died in the 1930s, reference Mercy Matthews and many other Nehantic Indians. The East Lyme Public Library has some information, mainly as small booklets that were researched and written by local historians.