Mashantucket Pequot Tribe

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

Contents 1 Geography 2 Demographics 3 Government 4 Chairman 5 Economy 6 History 6.1 Early History 6.2 Disease 6.3 Warfare 6.4 Federal Recognition 7 The Mashantucket Pequot today 8 References 9 See also 10 Sources 10.1 Primary Sources 10.2 Secondary Sources 11 External links

[edit] Geography

The Mashantucket Pequot Indian Reservation lies within the borders of the town of Ledyard, Connecticut, in New London County, in the Norwich-New London metro area, and on the Pequot River, now known as the Thames River. There is also about 3.47 acres of off-reservation trust land in the town of Preston. The Pequot reservation was created by Connecticut Colony in 1666. Over time it had been reduced to less than an acre (4,000 m²), and the Pequot population reached its nadir of 20 or 30. After a successful lawsuit initiated in 1976 which contested the illegal appropriation of reservation lands by the state of Connecticut, the Mashantucket Pequot expanded their reservation, and placed repurchased lands into trust with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The total land area is 5.616 km² (2.168 sq mi, or 1,387.81 acres), as reported in the 2000 census.

[edit] Demographics

According to the 1990 census, the Mashantucket Pequot population was assessed at 320, comprising 3.51% of Ledyard, Connecticut's total population of 14,687. By 2005, tribal membership grew to 785. The 2000 census showed a resident population of 325 persons living on reservation land, 227 of whom were of solely Native American heritage.

[edit] Government

As of 2008, the Mashantucket Pequot Elders council includes:^[2]

• Chair - Priscilla Colebut Brown
• Vice-Chair - Joyce Walker

• The seven members of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Council are:
• Chairman - Michael Thomas
• Vice-Chairman - Kenneth M. Reels
• Secretary - Charlene Jones
• Treasurer - Rodney Butler
• Councilor - Richard E. Sebastian
• Councilor - Maureen Sebastian
• Councilor - Marjorie Colebut-Jackson

The current administration's seven-member council has publicly stated that the tribal nation's priorities are protecting tribal sovereignty, focusing on the educational, emotional and physical well being of tribal members, and working to leverage the tribe's financial and economic strengths through partnership initiatives, both locally and abroad. Mashantucket Pequot's most recent efforts include investment in North Stonington. Tribal development there, such as the recently opened $80 million Lake of Isles golf resort, has proven to be a welcome addition to the town's tax base.^[3]

Council terms are three years. There are roughly 400 eligible voting members of the tribal nation.

[edit] Chairman

• Richard Arthur Hayward, 1975 to 1998.
• Kenneth M. Reels, 1998 to ?.
• Michael Thomas, ? to current.

[edit] Economy

Since 1992, the Mashantucket Pequot have operated the largest resort casino in the world. The Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, a research center at the University of Connecticut, performed an analysis of the casino's impact on the Connecticut economy. Their report stated that the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and its Foxwoods casino have had a positive economic impact on the neighboring town of Ledyard and the state of Connecticut.^[4]

[edit] History

See Main Article: Pequot

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

[edit] Early History

Debate still exists as to whether the Pequot migrated toward central and eastern Connecticut sometime around 1500, from the upper Hudson River Valley. The theory of Pequot migration to the Connecticut River Valley rather than originating in the region can be traced to Rev. William Hubbard who, in 1677, claimed that the Pequot had invaded the region sometime before the establishment of Plymouth Colony. In the aftermath of King Philip's War, Hubbard had sought in his Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England, to explain the unmitigated ferocity with which New England's Native peoples responded to the English. Seeking answers not in Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay Colony's own failed diplomacy and the colonial rapacity for Native lands, Puritan divines such as Hubbard may have projected their own situation and behavior onto the Pequot by defining the Pequot as "foreigners" to the region-- invaders not from another shore, but "from the interior of the continent" who "by force seized upon one of the googliest places near the sea, and became a Terror to all their Neighbors." ^[5]

Much of the archaeological, linguistic, and documentary evidence now available clearly reveals that the Pequot were not invaders to the Connecticut River Valley; that they were in fact indigenous to it.^[6] Certainly, contemporaneous to the establishment of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, the Pequot had already assumed a position of political, military, and economic dominance in what is now central and eastern Connecticut. Occupying the coastal area between the Niantic River of present-day Connecticut and the Wecapaug River in what is now western Rhode Island, the Pequot numbered some 16,000 persons in the most densely inhabited portion of southern New England.^[7]

[edit] Disease

The smallpox epidemic of 1616-19, which killed roughly 90% of the Native inhabitants of the eastern coast of present-day New England, failed to reach the Pequot, or the Niantic and Narragansett. But a subsequent epidemic in 1633 devastated the entirety of the region's Native population. Historians estimate that the Pequot suffered the loss of 80% of their entire population. At the outbreak of the Pequot War then, the Pequot may have numbered only about 3,000.^[8]

[edit] Warfare

See Main Article: Pequot War

In 1637, Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay colonies overwhelmed the Pequot during the Pequot War following a Pequot attack on Wethersfield, Connecticut that left several settlers dead. When the military forces of the two colonies, led by John Mason and John Underhill launched a genocidal assault on the Pequot stronghold at Mystic, a significant portion of the Pequot population was killed.^[9] Those who survived the massacre were enslaved, with some forced to become household servants of the Puritan English. More were sent to the West Indies, and others to the Mohegan and Narragansett, enemies of the Pequot who had allied themselves with the English colonies.^[10] Eventually, a few Pequot managed to return to their traditional homeland, not as suzerains, but as marginal inhabitants of a once populous, politically powerful territory.

[edit] Federal Recognition

By the time of the 1910 US Census, there were only 13 tribal members remaining on the reservation. ^[11] In 1973, Elizabeth George (?-1973) died on the remaining 214-acre (0.87 km²) tract of forest that was the reservation. Her death left no one remaining on the land, and the federal government started the process to reclaim the land. Richard Arthur Hayward became the tribal chairman in 1975, and worked to gain federal recognition for the tribe. ^[12]On October 18, 1983 (when President Reagan signed the Connecticut Indian Land Claims Settlement Act), the Mashantucket Pequot became the eighth American Indian tribe to gain federal recognition through congressional approval.^[13] By contrast, in 2005, the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation of Lantern Hill, North Stonington, Connecticut lost their bid for federal recognition following a challenge by the State of Connecticut that left the Mashantucket Pequot as the only federally recognized Pequot tribal government. The different outcomes can be attributed to the fact that, because their tribal recognition was granted by a direct act of Congress, the Mashantucket Pequots never went through the Bureau of Indian Affairs' recognition process which would have required them to prove that they were descended from the historical Pequot tribe. The Eastern Pequots did have to go through the BIA procedure and were found to have failed to meet the necessary criteria for recognition. In his book Without Reservation, author Jeff Benedict offered evidence that the Mashantuckets were not descended from the historical tribe but rather the Narragansett tribe. The Pequots denounced the book but never made public any contradictory evidence.^[12] Professor Laurence Hauptman, SUNY Professor of American Indian History, did dispute many of the aspects of Benedict's book especially with respect to his genealogical claims regarding the current tribe. ^[14]

[edit] The Mashantucket Pequot today

In 1992, the Mashantucket Pequot opened their enormously successful resort casino, Foxwoods, one of the largest casinos in the world.^[15]

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

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Foxwoods Resort Casino
• Indian gaming
• Indian Gaming Regulatory Act
• Mohegan Sun

[edit] Sources

[edit] Primary Sources

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

[edit] Secondary Sources

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

[edit] External links

• The Pequot
• Pequot History
• National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA)