The Golden Hill Paugussetts are the Connecticut state-recognized tribal descendents of the Paugussett (also Paugusset) Nation of Native Americans that occupied much of western Connecticut prior to the arrival of Europeans.[1][2] While state-recognized, they have been denied federal recognition.[3]
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The tribe lives in Colchester, Connecticut, where it has a 106-acre (0.43 km2) reservation,[4] and also has a 1⁄4-acre (0.0010 km2)[5] reservation in Nichols section of Trumbull, Connecticut. The Nichols reservation is considered to be the oldest continuing reservation in Connecticut and the smallest in the US.
In 2009, a state court dismissed a challenge to their heritage, refusing to eject members of the Golden Hill Paugussett Tribe and their chief from reservations in Trumbull and Colchester.[6]
While the history of the Paugussett Nation dates back to earlier times, written records begin with the arrival of Europeans on North American shores. At the time explorers first arrived, The Paugussets, an Algonquian-speaking nation, unlike the Iroquoian Pequots to the east, occupied a region bounded roughly by the coast of Long Island Sound from Norwalk to New Haven and the inland areas along the Housatonic River and Naugatuck River as far as they were navigable by canoe. The tribe was divided into four primary sub-groups, the Paugussett Proper in what is present day Milford, Derby and Shelton; the Pequonnock, along the coast; the Pootatuck in Newtown, Woodbury and Southbury and the Weantinock in New Milford. They were a farming and fishing culture, cultivating corn, squash, beans and tobacco and fishing in both fresh and saltwater. The size of shell heaps along the coast and the amount of cleared land attested to both a long period of occupation and a high degree of social organization.[8]
Preceded by a smallpox epidemic in 1633—35, and news of war against the Pequots in 1637, English settlers first arrived in Paugussett lands in 1638—39 when settlements were established in New Haven, Guilford, Milford, Stratford and Fairfield.[9]
Within a few years, the Paugussetts had been divested of the vast majority of their lands and left with several small reservations, including Golden Hill, site of a spring sacred to them, in present-day Bridgeport and Turkey Hill in present-day Derby. In 1802, Golden hill was sold by the tribal overseer. The last of Turkey Hill was sold in 1826 "for their own benefit".[10]
In the early 19th century, Paugussetts, including Joel Freeman from Derby, may have relocated to the urban enclave of Little Liberia, an African American neighborhood in Bridgeport, though the Bureau of Indian Affairs disputed this point.[11][3]
In 1993 the tribe made national headlines when it opened a tax-free cigarette shop on the Colchester reservation. An armed standoff with state police ensued that ended without violence when Chief Moon Face Bear agreed to close the shop.[12]
The Golden Hill Paugussetts have repeatedly been denied federal recognition.[3][13] Lack of federal recognition has stymied economic development plans such as opening a tribal casino in southwestern Connecticut.[14]
Lack of federal recognition has also made it difficult for them to pursue their claims to much of the land that was historically part of the Paugusset nation. They have claimed legal rights to 700,000 acres (2,800 km2) of land running from Orange/Woodbridge in New Haven County though Fairfield County to Greenwich and extending North into Eastern Litchfield County up to the Massachusetts border, though these claims have since been dropped.[4][15] In 2006, a federal judge dismissed the Golden Hill Paugussetts' 14-year-old lawsuit claiming lands in Orange, Trumbull and Bridgeport citing the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs' rejection of the tribe's request for federal recognition.[16]