![Hammonassett River Trail - Madison](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Hammonassett_River_Trail_-_Madison.jpg)
The Hammonasset people were
Eastern Woodland Indians who had their "digging grounds" from the west bank of the Connecticut River to the
Hammonasset River
The Hammonasset River is formed about southeast of Durham, Connecticut along a gully on the north end of Bunker Hill at about a half mile northeast of the junction of Route 148 and Bunker Hill Road. The river travels for U.S. Geological Survey. ...
in Connecticut.
Culture
They spoke an
Algonquian language. In the Eastern Woodlands Algonquian society, patrilineal clans with names appointed by animal totems made up the village-bands. The indigenous people who settled in the area named it ''Hammonasset'', which roughly translates to “where we dig the ground.” They subsisted by fishing and hunting, and raised corn, beans, and squash. The Hammonasset River was one of the few to have salmon runs.
The first colonists arrived in the area in 1639. In 1640, Uncas,
sachem
Sachems and sagamores are paramount chiefs among the Algonquians or other Native American tribes of northeastern North America, including the Iroquois. The two words are anglicizations of cognate terms (c. 1622) from different Eastern Al ...
of the
Mohegan
The Mohegan are an Algonquian Native American tribe historically based in present-day Connecticut. Today the majority of the people are associated with the Mohegan Indian Tribe, a federally recognized tribe living on a reservation in the easte ...
, added Sebequanash of the Hammonassets to his several wives . This marriage gave Uncas some type of control over their land which he promptly sold to New England colonists. The Hammonassets moved and became Mohegans.
They were once a band of
Quinnipiac
Quinnipiac is the English name for the Eansketambawg (meaning "original people"; ''cf.'' Ojibwe: ''Anishinaabeg'' and Blackfoot: ''Niitsítapi''), a Quiripi-speaking Native American nation of the Algonquian family who inhabited the ''Wampano ...
people, who were recorded living near
Guilford, Connecticut
Guilford is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States, that borders Madison, Branford, North Branford and Durham, and is situated on I-95 and the Connecticut seacoast. The population was 22,073 at the 2020 census.
History
Guilfo ...
. Their leader was named Sebequnash, or "The Man Who Weeps."
In 1730, the band's population was 250 to 300 people. By 1774, they were reduced to only 38 people. They moved to
Farmington, Connecticut
Farmington is a town in Hartford County in the Farmington Valley area of central Connecticut in the United States. The population was 26,712 at the 2020 census. It sits 10 miles west of Hartford at the hub of major I-84 interchanges, 20 miles s ...
, to live among the
Tunxis
The Tunxis were a group of Quiripi speaking Connecticut Native Americans that is known to history mainly through their interactions with English settlers in New England. Broadly speaking, their location makes them one of the Eastern Algonquian ...
in 1768.
References
Native American history of Connecticut
New Haven County, Connecticut
Algonquian ethnonyms
Native American tribes in Connecticut
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