Massaco was a
native
Native may refer to:
People
* Jus soli, citizenship by right of birth
* Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory
** Native Americans (disambiguation)
In arts and entert ...
settlement near the present-day towns of
Simsbury
Simsbury is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 24,517 at the 2020 census. The town was incorporated as Connecticut's 21st town in May 1670.
History
Early history
At the beginning of the 17th century, th ...
and
Canton
Canton may refer to:
Administrative division terminology
* Canton (administrative division), territorial/administrative division in some countries, notably Switzerland
* Township (Canada), known as ''canton'' in Canadian French
Arts and ente ...
along the banks of the
Farmington River
The Farmington River is a river, U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 in length along its main stem, located in northwest Connecticut with major tributaries ex ...
.
The small, local
Algonquian-speaking Indians who lived there in the 17th and early 18th centuries belonged to 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 ...
,
a
Wappinger people
The Wappinger () were an Eastern Algonquian Munsee-speaking Native American people from what is now southern New York and western Connecticut.
At the time of first contact in the 17th century they were primarily based in what is now Dutches ...
.
[
The Massaco were first encountered by Dutch settlers at the beginning of the 17th century, who referred to the river where they dwelt as the ''Massaco''. Over time, the term ''Massaco'' came to refer to the indigenous peoples, the river, the village they occupied, and the land adjacent to the river.
The area known as Massaco was transferred to European settlers, when a local Native man, Manahanoos, burnt a large quantity of tar belonging to John Griffin. Manahanoos was arrested and fined 500 ]fathom
A fathom is a unit of length in the imperial and the U.S. customary systems equal to , used especially for measuring the depth of water. The fathom is neither an International Standard (SI) unit, nor an internationally-accepted non-SI unit. ...
s, or 914.4 meters, of wampum
Wampum is a traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of Native Americans. It includes white shell beads hand-fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell and white and purple beads made from the quahog or Western Nor ...
. The local Indians did not possess that vast quantity of wampum, so the 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 ...
, or political leader, of the native community deeded the land to Griffin. The "Massaco Division" included the lands around the towns of Canton and Simsbury, as well as parts of Granby, Connecticut.
See also
* Connecticut Colony
The ''Connecticut Colony'' or ''Colony of Connecticut'', originally known as the Connecticut River Colony or simply the River Colony, was an English colony in New England which later became Connecticut. It was organized on March 3, 1636 as a settl ...
Notes
References
* {{cite book, last1=De Forest, first1=John William, title=History of the Indians of Connecticut from the Earliest Known Period to 1850, date=1871, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hNxf4YjU35AC&dq=Mattabesett+Indians&pg=PA364
Native American history of Connecticut
Algonquian ethnonyms