Quinnipiac

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Settlement area of ​​the Quinnipiac and neighboring tribes around 1600

The Quinnipiac , also called Quiripi , were Algonquin- speaking Indians who lived in western Connecticut on New Haven Bay and the rivers that flow there at the beginning of the 17th century . They belonged to a large number of small tribes from the Mattabesic group, who were expelled from their settlement area by the English colonists at an early stage. Like other New England tribes, they were semi-settled and seasonally migrated between relatively consistent locations. Their main diet was maize grown by women, as well as fish and game.

language

The Quinnipiac language is called Quiripi-Unquachog and was one of the five Algonquin languages ​​in southern New England: Loup, Massachusett , Narraganset , Mohegan - Pequot - Montauk, and Quiripi-Unquachog. These languages ​​had some phonological similarity, but they differed in other ways: for example, the tribes of New England often used different expressions for the same everyday terms. However, many reports from the seventeenth century confirm that all of these languages ​​were understood by their respective speakers. On the coast, this may be particularly true of speakers who have had some experience with other languages. Other early reports emphasize linguistic differences and difficulties that speakers of the Martha's Vineyard dialect experienced in communicating with residents of Nantucket and the nearby mainland of Massachusetts . Quiripi is no longer spoken today.

Names

The name probably means people from the long arm of the sea . Quinnipiac appears in the first English records of 1637 and 1638, but also Quillipeage, Quillypieck, Quinopiocke and Quinnypiock. The Dutch called them Quiripi or Quiripey.

groups

The Quinnipiac had four different groups, each led by a sachem:

  • Momauguin, settlement area near today's New Haven.
  • Montovese, at what is now North Haven .
  • Menunkatuck, by today's Guilford .
  • Totoket, by what is now Branford .

history

The legend

This is the Algonquin legend about the seven prophets and seven fires , which paints the picture of the Algonquin ethos in the form of the seven phases of creation:

The Creator created the first man out of rock and earth, a giant known by several names. Even today these names are current designations for aspects of the life of the Algonquin.

The prophecies said that the mighty thunderer (English. Mighty Thunderer) gave life to the firstborn stone giant with his serpentine, lightning-throwing spear and at the same time he sent fire. The Creator taught the firstborn to build a sacred fireplace. From this fire seven sparks flew out, and they became seven men, and then another seven sparks flew out of the fire, creating seven women. These became the ancestors of all humans, from which seven family clans emerged. Everyone had to gather at the central Mawiomi fireplace every year and this people called themselves Thunder Clan (dt. Donner-Klan ). The prophecies also said that the seven clans were distributed in seven directions, each building his own Mawiomi , until seven clans were formed here too - and so it went on and on. Each Mawiomi with seven clans corresponded to a nation .

The Algonquin began to migrate until they had spread over a full third of North America. Starting from southern Labrador , Newfoundland and Nova Scotia in the north to North Carolina in the south, from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west. The Algonquin established a widely branched trading system that used the Indian trails and main waterways as a means of transport. Before they knew the horse, they used wolves and deer as draft and pack animals. The word Algonquin comes from the Mi'kmaq language and probably means place where fish are shot with spears .

One of the groups of migrating Algonquians followed the Saint Lawrence River and turned south near what is now Québec , until it met the spring waters of the Connecticut River. The Algonquians migrated this stream downstream, named it Quinnehtukqut ( Eng . Long Arm ), and reached the Long Island Sound in southern Connecticut. Here they discovered a huge freshwater lake and huge waterfalls, a good place to settle. Those were the ancestors of the Quinnipiac.

Seventeenth century

In 1614, the Dutch explorer Adriaen Block anchored with his ship Onrest ( Eng . Unrast) at what is now New Haven. He named this area Rodenberg (German: Rotenberg) after the two distinctive red mountain cones that are now called East Rock and West Rock . According to Dutch records, they were greeted by an Indian delegation that included Munsey ( Munsee ), Mahicanni ( Mahican ), and Quiripey (Quinnipiac).

New Haven

On April 24, 1638, 500 English Puritans reached the Quinnipiac land. They were looking for a new theocratic colony away from the colonies in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Wars against the Pequot in the east and devastating epidemics had decimated the Quinnipiac to around 300 members and so they welcomed the English as potential allies against their Indian enemies. On November 24, 1638, the first contract between Sachem Momauguin and the leaders of the English was signed, in which the Momauguin received the east side of the port (including Grannis Island ) as a settlement area, while the colonists were formally assigned the rest of the land. In the early years, the Quinnipiac supplied the people of New Haven with venison because the Puritans were inexperienced in hunting. The settlers learned from the Indians how to build dams, catch fish and collect mussels. The Quinnipiac served as tour guides and messengers, they sold canoes to the whites and hunted wolves, which threatened the cattle of the whites.

Typical Algonquin planting in southern New England

The Puritans described the Quinnipiac summer camps as follows: These camps were all in clearings on the south side of a hill, surrounded by thick forest and close to a spring or a watercourse. Close to the camp there were fields on which corn and beans grew and which were cultivated by women. They were close to the coast or a river so there was no shortage of shellfish and fish.
In the fields there were also nut trees and berries, squash and other fruits and vegetables, but seafood was the main diet of the Quinnipiac.

Since the Quinnipiac lived near the English city, the colonists established the following rules, which were accepted by the Indians in this form:

  1. No traps may be set in which the cattle can be injured or in which they are caught.
  2. No fish may be chased away or stolen from English nets.
  3. On Sundays, no Indian is allowed to come into town to bargain or hang around when the Puritans are in church.
  4. No English boats or canoes may be used without permission from the owner.
  5. No more than six armed Indians may enter the city at the same time.
  6. No English man, woman or child may be attacked or injured in any way.
  7. Cattle killed or otherwise harmed must be paid for.
  8. Indians from other tribes must not be allowed to live with them without the consent of the English.
  9. All evil plans against the English must be reported immediately.
  10. The Quinnipiac give their consent that all guilty parties will be punished by the English.
  11. All damage done by them must be paid for.
  12. Anyone who harms the Indians in any way will be punished by the English.

The customs and traditions of the Indians were alien and incomprehensible to the English colonists, so for example that the Quinnipiac had a differentiated concept of private property. They did not own any herds of cattle and often took animals from the colonists to eat. The Puritans were very religious even for the time. Work was never done on Sundays and when the Indians came into town on Sundays to bargain, the English felt very disturbed

Cultural change

Three of the most important treaties with the English colonists were signed in 1658 and 1659. In the first treaty, 1,200 acres (4.856 km²) of land were reserved for the Quinnipiac - this piece of land is often seen as the first Indian reservation in what would later become the United States. In the other treaties, the Quinnipiac confirmed both a trade and a military alliance with the British. Wampum became the official currency in Connecticut, but the majority of it was barter. There are records of trade between the two parties showing that the Quinnipiac traded corn, hides, furs and tallow for iron utensils and tools, as well as English fabrics. Mohegan and Quinnipiac committed themselves in armed conflicts to provide a certain number of warriors at the request of the colonists. In King Philip's War, for example, the English sent a total of 500 Connecticut men to the final battle of the war on December 18, 1675, including 300 English and 200 Indians, 75 of whom were Mohegan and Quinnipiac warriors.

Although war never broke out between the New Haven colonists and the Quinnipiac, cultural conflicts were common. In the 1650s, it became increasingly difficult for the Indians to continue their traditional life, because the habitat of the Quinnipiac was increasingly restricted by the increased English settlement. The Indians were not allowed to cultivate fields outside the reservation. At a meeting in 1657, Momauguin tried to buy back a piece of land from the English, but the city refused after lengthy debates.

Title page of the Eliot Bible

Despite the assistance and trade agreements, relations between the English colonists and the Quinnipiac continued to deteriorate. For the Calvinist Puritans, the conversion of the unbelieving savages was a godly goal and they gathered the converted Indians in prayer cities. John Eliot was one of the Puritan ministers who preached to the Indians. The first printed Bible in the Algonquin language comes from him. For the Indians, however, the conversion to Christianity also meant that they had to give up their previous way of life completely. Many Quinnipiac therefore refused to convert to Christianity and preferred to hide from the English authorities. A hideout that was later known was West Rock near New Haven. Those caught were sent to mission camps.

18th and 19th centuries

In the winter of 1770, the last Quinnipiac male sachem died. In 1773 the rest of the reservation land, about 30 acres (121,440 m²), was sold to the public through an intermediary. This trader was named Samuel Adams and was reportedly a Quinnipiac who lived in Farmington .

The Quinnipiac groups split up in the late 18th century. One group moved to the Tunxis in Farmington, others stayed in a remote area near Guilford. The Tunxis group later moved to Stockbridge and lived there with members of the Munsee and Mahican. At the end of the American Revolutionary War , the Stockbridge Indians were found decimated, forced to sell their land and undesirable in their village, where the whites had taken over and were trying to force the Indians out. The discouraged remnants of the Mahican, Munsee and Quinnipiac, 420 in total, accepted an invitation from the Oneida and moved to an area on Oneida Creek in New York . The move began in 1783 and the population development points to the increase by further Mahicans from the Hudson River area . Between 1832 and 1834, the Stockbridge group finally moved to Calumet County east of Lake Winnebago . The Quinnipiac tribal identity has been considered extinct since around 1850.

A number of New Haven facilities today have names derived from the Quinnipiac:

The Quinnipiac worshiped a local rock formation as a sacred site, which is known today as the Sleeping Giant (dt. Sleeping Giant); the Quinnipiac called it Hobbomock .

See also

List of North American Indian tribes

swell

literature

Web links