The Nehantucket

1 Eons Ago

Over twenty-one thousand years ago, a melting glacier of solid ice with immense crevasses and torrents of melt water still covered New England. It churned and ground its weight into the hills and ledges as it receded, moving back slowly over the original continental shelf remaining beneath, some of the oldest granite bedrock on the planet. Its height was over a mile above the solid earth. It carved and scraped the landscape below its belly, dragging huge boulders and depositing them teetering on ledges like marbles as it melted and receded inland and slowly moved northward.

As the green vegetation reemerged in the soils eighteen thousand years ago, so did the migratory beasts, birds, and fishes of the coastal waters that rose, turning the once mountain peaks into small coastal islands. Envision immense saber-toothed cats, woolly mammoth herds—genetically different from the larger mastodon, massive herds of migratory elk and caribou. Including white tail deer, immense beaver, and teaming schools of freshwater fish filling the stream beds and rivers.

The massive flocks of birds that inhabited the coastal marshlands and inland grasslands were one hundred-fold the population we know of today and included geese, ducks, gulls, terns, partridge, turkey, and doves, just to name a few. The migratory gatherings along the shoreline encompassed not just an acre or so, but over ten and up to one hundred times the open acreage along these shores creating a moving sea of wild fowl flocks as seen from a high standpoint.

Abundant predatory and carnivorous creatures easily stalked their prey during the various seasons, flourished, and maintained a healthy and well-balanced population. The grey and red fox, coyote, mountain lion cats, dire timber wolves, and the massive, short-faced bear, over twice the size of any grizzly or black bear, were also indigenous to the shoreline.

Perhaps ten to thirteen thousand years ago, small tribal bands of early humans, those we consider native people, finally migrated from even further northern regions and found themselves able to flourish along this coastal area of southern New England. This would have been during the Paleo-Indian Period. Adapting quickly, they enjoyed the seasonal climate and adapted well to its variety and bounty, from the coastal marine life to the migrating herds of caribou and elk. They learned the applications of the natural fauna of wild plants, roots, and herbs well. These combinations sustained the people with a well-balanced diet of nutrients and protein not available to other inland tribes even just fifty miles inland and northward.

This civilization thrived during the Middle Archaic Period, some eight thousand years before the present (BP) and continued to thrive through the very early Woodland Period, which began some five thousand years ago. The Paleo-Indian adapted and evolved over those thousands of years to become the original indigenous natives of our story, which begins now, fully into the Woodland Period. Imagine these natives at a time of five thousand years ago.

The Nehantucket were a handsome people, of clear, smooth complexion, with straight teeth. They were tall in stature, from five-foot-six to six-foot tall. They had long straight dark amber hair, some with a tinge of reddish trait, others with darker browns and blackish hues. Their skin tone was that of a lighter olive hue. This was most likely due to an evolutionary adaptation to the seasonal southern New England climate that existed approximately six thousand years ago.

Adornments of polished beaded seashell, bird feathers, and shaped bone trinkets were important to individualism in a way that highlighted the individual’s persona and beauty. Adornments were also significant to one’s stature within the tribal band, endorsing his or her accomplishments and skills, as well as personality. These were people of deep spiritual connection to the earth, her energies and cycles. They had a deep understanding of all the creatures that they co habituated with in their surroundings and shared a universal respect, giving tribute to them as part of their daily rituals. The Nehantuckets bore a genetic trait of a kind, giving, and sharing disposition. Quiet and mild of manner, there was no need or concept of want or ownership!

In the warmer spring and summer season, only a light loin cloth was worn perhaps with a hide wrapping for leggings to protect from underbrush along with a simple type of moccasin. In the warmer summer seasons women were bare breasted as there was no understanding of shame in the human body. Males would at times paint part of the body with various pigments, colors of blue, greens, and reds derived from plant and okras. These pigments would also highlight the masculinity in males as well as bring out the inner beauty and magic mystical part of the feminine.

With a colder winter season upon them, fur skins were prepared, cured, and worked to a soft flexible texture, to endow their warmth on the people. Once fit to size, these garments could last an adult for many seasons of daily use and were generally handed down to growing children as the need arose.

No part of an animal ever went to waste. Bone was shaped into tools, implements and adornments; sinew was used for sewing and lashings, and hides were tanned into clothing and water shedding covers for their dwellings. These long houses, known as wigwams, were proven efficient shelters constructed of sapling tree bows, reeds, and over-lapped tree bark slabs.

The Nehantucket interactions with neighboring tribes, all speaking variants of the Algonquin tongue, was of the same kind and sharing nature as within tribal groups. At these important rendezvous gatherings, there was no concept of animosity between tribal neighbors to the north, west, or east.

There existed only a respectful trade alliance in the sharing of stone tools, hunting technology, utensils, and finally the much sought after wampum. These were beads of shaped quahog shells of exquisite colors of blue, purple, and pinkish hues made exclusively by the Nehantucket.

2 Living River

The sun gleamed separate beams of yellow light through the foliage from the canopy of the treetops illuminating the leaves and mosses in patches on the ground. It was early morning—just as the sun was poking in full splendor over the tree-topped eastern horizon.

From his vantage point high above the western edge of the river, now known as the Niantic River, although Ne-han-tuk-it was how the tribal people pronounced it, Lone Wolf looked down at the shimmering water. He could see the northern uppermost channel where the wider river narrowed between the ledges at the river’s beginning thread. Here fresh waters flow into the river’s body, sourced by the upland brook known today as Latimer Brook.

He could also see the mid-southern, wider, mature body of the river known then as the Inner Bay. To the south the river flowed and ebbed with the tidal influence of saltier brackish waters rising and subsiding in their tidal cycles. It was as if breathing, filling its lungs with life-giving nutrients, and exhaling, flushing out into the narrow deep gut of the ocean salt bay, with the influx of the fresh water from its uppermost source.

This river was and is alive with life not only in and under the sands of its belly, but up along both sides of its broadness, the sloping woods, and embankments. The river teemed with fish, crabs, mussels, clams, oysters, scallops, and lobster. Along its shores were the muskrat, fisher cat, bobcat, and beaver, just to name a few. Uphill into the river’s wooded parts in the area on the eastern shore of the Oswegatchie flatland, woodland creatures abounded. Upon the western shore, the area known today as Oswegatchie Hills, another wooded forest was home to all walks of animal life to include beaver along the freshwater stream beds and marshes.

The Algonquin-speaking Nehantuckets called this river living waters. It teemed with life, this river, alive and breathing. The young man called Tibamahgan, meaning Lone Wolf, named so by his people after his demeanor, could feel the essence of the river as part of his body and soul.

3 Summer’s Quest

Tibamahgan was completing and returning from a twelve-day upland trek that began at the larger summer village along the waterfront shore of the great bay. We know this area today as Crescent Beach.

Off in the distance across the bay’s horizon, one could see the islands, mountaintops whose slopes were well below the water’s surface. These islands protruded above the surface of the ocean bays much higher than present day, being uneroded some five thousand years ago, just to recall our timeline.

This village was just a series of smaller outlying villages situated along the Nehantucket River, the bay, and shore along the western points of higher land that jutted toward the bay. A large stone circle was used as a main gathering location for council meetings and ceremonial events.

From his high vantage point, Tibamahgan could also overlook these crescent sands that held a deep significance to this culture, emulating the moon’s beginning and ending cycles. Nearby were the sacred burial grounds, now known as McCook Point Park.

Lone Wolf was designated by the sachem council of elders as a mashkiki, a medicine scout, whose task, due to his acknowledged skills, was to locate and prepare the best seasonal winter village locations five and ten miles inland. He would survey the game trails of migratory herds, woodland bison, elk caribou, and the non-migrating, whitetail deer.

Winter villages enabled the tribal majority to better withstand harsh winds, snows, and ice annually gusting inward from the ocean and bay beginning in December at the winter equinox. The village always wanted to relocate as close to the grassy meadows and trails that these migratory animals would use so that hunting parties would only need to spend three to four days further upland from the winter village.

In the winter, they would base their diet on the various meats from game animals and stored dried maze and herbs. Their diet included fall-harvested gourds, varieties of pumpkin, squashes and freshwater fish caught and dried on racks. The inhabitants salted fresh meats and fish well, to preserve them. They harvested the salt itself by boiling down the bay seawater to dehydrate it.

Along with the fresh meats brought in from the men’s hunting camps, the Nehantucket people flourished far better than tribes located further inland. Those tribes were used to going hungry for longer durations of time. The Nehantucket people, over many hundreds of years learned and passed down techniques in hunting, growing, processing, and applying the bounties of the earth. This included its healing plants and herbs, seasonal and perennial harvests, and its creatures. These were bounties that they would give thanks for, cherish, and give tribute for.

4 Prana

As he sat atop this overlook along the river, surveying its beauty, Lone Wolf reflected on his last few days scouting the upland areas some five miles or so distant by today’s measurement, utilizing the streambed of the brook now known as Latimer Brook at the location we call Flanders. It was a good site for this winter’s camp, being far enough inland for protection from the shoreline winds, and close to the grassy flatland features of the terrain with its gentle slopes and wooded knolls.

The brook’s waters flowed further inland, nicely meandering with the grassy flatlands mostly along its miles of western embankments with the secluded wetland areas and natural ponds whereby all forms of game were abundant. The eastern embankments rose into rock ledges long since scoured and scraped by the glacial movements and recessions, leaving massive boulders oddly placed, teetering like marbles from giants’ games!

The brook, rather wide in some locations, harbored native trout, speckled and rainbow, many more than thirty inches long; salmon enough to walk on; and schools of sea bass looking to spawn in the first couple of miles or just a mornings walk away in the measurement used in those times. Lone Wolf determined this should be the winter’s camp area for his people; he was certain that the migratory herds would pass through this section of lush vegetation in the spring and the perennial game would be abundant. The grasses vibrated greener and richer here this season than further to the western part of the wooded forest known today as the Nehantic forest. The village migration would take only a few days and some smaller clans could utilize the older hovels just a few miles westward along Pattagansett Lake and again along the brook known today as Four Mile River.

Lone Wolf reflected on how at one time during his annual trek, while not far from the streambed, he encountered not one but two massive bull moose. Antlers of well over six-feet wide with webbed-horn growth, over ten inches in width were remembered in his mind’s eye, the larger bull with clumps of moss and grasses hanging from its antlers.

Just a few moments before this encounter, Lone Wolf was blowing on a split reed he had pulled from the grass patch. With two fingers, he split it slightly and pulled it taught horizontally and blew air from his lips in a whistle style that caused the reed to vibrate a bleating sound mimicking a deer grunt. With this trick he could scout the abundance of deer in the area. The bucks would respond to the bleats of a doe in heat. Hunting parties would only take bucks, to ensure nature’s balance of deer population, understanding that if there are no does there are no babies!

Deer would use various grunts and bleats to communicate their presence with each other. Does would bleat to let the bucks know they may be present and interested during the rutting season. The bucks, especially the dominant, would scrape and rattle their antlers on tree bark. They would also scrape two-foot oval patches of ground, leaving their scent in many locations within their territory. Does would leave their scent in the scraped ground patches as well.

The bull moose would do similar scrapings, tearing up larger sections of ground and limbs. Apparently Lone Wolf’s grunting tones, being much deeper and longer this day, drew an unintended outcome! It was just as he noticed this difference, reading the signs and the hoof tracks in the bare dirt that the energy subtly changed.

With an instant premonition, a flash of intuition of what was about to occur, he perceived in his core a knowingness of what was about to unfold. It was just a feeling or inner sense. Expecting a buck, he instinctively started to crouch a little lower. But there was not enough notice. His intuition came too late.

Within a split moment, a loud crack sounded. A heavy snapping of large branches nearby revealed two large dark brown silhouettes charging toward him just twenty yards downslope! He did not have the time to reach the spear strapped over his shoulder.

Nor was he able to even pull the stone axe from its sheath at his waist before the pair of massive beasts bounded up and around his position. The larger more dominant bull digging in its hooves to an abrupt halt just three feet from him. The bull loomed high over Lone Wolf who was standing just slightly down from the top of knoll. Just a few seconds later, the second bull trotted up to him from the opposite side and stood his ground approximately eight feet off.

Now, this was an extremely dangerous predicament. With the bulls deep into the rut and Lone Wolf in their mating territory, their testosterone levels were raging and causing unpredictable behavior. One or both could charge at any moment. If they perceived him as a threat or a rival bull he would not fare well from those antlers.

All animals can sense, feel, and even smell fear. Lone Wolf’s first impulse was to raise his spear into position or reach for the axe. With no time, his second thought was to pull the wood-handled bone knife from its shoulder-strapped sheath. Still there was no time and both of those thoughts he instinctively knew were fear-based.

Instead, something deep within his core, an inner knowingness, an ancient wisdom, told him to surrender, to suppress the fear emotion and transform it into an energy of tranquility, quietness, and gratefulness for this experience as it unfolded.

The hot breath hit his face from the snorting exhale of the closer bull; the other snorted as well, not expecting the human scent. Another loud long snort from the closer bull filled his senses with the breath and scent of the animal.

The shaman within him filled his essence. Some ancient memory and wisdom came forth in a form of divine timing. Whether he forced it forth from his inner being or, if it was through his natural sense of the earth connection from the soil beneath his feet he was suddenly connected with the massive animals, their essence. He instantly felt relaxed and centered.

Intuitively he put it out to them, focusing on the closer bull, that he was no threat. He meant them no harm. Slowly, he knelt on one knee bowing his head slightly. Lone Wolf relaxed his tense posture, lowered his shoulders, and in a simple gesture, held both of his hands out forward from his body toward the large bull.

With palms up, instinctively he put forth prana. A universal energy, warm and magnetic, it flowed from the palms of his hands. Intention and thought focused on only how majestic the animal was, its beauty and power. Then he spoke softly, saying meegwetch, meaning thank you.

The two bulls, after a few moments, snorted out a mist of breath. Then there was a long moment of silence throughout the woods. Tibamahgan felt their acceptance as the energy shifted with the moment of shared prana. Suddenly, they both crashed off through the woods and were gone.

5 Migrants

Tibamahgan knew and felt this would be the best winter village site. The deer population was abundant, moose most definitely abound, and turkey sign was everywhere: tracks and feathers and leaves in the hardwood areas were ripped up in their quest for acorn and beechnut.

Pijaki, or woodland bison, tracks were recent along the meadowy edges of timber hardwood. They would migrate somewhat through the region but could and would sustain well into the winter foraging on grasses under the snow. The pijaki were massive animals, generally in small herds of ten to fifteen or so. Just one of these creatures could sustain the entire village for a half-moon, many days, but the hunt would require many skilled hunters and a coordinated strategy.

After locating the area where the pijaki were grazing, usually a day or two prior to any hunt, the Nehantucket would first align many of the people, women and young adults alike, along the entrance of a two-sided steep ravine. Then the agile hunter drivers, sometimes six to ten abreast and thirty to forty feet apart, would push the herd into the narrows.

This is where it would become even more dangerous for the drivers. If the lead bull bison decided to double back or stand ground, the closest drivers in the forest could and did sometimes sustain great injury or death in being charged and mauled by the enraged pjaki’s huge horns.

Tibamahgan, Lone Wolf, reflected upon these past bison hunts as he sat on the overlook of the river. In the last season the hunt went well enough. Most of the small herd were forced into the ravine, where they turned and broke through the drivers and escaped back into the forest, leaving only two straggler pijaki trapped by the swarming Nehantucket, who closed the escape route with their numbers and with their spears.

Usually, the Nehantucket spears were made and shaped from the hard and straight white ash wood. Sharp pointed stone spear heads were mounted and lashed at the split end of a long straight shaft. At the opposite end of the shaft, they learned to fasten a beveled butterfly-shaped stone counter weight that would provide a better and more level aerial flight path more accurately to its target. These newer spears proved to be a vast improvement over their predecessors.

In addition, they made two-foot throw arrows or darts from the ash wood, tipped with sharp-edged quartz points, along with two turkey feathers mounted opposite each other at the blunt end to provide better flight control. These long darts were launched with great and accurate force from a wooden canoe-shaped sling rod of the same ash wood. The atlatl, as we call it today, was found to provide double the leverage of the hunter’s arm could provide and a shorter spear shaft was quicker and easier to make and carry in a simple quiver that was strapped over the hunter’s shoulder and back, leaving arms and hands free to carry the longer spear.

The Nehantuckets developed these tools over hundreds of years and learned to be very skilled with these hunting implements. The force of impact and penetration of these projectiles could pierce the vital organs of the large game and bring it quickly down to its knees.

Other migratory hooved animals such as elk and caribou were hunted very much in the same manner, utilizing the combined effort of many tribal members or by select smaller hunting parties. Younger boys coming of age would be allowed to accompany the senior experienced men on these important excursions, in this way the knowledge was passed down to the next generation.

Winter hunting parties would go off from the winter village for upwards of four to five days at a time, two to four miles into the forested areas. There, they would usually set up small encampments on knolls or higher terrain in and between two stream beds, utilizing the terrain to their advantage as they hunted game in these areas.

Throughout the Nehantic forest and today’s current farmlands, ancient fire pits of these encampments have been found at depths of eight to twelve inches, exposing remnants of charcoal and quartz chips and shavings. Here one can imagine the prowess of these hunters sitting around the evening fire working and chiseling new points for their spear shafts and arrows.

Over time they learned to fashion a bow from hickory or ash with a string of sinew strip that would propel a longer arrow than the earlier atlatl arrow or dart. The bow and arrow with turkey or partridge feathers to guide its flight was found to be more accurate at further distances than the atlatl. This technology proved to be more efficient for hunting the more elusive, non-migratory game, such as the independent deer and smaller game.

6 Cairns

Tibamahgan recalled that only the larger of the two pijaki or woodland bison was brought down to slaughter as dictated by their ancient code of honor. This held true for all game hunted in this manner. It was a sacrilege for these people to take any game above what was needed. It was based on an ancient universal law, not to be violated. This also retained the natural balance of the earth’s bounty and the people’s connection to it.

All would give thanks, in group ritual and in individual ritual. The animal’s spirit was released back to the earth and the stars so that it could return. The people were spiritually connected to the earth and stars.

Throughout the forested areas today and within the open farmsteads and wooded areas, one can find, with a keen eye, mounded structures, piles of moss-laden stone of various sizes situated in many different forms. Some mounds reveal lengthy serpentine wall forms with no obvious purpose to the layman. In fact, these structures were built with a much deeper intent than the casual observer might understand. Usually with a large serpent head stone at one end, they would point southward or be in circular formations giving tribute to the summer and winter equinoxes and solstices. Some openings within the structures would serve as portals to the other dimensions. Others would be as large mounds in silhouette shapes of animals or tortoises. Still others would be purposely set as small chambers whereby offerings would be made to the great spirit, to give thanks back to the earth and the stars.

These cairns, mounds, and chambers can be found throughout the woodlands of the Nehantic state forest, as well as throughout all of New England’s coastline and interior. Situated on and within the state and governmental preservation and forest lands as well as private woodland lots and farmsteads, they have withstood and remained intact over many recent centuries, and thousands of years. Holding the secrets of the ancients’ spiritual belief system, they depict a story, unfolding truths of the indigenous Nehantucket peoples and their relationship with the earth and heavens’ bounties.

This writer has now developed a greater understanding with deeper insights as to their meaning, uses, and purposes; a connection and passion for this ancient culture, these ancient and perhaps more humane of beings.

7 Lay lines

Sitting quietly at his overlook viewing the river’s water gleaming in the sunlight, Lone Wolf’s thoughts returned to a time when he was much younger, still a boy by our reckoning, about the age of perhaps twelve years old, just to provide a reference. He reflected on his kawagwedjit experience, the spiritual revelation during his vision quest.

Tribal people did not conceive of any age lines utilizing months or years as any form of reference. Instead, age was determined through experience, stature, and demeanor. Thus, when a young boy or girl was ready, as it was taught and passed down from the elders, they would quietly venture out into the forest or the shore on their own vision quest, a kawagwedjit, for a duration of days or even weeks.

While on this rite of passage, the boy, later to be known as Tibamahgan, found himself miles northward of the summer’s coastal encampment. For some reason he was drawn to an area just northwest of the Four Mile River and the eastern part of what is now known today as Old Lyme. Here amongst the steep ledges and deep ravines, were bear caves