One of the more perplexing geographic features of southern New England is Dighton Rock, a 40-ton, 11½ by 5 foot sandstone boulder once located on the east side of the Taunton River in the present-day town of Berkely, Massachusetts. Nicknamed…
Stiles’ map of the Connecticut shoreline shows the mouth of the Pequot River, today called the Thames, and the towns of New London, on the left bank, and a portion of Groton, on the right bank. Originally a village in…
During one hot summer at the end of the seventeenth century, the weather in Westerly, Rhode Island became unbearable and caused a drought. This prompted a group of Narragansetts living nearby to turn to their cultural practices for a remedy…
The editors of the Yale Indian Papers Project wish to congratulate our friend, colleague, and advisor, Faith Damon Davison, who was recently recognized by the Guardians of Culture and Lifeways International Awards Program with the “Honored One Award” for her…
Increase Mather, in his A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians in New England (Boston, 1676), wrote that the Native people “amongst whom we live, and whose Land the Lord God of our Fathers hath given to us…
Written from Saybrook at the end of June 1649, John Mason’s letter to the Commissioners of the United Colonies captures the unsettled nature of Indian affairs a decade after the end of the Pequot war. It is a world of…
In the fall of 1761, Ezra Stiles visited the Western Niantic Indian community in the Niantic-East Lyme, Connecticut area. Of the several Indian dwellings or wigwams standing there, he made sketches of two in particular, that of George Waukeets and Phoebe…