Waking Up on Turtle Island: June 2022

The Nonnewaug Diagonal Stone Fish Weir (1996)

“Nonnewaug” is a much misunderstood word, despite how often it is used in and around Woodbury CT. Modernly, Nonnewaug is the name of the local high school, the regional school system, a river, a road, and a waterfall. Nonnewaug is said to be the name of “an Indian chief” but that may not be quite accurate. There was a person was known as the Sachem Nonnewaug. His paper trail is limited to signatures to be found on treaties with the earliest settler colonists, made after the Pequot or First Puritan War, in the Housatonic River valley, in what is now known as Western Connecticut. Nonnewaug is an Indigenous place name, in the Quiripi or “R” dialect of the Algonquian Language group. The word most likely literally refers to a stone fish weir of undetermined age, damaged in the 1990s by a tree washing down stream, remnants of a diagonal row of boulders now barely recognizable a a fish weir.

I often see social media posts about Nonnewaug Falls, a favorite place of mine, in Woodbury CT.

I appreciate that people enjoy the beauty of the place – I’ve been doing the same for well over fifty years. I’ve sought out and read many stories about the Falls in local histories and newspaper clippings, had people hand deliver or mail me copies of Nonnewaug Falls related material in the past, and that continues to this day when I’m more likely to get an email or enter a discussion about the place on Face Book.

There are many versions of the “History of Nonnewaug Falls” as well as the “Legends of Nonnewaug Falls.” Just about all of them could be considered “firsting and lasting” stories that erase and then memorialize Indian peoples, as Jean O’Brien writes about in “Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England.” The exception to that thought is the first bit of writing I ever came across on my first visit to Nonnewaug Falls in the early 1970s. There’s a brass plaque above the Upper Falls that implies that a “Nonnewaug tribe” still existed in Seymour CT about a hundred years ago. Here are two 21^st century blog posts about Nonnewaug Falls for example:

“The falls are named after one of the last chiefs of the Nonnewaug tribe who was buried nearby. A plaque on the southern side of the upper falls keeps the chief’s memory alive. The plaque was placed there in 1916 by members of the Nonnewaug tribe of Seymour. It reads: “To the memory of Nonnewaug last chief of his tribe, friend of his white neighbors, who sleeps with his fathers near these falls which bear his name.” https://www.ctmq.org/nonnewaug-falls/

“Nonnewaug Falls was formed by glacial melt streaming over bedrock, carving a path into the landscape during the Last Glacial Period (LGP aka last ice age). So named for Chief Nonnewaug, the final leader of the territory’s long-vanished aboriginal inhabitants, Nonnewaug Falls has been a familiar and locally-celebrated landmark for nearly two centuries. Woodcuts published in the 1800’s portray Nonnewaug Falls with much the same rugged and secluded character that it possesses today.

On the opposite bank near the top of the falls, is a bronze tablet mounted on the face of a rock outcrop. It was placed there in 1916 by members of the Nonnewaug tribe of Seymour to memorialize the chief. It reads: “To the memory of Nonnewaug last chief of his tribe, friend of his white neighbors, who sleeps with his fathers near these falls which bear his name.” Nonnewaug is Mohican for “dry land.”

https://scenesfromthetrail.com/2022/05/09/nonnewaug-falls

The Nonnawauk Tribe #9 of The Improved Order of Red Men is actually “a fraternal organization established in North America in 1834. Their rituals and regalia are modeled after those assumed by men of the era to be used by Native Americans. Despite the name, the order was formed solely by, and for, white men,” according to Wikipedia, although by 1974 people of Indigenous descent were finally allowed to be “improved” by the group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improved_Order_of_Red_Men

“Chief Nonnewaug” refers to the Sachem Nonnewaug, the Indigenous leader’s title rather than the person’s personal name. One little reference from one slim volume of Woodbury History (the name of which momentarily escapes me) implies the man’s name may have been Wonowax, suspiciously similar to Womoqui whose name appears on an early treaty with a pictograph signature that looks like a reverse image of a later image of what John Minor records as “Nunawauk – his marke.”

William Cothren, in the second volume of his Woodbury History, offers a translation of the word Nonnewaug, as “the fresh pond or fresh water fishing place,” as implied by the “(am)aug” ending of the word, a variation of “Paug,” denoting “water at rest.” In a 1962 publication, Indian Place Names of New England, Charles C. Huden translates the word Nonnewaug to “dry land,” also noting that it may be a sort of Yankee farmer humorous translation alluding to the “stream drying up in summer.” Huden has many tips on translating these badly recorded place names and below is a map cobbled together on an old map that I’m probably in trouble with someone about making “corrections” to the original:

John Hammond Trumbull, in Indian Geographical Names (1870) writes, “Every name described the locality to which it was affixed. The description was sometimes topographical; sometimes historical, preserving the memory of a battle, a feast, the dwelling-place of a great sachem, or the like; sometimes it indicated one of the natural products of the place, or the animals which resorted to it; occasionally, its position or direction from a place previously known, or from the territory of the nation by which the name was given,—as for example, 'the land on the other side of the river,' 'behind the mountain,' 'the east land,' 'the half-way place,' &c. The same name might be, in fact it very often was, given to more places than one; but these must not be so near together that mistakes or doubts could be occasioned by the repetition. With this precaution, there was no reason why there might not be as many 'Great Rivers,' 'Bends,' 'Forks,' and 'Water-fall places' as there are Washingtons, Franklins, Unions, and Fairplays in the list of American post-offices.”

Trumbull cites quite a few names that resemble Nonnewaug, when he relates that “Names of fishes supply the adjectival components of many place-names on the sea-coast of New England, on the lakes, and along river-courses. The difficulty of analyzing such names is the greater because the same species of fish was known by different names to different tribes. The more common substantivals are -amaug, 'fishing place; -tuk or sipu, 'river;' ohke, 'place;' Abn. -kantti, 'place of abundance;' and -keag, -keke, Abn. -khigé, which appears to denote a peculiar mode of fishing,—perhaps, by a weir; possibly, a spearing-place.

From the generic namaus (namohs, El.; Abn. namés; Del. namees;) 'a fish'—but probably, one of the smaller sort, for the form is a diminutive,—come such names as Nameoke or Nameaug (New London), for namau-ohke, 'fish country;' Namasket or Namasseket (on Taunton River, in Middleborough, Mass.) 'at the fish place,' a favorite resort of the Indians of that region; Namaskeak, now Amoskeag, on the Merrimack, and Nam'skeket or Skeekeet, in Wellfleet, Mass.

Nahanm[oo], the Abnaki name of the 'eel,' is found in "Nehumkeag, the English of which is Eel Land, ... a stream or brook that empties itself into Kennebec River," not far from Cobbissecontee. This brook was sometimes called by the English, Nehumkee. The Indian name of Salem, Mass., was Nehumkeke or Naümkeag, and a place on the Merrimac, near the mouth of Concord River (now in Lowell, I believe,) had the same name,—written, Naamkeak.

J. Hammond Trumbull

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18279/18279-h/18279-h.htm

Margaret Bruhac cites Trumbull for a possible translation of Nonotuck as "far away land" (Nauwut-ucke) in the Massachusetts dialect as the Indigenous name for modern Northampton Ma.”

Nonnewaug is just such a place name, a fishing place, perhaps specifically an eeling place, that in 1673 was occupied by a group of Indigenous People, often referred to as the “Nonnewaug tribe of the Pootatuck.” Pootatuck is another place name that’s also a known contact era village referred to as the Pootatuck Wigwams also a fishing place at the Falls near the mouth of the Pomperaug River on the Housatonic River. “Nonnewaug” could be a fish weir “far away” up the Housatonic River from the Pootatuck Wigwams.

Sachem Nonnewaug also no longer "sleeps with his fathers near these falls." William Cothren lamented the mid-1800s destruction and probable looting of his grave in his History of Ancient Woodbury:

Apparently, I’m documenting Our Vanishing Ceremonial Stone Landscape more than anything else these days. Similar to Eric Sloane writing and sketching about a romantic colonial past, I’m instead blogging about and photographing disappearing features of an Indigenous Cultural Landscape that only a tiny percentage of people are aware of, think is somehow “interesting,” much less worthy of recognition, study, and preservation. I’ve been documenting for years the disappearing Nonnewaug Stone Fish Weir, miles and miles of stonework under powerlines being ground up for road beds, stones popping out of retaining walls at the family home, and now a simple tree fall that knocked apart a formerly very beautiful “Stone Prayer” on a hillside somewhere close to the Madison/Killingworth town line.

In a recent Face Book post, Karen Lucibello Daigle recorded a bit of video, perhaps in late winter or early spring, of some tree damage to this Káhtôquwuk or Stone Prayer that I took a look at once back in 2016: