Monday, September 15, 2025

Sachem Waramaug's Monument (in the local CT news)

 

New Milford and state to honor Native American chief by restoring monument at Lover’s Leap

By Kaitlin Keane, Staff Writer

Sep 15, 2025

 

NEW MILFORD (CT) – More than two centuries have passed since the monument honoring Native American Chief Waramaug at his burial site in Lovers Leap State Park was dismantled.

“He was a rock star, he really was,” Julie Stuart, executive director of the Bridgewater Land Trust, said at the recent Town Council meeting. “People have cheered at the idea of putting something back to honor his history there."

 She said there are a lot of area organizations and groups that would like to have one for him.

Waramaug commanded more than 200 warriors when the northwest corner of Connecticut was being settled in the 1600s and 1700s. He later presided over 1,000 members of consolidated tribes from today's New Milford, Kent, Woodbury, Roxbury, Litchfield and surrounding land in an area known as Weantinock, according to a 1985 article by The New York Times.

 

He was a sachem of the Wyantenocks, who had hunting grounds near the falls on the Housatonic River, wintered in the area now covered by Lake Lillinonah and spent the summer at today's Lake Waramaug. His “capitol” was believed to be at the Great Falls just south of New Milford, overlooking the Lover’s Leap gorge, according to The New York Times article.

Lake Waramaug, which is bordered by Kent, Washington and Warren, was named after Waramaug, whose name translates to “good fishing place,” according to state records. Lake Lillinonah – which borders Bridgewater, Brookfield, New Milford, Roxbury and Southbury – was named after Waramaug’s daughter.

 

According to local legend, Lillinonah fell in love with a white colonist she nursed back to health. He left with promises to return after telling his people about his bride, but when the colonist did not return, Waramaug arranged a marriage for Lillinonah, according to the legend.

 

Lillinonah is said to have boarded a small boat above the falls before her wedding, the legend states. Her love returned through the woods when Lillinonah’s boat entered the falls’ current and threw himself into the waterfall where they both perished, according to the legend.

 

Waramaug later died in 1735 at the age of 77, and a monument was erected in his honor at the top of Lover’s Leap, Stuart said.

“They say that both the Indians and the European settlers were so enamored with him,” Stuart said. “He was such a great figure in our history that as people came by through the years, they would add a stone to the monument.”

 

The New Milford Town Council unanimously voted at the council’s Sept. 8 meeting to work with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to create a monument at Waramaug’s burial site in Lovers Leap State Park.

 

His burial site is located on a 39-acre state-owned parcel on the eastern side of Lovers Leap “at the precipice overlooking the valleys,” according to the 1985 New York Times.

 

In the late 1800s, the Hurd family of Bridgeport bought the land at Lovers Leap and built a lodge and a castle, dismantling and using the stones from Waramaug’s grave to create the foundation and fireplace for both buildings, Stuart said.

 

“It may be karma that both those buildings have since been burnt down and there’s nothing left there but ruins,” Stuart said.

 

The land was later deeded to the state for a park in 1973, according to the 1985 New York Times article. 

 

Sep 15, 2025

Kaitlin Keane

Reporter

Kaitlin Keane is thrilled to nurture her journalism career as a weeklies reporter with Hearst and looks forward to becoming better acquainted with the communities in her coverage area. While she enjoys the opportunity to cover breaking news, her beat is generally focused on local profiles and school-centered stories. Outside of her reporting work, she is an avid reader, baker and cyclist.

 

https://www.nhregister.com/newmilford/article/new-milford-chief-waramaug-monument-lovers-leap-21041184.php

 


https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=Waramaug+

 

“Weramaug, Warramaug: the name by which the Sachem of the Weantinock…was known to the English.:"

 

A close-up of a document

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

“On the summit of Lover’s Leap, Chief Waramaug was buried. The spot, in the Hurd estate (not open), was formerly marked by the usual pile of stones built by passing warriors as a mark of respect, but the great house ( 'whose foundation and granite staircase sits overgrown like some Mayan pyramid, as well as an old chimney and castle-like turret,' according to http://articles.courant.com/2010-09-03/features/hc-marteka-lovers-leap-new-milford-0920100903_1_trail-gorge-natural-beauty) was erected, and the main fireplace stands directly over the chiefs grave (page 465).” Connecticut: A Guide to Its' Roads, Lore and People by Wilbur Cross; Federal Writers Project  ~ Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1938

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-few-bits-about-waramaugs-grave.html

 


  Dr. Luci Lavin writes, “A stone monument once overlooked the Housatonic River in the area of New Milford, Connecticut (Butler op. cit. pg. 5).  It supposedly marked the grave of the eminent Weantinock sachem, Waramaug, who died in 1722.  In the early 1800s it was vandalized by whites; the scattered stones supposedly were used to build a nearby mansion. Frank Speck reported that the 17th century Mohegans of southeastern Connecticut built a stone pile above the road leading from Norwich to Hartford as a boundary marker for the northern extent of their tribal lands; like the Stockbridge Mohicans did at the Monument Mountain stone pile, Mohegan members would add a stone to the pile each time they passed. He also reported a stone pile several feet high on the Schaghticoke Reservation in Kent, on which early 20th century Schaghticokes still added a stone as they passed to pay respects to the ghost of a murdered Schaghticoke whom they thought haunted the area (Frank G. Speck 1945, pp.19, 22 in “The Memorial Brush Heaps in Delaware and Elsewhere, Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Delaware, Vol. 4, No. 2)…”

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2015/05/monument-mountain-and-other-indigenous.html

 

 Mr. Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waramaug



In Orcutt's History, Indians of the Housatonic and Naugatuck Vallys, the name is spelled "Waraumaug:" 

https://archive.org/details/indianshousaton00orcugoog/page/n150/mode/2up?q=Waraumaug&view=theater

 

Monday, September 08, 2025

Those Champlain Maps That Look Like Drawings

 I got these maps all mixed up in my mind yesterday:

Those Champlain Maps That Look Like Drawings





Above is a Wabanaki Village on the Saco River
(in present-day Maine, United States) 

Below is Port Saint Louis, according to Champlain
or Accomack/Plimoth, according to Captain John Smith
as well as Patuxet,
according to:

And:
"In the manuscript, Smith originally called Plymouth by its Native American name, Accomack, but after consulting with Prince Charles the prince changed the name to New Plimouth," according to:


"French explorer Samuel de Champlain’s map of “Port St. Louis” from 1605 is the earliest known European representation of Patuxet, the Wampanoag community that became the site of Plymouth Colony and which the Herring Pond Wampanoag still call home today. The name “Patuxet” has several possible translations including “place of little falls” and “place of little springs.” At the time of Champlain’s visit to Patuxet, the population numbered approximately 2,000 people. Families cultivated corn, beans, and squash in their gardens, gathered food, and came together for political and social meetings. In his book, The Voyages of Samuel de Champlain (1613)the author described the encounter depicted in this map. Here is an English translation from the original French:

The same day we sailed two leagues along a sandy coast, as we passed along which we saw a great many cabins and gardens. The wind being contrary, we entered a little bay to await a time favorable for proceeding. There came to us two or three canoes, which had just been fishing for cod and other fish, which are found there in large numbers. These they catch with hooks made of a piece of wood, to which they attach a bone in the shape of a spear, and fasten it very securely. The whole has a fang-shape, and the line attached to it is made out of the bark of a tree. They gave me one of their hooks, which I took as a curiosity. In it, the bone was fastened on by hemp, like that in France...Some of them came to us and begged us to go to their river. We weighed anchor to do so, but were unable to do so on account of the small amount of water, it being low tide, and were accordingly obliged to anchor at the mouth…1




At least I didn't confuse it with present-day Chaffinch Island
(although the shape of the bay causes one to wonder about tidal fishweirs):























Sunday, August 24, 2025

The Deer Path "StoneWall" (Weston CT) Part Two

 Stonework and Stonework on Google maps and Google Earth

   “I keep looking for a view of them on Google maps and Google Earth where street views are available but the foliage gets in the way and I can't show you a good view of that,” I mentioned in the previous post, here:  https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-deer-path-stone-wall-weston-ct-part.html

 

   So I kept looking (as if that were the only thing in the world I was thinking about):

Of course there's the modern stonework:



And older stonework near the modern stonework:


And segments of old rebuilt stonework
that meet up with
other segments of old rebuilt stonework:



And because I've seen this stonework of undetermined age
elsewhere in the Paugussett Homeland
(with an overlay of horns and eyes for the skeptical to ridicule)
at the first Puritan minister's house in a certain town,
I'm looking for something similar in the Street-view images:

And going back to the first image above,
I certainly did not find something like that,
Just to the right of that old tree:

I was hoping to find something like this:

And then, 
just a little farther along,
there is this flat topped triangular boulder
at the beginning of a segment of what almost everybody seems to call a "stone wall:"


And then there is this one:



A wee bit of LiDAR:


A different road, with another similar but not identicle "gateway:"




Another wee bit of LiDAR:


I'm just getting used to the "new" viewer:


And then there is a little conjecture about some "left-over boulders"
by newer stonework, since I've seen this, as I said earlier:

Odd that there seems to be an apparent eye on this boulder:


Also odd is that another boulder also has another apparent eye,
over by another segment of modern stonework:

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

The Deer Path “Stone Wall” (Weston CT) Part One:

A Culturally Stacked Row of Stones on a Modern Day Property Line 

   Six months and a couple days past the Valentine’s Day Achille’s Tendon Incident, I found myself traveling down some old turnpikes and trails to have dinner with someone in someplace I’d only been to once before. The town was one of those fancy Connecticut towns where former farmland turned to fancy suburban houses for the wealthy, and of course I was looking at all the various forms of “stone fencing” reflective of those time periods my critics believe I’m unaware of, but as I drive along the old roads, I see the Indigenous Stonework remnants still in place here and there, just like just about everywhere in Connecticut. I glimpse old trail border rows of stones and spot some Stone Prayers (hidden in plain sight as they say), up by some “broken” rough and rocky uplands, a couple Stone Serpents with big stone heads guarding them, up near "The Devil's Den" along the way. 

(I keep looking for a view of them on Google maps and Google Earth where street views are available but the foliage gets in the way and I can't show you a good view of that.)

  Just before we pull into the driveway at our destination, I note that there is a “stone wall property border fence” hugging one edge of the yard…


    The ground was fairly level along this row of stones and I finally got a chance to hobble along the first “stone fence” I’ve been able to "walk like an old man pretending he's not drunk and failing to do so" along in half a year. The next day, at home, I check the aerial photos for 1934 and see the cultural snapshot of farmland that’s mostly “cow and apples” related, with probably tobacco plots and woodlots as additional cash crops. I see that the rows of stacked stones sort of point to present day magnetic north and I know that is commonly assumed to be a sign that somebody used a compass to plot these lines (long lots?) in the post contact period, as they say…


     (But the declination changes over time and the artificial intelligence overview that pops up these days on a web search surprises me by saying that “In 1700, magnetic declination in Woodbury, CT, was approximately 7 to 8 degrees west of true north. This means a compass needle would point 7 to 8 degrees to the left of geographic north.” I don't know what to think about that...)


     Still, these initial observations on a single visit makes me really wonder if I am seeing pre-contact Indigenous Stonework of undetermined age in the Paugussett Homeland or later stonework created in the last 335 or so years after the Puritan/Pequot War when settler colonists were granted land to be turned into private properties and farms practicing European style methods of agriculture. 

Close to the Deer Path Road, there's a large "triangular" boulder in the row of stones that could be or "could have been seen as" an example of a boulder-type of snake head (like hundreds of others in many other places).


Another one, as I "walked the line:"

With an overlay of an eye and a deer horn:


I thought, "Interesting: looks like someone wanted to see if this stone would be a workable piece of stone - as if one were perhaps a flint knapper" as a cultural clue or something. I'm not a flint knapper or a geologist so I don't really know if it's "not good:"


Note the bowl-like stone on top of another stone by but not on or in the "fence:"



Nearby were these broken non-flinty stones!!


Of course when one fnds oneself on Turtle Island, 
One should of course be looking for possible turtles as a cultural clue:



Or a possible snake head with a possible "jewel" on its possible head as well:


An interesting feature: 

And then there is this:

A Segregated Segement trapped inside two "pool fences."


Take a peek at the Google Earth, the old aerial photos,
and the recent CT LiDAR images:

1934:

Something lifted from somewhere:


Take a look at this map from 1975: