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."
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://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=Waramaug+
“Weramaug, Warramaug: the name by which the Sachem of the
Weantinock…was known to the English.:"
“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
In Orcutt's History, Indians of the Housatonic and Naugatuck Vallys, the name is spelled "Waraumaug:"
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