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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32
Gc 974.602 H175ha 1762957
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01105 5420
The History of Hamden, Connecticut
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The HISTORY OF HAMDEN CONNECTICUT
1786-1959
by
RACHEL M. HARTLEY
Incorporated 1786
TE
.... .. ... ......... .....*
The Shoe String Press, Inc. Hamden, Connecticut 1959
Copyright, 1943; 1959 by RACHEL M. HARTLEY
PHOTOLITHOPRINTED BY CUSHING - MALLOY, INC. ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1959
1762957
PREFACE
T HE many things of importance that have happened in Hamden since it separated from New Haven in 1786, make a story that has color and vitality in every period. The town twice sponsored volumes dealing with historical matters -following its 100th and its 150th anniversary cele- brations; and the tempo of progress and achievement has increased with the continuing growth of the town in every direction.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to Arnold Dana for old pictures and for details about the Sleeping Giant; to Charles Rufus Harte for material on the Farmington Canal; to Lauretta Plumley, who wrote the sesquicen- tennial pageant, for Indian lore; and to Professor Frank Monaghan of Yale University for historical criticism. Much about the school system and early school board action was supplied by my father, Charles F. Clarke, from his memories of 17 years service on the board. Particular guidance and help were given by F. Raymond Rochford.
The loan of valuable family papers and documents from older residents, as well as their accounts of early events, were most helpful. An attempt has been made here to show not only the necessary dates and facts, but anecdotes portraying consistent behavior that marked the character of the town with its own corporate personality.
One may observe currently that townspeople are prone to say, "I wonder if the town will let me do so and so," or "Our town has a definite policy in regard to such matters."
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Preface
Hamden's parent was the theocracy of New Haven Colony with its established Congregational Church so long in practical control of the governmental powers, and to whose church services our first settlers, who were almost exclusively farmers, traveled so far.
Hamden's grandparent was the State of Connecticut, "the land of steady habits" where people pay as they go, and whose natures have become as flinty as the uncount- able rocks and stones that they have been forced to move in clearing and farming their land.
We are one of the largest towns in New Haven County, comprising 32 square miles (or 21,054 acres); and our mid-history shows that we branched out from our agri- cultural pursuits to become Yankee gadget-makers in company with other similar Connecticut towns.
In the town's most recent years, rapid residential and industrial increases have rounded out the picture of olden and modern history, in which Hamden has kept abreast of the times with a level head and without losing her basic characteristics and personality.
R.M.H.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I-THE COLONIAL PERIOD I
PART II - NEW ROOTS IN OLD SOIL . 95
PART III - WHEELS BEGIN TO TURN . 23I
PART IV - ONLY THE GIANT SLEEPS . 35I
PART V - THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 447
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND APPENDIX .
471
INDEX
493
ILLUSTRATIONS
Map of Hamden
Frontispiece
Indian Corn Grinding Stone, Dunbar Hill Road
Facing page I2
Christopher Todd House, 1665, South of the Mill Dam
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The Cut in the Mount Carmel Steps
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48
Joel Munson's Mill Flume
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Amos Bradley House, 1766, North of the Mountain
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Hamden's First Schoolhouse, 1770, in Its Second Position "On the Brow of the Hill"
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Tollgate House on the Cheshire Turnpike Eli Whitney
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House" .
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Whitney Armory and Covered Bridge in 1825
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Canal and Railroad Near Brooksvale
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Upper Axle Works
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Hamden's Oldest Gravestone, 1751 .
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April 31 Gravestone in West Woods
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Peter Nielsen's Whitneyville Blacksmith Shop
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West Woods One-Room School .
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The Rectory School, Centerville .
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The Mount Carmel Young Ladies' Female Seminary
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"The Transfiguration" Painted by Bancel La Farge
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The Jonathan Dickerman "Old Red
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Illustrations
Ithiel Town's Covered Bridge at Davis Street
Facing page 279
Ives and Grannis Letterhead .
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The Mount Carmel Post Office, Ivesville, James Ives' Store on Opposite Corner The Centerville Web Shop, Where Good- year Shoes Were First Made .
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Kimberly Store and Lower Axle Works
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Old State Street School
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Sackett Hotel (The "New" Centerville House ), Northeast Centerville Corner Whitney Avenue, 1847-1880, Showing Railroad Tracks in the Road
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Elam Dickerman's Depot Store .
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Bolt Company Employees
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Whitneyville Post Office, on Whitney Av- enue at Augur Street .
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Showing Day's Store and Boathouse, and the Old Icehouses St. John the Baptist's First Meetinghouse The Old Hamden Plains Methodist Church .
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Centerville Crossroads in 1836
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The Door Tree, in Sleeping Giant Park
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Mount Carmel Churchgoers in Costume on Sesquicentennial Sunday .
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Sesquicentennial Group at Town Hall .
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Part of Sesquicentennial Parade, showing Selectmen's Carriage .
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The Giant Views Change and Progress
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The Sleeping Giant
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Part I The Colonial Period
PART I THE COLONIAL PERIOD
THE WILDERNESS BEGINS TO FLOWER
I N the shadow of the same Sleeping Giant which overlooks our closely built houses, busy streets, and factories of Hamden today, were once only the forests and streams that the Indians knew. Throughout all the many changes of modes and of men which have passed in review since then before him, the old Giant-lying here through incalculable years- has inspired all those who have seen him. The Indians who loved him, the sturdy New Haven pioneers as they edged out into the wilderness, and we ourselves have looked upon him as a majestic landmark and a symbol of latent strength.
Who among all those early people could have fore- seen that Eli Whitney's experiment which shaped the industrial world of today would have its origin in this place? that canal boats-both clumsy freighters and dainty packets- would at one time be the major form of transportation through the whole length of the town? that casks for West India rum, axles for peddlers' wagons that roamed the far south, and the first Good- year rubber shoes would be made here and sent out to distant corners of the earth?
Many notable men as well as important manufactures have gone out to far places from this small New Eng- land town-a town whose size and age are not the measure by which to gauge her greatness. Hamden has been slowly evolving a personality, made up of all the
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The History of Hamden
countless happenings and doings of the past and of the moving present; she has characteristics and folklore; old houses antedating her incorporation as a town, that are still standing in simple and impressive dignity after nearly two hundred years; stories of the old-time trot- ting races in the heart of Centerville, where were also uniformed schoolboys drilling in a nationally famous military school; and public schoolteachers con- tent with a 75-cent weekly salary.
Even the Giant himself had a beginning; and while we know his charms and the beauties of other hills and valleys, fields and streams of our town as they are today, yet we also know that these contours were not always so, that they have evolved through countless years in a gradual progressive change that made a story-though told without words, still an eloquent one.
In dim past ages Connecticut was covered with lofty mountains which in the course of centuries were planed down by weather and running water, to their bare roots. Weaker bed rock wore down faster, but at last the whole area became a great, comparatively flat plain, broken here and there with large, slow-moving rivers. Streams from the uplands deposited a red sediment which when piled up on this low plain began to force the original land surface to subside.
Then a great break in the earth's crust appeared near Branford, and the land on the western side of the fault began to sink. At least three different times eruptions of a volcanic nature occurred, opening huge fractures deep enough to reach down to liquid rock, which sprang up and filled them to the top.
When the lava cooled in the fissures it formed what is called trap rock; and its ridges or trap dykes stand up as East and West Rocks, Pine and Mill Rocks, and
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The Colonial Period
Mount Carmel. The eruptions caused a mixture of fire- made rock with the water-made sandstone. In time an almost uniform uplift of northern New England tilted the old plain gently toward the Atlantic. Then the streams flowed more swiftly, cutting deeper valleys, and again the weaker bed rock was more rapidly eroded than the harder, more resistant rocks, which became the hills.
In the Ice Age came the great glacier, so thick that it covered the highest points, moving slowly southward, carrying with it soil, stones, and blocks of bed rock which it dropped along the way. Whenever the ice loosened its grasp, it left behind high and broad plains, rich fertile lands, and clay beds which were later used for brick-making. The sandstone of the valleys was deeply excavated, but the hard trap rock, though some- what broken off, suffered little from the glacier's action and was left in prominent ridges.
By the time a more temperate climate had freed Connecticut of the glacier, most of the original covering had been carried away, but boulders and soil from Mas- sachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire were inher- ited in its place. Large boulders were carried from the north, traveling anywhere from fifteen to seventy-five miles with the glacier, to be dropped in the New Haven region. The great stones of the Judges' Cave on West Rock were among them, and if the cave was once a single rock it must have weighed a thousand tons. It is of a fine-grained stone quite different from the top of West Rock where it stands. There are many such boulders in the New Haven area, weighing over ten tons, which must have been carried by an agent much more powerful than running water.
On Shepard Avenue the group of large rocks called "The Brethren" is Hamden's outstanding example of
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The History of Hamden
such boulders; they made the journey with the glacier from some place many miles north of here. Other traces of the glacier's progress are the small lakes and the "pot-holes," or "Giant's Kettles." There was once one of these at the roadside by the Lake Whitney dam; and one can now be seen close by Mather Street. The New Haven Palladium, October 24, 1881, told of the filling in of a huge kettle, or "punch bowl," two miles south of Centerville on the railroad, 150 feet in diam- eter and 100 feet deep; in the center was a huge chest- nut tree, its branches reaching the top of the hole, which was filled in around the tree.
The passing of the great glacier ten thousand years ago was a mere yesterday to geologists, who have familiar knowledge of the period when the Connecticut River was cutting the valley millions of years ago, and even before that, when the whole state was a great mo- notonous plain.
THE SLEEPING GIANT
Some geologists have maintained that the Connecticut River once flowed straight down the state to New Haven Harbor, but that its course was deflected in the Ice Age, swerving at Middletown to its present channel toward Saybrook. One writer said that New Haven evened up this loss by eventually taking Yale College from Saybrook. Although this belief is no longer held, a similar explanation was made by the Indians of this region, who told a colorful tale of the "Long River" being taken from their valley and moved to the east- ward, and of how the Sleeping Giant came to be here. The story was that the Indians were very proud of their river, jealously guarding and cherishing its use, never
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The Colonial Period
forgetting to give thanks to their special gods for the blessings bestowed upon them, and particularly for those gained from their possession of the beautiful river. But alas! they failed to do honor to Hobbamock, the spirit of evil, who in his anger at their neglect, and because of their devotion to the god of water, deter- mined to wreak vengeance upon them. Wrathfully he stamped down his foot in the center of the river bed, making the Long River waters roll to the eastward.
But all was not lost. Kiehtan, the Indians' good spirit, saw what had happened, and, although powerless to undo the great harm, was yet able to moderate the blow which had fallen upon his faithful believers, for he cast a spell of endless sleep upon Hobbamock. He then hid treasures in the pockets of the sleeper, saying as he did so that some day these would be sought and the children of the valley would be repaid for the loss of their beloved river. It was long after the Indians were gone that the Giant's pockets were examined and found to contain copper, silver, gold, iron, quartz, and lead-in small quantities to be sure-still, treasures of a sort they were.
The Sleeping Giant, first known and loved by the Indians, had a part in many of their legends. They explained the presence of the large boulders on the East Haven hills by saying that the Giant, in his dying agonies, flung them there after wresting them from the soil of Cheshire.
It was said that the Indians from the north used to make regular trips to the seashore for fish. They were extremely fond of oysters, and a chief once so over- indulged in the favorite delicacy that drowsiness over- came him and he lay down to rest awhile. A wicked spirit who found him outstretched in heavy slumber
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The History of Hamden
amused himself by casting upon the recumbent chief a spell from which he never awakened. Indian mothers often warned their too-greedy children by gesturing toward the mountain and repeating the legend of the gluttonous chief doomed to eternal sleep.
Scientists have described the small crater on the fifth mountain as that of an extinct volcano. It is two hun- dred feet in diameter, and specimens of lava have been dug from its center. But the Indians said that the up- heaval was caused when the Giant once suffered a nightmare in which he moved a restless foot!
In early colonial days a hunter by the name of Samuel Payne made a long trip after game to the forests of the Giant. Upon his return home he told glowing tales of the marvelous view from the top of the hills, in which he saw a great long island stretching away over the sea for a tremendous distance. He said that while he was hunting he discovered a lake of surpassing beauty. The Indians whom he encountered told him of their venera- tion of the place as the abode of the spirits of their race. They believed that the good god Kiehtan dwelt in a frowning pinnacle of rock where, high above the valley, he held council with his followers when they came there to seek his guidance. The hunter stood one unforget- table evening just at nightfall, drinking in the wild beauty of the wilderness lake. The moonlight tipped the trees with light and glinted softly on the water. There was no sound, but as he watched, a birch-bark canoe glided from a cavern at the base of a cliff and across the surface of the lake.
After the red man's passing, this lake eventually became no more than a spring of clear mountain water, a present-day reminder of that early time when the Indians believed that a deity ruled over the place, giv-
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The Colonial Period
ing forth oracles from this sheltered spot, hidden among the huge forest trees.
The mountain has been called by three distinct and appropriate names. The earliest one, "the Blue Hills," originated from the deep blue color which the whole range holds when viewed from a distance. Mount Car- mel, the name given to the ecclesiastical parish by the General Assembly of 1757, was also used to designate the mountain, which continued to be so called after the parish was absorbed into Hamden. No one knows who chose the title, but it was doubtless suggested by the Biblical allusion to Mount Carmel in the Holy Land, and seemed a fitting name for this place with its own beautiful majestic mountain.
The third name, "the Sleeping Giant," has been used more frequently as a title in recent times, although the singular likeness to a huge recumbent man has always been recognized.
The Giant's ample form is plainly visible from a great distance; it is two miles long-the height of his chin above sea level is 540 feet, and his 736-foot chest is the highest point of his figure. One can believe that the New Haven colonists saw him as one of their first landmarks, standing out in bold relief against the north- ern horizon. Theophilus Eaton may have been im- pressed with the Giant's grandeur and the desirability of making him a part of the Colony; and purchase of the land including the Giant was one of the earliest transactions between Eaton and Davenport and the Indians.
THE FIRST WHITE MEN
Dutch traders were the first white men to come to New Haven Harbor. In 1614 Adrian Block caught
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The History of Hamden
sight of the setting sun shining on the bright red face of East Rock, and was inspired thereby to name the place "Roodenbergh," or "Red Hills." In the years between 1614 and the coming of the English to New Haven in 1638, the Dutch traders did a profitable busi- ness with the Indians in animal pelts, chiefly beaver, from which fact the Beaver Ponds received their name. The trading company's records showed the receipt of 63,000 skins within a nine-year period.
The New Haven colonists were among those unhappy Puritans who came to New England to escape the tyran- nical rule of Charles I. During the years between 1620 and 1640, as many as 20,000 English people migrated to this region and established settlements from Boston to the Connecticut River, embracing large areas which they confidently expected to be occupied in time by a continual influx of their countrymen. But in 1640 the autocratic government of Charles was tottering. It was the beginning of the Cromwellian revolution, in which the Puritans were coming into power. Not only did emigration to New England cease, but many who had settled in the new country decided to return to Eng- land, where it was felt that a better government might be had without the hardships attendant upon building one across the seas.
The New Haven settlement, in common with the Connecticut River towns, set out to be a port of trade. Its leaders were men of wealth and education, who planned to continue a comfortable and profitable busi- ness life.
In the spring of 1638 Theophilus Eaton purchased from Momauguin, chief of the Quinnipiac Indians, the original tract on which the New Haven colonists set- tled. He paid for it with 12 coats of English trucking
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The Colonial Period
cloth, 12 alchemy spoons, 12 hatchets, 12 hoes, 24 knives, and 12 porringers.
In November of the same year Eaton bought of Montowese, chief of Mattabeseck (Middletown), an additional piece of land, going 10 miles northward from the original purchase and extending for 8 miles east of the Quinnipiac and 5 miles to the west-altogether about 130 square miles, paying for it with II coats of trucking cloth and a fine coat for the chief. In this tract were what later became Hamden, North Ha- ven, East Haven, Woodbridge, Wallingford, Cheshire, Branford and North Branford, and portions of Orange and Meriden.
THE QUINNIPIACS
The peaceful Quinnipiac Indians were from the be- ginning friendly to the white man and quite willing to share with him the bountiful gifts of Nature which more than supplied their simple needs. They supposed that the white man would wish nothing more than a place to live, enough land to till for his own table, and free- dom of the woods and streams in which to hunt and fish. They little dreamed that his coming meant the vanishing of wild life-fish, animals, and birds-van- ishing forests, and at last, inexorably pressed back far- ther and farther from their beloved home, the vanishing of the Indians themselves.
The Indians used signs and symbols as much as spoken words. Often these symbols were ceremonious and impressive. The sale of land was consummated by the chief taking a clump of earth and sod and offering it to the purchaser as a symbol that all things growing within the soil of this property were hereby given to
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The History of Hamden
him. One of his followers then took a twig from a pine tree and stuck it into the piece of turf as a symbol that all which lay beneath the branches of their forests was also given to the "white brother." In this poetic man- ner did the land pass from the native Indian to the white man.
Reverend Benjamin Trumbull of North Haven, writing in 1779, estimated that in 1633 there were as many as 20,000 Indians in Connecticut, but this figure has been vehemently disputed by other historians, who do agree, however, that there were many more in Con- necticut than elsewhere in New England. The fondness of the Indians for seafood was doubtless a prime reason for so many making their homes on the Sound and the banks of the rivers, as is evidenced by the old middens of clam and oyster shells which have been found along the shores. Probably they lived by the shore in the summer time and in the forests in the winter.
There was an Indian cave, or rock shelter, in Pine Rock in western Hamden, in which were found in 1910 stone implements, daggers, skinning knives, pottery, and the bones of deer, elk, bear, raccoon, fox, beaver, and blackfish, and heaps of clam and oyster shells. These articles were removed to the Peabody Museum of Yale University, where they were placed on exhibi- tion. The shelter was completely destroyed in 1912 by a heavy dynamite blast from the near-by quarry. On Dunbar Hill there is a large flat stone, hollowed out in the center, where an old squaw used to grind her corn.
It is impossible to say how many of the Quinnipiacs inhabited our own forests in more remote times. When the colonists came, they were situated in a village on the east side of New Haven Harbor in East Haven,
Indian Corn Grinding Stone, Dunbar Hill Road
Christopher Todd House, 1665, South of the Mill Dam
Gift of Arnold G. Dana
----
--
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The Colonial Period
where they had 30 acres of tillable land. In 1638 there were 47 in Momauguin's band, and 10 warriors and their families in that of Montowese. Charles Towns- hend* estimates that there were 100 around New Ha- ven in 1680. Their last sachem died about 1730, and by 1773 most of the survivors had gone to join their cousins, the Tunxis, at Farmington. In 1807, when Reverend Timothy Gillett came to Branford, there was only one squaw remaining, Lydia by name, who came once or twice from her wigwam to attend his midweek lecture, leaving with the final prayer. With her death at the age of sixty-eight, the Quinnipiacs disappeared from this immediate region.
The melancholy story of Nepaupuck is illustrative of the effect upon the red man of the white man's occu- pancy of his lands. Nepaupuck, the only person ever executed upon the New Haven Green, was put to death in 1638, charged with the murder of a number of white men. His head was cut off and set on a pole in the pub- lic marketplace. The Indians never understood the ways of the white man. They had a culture of their own, they pursued with wholehearted devotion the ideals of bravery, protection of family and tribe, loyalty, patriotism, calm and courage, and notably a silent and stoic endurance of physical pain. With a remarkable dignity, when he heard his death sentence, Nepaupuck said simply, "It is well." Was his red skin the reason that it was not deemed commendable for him to fight for his land and his people?
Arrowheads have been found in reasonable numbers in the soil of Hamden, telling only that these common and necessary implements were used in hunting food.
* The Quinnipiac Indians.
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