USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Waterbury > The town and city of Waterbury, Connecticut, from the aboriginal period to the year eighteen hundred and ninety-five, Volume I > Part 8
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Reference may be made, in conclusion, to another spot which has aboriginal associations connected with it of quite recent date. A few rods south of the city line (in Simonsville), on the east side of the highway, which here runs close to the river, there is a bit of elevated meadow, formerly surrounded by a wood, some trees of which still remain. Within the memory of persons now in mature life it was the site of a wigwam and the home of a solitary squaw. There was a kind of dam across the Naugatuck at this point, and it was a good fishing place.t
* Land Records, Vol. XXV, pp. 302, 407 ; Vol. XXVI, p. 427.
+ Reference has been made to the fact that in the town of Watertown, which belonged to ancient Mat- tatuck, there is an entire absence of Indian local names. An Indian name has recently been introduced which is likely to secure a permanent foothold in the town. The proprietors of " Wattles Pond," desiring to give it a more euphonious name, in connection with a plan to make it a place of resort for summer visitors, applied to the writer of this chapter for aid in selecting one. Instead of resorting (as is usually the case) to borrow- ing, a name was made to order, according to the laws which govern the construction of Indian place-names. The pond being a " fine fishing-place " was called Winnimaug, and is likely to be known by that name in the time to come. Some future explorer, failing to light upon this statement respecting its origin, may regard it as a genuine survival of the aboriginal period.
( The author cannot refrain from adding here that while the proofs of this chapter were passing through his hands, tidings were received of the sudden death of Samuel McLean of Watertown, who is referred to in this note, and also of the Rev. Samuel Orcutt, whose " History of Derby " and " History of Wolcott'' are quoted above, and who was the author of other voluminous town histories. Both of these gentlemen were killed by railroad trains at Bridgeport, within a few days of one another-January 10 and 14, 1893. )
CHAPTER V.
THE "STONE AGE" IN CONNECTICUT-STONE IMPLEMENTS, CHIPPED AND GROUND-USES TO WHICH THEY WERE APPLIED, IN PEACE AND IN WAR - PLACES WITHIN MATTATUCK TERRITORY WHERE REMAINS OF THE STONE AGE HAVE BEEN FOUND - ACCOUNTS OF VARIOUS "FINDS" BETWEEN BEACON HILL BROOK AND LITCHFIELD -IMPLEMENTS DESCRIBED.
I N Europe the long prehistoric period has been roughly divided by archæologists into three ages-the Stone age, the Bronze age and the Iron age. This division, based upon the charac- teristics of the prehistoric remains that have been collected, is not entirely applicable to the western hemisphere, yet we may speak of the aboriginal population of America at the time of the Discovery as belonging to the Stone age, and some tribes or families as having passed upward into what may be designated the Copper age. The Indians of New England were still in the Stone age at the coming of the first settlers. They seem to have used to a very limited extent implements and weapons of hammered copper, obtained through traffic with other tribes, and there is evidence that they had learned to make pottery. But their dependence for useful implements, for weapons of war and for cooking utensils was almost entirely upon stone and wood.
We should hardly expect articles of wood to resist decay until modern times (although in a few instances wooden objects have survived), but implements of stone in large numbers lie scattered on the surface of the ground to the present day, or imbedded in the soil, and are still found, by those who have eyes to see, in ploughed fields, on the banks of rivers, along roadsides and in places where no one would expect to discover them. These stone imple- ments may be divided into two general classes-those made by chipping, such as the well-known arrow heads, and those made by pecking and grinding, such as celts, axes and pestles. Of these two classes, the former is by far the more numerous, although the num- ber of axes and other ground implements which have been picked up in New England and over all the Atlantic slope during the past two hundred years must be immense.
If we knew precisely to what uses the various implements were applied, we should be able to reproduce quite fully the life of the
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aboriginal tribes. But concerning many of the remains there is still much uncertainty, after all the study which archaeologists have bestowed upon them. We know what the universal needs of the Indian were,-to provide for himself and his household sustenance and clothing and shelter. We know that the men hunted, that the women tilled the ground, that certain games and other amusements were indulged in, that religious rites were practiced, and that tribes made war upon one another. The remains that have been gathered consist of utensils or weapons which had to do with this simple but varied round of life; but what particular uses they served it is not always easy to say. To the various kinds of stone implements names have been confidently attached by collectors, but in all prob- ability those names are in many cases erroneous and misleading,- although as a matter of convenience they have to be used. In meet- ing the simple wants referred to, trees had to be felled (by burning or otherwise), posts had to be trimmed and driven, canoes had to be dug out, fire-wood to be prepared, deer and smaller game to be shot or trapped, fish to be caught in summer and in winter, flesh and fish to be boiled or roasted, bones to be cracked for the marrow in them, corn and beans to be planted and the ground tilled, skins to be scraped and cleaned, enemies to be slain, by arrow or club, and their scalps removed, and the dead to be disposed of by burial or otherwise. The stone implements that are found were used, either mounted in wood or otherwise, for these various purposes-some for one kind of work and some for another; but there was of course no such strict application of the tool to its specific purpose as we find to-day among skilled workmen. The celt, for instance, or the grooved axe, or the large chipped implement, may have been applied, like the modern jack-knife or hatchet, to a hundred differ- ent uses.
To a people whose chief means of subsistence were hunting and fishing, a region of rapid water-courses and of forests must have been specially attractive, while at the same time "interval lands" and clearings at the mouths of streams must have had great value in their eyes. We can readily believe, therefore, although there may have been no tribal seat or central camping-ground within the limits of ancient Mattatuck, that the territory was quite constantly occupied by wandering bands or family groups, who settled down here or there for a season, and then departed to some more prom- ising fishing-place, or some bluff commanding a better view of the river. At any camping-ground likely to be occupied for a few weeks in succession, wigwams would be erected, cooking would be gone through with, fire-wood would be provided, soapstone dishes
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
would be used, fish and game would be got ready for the pot, arrows and fish-spears would be made, to take the place of those that had been lost or broken, and arrow-heads and spear-heads chipped, to supply the constant demand. There are doubtless many spots up and down the Naugatuck valley, at the mouths of streams and on such bluffs as that on which the Waterbury hospital now stands where these various processes were carried on, year after year, for centuries. Some of these spots have already furnished large har- vests to the collector of "relics" or to the farmer-boy, while others have yet to be discovered. In some parts of our country-notably in New Jersey and in Ohio-the collecting of stone implements has been engaged in by so many, or systematized to such an extent, that definite opinions may safely be expressed in regard to their abundance and their relations to different localities. But nothing of this kind has been accomplished in the Naugatuck valley; it would be impossible to indicate on a map of the region, except in the most imperfect way, where camping-grounds were situated, or where the arrow-maker's hut may have stood, or where a battle with some hostile tribe may have been fought. The abundance of small chipped implements at a given place might be explained by one collector as the result of a battle, and by another as indicating the site of an arrow-maker's workshop, according to the scientific training of the collector, his accuracy as an observer and his caution in drawing inferences. Kilbourne, in his "Sketches and Chroni- cles of Litchfield," comments in this way upon the chipped implements found on the shores of Bantam lake :
That such battles [between the Litchfield Indians and the "intruding Mohawks "] have been fought on the now quiet rural shores of our beautiful lake and for a mile or two northward, is clearly indicated by the stone arrow-heads which are scattered in such profusion in the soil. It is true they are found in other parts of the township, but nowhere in such abundance as in the locality described. The writer remembers, as one of the pastimes of his childhood, following in the furrows behind the ploughman, on the West plain, for the express purpose of picking up these interesting memorials of a by-gone race-then of course regarded simply as playthings. These arrow-heads are of various shapes and sizes, and are made of different kinds of flint-black, white, red and yellow-showing them to have been manufactured by different and probably distant tribes. *
To the untrained collector it may seem almost a matter of course thus to explain the abundance of arrow-heads at a given place by supposing a battle to have been fought there; but it may be entirely unscientific to do so. There are other hypotheses which must be brought into careful comparison with this ere a safe
* Pp. 64, 65, of " Sketches and Chronicles of the Town of Litchfield. By Payne Kenyon Kilbourne, M. A.," Hartford, 1859.
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STONE IMPLEMENTS OF MATTATUCK.
decision can be reached. So, too, it may seem a natural inference from the variety of materials represented in a collection of arrow- heads that they were "manufactured by different and probably distant tribes," but no such inference can be sustained ; indeed there are various facts which go to show that the material of which these implements were made was sometimes transported in considerable quantities from place to place, and manufactured afterward.
Not only has no systematic exploration of Waterbury territory with reference to archæological traces been made ; it is quite impos- sible to give any full account of the remains which have been gathered up in the present and in previous generations. The very miscellaneous data which follow are simply those that have come to the writer's knowledge within a few years past, representing no effort at an exhaustive search for "relics" in the field, nor any serious attempt to ascertain what may be treasured in private collections, or lying around in the garrets and cupboards of farm- houses. These memoranda, however, will serve to show how wide- spread and general was the aboriginal occupancy of the region, and how closely conformed was the life of our Mattatuck predecessors to the typical Indian life.
Beginning at the southern boundary of Mattatuck, that is, at Beacon Hill brook, a mile and a half below Naugatuck centre, we find traces near the mouth of the brook of what some have called an Indian village. The brook is famous as a trout stream ; indeed for rods above and below its mouth the Naugatuck river used to be " black with fish," and it was with reference to the fishing that the " village " was established there. This camping-ground was situ- ated on the northern bank of the stream, about forty rods above its mouth. Certain details in regard to it were furnished to the writer by the late Josiah Culver of Naugatuck (born in 1799), whose father, Amos Culver, settled near the mouth of Beacon Hill brook previous to 1780. At that time, corn-hills-remains of aboriginal planting-were plainly visible, and there were Indians living in the neighborhood. Numerous traces of an arrow maker's work- shop existed there, and some years ago, in digging a cellar, a large quantity of stone " chips" was unearthed. Josiah Culver found a stone pipe on this site, and a soapstone dish that would hold two or three quarts. In his later life he found a rude "pestle " and a few white quartz arrow-heads near his dwelling, on the west side of the Naugatuck river.
About a mile back from the river rises Twelve Mile hill, known also as Straight mountain. Here, on a plateau overlooking the
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
Naugatuck valley, is the residence of H. N. Williams. On the level surface, ten rods back from the declivity and near a peat swamp,
Mr. Williams found one of the axes figured in the accompanying cut. It is six and a half inches long and three and a half wide, nar- rowing to the cutting edge. It is flat on one side, but the groove runs entirely around it. It has been carefully ground in the groove and near the IMPLEMENTS FOUND IN NAUGATUCK. edge, but not elsewhere. Mr. Williams found near the same spot a mallet-like stone, having a very artificial look ; but it is probably a natural object.
The other axe here figured was found in the village of Nauga- tuck, and was preserved for many years in the family of the late Willard Spencer, of Waterbury. Its length is six inches. It is very slightly grooved, except on the edges, and bears few traces of work. It was evidently a natural wedge of fine sandstone, selected because of its axe-like shape, and mounted in its handle with as little labor as possible.
The large chipped implement figured in the same cut was also found in Naugatuck village, near the river. It is of dark brown flint (more properly, chert), and is seven inches long, and seven- eighths of an inch thick at the middle, tapering on both sides to a nicely chipped edge.
In the writer's collection are three other implements found in Naugatuck, near the river. One of them (presented by the late Cal- vin H. Carter) may be regarded as a pestle, although it approxi- mates to the form of a blunt chisel. It is eleven inches long. Three of its sides are flat; the fourth side rounded. Lying with its rounded side up, its heighth is two and a quarter inches, its thickness one and three-quarters. One of the ends is rounded, the other wedge-shaped, but blunt. The material is a fine sandstone, very similar to the axe last described. The second specimen is a chipped "hoe" of white quartzite, five inches long. The "blade " is three and a half inches wide, the " stem " two and a quarter. It is very rough and evidently unfinished. What it would have become in the finishing process it is difficult to say. Still more interesting than this is the third implement, which may be described as a small
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STONE IMPLEMENTS OF MATTATUCK.
" adze " or a "gouge " designed for mounting in a handle. On one side it is flat, except that it is gouge-shaped at the cutting edge. The other side is convex, and midway there are two projections, with a hollow between them, evidently made to receive a withe handle. The tool is five inches long and an inch and three-quarters in width. It is of very hard stone, but is symmetrically shaped and carefully ground.
At Bradleyville, northwest of Naugatuck, stone implements have been picked up by John Bradley, Isaac Scott, Enoch Newton and others, but no details can be given.
Through the kindness of Dr. Isaac N. Russell the writer's col- lection contains a stone axe found at Platt's Bridge on the Nauga- tuck, three miles south of the centre of Waterbury. The stone is very compact and heavy and almost black. The length is seven and a half inches, the breadth five inches; the thickness above the groove two inches and a half. The groove is shallow, and although the axe is of a well-defined type it has been made such without the expenditure of much labor. The part below the groove is wedge- shaped and tapering, and the cutting edge is very nearly a semi- circle. Along with the axe came a few arrowheads, and additional arrowheads of white quartz were received from the Misses Cowell, residents of the Platt's Mills district.
At Malmanack (or Malmalick), a hill referred to in the previous chapter, numerous chipped implements have been found. The Rev. Eli B. Clark, in a letter already quoted, says :
In my youth, while cultivating the fields on the sides and top of that hill, we often found Indian relics, chiefly arrow-heads of greater or less perfection. I should judge that they were from three to five inches in length, some very slim and sharp, others larger and more blunt, intended probably for larger game. We often found them broken, but some were apparently as perfect as when used by the red man in slaughtering his game.
It was very pleasing to us boys to find these relics of a former race, and we carefully treasured them up, for the time being, as curiosities. I have a vague recollection that something we called the Indian hatchet was occasionally found, but of this I could not affirm positively.
The locality of the arrow-heads was confined chiefly to the hill; I scarcely recol- lect finding any on other parts of our farm, which extended quite a distance in all directions. I do not think that the question why the arrow-heads were confined to that particular spot was much agitated in those days. Whether the Indians came there for the outlook, or for game, or for some other reason, was not satisfactorily settled, if indeed it has been since, or ever will be. The hill was evidently a favorite camping ground, where much time must have been spent; otherwise it is not easy to account for the loss of so many weapons of the chase.
As far to the east of the Naugatuck as Malmanack is to the west, rises the height known as East mountain, near the bounds of
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
Prospect. This is represented in the writer's collection by a hand- some black spear-head. At Prospect centre, on ground high enough to command a view of Long Island sound, the writer secured an interesting stone "mortar," probably of aboriginal manufacture, which now rests under a tree near his cottage at Woodmont. The material is a compact, yellowish brown sandstone. It is without definite form, but approximates to an oval. It is twenty-three inches in length, eighteen in breadth, and six in thickness. The excavation is three inches at its greatest depth and slopes gradually to the top. The longer diameter of the excavation lies across the stone and measures seventeen inches. Its width is fourteen inches, so that there is a flat margin on one side of it, measuring several inches across. This may have been a mortar in which to grind corn. If so, the "pestle" must have been used horizontally, that is, rolled. But the excavation does not afford much evidence of use. *
Returning to the Naugatuck river, a little above the point at which Mad river empties into it, we find a spot productive of arrow- heads where the office of the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing company now stands. Here was the home of the late Joseph P. Somers, from whose daughters, Mrs. Stephen E. Harrison and Mrs. Douglas F. Maltby, the writer has received collections of arrow and spear-heads-the arrow-heads, as usual, being mostly of white quartz. They were picked up, years ago, in the garden connected with the old homestead.
In the autumn of 1892, some laborers who were digging a cellar near the corner of East Main and Silver streets in Waterbury came upon a number of arrow-heads. A short distance to the east of this, on the Meriden road, are two curious depressions, formerly filled with water, known as the Spectacle ponds.} Some years ago, in one of these ponds or "kettle holes"-that on the south side of the road -a curious and interesting discovery was made, not only represent- ing aboriginal life, but bearing upon the question of the antiquity of man in this region. The workmen of Mr. D. G. Porter, while digging muck and peat from the bottom of the pond, came upon a number of pieces of wood bearing unquestionable evidence of hav- ing been cut with a blunt instrument. Some of the sticks were pine,
* The writer recalls with no little amusement the prolonged effort put forth to secure this "relic " from its putative owner. It lay at the time in a barn yard, filled with ice, having been set apart as a watering trough for fowls. But the farmer's son, as soon as he was asked to sell, conceived a strong attachment for it. " My grandfather," he said, "found it and brought it home a hundred years ago, and people have come miles to see it." When finally persuaded to name his price, he said, with much deliberation, " I shall have to ask you twenty-five cents for it." "Well, I am willing to give you twenty-five cents for it," the col- lector quietly replied ; and he then and there began to appreciate for the first time the high estimate which the hill-top farmer puts upon a quarter of a dollar.
+ These are described and their origin explained in chap. I, pp. 8, 9.
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some white birch, and measured two inches in diameter. Others showed unmistakable traces of fire, as did also the stones that were found with them. The remarkable thing about these remains (now in the writer's possession) is that they were found at a depth of fif- teen feet below the surface. To establish approximately their date, we must not only go back to a time when the Spectacle ponds were dry ground, but must reckon the rate at which black earth is formed by the annual deposit of leaves, and the rate also of the formation of peat through the growth and decay of peat-moss. It has been estimated that in a country overgrown with forests of beach, oak and chestnut, where there is annually a vast deposit of dead leaves, the increase in the depth of the soil is "one one-hun- dred and twenty-eighth of an inch per annum," or one inch in a hundred and twenty-eight years .* At this rate, to deposit a stratum of soil fifteen feet in thickness would require more than twenty- three thousand years. Such estimates are of a hap-hazard character at best; but even if such a rate as this could be established for a wooded region and a level surface, it would serve but poorly as a measure of the time required for the deposition of earth and muck and peat in a glacial "kettle hole." We must make large allowance for the accumulation of fallen leaves in such an excavation; and for the washing in of sand and refuse by heavy rains. But after all such deductions are made, the depth at which the remains at Spec- tacle pond were found is remarkable. A variety of hypotheses might be suggested to account for their position; but those who believe that man existed in North America during the last glacial period or soon afterward, will find here new evidence in support of their opinion.
Coming westward again to the centre of the city, and going a short distance up Prospect street, we are at the residence of Mr. Luther C. White-the house next north of Trinity church. In dig- ging the cellar of this house, some years ago, a "relic" was found more interesting than any other that has thus far been discovered in ancient Mattatuck. It is the pipe with a face and figure upon it pictured on page 38. This pipe is of fine, dark green steatite, so dark that it is almost black. The stem is four and a half inches long, half an inch wide, and five-eighths of an inch thick. The bowl is two inches and three-quarters in depth; the diameter across the top is seven-eighths of an inch, and the diameter of the bore three-eighths. On the upper side of the stem is a recumbent female figure, the right arm alongside of the body, the left arm across the chest. Each hand has three fingers which are spread apart
* Dr. C. C. Abbott on the " Antiquity of the Indians of North America," in The American Naturalist for February, 1876 (Vol. X, p. 67).
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
like the claws of a bird. The figure is three inches and a half in length, and a little broader than the stem upon which it rests. On the upper part of the bowl, facing the smoker, is a carefully carved man's face, an inch and three-eighths in length. The ears are per- forated, and the eyes are either closed or directed downward to the recumbent figure on the stem. There is a slight projection or ring around the top of the bowl, and another similar ridge around the stem, half an inch from the end. The pipe is carefully carved and beautifully polished throughout, and taken as a whole is far superior to the average handiwork of the New England Indians. Artistically and in its workmanship it bears some resemblance to the pipes of the Ohio valley Mound Builders,-although if it were a mound pipe, it might not be easy to explain how it reached the Naugatuck val- ley during the aboriginal period. But if we may judge from what some of the early writers have said concerning the skill of the New England Indians, such work as that displayed in this Waterbury pipe was not altogether beyond their reach. John Josselyn, in his "Two Voyages to New England," enumerating articles of Indian manufacture, mentions "tobacco pipes of stone, with images upon them;"* and Wood, in his "New England's Prospect," speaking of the things which the Massachusetts Indians obtain from the Narra- gansetts, says :
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