MASHANTUCKET, Conn. -- Just three decades ago, Herman Melville's premature obituary of the Pequots seemed close to fulfillment. Over three centuries, the Mashantucket Pequot reservation had been whittled away to 213 acres. By the 1960s, only two older women remained on the land, living in a shack without running water or electricity.
How times have changed.
Federal recognition and settlement of land claims have boosted the reservation to 1,250 acres. It is home to more than 600 tribal members, mostly living in decent housing. Drawn together from far corners of the country, the descendants of the Pequot nation have returned to reclaim their heritage and stake out a better future, boosted by the success of the tribe's Foxwoods Resort and Casino.
"It's been a unique experiment in a sense, bringing back the tribe, making it work, building a community," says Bruce A. Kirchner, Foxwoods' senior vice president of administration, who has worked for the tribe since it opened its bingo hall in 1986.
Kirchner recalls childhood visits to his grandmother, Alice Langevin Brend, and her half-sister, Elizabeth George, on the reservation. "We had to go to a long dirt road. It was just one dirt road, off the hill, with one house, with the two women living there." When he graduated from college, his grandmother suggested that he volunteer for the tribe, and he joined the small but growing number of people returning to the land.
The result was a renewed destiny, as the tribe reversed a centuries-long diaspora and reinvigorated its local economy. The blue and white tower of Foxwoods, which boasts two hotels and the casino, rises over the Connecticut woods, attracting people from across the state and beyond to its gaming tables and jing-jangling slot machines. Last August's opening of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center was a highlight in the tribe's quest to reclaim its heritage.
After the end of the Pequot War in 1638, in which more than 600 were massacred by settlers and opposition tribes, the remnants of the tribe were dispersed among other tribes. In 1666, several hundred survivors were allotted a 3,000-acre reservation by the state. This land was gradually carved up and sold off, and by the 1940s George, recognized as the tribal leader, was fighting with the state over who would pick up the cost of repairing the single standing house on the reservation.
Encouraged by George's call, "Hold on to the land," tribal members began returning in the 1970s. They drew up a constitution and elected George's grandson, Richard "Skip" Haywood, as president. With limited success, members tried pig farming, a hydroponic greenhouse and a maple syrup business.
In 1976, the tribe filed claim to 700 acres auctioned -- illegally, they alleged -- by the state in 1856. The bitter court battle, which frayed the tempers of local property owners, lasted seven years.
Federal recognition and a settlement of the land claims came in 1983. The tribe also received $900,000, earmarked for land acquisition and economic development. In 1986, the high-stakes bingo hall opened, with Foxwoods following in 1992. Slot machines came in 1993 and in June returned $59.2 million in earnings to the casino.
If the casino is the enterprise's heart, the museum is its soul. Its design makes the most of the natural surroundings, bordering on the Cedar Swamp that has always been the core of the tribe's land. Traditional designs, such as the image of a wampum belt, are woven into the architecture. White and purple shell shards glisten in the lobby floor.
The museum features portrayals of Pequot life, starting with an ice age caribou hunt on a glacier 11,000 years ago. A replica of a 16th-century village shows full-size figures in daily activities: Women scrape kernels of corn off the cob and mash them into meal; nearby, a young couple builds a home. A stockaded village reflects life after the arrival of the Europeans, who brought trinkets such as metal pots -- and also ravaging diseases. The aftermath of the Pequot War and the development of the reservation are documented through movies and interactive displays. A photo gallery of today's tribal members links past, present and future.
Kelly Reising feels most at home in the photo gallery: "It's a nice feeling," she says. Reising, 29, was working as a pharmacy clerk in California before moving to the reservation eight years ago. Of the photos of other tribal members, she says, "That's really who people are and where they are today."
Reising's mother, one of George's granddaughters, grew up in poverty and left the reservation when she married. "When my mother was a child, you didn't want to be an Indian," she says. Not that her mother passed on a sense of shame, but she said little about their heritage. "I always knew I was Native American," Reising says. "I always wrote in that I was Native American on applications. But [the identification] wasn't too strong."
When Haywood invited her mother to join the growing Pequot enterprise, Reising went along, securing a job as a receptionist at the bingo hall. She is now the tribe's manager of special events and is nurturing hopes of a college degree. "It's a nice secure feeling to know you have the backing and the discipline behind you to keep going," she says.
She is also raising her two children, ages 2 and 7, on the reservation without the poverty or embarrassment that shadowed her mother's childhood. "It's nice to be able to send [the children] to school with lunch," she says.
Visitors to the research center find resources documenting Pequot history and information on other native peoples of the United States and Canada. Public relations specialist Aaron Gooday, an Apache, is amazed by the variety of books. "Every time I come here I see new books," he says. "When I was a child growing up, there were very few books on Native Americans."
The reservation enterprises provide more than 12,000 jobs for an area pummeled by military downsizing. The tribe contributes to local organizations and charities. Connecticut towns and cities benefit through the Pequot Fund, which claims a quarter of all the casino's slot revenues. Last year, the state received $170 million.
Still, relations with the surrounding area are lukewarm. Ledyard's mayor, Wesley Johnson Sr., says his town has benefited through new jobs from Foxwoods but has lost tax revenue from land now belonging to the tribe. The town has spent more than $750,000 in legal costs, and local property owners fret over the possibility of further land claims. And, the mayor says, heavy traffic has affected the quality of life for neighbors of the casino.
New horizons beckon. The tribe operates a high-speed ferry service on weekends from New London, Conn., and Jersey City, N.J., to Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and runs a low-cost prescription-drug service. But the casino, even in the face of competition from the neighboring Mohegan Sun casino, will likely remain the driving economic force.
"I think we're at a point now where we're going to take a breath, look to the future and see where we want to go from here," says Kirchner. Grooming the next generation is high on that priority list.
"Somebody's got to take over the jobs from us old guys," he says.
Pub Date: 8/05/99