Chickens Warrups

Chickens Warrups (dates of birth and death unverified), in some accounts referenced as Chicken Warrups or Sam Mohawk, was a Native American who lived in the southwestern part of Connecticut in the late 17th century and 18th century, at the time colonial settlers were establishing town governments, church parishes, and farms in the region. Warrups' name appears on multiple deeds awarding land to colonial settlers.

A family ancestry study based on oral history suggests Warrups was the son of a Mohawk sagamore named Ky-ne. The same account states that in his youth Warrups killed a member of the Onondaga tribe and was banished from the Five Nations confederacy that included the Mohawk people. He relocated to the area straddling the border of Connecticut and New York, and was captured by a tribe led by the sachem Katonah (one of multiple spellings of that name referenced in historical documents). Warrups is thought to have married a daughter of Katonah and relocated to Fairfield, Connecticut.

There is dispute as to whether Warrups killed a Native American in Fairfield; he again moved, however, this time several miles north to land that would eventually be included as part of Redding, Connecticut. There, Warrups established a village of Native Americans who had become displaced from other tribal units.

Settlers began eyeing unclaimed land north of Fairfield for new farmland, and colonial authorities began distributing grants of land in that area in the late 1600s, with settlers relocating in the early 1700s into the area occupied by Warrups village.

Redding's official town seal, dated 1714, depicts founder John Read under the boughs of a tree purchasing land from Chickens Warrups, with another settler and Native American in attendance.

Read is thought to have established a homestead in the vicinity of the village by 1711, and is credited with initiating the process that led to the creation of the town of Redding.

"Chickens ... seems to have been a strange mixture of Indian shrewdness, rascality and cunning, and was in continual difficulty with the settlers concerning the deeds he gave them," wrote historian Charles Burr Todd. "In 1720 he was suspected by the colonists of an attempt to bring the Mohawks and other western tribes down upon them." Todd found three petitions by Warrups, preserved in colonial records, in which he complained of injustices in his land dealings with settlers.

...
Wikipedia