Wangunk

The Wangunk or Wongunk are an indigenous people from central Connecticut. They had three major settlements in present-day Portland, Middletown, and Wethersfield, but also used land in other parts of Middlesex and Hartford Counties. Some sources call the Wangunk the Mattabessett, but Wangunk is the name used by scholars and by contemporary Wangunk descendents.

The Wangunk were part of the Algonquin language group, and had strong connections with other Algonquian nations. The Wangunk are not recognized as a tribe by either the US Federal Government or by the State of Connecticut. However, many people today identify as being of Wangunk ancestry and strive to carry on cultural traditions.

The Wangunk peoples as encountered by English colonists occupied present-day Middletown, Haddam, and Portland Connecticut. Originally located around Hartford and Wethersfield but displaced by settlers there, they relocated to the land around the oxbow bend in the Connecticut River. Before English settlement, there were at least half a dozen villages around the area on both sides of the river. Of these, Mattabassett (or Mattabesseck, Matabesset) was the name most associated with the Wangunk by the English (corresponding with Middletown). Other villages include Pocowset (Portland), Cockaponet (Haddam), Coginchaug, Cononnacock, and Machamodus. The Wangunk are also sometimes referred to as “the River People” because of their positioning within the fertile Connecticut river valley. When the English settled and established Middletown on the west side of the river, the designated Wangunk reservation land was mainly on the East side of the river bend, with a small parcel on the West side, an area near where Indian Hill is today. Wongunk is also used to describe a meadow in Portland that was part of the Wangunk reservation. As the Wangunk felt pressure from the settlers for the land, they sold off portions of this land and joined either neighboring tribes such as the Tunxis (Farmington, CT), many of whom later moved with other communities of Christian Indians as far as the Great Lakes, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma.

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