216 TRIBES AND DIALECTS OF CONNECTICUT |eth. ann. 43 



(Quiripi group *). A word or two on this interesting and little-known 

 division may be added here, to repeat what Professor Prince noted 

 concerning some words and phrases rescued at the last moment from 

 oneof the Scatticook Indians living in 1903 on the Housatonic River. ^ 

 He assigned to the New England dialect a closer affinity with the 

 Mahican, a view which has since received support from Doctor 

 Michelson. The band at Scatticook was composed of fugitives from 

 the Pequot, Narragansett, Wampanoag, and other eastern bands, 

 from about 1736 on, seeking refuge with the tribes west of the Con- 

 necticut River, which were then more remote from contact with the 

 whites. We see, accordingly, how the southern New England tribes 

 felt about their own affinities, always turning westward toward the 

 Hudson rather than northward to the country inhabited by the Waba- 

 naki. Between the two a completely unfamiliar culture setting, 

 different historical associations, more widely separated speech, even 

 open hostility, marked the Wabanaki and the southern New England 

 group as the oft'shoots of diiTerent waves of Algonkian migration to- 

 ward the Atlantic coast. Turning to historical matters, it seems 

 proper now to refer to the opinions of the natives themselves con- 

 cerning their former migration, opinions which in spite of Doctor 

 Lowie's scepticism on the value of native historical traditions, may be 

 repeated in a sympathetic spirit, since in this case they substantiate 

 the inclination of internal evidence. 



Migration Legend. — In one of the previous papers * on Mohegan- 

 Pequot I mentioned Mrs. Fielding's tradition that her people had 

 originally come from the Hudson, movmg eastward toward the 

 Connecticut, then following down this river to Long Island 

 Sound. Another recently recovered document corroborates her 

 belief and shows that it was widely known among these Indians. 

 The document referred to I shall quote in full from its som-ce, 

 Mrs. Emma Baker (pis. 28, h; 29, d), one of the oldest Mohegan 

 women, often consulted on ethnological and historical matters 

 before she died several years ago. "When a child of 7 years, 

 my great-great-aunt used to take my sister, brother, cousin, and 

 myself on the hiU near where the church now stands, point to 

 the northwest, and tell us that was the way that her folks 

 came, and that we must never forget it, away to the hills of 

 Taughannick, and after that for several years she used to impress 

 upon our minds that it was something that we must not forget." 

 Still another version of the eastern migration tale finds place in the 



'- From a statement in Hubbard's Narrative of Indian Wars in New England, etc., Stockbridge (1803), 

 p. 244, it may be inferred that the Pocomtuck on Connecticut River, near the location of Springfield, were 

 closely allied to the Stockbridge Mahican. At their dispersal in 1676 by Major Talcot they fled to Stock- 

 bridge. Hubbard says they were separate from the Nipmuck. A recent paper by A. B. Skinner, Notes 

 on Mahikan Ethnology, Bulletin, vol. 2, no. 1, 1925, Public Museum of Milwaukee, furnishes some in- 

 teresting ethnological information on the StockDridge Indians. 



» Prince and Speck, ref. d (1904\ p. 34". 



• Prince and Speck, ref. a, p. 193; also Speck, refs. g and i, p. 184. 



