Robin (Wangunk), 1665 - 1757

Robin (or Puccaca) was the son of the Wangunk tribal leader Robin and the daughter of Chiamugg.   From the documentary record, he appears to have been the tribe’s medicine man or healer.  Robin and his family were known for their skill in curing “the King’s evil” (scrofula).  According to the Rev. William Russell, pastor of Middletown’s First Church, “many very remarkable cures have been [made by] them on persons where the most skillful English physicians have not been successful.”  Robin, sometimes called Dr. Robin, was a leader within the Wangunk community and possibly rose to the position of sachem.  He died in Hartford in 1757 and was interred in the Harford Burial Ground.  Among his descendants in the eighteenth century were Robin, John, Thomas, Joseph, Samuel, David, Ann, Hannah, Sarah and Ruth Robin, and a grandson, Richard Ranney. 

 

Timothy Ives, Wangunk Ethnology: A Case Study of a Connecticut River Indian Community, Masters Thesis, College of William and Mary (2001).  Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, vol. 3 (Hartford, The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1895), 280. Hermes, “Uncovering Their History: African, African-American and Native-American Burials in Hartford’s Ancient Burying Ground, 1640-1815,” Ancient Burying Ground Association, 2019.