ON OUR OWN GROUND: PEQUOT COMMUNITY RECORDS, 1813-1850

ON OUR OWN GROUND: PEQUOT COMMUNITY RECORDS, 1813-1850

Featured Collection
The 107 materials that constitute the On Our Own Ground: Pequot Community Papers, 1813-1850 Collection in the Native Northeast Portal are financial ledgers of the State-appointed agents to the tribal communities in Connecticut, related invoices and bills, overseer bonds, and petitions to the New London Superior Court. 
 
The vast majority of these documents are part of the New London County Court Records housed at the Connecticut State Library in Hartford, Connecticut, with the remainder residing in the collections of the Indian and Colonial Research Center in Old Mystic, and the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford.
 
These financial accountings and other associated records, otherwise known more informally as the Overseer papers or records, are the bookkeeping required by State statute (1821) as part of a paternalistic guardianship system designed to "protect" Connecticut's Native communities by managing their properties.  To that end, overseers used reservation land, by leasing or selling parts of it, to generate a tribal fund that would be used to offset the community's annual expenses. 
 
Each record in the Portal includes digital image(s), metadata and two forms of transcription, a Scholar's Transcription or typographic facsimile, and an Annotated Transcription with hyperlinked interactive biographies and geographies.  All materials have been reviewed for cultural sensitivity by representatives of the respective tribal community and have been given the Verified Traditional Knowledge Label.
 
A Community Scholar Committee, comprised of four to five people including at least one Elder, from the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation and the Mashantucket Tribal Nation also provided their perspective in editorial interventions, such as keywords, community landing page, and commentaries.  In some instances, representatives suggested additional information or added their community understandings to annotations and biographies.  These documents have been given the Community Voice Traditional Knowledge Label.  This particular content can be accessed from within each record by selecting the Eastern Pequot or Mashantucket Pequot tab.

For more information about the Collection, click here.

To see Awful Consequences of the Fiery Curse of Rum, a StoryMap on a problem hidden behind the Pequot overseers reports, click here.

 
 
 
 
 
 
In this collection