Copyright © 1997-1998 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Saygo and Happy Thanksgiving:

I know that you will be sitting down to a feast this week, to give thanks for your ancestors deliverance from starvation in a new land. On the Paugeesukq reserve tribal members will likewise give thanks and many who live off the reservation will come together on the reservation, bringing food to give thanks. It was very hard for the ancestors of the first New Englanders and it is unlikely that they would have survived if not for the help an Algonquin Indian, Squanto, gave to them. Today, it is hard for the Paugeesukqs. Though they are a tenacious people and would not say that survival is threatened, without the help of the descendants of the first New Englanders, this nation of first people, of Algonquins like Squanto, will have a very hard time.

Squanto was greatly wronged by English people. He was kidnapped from his land to be sold into slavery. He was taken to Europe for this purpose, but was delivered out of slavery by Christian friars. After many years he returned to the land of his people to find that they were all dead. When living among a neighboring tribe, he discovered a group of English pilgrims, barely alive, at the site of his people's village. He took pity on them and showed them how to find and grow the foods of his land. The first Thanksgiving on these shores was a three day feast of celebration to honor that harvest which would not have happened, but for the decency of that Algonquin, Squanto.

Some time after that, Paugeesukqs had their first encounter with New Englanders. Under the leadership of a man named Mason, Paugeesukq villages were burned and the men, women and even the children were killed. The Paugeesukqs were killed, not because they had made war on the new people, they did not. They were killed because they were Algonquin Indians. This was America's ethnic cleansing. Mason's followers did not give much thought to the kindness of Indians like Squanto who had welcomed them into the new land.

Though most of the Paugeesukqs were slaughtered or sold into slavery in the sugar plantations of the West Indies, some remained. In spite of constant theft of the little land they still had, they remained and like Squanto were good neighbors in spite of the wrongs done to them. Contemporary records show that Paugeesukqs, like William Sherman, in the 1830's, were good neighbors to the non-Indian community which still was in the process of taking Paugeesukq land.

Over the centuries New Englanders have celebrated Thanksgiving by remembering the pilgrims' deliverance. The part of Squanto in that remembrance is not a major aspect of the celebration. Could it be that New Englanders seldom remember the good works of Indians? For example, Senator Dodd and Connecticut neighbors of the Paugeesukq oppose Federal recognition of the Paugeesukqs. They do not acknowledge that when a Paugeesukq chief, acting alone and without the necessary direction of the Tribal Council, attempted to tie up their homes in litigation for ancient land claims, it was the Paugeesukq Tribal Council that went to court and had these land claims withdrawn. The Chief was removed from office. There were no letters of thanks from the homeowners whose land was defended by Paugeesukq Indians. Rather, a committee was formed, the Connecticut Homeowners Held Hostage, whose purpose was to complete the ethnic cleansing begun so long age. The purpose was to erase the Paugeesukq nation from existence with letters instead of a sword.

This Thanksgiving, is it too much to ask that you honor Squanto's memory. Senator Dodd, please end your endorsement of ethnic cleansing, and sisters and brothers in New England, please write to Senator Dodd and ask that he become a friend to the Indians of Connecticut.

Truly in Thanks and Fellowship

Lawrence Otway

Tribal Court Judge
Golden Hill Paugeesukq
Tribal Nation
inobu@aol.com