Reconstructing the Wangunk Reservation Land System: A Case Study of Native and Colonial Likeness in Central Connecticut

This article brings land systems into dialogue to explain the successful coexistence of the Wangunks, a native community of central Connecticut, and their English neighbors during the colonial period. Using the interpretive research focus of likeness, structurally similar aspects of Wangunk and English land tenure are compared, including diversified landholdings extending from a village center, cooperation of individual and common rights, and a gendered proprietorship. This discourse suggests that the character of Wangunk ethnicity resonates from the values that motivated their land system more than from its structures. Furthermore, distinctive elements of the Wangunk Reservation land system, as hereby reconstructed, contribute to an emerging sense that articulations of native and English land systems are not only dynamic but locally distinct across New England.