Tour 9 is my third attempt to follow a driving tour laid out in Connecticut: A Guide To Its Roads, Lore, and People, the Federal Writers' Project guidebook published in 1938. (Obviously, I'm not doing these in order. The first one I did is here, and the second is here.) Tour 9 is described as "From New London to Massachusetts Line (Worcester), 56.2 m., State 32 and State 12." (They liked their arbitrary italics in 1938 I guess!)
Though the tour starts in New London, it doesn't include much of the city, except the glimpse you catch of the Coast Guard Academy, a streak of dignified red brick, green lawn and symmetry, as you speed north up Route 32. This road "travels the same route as an old Turnpike, the first to be completed in America." It was built to connect the commerce of New London to the agriculture of West Farms (now Waterford.)
The Guide notes the neighborhood of Quaker Hill, "a residential section on a high bluff above the Thames," and correctly points out that the Rogerenes, the religious sect the area was named for, were not Quakers. (I've written a bit about the Rogerenes and Quaker Hill here.)
"Waterford spreads fan-like about New London," the book says, in what sounds like a sly insult, "a township without a community of the same name." But quite quickly, after a few of the promised "wide views" of the river, I have left Waterford and entered Uncasville, a village of Montville. The book calls it a "neat, prosperous village" manufacturing "silk and cotton fabrics and paper goods." Today it does not look particularly neat or prosperous, and there is no evidence of silk. I miss the crossing over the excellently named Oxoboxo Brook as well as the Uncasville Library, which may no longer exist. But I do see something very rare these days in America and perhaps especially so in Southern New England; something closer to the Depression-era itinerary I am following than the strip malls and Dunkin Donuts of Modern Montville: a hitchhiker.
Uncasville was named for Uncas, the 17th century sachem of the Mohegans who fought the Pequots (and others) and allied himself (mostly) with the English settlers in the region, using his remarkable political acumen to make his tribe (which hadn't even existed as a separate entity until a short time before) into a major regional power. I had noticed before, sort of, but I did not really see until now just how much here is still named for him. Perhaps it's because there are more buildings to stick signs on, and more streets to name, that there seems almost more of an Indian presence here than in the Plains or Mountain States, with their vast reservations.
I enter the village of Mohegan, which my book calls "a thriving Indian community, no longer a Government reservation, but still nominally governed by a chief called 'Malagah' (Leap Dancer), who rules over the 36 remaining half-breed members of the tribe." But that was a long time ago (see: government-sponsored publication using the phrase "half-breed") and the existence of the village of Mohegan, like Uncasville, is currently apparent mainly from the brown sign identifying it as the "seat of Uncas, the Mohegan sachem, friend of the English." But the Tantaquideon Lodge, a "small structure of native granite," and a museum, is right where the Guide says it is.
"About 200 yards from the highway on the blue-marked Mohegan Trail, is the Mohegan Congregational Church erected for the remaining members of the tribe in 1831...a Brush Arbor Ceremony has been held here annually in the latter part of August since 1860. Formerly green brush arbors were erected as temples to the gods of the harvest, and the Indians, forming a chain, danced through the temples..." There is no blue-marked Mohegan Trail anymore, that I can see, and by 1938 there was no more brush arbor ceremony. But I turn past the Tantaquidgeon Lodge down a little road and find the church. (The one in the picture above.) I don't know if the Mohegans of 1831 wanted to be Congregationalists; the book does not say.
I paused on the height overlooking the river, careful not to step too close to any of the minute gravestones scattered beneath my feet. There were more recent markers, too, shiny ones with properly carved names, but I stared only at these more ancient ones. I remembered suddenly that I was standing in a sovereign nation, that this park spanned not just time but place.
Continuing north, "the highway climbs to the top of Trading Cove Hill. This district...abounds in Indian history, legends, and memorials." Several road signs still allude to Trading Cove, "where early settlers from across the river traded with the Indians." The trading continues, in a way, at Mohegan Sun casino, which rises like a shimmery apparition off to my right. Settlers from all over come to trade with the Indians still, not in skins and shells but in US Dollars and smoke-filled, shiny, tacky-luxury escapes.
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