General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1853 Original Publisher: Library Reprints, Inc. Subjects: History / Native American Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Native American Studies History / Native American Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Native American Studies Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER II. NAMES, NUMBERS, POSITIONS, AND POLITICAL RELATIONS OF THE DIFFERENT TRIBES. Nothing can be more obvious, on a little examination, than that the usual estimates of the aboriginal population of Connecticut contain great improbabilities. Even the historian, Trumbull, from whom wiser things might have been expected, seems to have been actuated by an unreflecting disposition to magnify, as much as possible, their importance and numbers. In his account of the different tribes, he usually, if not invariably, selects the largest known estimates, and introduces them into his narrative without the slightest attempt at reasonable criticism. They cannot, he says, be estimated at less than twelve or sixteen, and they might possibly amount to twenty, thousand souls. This assertion is grounded, in part, upon a passage in Winthrop's Journal, mentioning a report that the Indians of Connecticut River were supposed to muster three or four thousand warriors. This passage was penned in 1633, when the New England colonists had not yet extended beyond Massachusetts Bay; when an impassable bar was reported to exist at the mouth of the Connecticut; when it was said that, during seven months in the year, no vessels could enter it Hiat. of Conn., Vol. I, p. 27. on account of the ice and the violence of the stream; and when the Connecticut, with the Hudson, the Potomac, and other large rivers,...