Description
The Wangunk or Wongunk were an Indigenous people from central Connecticut. They had three major settlements in the areas of the present-day towns of Portland, Middletown, and Wethersfield. Like other Algonquian groups, the Wangunk political leadership rested with an individual leader called a sachem, based on English settler documentation. Most Algonquian social structures were known to be based on a matrilineal kinship system, by which inheritance and property passed through the maternal line.
Language
Algonquin
Culture
Before the 1600s, the Algonquin-speaking Wangunks had dominated this area of Connecticut for centuries. They were a spiritual people who revered Manitou, the Great Spirit found in all living things and in the forces of nature. They made tools from stones and animal bones, cured animal hides for clothing, and carved canoes out of birch. Round-topped wigwams gave them shelter; game and fish fed them. They planted crops of corn, squash and sunflowers.