Once Upon A Time In Connecticut | Page 6

end of two
years there was a revolution in England, and William and Mary came to
the English throne. Then the charter was taken out of its
hiding-place--wherever that was--and government was at once resumed
under the same old patent which had disappeared so mysteriously on
that famous Allhallowe'en night.
In the Memorial Hall of the State Library at Hartford, under a glass
shield, in a fireproof compartment built into the end wall of the room,
there hangs to-day one of the two original copies of the Connecticut
Charter. It is in a good state of preservation, its lettering is clear and
distinct, and so is the portrait engraved upon it of King Charles the
Second who gave it to Governor John Winthrop. A part of its present
frame is made from the wood of the Charter Oak. The other copy, that
is, what remains of it, can be seen in the box which is owned by the
Historical Society.
When, after the Revolutionary War, the Colony of Connecticut became
the State of Connecticut, the charter of the colony was adopted without
alteration as the State Constitution. No change was made in it until
1818.
The old oak tree, known to Indian legend and better known in
Connecticut's story, lived, honored and protected, until its fall in the
great storm of August 21, 1856.
REFERENCES
1. Trumbull, Benjamin. History of Connecticut. Maltby

Goldsmith & Co. New Haven, 1818.
2. Trumbull, J. Hammond (editor). Memorial History of Hartford
County. E. L. Osgood. Boston, 1886.
3. Andrews, Charles M. "The River Towns of Connecticut," in
Johns Hopkins University Studies, vn, 1-3, September, 1889.
Baltimore, 1889.
4. Love, Wm. De Loss. The Colonial History of Hartford.
Hartford, 1914.
5. Love, Wm. De Loss. "Hartford, the Keeper of Connecticut's
Charter," in Hartford in History, Willis J. Twitchell (editor).
Hartford, 1899.
6. Bates, Albert C. Article on "Charter Oak" in Encyclopoedia
Americana.
7. Hoadly, Charles J. The Hiding of the Charter. Case,
Lockwood & Brainard. Hartford, 1900.

TWO INDIAN WARRIORS
The two Indian chiefs of whom we hear most in the early history of
Connecticut were Uncas, sachem of the Mohegans, and Miantonomo,
sachem of the Narragansetts. A great Indian battle called the "Battle of
the Plain" took place once, near Norwich, between these rival tribes led
by these two rival chieftains.
The Mohegans were a part of the Pequot tribe, and the Pequots, or
"Gray Foxes," were the fiercest, most cruel, and warlike of all the
Indians who roamed through the forests of Connecticut before the
English came. The white settlers soon had trouble with them, and when
the Pequot War, which was a war between the settlers and the Indians,
began, in 1637, Uncas came with some of his Mohegan warriors and
offered to guide the English troops through the woods to the Pequot

fort.
Now Uncas was himself a Pequot by birth and belonged to the royal
family, and it seems strange that he should not take part with his own
people. But not long before this he had rebelled against the chief
sachem, Sassacus, and had tried to make himself independent. "He
grew proud and treacherous to the Pequot sachem," says the old
chronicle, "and the Pequot sachem was very angry and sent up some
soldiers and drove him out of his country." Afterward, when "he
humbled himself to the Pequot sachem, he received permission to live
in his own country again." But he was restless and dissatisfied. He was
said to be of great size and very strong; he was brave too, and had a
good deal of influence among the Indians. The settlers needed his help,
yet they were half afraid to trust him, knowing that he would be
"faithful to them as the jackal is faithful to the lion, not because it loves
the lion, but because it gains something by remaining in his company."
Before he would accept him as a guide, Lieutenant Lion Gardiner,
commander of the fort at Saybrook, said to him, "You say you will help
Captain Mason, but I will first see it; therefore send twenty men to Bass
River, for there went six Indians there in a canoe, fetch them, dead or
alive; and you shall go with Mason or else you shall not."
Uncas went off with his men and found these Indians. He killed four of
them and brought back another as a prisoner, and the colonists, feeling
more certain of his fidelity, took him with them on their expedition.
Miantonomo, the Narragansett sachem, did not go himself, but he sent
one hundred of his warriors, for he, too, hated the Pequots, who had
lately overrun the country and made themselves a terror to their
neighbors. The Narragansetts lived near them, just over the Rhode
Island border. They were a larger