The Nipmuck Fishing Fires

BEFORE THE FIRST white settlers found their way into the rolling hills and quiet valleys of easternmost Connecticut, the Nipmuck Indians claimed the region's ample forests as their private hunting preserves and the teeming Quinebaug River, with all its tributaries, as their special fishing waters. Though they were a gentle people, the Nipmucks stood ever ready to protect this bountiful land which they knew the Great Spirit must have created for them alone. Especially were they vigilant for signs of the fierce and warlike Narragansetts, who often struck swiftly and stealthily from their territory to the south and east, in what today is the state of Rhode Island.
The central link in the Nipmuck security network was a fortified area atop a 625-foot height-of-land, only a mile or so from the center of what would one day be the town of Thompson. From the summit of this hill (now called "Fort Hill") the tribal lookouts commanded a fifty-mile view of the wooded slopes stretching away for nearly 300 degrees around the horizon. Other tribes found it difficult to mount a surprise attack on a people so well protected. However, according to a legend still known in the area today, neither their fine fortress on the hill nor all their strongest braves could save the Nipmucks from an eerie sort of Narragansett "attack," which the local tribe brought upon itself and which has continued, some say, to the present day.
Tradition holds that there once was a period when the Nipmucks and the Narragansetts were not blood enemies. It was not a time of perfect peace, perhaps, but there was a kind of truce, permitting interchange between the tribal neighbors and some sharing of hunting lands and fishing streams.
One day, during the height of this era of good feeling, a Nipmuck fishing party on the Quinebaug River met a group of Narragansett hunters heading home after a successful foray into the local forests. The Nipmucks, too, had enjoyed a splendid catch. They were especially proud of their plentiful supply of river eels, a creature they regarded as a great delicacy. On the spur of such a happy moment, the Nipmucks asked their Narragansett brothers whether they would like to join them in a feast. They could share some eels, pass the pipe around and maybe exchange some tips on hunting or fishing or raising maize. The Narragansetts would be delighted, they said.
Well, everything went smoothly through the first few courses. Good-natured banter accompanied the herbed mushrooms. Some outrageous hunting and fishing yarns were spun over the squirrel and rabbit stew. But when the Nipmuck braves proudly presented their famous baked eels to their guests from Rhode Island, all conversation abruptly halted. The eels, according to Nipmuck custom, had been cooked and served, undressed. The Narragansetts, to a brave, took one look at the steaming, unskinned eels -- and refused to touch them. Never, they said, should an eel be prepared in such a fashion. No Narragansett would think of serving an eel to a friend -- or even an enemy -- until it had been properly dressed.
Thus began an argument between the "dressed" and "undressed" factions which grew hotter and hotter. The Nipmucks were indignant at their guests' refusal to eat such good food, freely offered, while the Narragansetts insisted that their hosts' cooking was barbaric and insulting. As tempers rose, inhibitions dropped. Within a very short time, the happy feast turned into a general melee, with locals and visitors wrestling on the ground, grunting and groaning, as each side sought to convince the other of the superiority of its tribal cuisine.
Unfortunately, however, things quickly got out of hand. Some Nipmuck hothead split the skull of a Narragansett brave with his tomahawk. Another local Indian sliced a guest open with his filleting tool, then another, and another. Pretty soon, all of the usually benign Nipmucks were engaged in a murderous orgy. Before the killing ended, all but two members of the hapless Narragansett hunting party lay dead on the ground, surrounded by the remains of the controversial meal. Somehow, a couple of Narragansett hunters managed to escape the carnage and return home to Rhode Island to tell the incredible story. Not surprisingly, the Narragansetts vowed vengeance.
Once the bodies of the Narragansetts had been disposed of, the cool light of reason began to dawn on the Nipmuck fishermen. Since Indian belief held that any guest, even an enemy, must be treated with respect as long as he remained on the hosts' home ground, it was painfully obvious to the Nipmucks that they had broken a taboo which would invite the wrath of the Great Spirit.
What the Nipmuck fishing party did not expect, however, was what they got. On the very night of the fatal eel bake, and continuing from that time on, they witnessed an array of slowly moving blue and yellow lights hovering over the site of the massacre and up and down the length of the Quinebaug valley. These ghosts of the slaughtered Narragansetts, they feared, would haunt them forever. So a frenzy of guilt and supplication overcame the frightened Nipmucks. With beating drums and mournful cries, they confessed their terrible transgression to the Great Spirit -- and begged for mercy. Call off the glowing Narragansett phantoms haunting their fishing waters, they pleaded. But the Great Spirit was unmoved, and the eerie lights continued their dance of retribution for as long as the Nipmucks remained in the land.
Even after the white man came to the region, they say, the colonists heard the drums and chants of the Indians, sounding from time to time through the hills and valleys of northeastern Connecticut. Then did the settlers shutter their windows, bolt their doors and huddle close to their fireplaces, for they, too, had seen the ghostly fireballs swinging over the local wetlands -- and were afraid. Even today, some claim that the Nipmuck fishing fires burn every seven years, as the angry ghosts of the murdered Narragansetts still seek their Nipmuck killers.
Some skeptics, of course, explain the glowing lights along the Quinebaug as nothing more than "swamp fire," the result of gasses released by rotting vegetation. But for many others who now walk the land where once the Nipmucks roamed, the ghost fires are moving reminders of some Indians who came to dinner long ago and never left.

from Legendary Connecticut by David E. Philips / ISBN 1-880684-05-5 / $17.95

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