“What’s In A Name?” Part V: Brotherton: Something Old, Something [They] Knew

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Brad Jarvis, brotherton, Brothertown, Brothertown Indians, brothertown new york, Craig Cipolla

Just as it is difficult to know with 100% certainty exactly how Occom and our ancestors pronounced and defined “Eeyawquittoowauconnuck”, so too, it is difficult to know exactly why they named their town “Brotherton” or precisely what that name reflected for them.   However, by looking at the writings of our founders and viewing other communities and documents from the same area and time period, modern day scholars have made some well-educated guesses as to where the name Brothertown came from, what it may have meant to our Tribal Founders, and how it was used throughout our time in New York.

On Dartmouth’s Occom Circle site, it states, “They named the land Brothertown to both reflect their intention to live with fellow tribes as brothers and also to pay tribute to Brotherton, a Delaware Indian reservation in New Jersey that served as an inspiration for the Christian Indian Settlement (1).”  That Occom knew about this community is likely.  That the Brotherton Indians of New Jersey moved to Oneida lands in New York in the early 1800’s is unquestionable(2).  However, any substantiation to the claim that Occom’s Brotherton was named in tribute to this community has proven elusive thus far.   Many scholars have looked elsewhere for explanations on the origins of the name “Brothertown”.

Author Brad Jarvis sees the choice of the name “Brothertown” as a reflection of how our founders viewed their new community.  “Symbolic of the proposed internal cohesion of the town’s new name, the residents, “concluded to live in peace, and in friendship and to go on in all [their] public concerns in harmony; both in religious and temporal concerns, and every one to bear his part of Public Charges in the Town (3).”  Jarvis offers another glimpse of how the early Brothertown people saw their community, as well as the boundaries and racism they experienced outside of it, through a 1795 interview conducted by some Quaker ministers.  An unidentified Brotherton man told them that he, “hoped the partition wall that divided nations would be broken down, bigotry and prejudice done away, and all mankind come to live more like brothers.”  “Such language,” Jarvis comments, “reflected the founding principles of Brothertown-a community defined by Christian brotherhood, kinship, and mutual partnership (p 149) (4).”

In his book, Becoming Brothertown:  Native American Ethnogenesis and Endurance in the Modern World, Craig Cipolla describes Occom’s view of Brothertown as being “a community linked by shared religious views and approaches to the politics of colonial North America (p 53).”  He points out that the name “Brothertown” accomplished two important things:  1) It was relatable both to Natives, where “brother” or “brethren” denoted Native kinship, and to Euro-Americans who saw it in terms of Christian brotherhood.  2) The name also gave our ancestors a commonality.  They were no longer, “Narragansett, Mohegan, Montauk, etc, but were now “Brotherton”(p64ff).   In this book, Cipolla also looks at usage of the term ‘Brothertown” in the 18^th and 19^th centuries and compares how it was viewed by Euro-Americans as opposed to the Brotherton themselves.  In short, Euro-Americans tended to place more emphasis on Brothertown being a location or a “town” while the Brotherton people used the name to “mark shared ethnic and racial identities (p63)”.

While there may be differing theories as to where the idea for the name of Brothertown originated and what exactly it may have meant to our founders, there is little doubt of the hopes that this new community held for its people.  As they themselves have said across multiple decades, Brothertown was meant to be a shining example of peace, friendship and harmony; a place where bigotry, prejudice and walls of division would no longer exist and where we all would live like brothers.

~to be continued.

(1) http://collections.dartmouth.edu/occom/html/ctx/placeography/placeography.html?ographyID=place0023.ocp

(2) https://brothertowncitizen.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/bartholomew-scott-calvin-article-by-caroline-k-andler.pdf)

(3)Jarvis, Brad. The Brothertown Nation of Indians, p 115.

(4) Ibid, p 119

Note: If you are interested in exploring how the name “Brothertown” has changed in usage and meaning over the years, please see Craig Cipolla’s book, Becoming Brothertown:  Native American Ethnogenesis and Endurance in the Modern World, chapter 4.

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“What’s In A Name?” Part IV: Happy Eeyawquittoowauconnuck Day!

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brotherton, Brothertown, eeyamquittoowauconnuck, Eeyawquittoowauconnuck, native american tribes of new york, native american tribes of wisconsin, New York Indians, november 7 1785, Samson Occom

Today, November 7, 2017, marks the 232^nd anniversary of the “incorporation” and naming of Brothertown.  On Monday November 7, 1785, Occom noted in his journal that, “we named our town by the name of Brotherton, in Indian Eeyawquittoowauconnuck.”  By virtue of the fact that Occom included this “Indian” name in his journal, we can make the assumption that this detail was important.  However, while we know that Eeyawquittoowauconnuck means “Brotherton”, ideas vary a bit on exactly how Eeyawquittoowauconnuck would be translated.

In his book, Becoming Brothertown:  Native American Ethnogenesis and Endurance in the Modern World, Craig Cipolla makes the claim that Eeyawquittowauconnuck means “town or plantation of equals or brothers,” or “many eat from one dish” (p95).  In The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan, Joanna Brooks quotes Stephanie Fielding (great great great niece of Mohegan linguist Fidelia Fielding*) who “believes that [it] translates as “he does so like someone looking in a certain direction or a certain way.”  Phrased differently, this meaning might indicate a group united by a distinctive shared perspective” (p 25, footnote).

While the proffered translations may not be exact and are each a little different, Eeyawquittoowauconnuck reflected the desire of its founders that it be a distinct place where inhabitants with a common vantage point were bonded to one another within a caring community.

…..to be continued.

* ling.yale.edu/news/Stephanie-fielding-interviewed-wnpr

What’s In A Name Part III: “The E-Word”

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BIN, brotherton, Brothertown, Brothertown Indians, eeyamquittoowauconnuck, Eeyawquittoowauconnuck, New York Indians, Samson Occom

“The E-word”

Daunted by its 22 letters and 7 syllables, some people simply refer to it as “the E-word”.   However, Eeyawquittoowauconnuck is not just a word; it is a name.  It is our name; one that holds meaning and value for us as a People.  For those who are not already comfortable using it, it is well worth taking a few minutes to become more familiar with “Eeyawquittoowauconnuck”*.

For the sake of ease, let’s start by dividing Eeyawquittoowauconnuck into 7 manageable syllables.  They look like this:

• Ee
• Yaw
• quit
• too
• wau
• con
• nuck

Now, lets pronounce them*.  Try saying these out loud:

“Ee” (pronounced just like it looks…like the long sound of the letter “e” as in “me”)–Ee

“Yaw” (rhyme it with “paw”)–Yaw

Next, put those 2 together:  “Ee”+“Yaw”= “Eeyaw”.

Say it out loud so your tongue and ears get used to it.

Next, is

“quit”(pronounce it with a long “ee” sound in the middle so it rhymes with “tweet”)—quit

“too”(also like the English word too)—too

Now put them together and say them out loud.  “quit”+”too”=“quittoo”.

Let’s go back and pick up the first part and pair it with this:  “Eeyaw” + “quittoo”=“Eeyawquittoo”

Good job, we’re almost done!

The next 3 syllables are:

“wau” (rhyme it with “la”)—wau

“con” (like the English word con)—con

“nuck” (rhymes with truck)—nuck

Now, put those 3 together:  “wau”+”con”+”nuck”=“wauconnuck”.  Say it again, “wauconnuck”.

Finally, lets put the entire word back together: “Eeyawquittoo”+”wauconnuck”=”Eeyawquittoowauconnuck”. 

Congratulations, you did it!  Now keep using it.  Try it out at the next Brothertown gathering, teach it to your kids, greet one another with it.  Eeyawquittoowauconnuck is who we are.  Say it often and say it proudly: Eeyawquittoowauconnuck!

UPDATE WITH AUDIO:

*It should be noted that the above pronunciation of “Eeyawquittoowauconnuck” is based on the author’s personal estimation of Occom’s spelling of the word as found in his journal entry of November 7, 1785.  Occom had a strong grasp of the phonetic sounds of English letters and wrote the name accordingly.  The author acknowledges that there is, however, some room for variation.  For example, the double o’s in the 4^th syllable, “too,” suggest that Occom heard it as either the “oo” sound as in “too”(as presented here) or possibly, the “Uh” sound as in “book”.   Mohegan linquist, Stephanie Fielding, suggests that Eeyawquittoowauconnuck, in Mohegan orthography today, might be spelled “Iyáhqituwôkanuk”(1).  Using the Mohegan pronunciation guide(2), as found in Fielding’s work at http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/collections/MoheganDictionary.pdf, the pronunciation of this 4th syllable (“too”/”tu”), might change the sound into “uh” as in “pup”.

• Brooks, Joanna. The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan. p25, Footnote 28.
• Fielding, Stephanie. A Modern Mohegan Dictionary, 2006, pp 9-10.