The Lost Tribe?

By Viveca Novak and Mark Thompson

He calls himself Chief Quiet Hawk, and true to his name, he usually answers questions by fax. But on this day he is visiting Washington to press the case of his people, and he has agreed to meet at a restaurant favored by lobbyists, just a block from the White House. A solidly built man in a dark business suit, Quiet Hawk--born 55 years ago as Aurelius Piper--picks at a salad and steak as he explains his crusade to win federal recognition as an Indian tribe for himself and his 324 followers, most from the area around Bridgeport, Conn. "I'm trying," he says, "to get the best possible deal for the tribe to live out its culture and heritage."

And what would he and his followers do if they won Washington's seal of approval? They would seek return of some of their ancestral lands, he says, on which they would establish a museum and model village. And that's not all. "We're talking," he adds, "about having the largest casino in the world."

Three times over the past five years, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs has rejected the petitions of Quiet Hawk and his followers, ruling that they failed to demonstrate sufficient links to the Golden Hill Paugussett tribe from which they claim to be descended. The ancestral Paugussetts were hunting and fishing around Bridgeport when the first English settlers arrived in the 1600s, but their numbers had dwindled by the late 1800s. Despite his setbacks, Quiet Hawk, a former social worker who now labors full time on his crusade, has persisted--and has persuaded the BIA to take an unusual fourth look at his group's appeal for recognition.

Billions of dollars are riding on the decision, expected by midyear. With federal recognition, Quiet Hawk's Paugussetts--factory and government workers, small-business owners and retirees--would become, in many respects, a sovereign nation and could, with the state's approval, open their casino. And not just any casino. Their preferred site would be on the Bridgeport waterfront--only 55 miles from New York City, and even nearer to the city's wealthy northern suburbs.

Profits, gambling experts say, would be at least $1 million a day. Connecticut's two existing Indian casinos have already proved the potential. The Foxwoods casino, hard by the Rhode Island border and run by the Mashantucket Pequot tribe, is the largest-grossing gambling complex in the world. The Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, run by the Mohegan tribe, announced plans earlier this month for an $800 million expansion, including a 40-story hotel.

"There's a substantial market there, a good market," says Thomas Wilmot, a Rochester, N.Y., real estate developer. He has invested more than $4 million underwriting the lawyers, genealogists and historians who are helping make the case for federal recognition of the Quiet Hawk group. Wilmot says he will build and manage the casino if the Paugussetts get the go-ahead.

The pride of claiming Native American lineage--as almost 2 million Americans did in the 1990 Census--has been joined by a big practical benefit since passage of the Indian Gaming Act in 1988. Today there are 198 tribes with some sort of gaming on their reservations. Some use the resulting income for community development, education and investment. Others simply make big payouts to their members. The Shakopee, a small Minnesota tribe, writes checks for as much as $700,000 to each of its adult members every year. This kind of jackpot has attracted a host of non-Indian investors, willing to put up millions of dollars to back would-be Indian tribes in their attempts to win federal recognition.

"Ever since we allowed Indians to have gaming, we have made them into wonderful bets for big-money interests," says Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican who opposes the Quiet Hawk group's efforts. His district includes much of the land entangled in what he calls the group's "bogus" land claims, which sweep across much of western Connecticut, including land occupied by Bridgeport city hall, Trumbull town hall, the headquarters of People's Bank and hundreds of private homes. Quiet Hawk retorts that the casino issue came up long after his group began its quest for recognition and real estate--which by now includes land claims filed on about 1,000 acres of Connecticut.

Quiet Hawk's Paugussetts have long been recognized as a tribe by the state of Connecticut, but that status required scant proof of lineage and carries few benefits. Only 10 of the modern Paugussetts live on the group's two reservations: a quarter-acre lot in the town of Trumbull and 106 acres in Colchester. There a metal gate blocks the gravel drive, and a NO TRESPASSING sign bars the curious from visiting the two mobile homes inside. A mailbox reads GOLDEN HILL RES.

What's at issue is not whether the Golden Hill Paugussetts ever existed as a tribe, but whether Quiet Hawk's group is descended from them as a tribe. Historical documents show that as early as 1639 the Paugussetts asked the Governor of Massachusetts to help them recover "squaws" taken into slavery by English settlers. At that time the tribe numbered about 800 members, who fished the Housatonic and Naugatuck rivers and cultivated corn and other vegetables. Sun worshippers, they prayed to the east every morning. Many Paugussetts died fighting in the 1637 Pequot War against the English. After that war, much of their land was sold or taken away. By 1875 the Paugussetts had only a quarter-acre left, and the tribe had greatly dispersed.

Quiet Hawk's people claim to be descended from a man named William Sherman, who they say was a member of the original Paugussett tribe. Sherman was born in New York in 1825 and spent his youth whaling before arriving in Trumbull at age 32. It was he who bought the quarter-acre lot in 1875 and preserved it as the tribe's then only reservation. Sherman's race in the 1880 Census was listed as "Indian." He was identified as a Paugussett in his newspaper obituary in 1886, and in two books published shortly before he died.

Officials at the BIA, however, found that Sherman "has not been documented conclusively to have Indian ancestry." Beyond that, the agency said, the claim that Quiet Hawk's group had descended from a single individual barred it from federal recognition, "which requires ancestry as a tribe, not simply Indian ancestry."

The BIA says it found no records identifying Sherman as an Indian earlier than an 1870 Census cited by the Quiet Hawk group. "In 1850 and 1860, he was identified as non-Indian" by federal census takers, the BIA said. "On some records, such as those of his marriage and the births of some of his children," the BIA said, "he was specifically identified as non-Indian." There was "no documentation" of Sherman's parents, and his personal journal "made no reference to his being Indian or associating with Indians." In addition, the agency said, "considerable documentation" uncovered by BIA researchers indicated that Sherman "did not live in tribal relations during his lifetime and was closely associated with demonstrably a non-Indian Sherman family."

Quiet Hawk and many of his followers appear more African American than Native American, and he and others, including the Connecticut N.A.A.C.P., have suggested that racial prejudice has played a role in opposition to his efforts. Quiet Hawk's mother was black, but even before he was born, many members of the tribe had intermarried with African Americans, in a pattern that historians say is not unusual among northeastern tribes, dating back to the era when they sheltered runaway slaves.

The woman who drafted the first two BIA rulings says they were decided on the merits of the evidence. "I am proud of being an Indian, and it bothers me when non-Indians, for whatever reason, try to be recognized as a tribe," said Kay Davis, a Chippewa Indian no longer with the agency. "It wasn't even a close call. We had no documentation, other than from a few secondary sources, that they were Indian." Davis added that "I think these people really believed" they were a tribe. "I really wanted to find positively for them, but I couldn't."

Davis says that when she worked on the petition of Quiet Hawk's Paugussetts, she received three threatening phone calls. "You'd better find right!" a male voice would say before hanging up. One night an unknown man followed her home; twice the doors to her residence were jimmied, although nothing was taken, she says. One night before going home, Davis says she noticed that two Paugussett files were missing from her cabinet. Then one day, according to Davis, after a tense meeting with members of the Quiet Hawk group, Davis and a woman colleague were victims of an apparent booby trap in a BIA restroom, where a can of Mace had been rigged to a paper-towel dispenser. "We went out of the bathroom coughing," Davis says. "I think it was a scare tactic." No perpetrators were ever identified by government agents who investigated the incidents, Davis says. Quiet Hawk says he "greatly resents" any suggestion that his group had any role in harassing Davis, calling the idea "absurd."

When Quiet Hawk and his group won a fourth hearing for their claims last May, some wondered if the band had more political pull than did other applicants. Federal records show that Wilmot, the developer backing the Quiet Hawk group, has contributed nearly $100,000 over the past five years to the Democratic National Committee and individual Democratic politicians. Wilmot has given $3,000 to the re-election efforts of Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, the ranking Democrat on the Indian Affairs committee, since 1995, when the Senator wrote to BIA to complain about its treatment of the Quiet Hawk group. Both Wilmot and staff members for Inouye deny any connection between the donations and the Senator's actions. Wilmot was host for a $1,000-a-person cocktail party-fund raiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate bid at his Rochester home three weeks ago, bringing in about $50,000.

Wilmot and Quiet Hawk's Paugussetts also have friends in high places in the tightly knit world of government-Indian relations. Kevin Gover, who counted Quiet Hawk's tribe among his clients when he practiced law, is Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs. Back in 1996, Gover had helped coordinate the Clinton-Gore campaign's outreach to Native Americans. During the campaign, Gover wrote memos urging the White House to pay special attention to supporters, noting that "the tribes have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the D.N.C. and Democratic campaigns." In 1997 President Clinton named Gover, a Pawnee Indian, to the Indian Affairs post. In June 1998 Gover was given the Quiet Hawk group's appeal of the agency's latest rejection of its petition. Gover recused himself and assigned the matter to his deputy, Michael Anderson, a political appointee, who ordered a full review of the petition.

"We were disappointed and surprised that the initial decision was, in effect, reversed," says Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general who opposed federal recognition of the tribe. But other Connecticut officials say that if Quiet Hawk's Paugussetts win federal recognition and then agree to drop their pending land claims, Connecticut would probably agree to give the tribe land for its casino and reservation.

Quiet Hawk believes his group's efforts to develop the Bridgeport waterfront should be welcomed by all. "This would help the city," he says. "It would help the state, the poor and the minorities." Including, of course, the chief and his followers.