Paugusset

Member of an American Indian people who live in Connecticut. They are descended from the Pequannock, one of the five Algonquian-speaking tribes that comprised the Paugussett Confederation, a 17th-century alliance formed against the encroachment of European settlement. A farming and hunting people, they also traded with the Dutch until excluded by Iroquois–Dutch trading agreements. Much of their land was taken by white settlers, and wars, disease, and poverty severely reduced the population. The Paugussett now live on two reservations in Connecticut, and number about 120 (1994) in that state.

The Paugussett were allotted Golden Hill, an 80-acre reservation in Connecticut, in 1659, and became known as the Golden Hill Indians or Paugussett even though the land was later retracted. Their remaining reservations are a 1,018-sq m/1/4-acre plot in Trumbull, the smallest Indian reservation on record; and a 43-ha/107-acre reservation in Colchester.