One of the important names of America's early history was the great chief of the Mohegan Indians, Uncas. Today, a great many people know the name Uncas from James Fenimore Cooper's book Last of the Mohicans, or the movie(s) of the same name, with the heroic young Indian Uncas and his father Chingachgook. This 18th century Uncas, of course, was fictional. The real Uncas was born in the late 1500s before his people had met white men.
Because of the growing amount of interaction between the European settlers and the Indians, Uncas, as the representative of a prominant tribe, and Thomas Stanton, as one of the most reliable interpreters, would have had frequent occassion to meet and form a relationship. Family legend says Uncas came to Stanton's house to sign and his will and have it witnessed. Stanton historian Jane Edmundson says there is no evidence that this event occurred.
However, in the words of John Whitman Davis, a decendant of Thomas Stanton and the President of the Stanton-Davis Homestead Museum, Inc.: "...they visited back and forth and they traded. And through his trading with them he had probably first came in contact with Uncas. And Thomas, through being the interpreter, was the one that he did business with and allied himself with, because Thomas had a lot of influence in the colonial legislature. He was powerful with the Indians and very important to the white people because they had to get along somehow.
"Because Uncas allied himself with the English he and Thomas became very close friends He trusted Uncas and Uncas trusted Thomas Stanton, and they each kept their word to each other which meant a lot."
The historical record has considerable proof of the role that Thomas Stanton and his family played in dealings between the Colonists and the Natives (Mohegans, Pequots, Narragansetts, and more) and their many meetings with Uncas.
Some of the interactions were small and apparently trivial: In 1651, Uncus complained about James Meuis who taking away a Mohegan canoe which he sold to a Long Island Indian. The Mohegans took it back but Meius is ordered to pay Thomas Stanton 9 shillings which was to be given to the Indian on Long Island for compensation.
Some of the interactions were of paramount importance for the Colonists to tread their way through complexities of warfare between the tribes and the spillover to various uprisings by those factions antagonistic to the Colonists. For example, in 1669: Thomas Stanton at Stonington wrote to Major Mason at Norwich about an extensive conspiracy among many tribes of Indians, to rise and cut off the English, etc. and gave many particulars. Testimony by John Gallop and John Stanton stated that the Pequots are discontented and that Pequot Daniel said that the supposed plot is all a trick of Uncas to get the Pequots in trouble. (Indian Papers).
This important relationship unites the history of the Colonists and the Connecticut Native tribes under the one roof of the Stanton-Davis Homestead.
1 Spoken by Whit Davis as part of the documentary "The Mark of Uncas" produced by Simon Pure Productions in 2002. This documentary was narrated by actor Eric Schweig, who played the character of Uncas in the 1992 movie "Last of the Mohicans" and included and interview with actor and Native activist Russell Means (Chingachgook, father to Schweig's Uncas in the same movie).
2 Records of the Particular Court of Connecticut 1639-1663. Albert C. Bates, Editor. Hartford : The Connecticut State Historical Society and the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Connecticut, 1928.
