Mashantucket Ethnohistory Project “Before the ethnohistory project, I think Pequot history was only known to the Pequots,” says archaeologist Dr. Kevin McBride.  “What we, the non-Pequot community, knew about Pequot history was the Pequot War.  To read all the history books, you’d think the Pequots became extinct.” Dr. McBride has led the Pequot ethnohistory project since 1983, when tribal leaders contacted him at the University of Connecticut and invited him to conduct the first archaeological survey ever made at Mashantucket.  What began as a modest effort has been growing ever since, and this small reservation has become a vital center for the study of New England Native cultures. “The more we dig, the more we discover,” says Dr. McBride.  “The record that’s around the Great Cedar Swamp and on the Mashantucket Reservation is truly remarkable.  It documents a continuous presence of native people from 10,000 years ago to the present.  Within a quarter-mile of this museum we probably have more than 200 archeological sites and counting.  We have 10,000 year old hunting camps.  We have some of the earliest documented Native housing.  We have dozens of Pequot farmsteads from the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s and early-1900s.  One of the reasons the, the archeological sites around the Reservation are so important is they’re undisturbed.  Europeans didn’t build here on the Reservation.” For Dr. McBride, helping to uncover the Pequots’ past has been an eye-opening experience.  “I grew up around here, and all I knew about the Pequots was that they lived down the road.  In fact, I knew very little about the tribe, I’m sorry to say, until I met [former Tribal Chairman] Skip Hayward and I became more actively involved.  Before then I was clueless, in spite of the fact that I was a professional making my livelihood from learning about and teaching about Native people.  I had no idea what was – almost literally – right here in my own backyard.