Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center

By the 1960s, generations of poverty had forced most of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe to leave their 214-acre reservation in search of adequate jobs and housing. For the handful of Pequots who remained at Mashantucket, the land was an important part of tribal identity. Yet the threat of losing that land was very real—Connecticut authorities in the 1960s were making plans to turn the reservation into a state park.

Only one thing stood between the State of Connecticut and its plan to take over the last piece of reservation land: the determination of three elderly women not to let go. Alice Brend, Martha Langevin and Elizabeth George were half-sisters, born and raised at Mashantucket early in the century. They had no political or economic power, but as long as they were alive, these three women could frustrate every outside effort to assert authority over Pequot tribal rights.

“They were going to fight to hold onto the land," recalls tribal member Bruce Kirchner. “They were proud of their heritage, they were very knowledgeable of the history of the tribe, and I think they were well aware of what they had to do.”

Alice Brend

Alice Brend left the reservation as an adult to raise her family in better circumstances, but she returned to Mashantucket in her later years. Alice’s attempt to move a trailer onto tribal land brought her in conflict with local authorities, and her refusal to accept their jurisdiction centered on a critical question: did local authorities have the legal right to decide what the Pequots could do on their own land? “She had to get a lawyer, she had to go to the papers,” says grandson Bruce Kirchner. “She won that battle, and I think that was very important to the tribe at that time.”

Martha Langevin

Martha Langevin spent her entire life at Mashantucket, and those who were close to her remember a woman who was as rugged as the backwoods she called home. “She was a feisty thing when she got upset,” recalls Martha’s grand-niece Charlene Jones. “She used to carry around a shotgun, and she wasn't afraid to use it.” Along with her sister Elizabeth, Martha lived mostly off the land, growing fruits and vegetables, and gathering wild berries, nuts, and other edible plants. Both women also supplemented their incomes by working in the neighboring community. But in her old age, it became more difficult for Martha to manage on her own. Unable to keep up with repairs, she was forced to abandon her old house for a second-hand trailer with a leaky roof. “I worked with her to re-cover her trailer so it wouldn’t leak,” recalls grand-nephew and future Tribal Chairman Skip Hayward. “I remember the state overseer coming by and scolding this old woman like she was a child for doing any of this without their permission. It was one of the most humiliating things that I’ve ever seen anybody put through, and right then it just set off a fire inside of me.” This incident struck a deep chord in the young man who would later lead the Pequots to federal recognition and to the return of lost tribal lands.

Elizabeth George

Elizabeth George was the hub of the extended family and the most active in resisting attempts by state authorities to encroach on what she passionately believed was sovereign Indian land. “She always said, ‘Hold on to your land, and get our land back,’” remembers granddaughter Theresa Hayward Bell. “People would be surveying our land, and she’d send me up the road to rip out all the surveying stakes. And she did go down there when they brought in bulldozers, and stood right in the road. Men stopped working because she said, ‘You’re not going to plow up this ground. This is mine.’” In the last years of her own life, Elizabeth George saw how urgent it was that a younger generation carry on the struggle. “She urged all of us to come home,” says Charlene Jones, another of Elizabeth’s granddaughters. “She didn’t care what it took for us to get home—to get home and stay there because once she was gone there would be no more land... and without your land, you lost your identity.” “If it hadn’t been for my grandmother’s tenacity,” says Skip Hayward, “and her perseverance living here on the reservation—I don’t think it would be here for us today. I give her all the credit.”

Alice Brend
Alice Brend, shown at left as a child, war born and raised at Mashantucket in a time when many of the old traditions were still alive. In her old age, Alice fought a legal battle with the town of Ledyard that was seen as pivotal in the Pequots’ struggle for independence.

Martha Langevin

Martha Langevin, shown at left next to her father and others, lived at Mashantucket all her life, leaving at times for seasonal work in area communities. She had a reputation not only as a skilled gardener, but also as an expert with a rifle, able to shoot the head off a snake.

Elizabeth George
Elizabeth George loved the landscape of Mashantucket, in particular Lantern Hill. She taught her grandchildren the importance of the land and its central role in Pequot history and identity, and encouraged Pequots to live on tribal land.