A TIME TO ‘REENGAGE’
Turtle Clan leaders, city officials connect on Stamford Day
STAMFORD — Chief Vincent Mann offered up a prayer, spoke briefly and sang a song in Mill River Park on Sunday as residents and local officials looked on during the city’s second-ever “Stamford Day” celebration.
Mann, the Turtle Clan chief of the Ramapough Lunaape Nation, explained to the attendees of the event, aimed at recognizing Stamford’s diversity, that he and members of his community are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the area.
Mann said he wanted the moment to serve as the “reintroduction” of his people to Stamford.
“I think that it is time right now for us to reengage the communities, which were our communities, our villages, prior to the settlers coming here,” Mann told the Stamford Advocate. “We really look forward to creating relationships and building that trust or respect and honor for each other. And that's what's really important to us.”
Mann, who lives in New Jersey, said he and his wife have been researching deed signings and the movement of their ancestors going back to the 1600s. As Katonah, a Ramapough chief, sold land to European settlers, their people gradually moved toward what are today known as the Ramapo Mountains, Mann said.
Mann said they traced from Katonah all the way back to a chief named Ponus — who, along with another chief, signed the original deed of Stamford in 1640.
It was “the first transaction between the representatives of
the New Haven Colony and the Indians of this area,” said Ron Marcus of the Stamford History Center. The purchase included land covering what today is Stamford, Darien and a western part of New Canaan as well as Pound Ridge and Bedford, N.Y.
Later on, “further documents were issued to reaffirm the claims of the English settlers,” Marcus said, and eventually, Stamford was “whittled down to what it is today.”
Lyda Ruijter, Stamford’s city and town clerk, said the original deed is now at the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, Mass., where it is being restored and preserved. The work will cost about $15,000.
“My office produces $7 million in revenue every year, and a very small part of that is dedicated to historical preservation,” Ruijter said. “And I decided to tap into that, and I got approval for that.”
Ruijter said she expects the deed to return to Stamford in the fall, and then there will be a “proper ceremony” with the Manns.
The original document will go into a vault, Ruijter said. She has also asked for two copies to be made. One will be framed and put on display, and the other will be given to the Manns.
The deed is a “kind of document that appeals to everybody’s imagination,” Ruijter said. “And it is timely in the sense that everybody is re-evaluating where we come from.”
Turtle Clan Mother Michaeline Picaro Mann said she took a trip to Stamford before Sunday’s event to meet Ruijter, who showed her a book of historical documents.
“For us, it was everything that we knew and everything that we heard orally. [It] was something that we could look at. It was tangible,” Picaro Mann said.
The Board of Representatives approved a resolution in 2019 declaring May 16 “Stamford Day.” It noted that May 16, 1641 is considered the date of Stamford’s founding.
The holiday was the brainchild of then-Rep. Steve Kolenberg and Rep. Bob Lion, D-19. The first-ever Stamford Day was marked by a small event at the government center. Last year, no event took place because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year, the Mayor’s Multicultural Council and the Mill River Park Collaborative sponsored an about three-hour event at the park that included music and dance performances, among other activities.
“The purpose of this event is to sort of celebrate the history and the diversity of the city today, so we're doing that through demonstrations and presentations and visuals and activities,” said Eva Weller, who chairs the Mayor’s Multicultural Council, ahead of Sunday’s event. “We're very excited about it because it's our first in-person event since COVID started.”