Word: pequots
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Profits, gambling experts say, would be at least $1 million a day. Connecticut's two existing Indian casinos have already proved the potential. The Foxwoods casino, hard by the Rhode Island border and run by the Mashantucket Pequot tribe, is the largest-grossing gambling complex in the world. The Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, run by the Mohegan tribe, announced plans earlier this month for an $800 million expansion, including a 40-story hotel...
...wonders, though, what the motivation is for recapturing indigenous identity, and how this motivation might be different without the presence of the gaming industry on the rez. It would be highly disingenous, no doubt, to say that Mashantucket Pequot identity is premised solely upon economic incentive. But at the same time, for many of those who have moved back to the reservation after years away or for those, like Regina Kirchner, who have little direct knowledge of their indigenous heritage, it is hard to posit much in terms of their motivation aside from enlarged economic opportunity...
...Mashantucket Pequot reservation, home of the elder statesman of Indian casinos, Foxwoods, Trump is not a popular man. His lawsuit against the government in 1993 charging preferential treatment for American Indians was, at least implicitly, an attack against Foxwoods, which is now the largest casino in the world. So, some speculate, were his comments about the ethnic appearance of his competition. Indeed, there hasn't been a full-blooded Pequot since the turn of the century; members only have to prove they are one-sixteenth Pequot to be admitted to the tribe. Not that they don't try to make...
...Pequot War in 1637. Across the river, the Mohegan tribe's casino, Mohegan Sun, "the casino is separated into four quadrants, each featuring its own seasonal theme--Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall--highlighting the importance of seasonal changes to Mohegan life." Revenue at the "Trading Cove" gift shop rises and falls with the seasons, no doubt...
...That said, the two Connecticut tribes that have parlayed their sovereignty into gambling fortunes at least have the historical credentials. Back in the day, the Pequots and Mohegans fought on opposing sides during the Pequot War. Soon-to-be Harvard President Increase Mather, in his 1677 history "A Relation of the Troubles which have hapned in New-England, By reason of the Indians there," recounts that the Mohegans, newly splintered from the Pequots, sided with the English. In return, after the English victory the Mohegans Sachem got a share of the spoils, human booty. "Then were there granted to Uncas...