Wequonnoc Reservation is the contested homeland of the Wequonnoc Nation near Three Rivers, Connecticut. In the novel, it is first evoked through a nearby cemetery that records the costs of dispossession and assimilation; later, the reservation becomes the site of federal recognition, tribal political planning, and the Wequonnoc Moon Casino and Resort. Its story links an old pattern of shrinking Indigenous land to a dramatic, though not uncomplicated, return of economic and political visibility.

Land and historical setting

The Indian cemetery abuts the sprawling grounds of Three Rivers State Hospital, on land once used by the Wequonnoc Nation for hunting and fishing. At its center stands a ten-foot pyramid of fist-sized stones commemorating Samuel, the Great Sachem. In the seventeenth century, Samuel fought neighboring Nipmucks, Pequots, and Narragansetts, then allied himself with white settlers. The narrator calls that alliance a grave mistake: Three Rivers was incorporated in 1653 and grew under a legal order controlled by white settlers, while the reservation steadily lost acreage and the tribe’s population dwindled.

The cemetery makes that history tangible without presenting it as a closed chapter. Its oldest stones, dating to the eighteenth century, have become so worn that reading them depends on sight and touch together. Other graves belong to people whose family names reflect assimilation; newer markers commemorate Wequonnoc veterans of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, and Korea. The final stone described is for Lonnie Peck, killed by sniper fire near Vinh Long in Vietnam in 1969. The sequence of graves places Indigenous lives within national military history while the shrinking cemetery and reservation testify to a loss of land that continued alongside that service.

Identity, public memory, and dispute

The reservation’s people are not simply absent from the town’s public story. In a history lesson, Mr. LoPresto presents Indigenous people as vanished and characterizes them through a hierarchy that places Western civilization above them. Ralph Drinkwater challenges the claim of disappearance by identifying himself as a full-blooded Wequonnoc Indian. Mr. LoPresto denies having used the word and sends Ralph to the office on a disciplinary referral. The narrator’s account complicates the exchange: he doubts Ralph’s claim of full-blooded identity, yet recognizes that the teacher did use the disputed word and has the wording in his notes.

That classroom scene echoes the cemetery’s longer record. The reservation and its people are first rendered in the language of loss, then made present by Ralph’s insistence that the Wequonnoc have not disappeared. The episode also shows how authority shapes which account is treated as legitimate: Ralph’s correction is met not with a discussion of the history but with discipline, while the teacher resumes the lesson from Ralph’s now-empty seat. The reservation therefore stands for more than a bounded piece of land; it is also the ground of an ongoing argument over who can name Indigenous history and whose presence counts as evidence.

Recognition and tribal plans

By the early 1990s, the narrator has read that the Wequonnocs won a case and received recognition from the federal government. He connects that legal victory to plans for a large casino and resort on the reservation, and later remarks on the architectural drawings and the prospect of outside investment. Ralph confirms his confidence in the project, although he does not answer the narrator’s questions about his own involvement in tribal politics. The exchange suggests the scale of the plans without specifying Ralph’s role in them.

The reservation’s political future also reaches beyond the casino site. After Three Rivers State Hospital is abandoned, its grounds—described as once belonging to the Wequonnoc Nation’s sacred hunting and fishing lands—may revert to the tribe for expansion. Tribal officials and Connecticut’s governor are negotiating over the possibility. The potential return of these grounds reverses, at least in prospect, the earlier movement of Indigenous land into state use. The account leaves the negotiations unresolved, but places the issue of land restoration alongside the tribe’s new federal recognition and economic plans.

A changing regional economy

The casino’s rise unfolds as the region’s older industrial base recedes. Electric Boat, a manufacturer of nuclear submarines and a major source of regional employment through much of the twentieth century, has laid off workers until its payroll is only a fraction of its former size. The narrator recalls that he and Thomas worked seasonal jobs for the Three Rivers Public Works Department after their first year at college; in the same period, Ray argued against paying twin tuition bills and suggested employment at Electric Boat, where some jobs carried deferments. Those details place family choices within an economy shaped by shipbuilding, military contracts, and limited options for young workers.

As the defense industry contracts, the gaming industry expands. During an earlier conversation, the narrator tells Thomas that the Wequonnocs have won their case and that the casino is expected to be enormous. Thomas responds by reciting a biblical image of a river of life. After a truck accident, the narrator sees a vision of gamblers streaming by car toward the casino, joining the project to questions of desire and what the future might bring. Separately, Leo argues that casino employment could become important if Electric Boat loses submarine contracts and lays off more workers. These moments show the casino entering local conversation first as a plan, then as an imagined source of jobs and a destination for people arriving from elsewhere.

The Wequonnoc Moon Casino and Resort opens in September 1992 and, over its first six years, exceeds even optimistic expectations. Expansion continues, and the complex of casinos and hotels rises in the woods off Route 22. It employs seventy-five thousand people, while cars and buses arrive day and night; planners consider bringing gamblers by ferry up the Sachem River from New York and by private high-speed railroad from Boston. The account concludes that the Wequonnoc Nation’s 415 members are millionaires. These figures mark a startling economic reversal from the earlier image of a reservation losing land and population, though the text also notes that the resort has champions and detractors.

Narrative significance

Wequonnoc Reservation gathers the book’s regional histories into one changing landscape: colonial settlement and land loss, the persistence of a people declared vanished, and a contemporary struggle for recognition and territorial expansion. The cemetery beside Three Rivers State Hospital preserves the human record of survival and dispossession; the casino’s growth makes tribal sovereignty visible in a form that transforms the local economy. Yet the possible return of the hospital grounds remains under negotiation, and the resort’s mixed reception prevents economic success from standing as a simple resolution. The reservation’s significance lies in that tension between historical dispossession and present-day claims to land, political standing, and a future shaped by the Wequonnoc Nation itself.