Cushoy, Tyke (Mary), - 1771

Tyke (alias Mary Cushoy, Asquasuttock) was the wife of the Wangunk leader Cushoy.  She was the daughter of  Massecump (d. c. 1712), the Narragansett who had lived among the Wangunk in the seventeenth century, and granddaughter of the Narragansett leader Miantonomo and his wife Warwarme. 

 

Tyke held a leadership position within the Wangunk community as a sunksqua.  In fact, another name associated with her, Asquasuttock, may reflect that status, as it bears a remarkable similarity to the alternative name of Mary Mamaho, an Eastern Pequot leader of another generation, who was also called Oskoosooduck.

 

After the death of her husband, Tyke and her three children and another unnamed woman were the last to live on the Wangunk reservation before it was sold.  In her later life, blind and infirm, she was supported by the selectmen of Middletown, who later reimbursed themselves with proceeds from the sale of the tribal reservation.  

 

NNRC Research Notes.  Barrett, "Indian Proprietors of Mattebeseck and Their Descendants.  Wangunk, Wikipedia. Hermes and Maravel, "The Wangunk Tribal Communities of the Lower Connecticut River Valley," Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Connecticut (2017) 79: 95–109.