The location of Wood Memorial Library & Museum, on a knoll above the South Windsor meadows makes it a natural repository for Indian Artifacts. Since the mid-19th century, the meadows have been recognized as a prime area for picking up relics of the past. The Wood is home to more than 20,000 Native American artifacts, which include axes, drill points, weapons, pipes, hoes, bowls and more. These tools are made of materials such as basalt, flint, quartz and soapstone. 
Items in the Ellsworth/Jennings/Sperry Collection were picked up on the Connecticut River flood plain in South Windsor, where several generations of one family farmed. These artifacts are supplemented by ones from New York State, Ohio and Indiana where collectors traveled. These 19th century additions from the mid-west are of legitimate interest to this collection, as other finds in this 
same area of flood plain have included Adena and other mid-western materials as well as copper beads from Michigan. The collection ranges from fluted and bifurcate points of the late Paleo and early Archaic Periods, some 8,000 years ago, to late Woodland tools from the time of European contact.
Two chests display part of the Barney E. Daley Family Collection, a selection of more than 5,000 artifacts picked up over a half century of surface-hunting in the South Windsor meadows (Connecticut River flood plain). One is located in the Native American Museum Room and the other in the elevator lobby, both on the 2nd floor.
The Podunk Village Diorama depicts life in the early 1600s. The Podunk were an indigenous people of the Woodland time period, who lived in an area that is now South Windsor, East Hartford, Manchester and Bolton, and parts of East Windsor, Ellington and Glastonbury. The name Podunk is of Algonquian origin, meaning “where you sink in mire” or “boggy.” Woodland culture is characterized by the practices of limited horticulture, specifically growing corn, beans, and squash (known as the “three sisters”), and the making of pottery. Villages were located near a source of water: spring, pond, stream or river. Summer lodges were built in the floodplain, for level land that was fertile for growing crops and the close proximity to fish. The river was also used for drinking, cooking, washing and travel. Plant life grew on its banks and attracted wildlife. In winter months, the Podunk moved inland. Learn more about our Nowashe Village and the educational programs we offer about the lifeways of the local indigenous people, commonly known as the Podunk or Nowass tribe.