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TRIBAL GAMBLE: THE SERIES

Day One, 12/10/00
Casino boom benefits non-Indians

The $800 million deal for outsiders at Mohegan Sun

Day Two, 12/11/00
Few tribes share in casino windfall

Gaming success helps tribe gain community acceptance

California tribes hit the jackpot with gaming vote

Day Three, 12/12/00
It's a war of genealogies

Lineage questions linger as gaming wealth grows

Tribes scramble to get into the game

Day Four, 12/13/00
Tribes make easy criminal targets

Trump plays both sides in casino bids

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By Ellen Barry, Globe Staff, 12/12/2000

EDYARD, Conn. - Andrew Leon moved East from Montana's frontier country two years ago, but on a dark, rainy night in Connecticut recently, he felt right at home.

The scene was an appearance by Jeff Benedict, who became a hero in Ledyard this spring when he published ''Without Reservation,'' which accused the Mashantucket Pequots of faking their lineage. Some 900 townspeople packed the high school auditorium to cheer Benedict during a three-hour meeting in September that crackled with tension.

As she filed out, Eleanor Drake of Preston held her copy of ''Without Reservation'' and expressed the fervent wish that the author run for president.

Something about the scene reminded Leon of his home on the range.

''They're on one side or the other,'' Leon said, looking around. ''They're either Indians or they're cowboys.''

Over the last 20 years, the relationship between the Mashantuckets and their neighbors in the Connecticut towns of Preston, Ledyard, and North Stonington has grown steadily uglier - so ugly that this fall, lawmakers offered to bring in former US Senator George Mitchell, who brokered the Good Friday Peace Accords in Northern Ireland, to mediate between the groups. While the towns' chief battle - keeping more of their taxable land base from being absorbed into the reservation - has been played out in courtrooms, the rift has made itself felt in everyday life.

With the tribal-run Foxwoods casino bringing in estimated yearly revenues of $1.3 billion, the Mashantucket Pequots - who number around 600 - are taking home bulging checks every year. The tribe did not divulge the amount of the checks, but one tribal officialsaid he receives more than $200,000 ''in incentive pay'' in addition to his $200,000 tribal salary.

For those who criticize Indian gambling and Indian reservations in general, this Connecticut community shows what can go wrong when neighbors find that they have two sets of rights. And if there is going to be a grassroots movement against Indian gaming, critics say, it will start in Connecticut, where small tribes have become very rich, and the threat of land claims which has loomed over homeowners for a decade.

''To my way of thinking, they're kind of an emblem of what's wrong with the whole operation,'' said Peter Gass, an attorney with Upstate Citizens for Equality, a group of New York homeowners organized to fight land claims. ''In the 1980s, if someone said `Indian' people would think of a picture of a guy with a tear running down his face, caring for the environment. If you say Indians now they think of casinos.''

In the 1970s, the Mashantuckets were some of this area's poorest people. Only one woman, Elizabeth George, remained on the reservation full-time, and her death in 1973 left the tribe's future in doubt. It was her grandson, Skip Hayward, who gathered relatives to embark on businesses - a pizza shop, then a hydroponic lettuce farm, then a bingo hall. But Hayward's central dream was the casino that has made the Mashantuckets the richest tribe in the world.

Defenders of the casino say Foxwoods has saved southeastern Connecticut from an economic hemhorrage. According to a report issued last month by the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, the casino raised the state's gross domestic product by $1.2 billion.

Relations between the town and the tribe have been rubbed raw since Benedict's book came out. On the night in September when Benedict climbed onto the stage at Ledyard High School, the pent-up frustrations of a whole community were on display. At one point, Rita Sebastian, whose husband and child are enrolled in the tribe, lashed out at school officials for allowing Benedict to attack Indians in public space.

''I just want whoever it is, I want to let them know that it is a slap in the face to every tribal member and every tribal child,'' she said.

But townspeople hail Benedict for bringing into the open their lingering suspicion that the Mashantucket Pequots were - as 24-year-old Greg Lindner, a Ledyard volunteer firefighter, put it - ''a shake-and-bake and fabricated tribe.'' For many who knew members of the tribe before Foxwoods opened, their sudden rise out of poverty has been a bitter pill to swallow.

''See, it's hard for people like us, who are working our butts off,'' said Roxanne Luft, who works at The Bake Shoppe in Ledyard. ''They never had a pot to pee in, and all of a sudden they're driving in $40,000 cars.''

Sean Murphy contributed to this article.