A Split Tribe, Casino Plans and One Little Indian Boy in the Middle

KENT, Conn. - There are more people dead than alive on the Schaghticoke Indian Reservation overlooking the Housatonic River in northwest Connecticut. There are more headstones than houses. There is more silence than sound.

Just one member of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation lives on the 400-acre reservation at the foot of Schaghticoke Mountain in the tidy town of Kent.

His name is Brett Rothe, and he is 4, a child of a divorce between a father who is Indian and has rejected the Tribal Nation government and a mother who is not but has embraced it. But Brett is also caught in a larger divide, between the Tribal Nation and a separate Schaghticoke faction at odds over control of the reservation and who will capitalize on the tribe's newfound leverage in the region's escalating casino wars.