Mahikan/Mohicans/Stockbridge Indians & Mohegan

Mohegan

North American tribe of the Algonquian language family and of the Eastern Woodlands culture area. They were living in what is now eastern Connecticut when the first white settlers arrived in New England. The Mohegan sided with the English against other North American tribes, and by the 1700s were the only indigenous peoples of prominence remaining in southern New England.

The Mohegan practiced hunting, fishing, and farming; their staple crop was maize. As white settlements gradually surrounded and then displaced the tribe, the Mohegan dwindled in number. They sold most of their lands and moved to a reservation in New London County, Connecticut. Surviving members later scattered, some joining other indigenous settlements. A remnant continued to live in Connecticut.

In the 1990 census 674 people identified themselves as being of Mohegan descent, although no pure-blood Mohegan exist today.

The tribe was romanticized by the American novelist James Fenimore Cooper in his book, The Last of the Mohicans (1826).

"Mohegan," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Massachusetts, Early Inhabitants

The earliest human inhabitants of the Massachusetts area lived about 10,000 BC, after the glaciers had retreated. Archaeological sites indicate several other cultures developed in the millennia that followed. For centuries before Europeans arrived in the area it was inhabited by Algonquian-speaking groups of Native Americans.

When European colonization began in the early 1600s, seven major groups lived in the area. The Wampanoag and the Nauset were on Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket Island; the Massachuset had settlements along Massachusetts Bay; the Nipmuc were in central Massachusetts; the Pocomtuck lived in the northwest; the Pennacook were near the New Hampshire border; and the Mahican were in the Berkshire area.

The native peoples lived largely by hunting deer, catching fish and shellfish, and growing corn, beans, and squash, migrating from forest to coastal areas to take advantage of seasonal resources. Approximately 30,000 native people inhabited Massachusetts in 1614, but epidemics of disease brought by whites soon greatly reduced the population.

from: "Massachusetts," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Origin and early history

According to tradition, Mohican history says that a great people came from the north and west. They crossed the waters where the land almost touched. The people inhabited these lands for many years, leaving settlements behind when they moved on. It is said that they were looking for a place where the waters were never still, like the land from which they originally came.

After a long journey, these people settled in the east. In time, they divided into different groups and dialects. The oldest of these, the Muh-he-con-ne-ok or Mahikans, lived along the Muh-he-kun-ne-tuk, later called Hudson's River. The waters of this river are never still because of the influence of the tides. There they lived, forming a great Mahikan Confederacy, for several hundreds of years before the arrival of white men. The area they inhabited included land south of what is now called Lake Champlain, west to Scoharie Creek, east to Vermont and New Hampshire and south to Manhattan Island.

The Stockbridge Indians were originally part of the Mahikan Confederacy. The Munsee, on the other hand, were a group of native people in the Delaware Confederacy. The land where they lived was west of the Hudson River, covering an area on either side of the Delaware River and stretching south to what was later called the state of New Jersey.

The lifestyles of the Mahikan and Munsee were so similar that to describe one is to describe the other also. Their lives were rooted in the woodlands in which they lived. These were covered with red spruce, elm, pine, oak, maple and birch trees. They were filled with black bear, deer, moose, beaver, otter, bobcat and mink, as well as turkey and other birds. The clean rivers were filled with fish.

Usually the native people built their homes near rivers so that they could be close to food, water, and transportation. Their village homes, called wigwams, were circular and made of bent saplings covered with hides or bark. They also lived in long- houses, which were often very large, sometimes as long as one hundred feet, with curved roofs shingled with elm bark. Several families of the same clan lived in each long-house. There were no windows, but every twenty feet or so there was a fire pit with a smoke hole above it , the center of one family's section.

While women planted gardens in the spring, the men fished for herring and shad which swam up the river in large schools. From dugout and bark canoes, the men speared or netted fish. During late summer and fall they hunted the animals which were so plentiful in the woods. After the harvest, dried meat and vegetables and smoked fish were stored in pits dug deep in the ground and lined with grass or bark.

During the winter months, time was spent doing a variety of things. Eating utensils and containers were made and repaired, as were hunting gear and tools. Pottery was made for future use, clothing and blankets were fashioned and often beautifully decorated with porcupine quills, shells and other natural things. If the food supply began to run low during the winter, men traveled by snowshoe to hunt game.

Early spring meant gathering sap from the maple trees to make syrup and sugar. The round of planting and fishing began again. The Mahikan and Munsee people lived in harmony with the seasons and found everything they needed to live the good life from the abundance that Mother Earth provided.

for the complete history and more information please visit the Mohican Com Site

Text and Graphic from the Mohican Com Site for more info please visit this site.

The Mohicans Still Exist

The Mohicans are sometimes confused with the Mohegans who live in Connecticut. I believe the Mohicans are the grandfathers of the Mohegans. The people who first came to the upper Hudson River Valley were the ancestors of the Mohicans, Pequots and the Mohegans. The ancestors of the Mohegans left this area and migrated west, becoming known as the Pequots, the invaders. Then the ancestors of the Mohegans separated from the Pequots. Thus, these three distinct cultures can trace their history back to the some of the same ancestors. There are no written records of this, but the first people of the area were living here over 12,000 years ago. The Mohegans, Mohicans, and Pequots have been separate and distinct nations for hundreds of years, well before 1609.

The "Many Trails," symbol was created by Edwin Martin of the Mohican Nation to symbolize the history of the nation. This interpretation was inspired by a piece of beadwork owned by a friend of Mohican descent.

Text and Symbol from the 'The Mohicans Still Exist' Site, for more info please visit this site.

The Last of the Mohicans Cooper, James Fenimore

please their site for more information

The Mahican

When James Fenimore Cooper wrote "Last of the Mohicans" in 1826 he made the Mahican famous. Unfortunately, he also made them extinct in many minds and confused their name and history with the Mohegan from eastern Connecticut. This error has persisted, and most Americans today would be surprised to learn that the Mahican are very much alive and living in Wisconsin under an assumed name, Stockbridge Indians.

Population

Because they include all Algonquin tribes between the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers, some estimates of the Mahican population in 1600 range as high as 35,000. However, when limited to the core tribes of the Mahican confederacy near Albany, New York, it was somewhere around 8,000. By 1672 this had fallen to around 1,000. At the lowpoint in 1796, 300 Stockbridge, the "Last of the Mohicans," were living with the Oneida and Brotherton in upstate New York. However, if the Mahican with the Wyandot and Delaware in Ohio were also included, the actual total time was probably closer to 600. The census of 1910 listed 600 Stockbridge and Brotherton in northern Wisconsin.

Three years after the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, the Stockbridge became a federally recognized tribe. They currently have almost 1,500 members living on, or near, their reservation west of Green Bay. There are also 1,700 Brotherton Indians (without federal status) on the east side of Lake Winnebago.

Names

Both Mahican and Mohican are correct, but NOT Mohegan, a different tribe in eastern Connecticut who were related to the Pequot. In their own language, the Mahican referred to themselves collectively as the "Muhhekunneuw" "people of the great river." This name apparently was difficult for the Dutch to pronounce, so they settled on "Manhigan," the Mahican word for wolf and the name of one their most important clans. Variations were: Maeykan, Mahigan, Mahikander, Mahinganak, Maikan, and Mawhickon. In later years, the English altered this into the more-familiar Mahican or Mohican. The French name for the Mahican was Loup (French for wolf) and followed a similar reasoning. However, the French were prone to using this without distinction for most Algonquin-speaking tribes south of the St. Lawrence (Mahican, Delaware, and Abenaki). Other names: Akochakaneh (Iroquois), Canoe Indians, Hikanagi (Shawnee), Monekunnuk, Mourigan (French), Nhikana (Shawnee), Orunges, River Indians, Stockbridge, Tonotaenrat, and Uragees.

From First Nations, for complete history and much more information, please visit the First Nations site