Mahican

The Mahicans (also Mohicans) are a Native American tribe who have moved mostly to northeastern Wisconsin, U.S., ^{[1] [2]} but who came from the Hudson River Valley (around Albany, NY), many then moving to Stockbridge, Massachusetts after 1780, before the remaining descendants moved to Wisconsin during the 1820s and 1830s. Though similar in name, the Mahicans were not Mohegans, a different Algonquian-speaking tribe living in eastern (upper Thames valley) Connecticut ^[3] (who were jointly ruled by the Pequot tribe until 1637^[3]).

History

The Mahicans were living in and around the Hudson Valley at the time of their first contact with Europeans in 1609. Over the next hundred years, tensions between the Mahicans and the Mohawks as well as the Europeans caused the Mahicans to migrate eastward into western Massachusetts and Connecticut to the Hudson River. Many settled in the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts becoming known as the Stockbridge Indians.

The Stockbridge Indians allowed Protestant Christian missionaries to live among them and converted to Christianity in the 18th Century. Although they fought on the side of the American colonists in both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, they were dispossessed of their land and forced to move westward, first to New Stockbridge in the 1780s, on land allocated for them by the Oneidas, and later to Shawano County, Wisconsin in the 1820s and 1830s. In Wisconsin, they settled on reservations with the Munsee; the two were jointly known as Stockbridge-Munsee. Today the reservation is known as that of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians (Stockbridge-Munsee Community).

The first Christian Indian community in America was established by the Moravian church at the Mahican village of Shekomeko in 1740. The Moravian missionaries intent was to incorporate the native American people into European society through civilizing Christianity. They were so successful in their efforts and so diligently defended their Indians against white exploitation that the missionaries were hounded and finally forced out by the government.

The now extinct Mahican language belonged to the Eastern Algonquian branch of the Algonquian language family.

James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Last of the Mohicans is based on the Mahican tribe but includes some cultural aspects of the Mohegans, a different Algonquian tribe living in eastern Connecticut. The novel takes place in the Hudson Valley, Mahican land, but some characters' names, such as Uncas, are Mohegan.

Notable Mahicans

• Brent Michael Davids, composer
• Anthony Kiedis, singer/songwriter, author
• Bill Miller, singer/songwriter

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