Hendrick Aupaumut

Hendrick Aupaumut (* 1757 in Stockbridge , Massachusetts , † 1830 in Kaukauna , Wisconsin ) was a charismatic sachem of the Stockbridge Indians , a tribe of the Mahican . White eyewitnesses described him as an intelligent man who spoke fluent English and could also write correctly.

The Stockbridge consisted largely of Mahican and other Native American people from across the Hudson River Valley . At the beginning of the 17th century, the Mahican residential area stretched from Lake Champlain in the north to the Catskill Mountains in the south on both sides of the Hudson River. The Mahican are not to be confused with the Mohegan , whose residential area was 150 km to the east. The southern neighbors of the Mahican were the Munsee - Delaware , to which they had good relations. By 1700, however, they had shrunk from 4,000 tribesmen to nearly 500 as a result of devastating epidemics, war, displacement and migration to other tribes. Around 1735 missionaries appeared on the Housatonic River in western Massachusetts and set up a mission in Stockbridge to collect the remains of the Native American tribes from the area. Around 1740, the Moravian Brethren established a mission for the Mahican in New York State. Soon they had to leave the state by order of the authorities and moved with the Indians to Pennsylvania , Canada and Stockbridge.

Captain Hendrick Aupaumut

Hendrick Aupaumut was born in Stockbridge in 1757 and raised by the Moravian Missionaries. At the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War , he and many other Mahicans joined the Continental Army . Aupaumut served according to the trunk role of August 1, 1775 initially as a simple soldier in Captain William Goodrich's Indian company. Colonel Patterson's regiment, to which the Indian company belonged, was stationed near Boston at the time and may have participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill .

Aupaumut was mentioned in several records in the following years: On February 27, 1776 he received the membership bonus in the form of a coat or a sum of money corresponding to the value. On September 5, 1777 he was given 30 rifles for the Indian company on Van Schalk's Island. Around 1778 he was promoted to lieutenant in Captain Ninham's Indian company and in the same year Aupaumut was awarded the promotion of captain after the Battle of White Plains (English: battlefield promotion). Then Captain Aupaumut took part in the Battle of Saratoga , as well as in several missions as a scout for the Continental Army until 1782. In 1791 General George Washington presented him with a sword as an award for his services.

The diplomat

After the war, Stockbridge, Massachusetts decided to leave. The war had decimated them, in their village the whites had taken over the regiment and forced the Indians to sell their land. The discouraged remnants of the Mahican nation, 420 in total, accepted an invitation from the Oneida and moved to an area on Oneida Creek in New York . By 1786, most of Stockbridge had settled in New York State and named their place of residence New Stockbridge . After the move, Hendrick Aupaumut's influence grew through his role as an important mediator between the state government and the Indians.

In the 1790s there were bitter wars in what was then the Northwest Territory between the Indians, who had been supplied with weapons by the British, and American settlers and militias. In 1791 General Arthur St. Clair sent Hendrick Aupaumut to the opposing Indians with a proclamation and an offer of peace. At the request of US Secretary of War Henry Knox , he traveled to the Delaware , Miami , Shawnee, and other tribes for eleven months in 1792 . Following this mission, Aupaumut wrote a detailed account of his journey and the negotiations with the various tribes and called it A Short Narration of My Last Journey to the Western Country . In 1794 he took part in the Battle of Fallen Timbers under General Anthony Wayne and accompanied the peace negotiations with the Six Nations and others in Canandaigua . He was a co-signer of the contract and also acted as a mediator in the following years. In 1808 or 1809 he was in Washington with the Tuscarora Nicholas Cusick in order to receive compensation for his tribe for lands that they had to cede to white settlers in North Carolina in the 18th century .

Moving west

In the course of his travels to the west, Aupaumut came to believe that the Stockbridge should go further west. He particularly feared the influence of the Oneida, who despised the Stockbridge men’s farm work. They also tried to introduce the religion of Seneca chief Handsome Lake to the Stockbridge . Aupaumut was appointed Indian agent of the Munsee and Delaware, which had settled on the White River in Indiana in 1808 . He wanted to bring his Stockbridge to them. However, the war of 1812 delayed the relocation plans.

In 1818 over 75 Stockbridge set out for Indiana under the leadership of John Metoxen . Upon arriving at the White River, they heard that the Delaware and Miami had been forced to sell their land. Several missionaries appointed by the War Department were now buying land from the Menominee and Winnebago in Wisconsin for the New York Indians. In 1828 a group from New Stockbridge moved to the area and settled on the Fox River . Metoxen and his wandering Stockbridge joined them, and more groups followed - the last Indians left New Stockbridge in 1829. Hendrick Aupaumut died in 1830 after all of his people had arrived in their new homes. His grave is on Frank Thelen Farm in the Stockbridge Indian Cemetery near Kaukauna, Wisconsin.

In 1831, 225 Stockbridge were living on the Fox River with over 100 Delaware; her head was John Metoxen. Today the tribe is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians of Wisconsin , the reservation they inhabit is called the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and counted 2,012 members in the 2000 census.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Biography of Hendrick Aupaumut
2. ↑ Captain Hendrick Aupaumut ( Memento of the original from July 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Handbook of North American Indians - Chapter: Mahican, pp. 208f
4. ↑ History of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community ( Memento of the original from November 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Web links

• Captain Aupaumut
• Stockbridge-Munsee story
• Biography of Hendrick Aupaumut