Mahican
The Mahican , also spelled Mohican , were Algonquin- speaking Indians who lived in the upper Hudson Valley across the Catskill Mountains in what is now New York State . They referred to themselves as Muhhekunneuw or Muh-he-con-neok ("people by the water that always flows"), since they originally settled along the Hudson River ( Mahicannituck "water that always flows"). Therefore they were referred to as River Indians by the Dutch and English, along with the tribes living along the Hudson, such as the Munsee or Wappinger . The Dutch corrupted the name of the wolf clan ("Manhigan") in Mahigan , Mahikander , Mahinganak , Maikan or Mawhickon . The English simplified the word to Mahican or Mohican . The French called them loups (wolves). They should not be confused with the Mohegan, also belonging to the Algonquin , a tribal group that once belonged to the Pequot in eastern Connecticut .
Tribal area
The Mahican settled in the 17th century on the Hudson River and its tributaries, the Mohawk River and Hoosick River in what is now eastern New York, western Massachusetts , southwest Vermont and northwest Connecticut . Their territory ranged in the northwest of Lake George to the south shore of Lake Champlain , in the north-east to the tribal areas of the Western Abenaki counting Pocumtuc (also Pocumtuk ), Penacook (also Pennacock , Merrimack or Pawtucket ) and Sokoki , in the East, including the Taconic Mountains to the western Berkshire Mountains , in the west between today's Schenectady and Amsterdam to Schoharie Creek , in the southwest to the Catskill Mountains and Catskill Creek , the border river to the Munsee area (the so-called Northern Delaware , a dialect group of the Lenni Lenape ) as well as in the southeast to east of the Housatonic River . Their tribal area, which they called N'DahAhKi (English pronunciation: "En-DAH-kee", short form: N'DahAhKiNaNa - "Our original home country"), was characterized by vast forests, mountains and rivers and was an important ancient trade - and communication route between the tribes, as the rivers Mohawk and Hudson merged here.
Socio-political organization
The Mahican formed the so-called Mahican Confederation , consisting of five tribes led by hereditary (hereditary) sachems and supported by appointed advisors:
- Mahican , lived in the area of today's Albany ( Pempotowwuthut-Muhhcanneuw - "Place of the Council Fire of the Mahican Nation") west to the Mohawk River and in the northwest to Lake Champlain and Lake George .
- Mechkentowoon , lived along the west bank of the Hudson River above Catskill Creek.
- Wawyachtonoc , Wawayachtonoc , also called Eddy People - "people of the swirling stream" or people of the curving channel - "people on the bendy river bed", as well as New Milford Indians . They lived on both sides of the Housatonic River in today's Dutchess and Columbia Counties in the extreme southeast of the US state of New York and in the west and northwest of Connecticut, named after their main settlement Weantinock on the Housatonic River, today's New Milford . Other villages were Shecomeco, Wechquadnach, Pamperaug, Bantam, Weataug and Scaticook, originally called Weantinock (Wyachtonok) , a tribe of the Paugussett .
- Housatonic derived from hous atenuc - "on the other side of the mountains" and Westenhuck garbled. Their main village of the same name was near today's Great Barrington. They lived in the Housatonic River Valley of Connecticut and Massachusetts , as well as the Great Barrington, Massachusetts area.
- Wiekagjoc , a corruption of Wikwajek - " Upper course of a stream". They lived east of the Hudson River near today's city of Hudson in Columbia County in New York.
Presumably the Housatonic (Westenhuck) were originally an independent tribe, which later joined the Mahican, as well as the Wawyachtonoc , who fled westward , also Weantinock or Wyachtonok of the Paugussett , who joined the Mahican Confederation in 1687.
The Mahican lived in around 40 partly closed, between cornfields and forests, villages that were on hills and surrounded by palisades . These fortified villages consisted of 20 to 30 houses and were inhabited by up to 200 people. The Mahican were made up of three clans , namely bear , wolf , and turtle . If important matters had to be decided that affected the Confederation, such as war or peace, abandoning villages or developing new residential areas, the sachems of the various clans and tribes regularly met in their capital Shodac , also Shodack , which is on an island east of the today's Albany lay to vote on it. During wartime, the council of sachems transferred its authority to an experienced and respected wartime sachem who wielded almost dictatorial power during the conflict. However, when the war ended, the civil sachems took over the leadership of the Confederate tribes again.
history
Conflict with the Mohawk
Even before its first contact with the merchants and settlers of the Dutch and later those of the British , the Mahican Confederation was at war with the mighty Mohawk in the northwest, the "guardians of the eastern gate" of the Iroquois League , for the tribes both culturally and also materially significant wampum trade . As a short term New England - Algonquin along the Atlantic Coast military over the non with Dutch guns and steel Tomahawks equipped Iroquois gained the upper hand, the latter was clear that they had to establish direct trade contacts with the Dutch to catch up to weapons technology. However, since the Mahican blocked every attempt in order not to endanger their own trade monopoly , the armed conflicts with the Iroquois, here especially with the Mohawk, began to escalate.
Around 1610 Dutch traders reached the Hudson River valley, which was important as a trade route to the tribes in the Great Lakes area as well as inland. They supplied the Iroquois with the weapons they wanted to join them in fighting the Susquehannock in the south. In 1618 the Dutch brokered a peace between the warring Mohawk and Mahican. In 1624 the Dutch set up their first trading post, Fort Oranije, south of today's Albany, and from 1626 began to build their colony Nieuw Nederland along the course of the river , which soon became the city of New Amsterdam ( Nieuw. ) On the southern tip of Manna-hata ( Manhattan ) Amsterdam ) as the headquarters. In addition, the Dutch tried to trade fur through middlemen of the Mahican with the Anishinaabe tribe group, also belonging to the Algonquin , the Anishinabe (Ojibwe or Chippewa) , Saulteaux (Salteaux) , Missisauga , Odawa (Ottawa) , Potawatomi (Bodéwadmi) , Algonquin (Algonquin) ) , Nipissing and Oji-Cree (Severn Ojibwa) and Montagnais in the north, who were also enemies of the Iroquois.
Now the Iroquois saw themselves threatened on both sides by well-armed Algonquians. However, the Dutch had also armed the Mohawk, which was easier to reach thanks to the newly built Fort Oranije, with rifles. In 1624 the Mohawk struck surprisingly and a violent war broke out with the tribes of the Mahican Confederation, which the Dutch could not prevent and which the European settlers fanned by further deliveries of arms to the warring tribes. In 1626 a joint war force of Dutch and Mahican was surprised and defeated by hostile Mohawks. This defeat caused the Dutch to remain neutral in the ongoing war between the tribes. By 1628 the Mohawk had triumphed and the Mahican had drifted east across the Hudson River. The Dutch accepted the Mohawk's victory and made them their main ally and trading partner. The Iroquois now had an extremely important strategic position. Their residential area was located exactly between the Dutch in the Hudson Valley, the fur suppliers around the Great Lakes, and the French fur traders on the Saint Lawrence River . The Mahican had to pay tribute to the Mohawk in the form of wampum .
Destruction of the Wappinger Confederation
In the meantime, the Mohawk and Mahican overcame their enmity in order to continue trading with the Dutch undisturbed. When the also Eastern Algonquin-speaking tribes of the Wappinger Confederation - especially the eponymous Wappinger , Mattabesic and Metoac - rose up against the Dutch in the Wappinger War (also: Gouverneur-Kiefts-Krieg (Kieft's War) , 1643-1645) the Mahican and Mohawk are their European trading partners, as well as the English allied with them, with scouts and warriors. The Mahican in particular were able to regain strength and power at short notice thanks to their support in one of the bloodiest and cruelest wars of extermination in the history of the North American colonies. Together with their allies, the Wappinger had lost over 1,600 tribal members, and the Wappinger sachems were ready to make peace in Fort Amsterdam by April 1644 . However, under pressure from the Mahican, the Sachems had to sign a peace treaty in Fort Orange in August 1644.
After the war, the Wappinger Confederation fell apart, and some of the previously allied tribes even became enemies. The Wappinger and Western Metoac became tributaries to the Mahican and had to make a substantial payment annually to the Mahican in the form of wampum . It was common among the tribes in southern New England and Long Islands for the weaker groups to pay tribute to the stronger groups. The Mahican had no losses of their own and the Treaty of Fort Orange enabled them to control the wampum trade in southern New England and Long Island. To heighten the humiliation, the Mahican did not collect the due tribute themselves, but instead sent the Wappinger to the Metoac as their collectors. The failure of payments resulted in raids by the Wappingers on their villages without the Dutch intervening. This led to further resentments between the considerably decimated Metoac and the Dutch, but the tribes on Long Island were so weakened that they could no longer take military action against them successfully.
In the following period, the Wappinger avoided further conflicts with the Dutch and in 1649 the Wechquaesgeek sold their land at the northern end of Manhattan. Nevertheless, in 1655 they fought together with the Hackensack of the Munsee (a tribal group of the Lenni Lenape ), who were allies of New Sweden , in the so-called Peach (Tree) War against the Dutch, which resulted in the occupation and the end of New Sweden by the victorious Dutch. Other groups of the former confederation - including Wappinger - fought again in the two Esopus Wars (1659–1664) on the side of the Esopus, a powerful tribe that also belonged to the Munsee.
The Mohawk-Mahican conflict escalates
Strengthened by the influx of dispersed eastern Algonquin tribes and the tribute payments, the Mahican made repeated attempts to regain their tribal areas and to dominate trade with the Europeans again. The war between the two peoples - known as part of the so-called Beaver Wars ( French and Iroquois Wars , 1640 and 1701) - lasted until 1673. The raids of the militarily strengthened Mohawk became increasingly violent, and they had won the support of the Dutch and British settlers . In 1664, the Mahican were forced to move further east to western Massachusetts and Connecticut and to relocate their capital Shodac (also Schodack ) near Albany to Westenhuck ( Westenhook , also Housatonic ), today's Stockbridge . Between 1683 and 1685 the Wappingers sold more than 40 km² of their land east of the Hudson River. Most of them moved north to the Mahican villages on the Housatonic River in western Connecticut or to the surviving Algonquian tribes of the Potatuck, Wawyachtonoc (Weantinock), Tunxis , Podunk and some Mahican in Schaghticoke who went there after the King Philip's War ( 1675–1676) had fled.
Sale of the tribal areas and settlement in reservations
Little by little they sold their land, rallied at a mission station in Stockbridge in 1736 and became known as the Stockbridge Indians ; they were the only Mahican who could maintain their cultural identity. The Stockbridge Indians consisted not only of Mahican, but also of Munsee , Wappingern , Nipmuck and many other ethnic groups, which over time were absorbed into the Stockbridge-Mahican and thus lost their own identity. One of the most famous refugees was the Wappinger sachem Daniel Nimham , who some time later also went down in history as the Sachem of the Stockbridge. It was largely on his initiative that the Stockbridge-Mahican took part in the French and Indian War on the side of the British. Other groups split up and mixed with different tribes. During the French and Indian War (1755–1763) they fought with the Mohawk on the side of the British. But they only got a sachem known across tribal borders in the form of Hendrick Aupaumut . It was also he who convinced his people to fight on the American side during the American Revolution . Because of his role in the American Revolutionary War, he is still revered by many Americans today. However, his living descendants received less respect. As soon as the war was over, the Stockbridge-Mahican found that their land had been taken over by the white settlers, i.e. the Americans. The Stockbridge Group therefore first moved to New York and later, following Hendrick Aupaumut's advice, to Wisconsin .
Demographics
All of the Algonquian tribes that lived between the Hudson River and Connecticut River were commonly referred to as Mahican and numbered around 1,600 estimates according to around 35,000 people. The tribes of Albany, known as the Mahican Confederation, had a population of around 8,000. In 1672 the number was decimated to about 1,000 people. At the low point in 1796 there were only 300 Stockbridge ( The Last of the Mohicans , The last of the Mohicans ), which together with their former Iroquois enemies, the Oneida in Brotherton, New York, lived. If you add the Mahicans living with the Wyandot and Lenni Lenape in Ohio, their total number at that time was about 600 people. Nowadays, 1,500 Stockbridge (government recognized) reside on or near their reservation west of Green Bay , and an estimated 1,700 Brotherton Indians (Mahican) (government unrecognized) on the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago .
Mahican in literature
The American writer James Fenimore Cooper drew a romanticizing portrait of the disappearing Mahican in his book The Last of the Mohicans (1826). There was never a certain Uncas with the Mahican , but there was one with the Mohegan . This Mohegan sachem did not live at the time of the novel, but exactly a century earlier. The only thing he had in common with the hero of the novel of the same name: He was an ally of the British. But he did not fight against the French, but against his own people. The following explanation: The Mahican, Mohegan and Pequot were once a people. Long before the whites came, the Pequot separated from the Mahican and headed east into what is now Connecticut . The Pequot had two rival sachems, namely Sassacus and Uncas. When the former was elected the new Obersachem, Uncas and his followers separated from the tribe and henceforth formed the Mohegan. When Sassacus finally fought against the British (in the so-called Pequot War ), Uncas stood on the side of the British against the Pequot and helped to destroy them completely.
But it is also quite possible that the Wappinger sachem Daniel Nimham Cooper served as a historical model for his Chingachgook , because his friendship with the ranger and border guard Robert Rogers is historically guaranteed. In addition, Daniel Ninham and his Mahican took part in the decisive battles of the French and Indian War as part of the Rogers' Rangers. These historical events could have served as the basis for Cooper's leather stocking novels.
Todays situation
Members of the Stockbridge - Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians now live in Wisconsin . Earlier traditions have been completely lost and they are looking for an identity. The Stockbridge-Munsee group had been drifted west from the east coast across half the North American continent. They were often uprooted and relocated again and again until they got to the Oneida in Wisconsin. Edwin Martin , a Mahican, designed the “Many Trails” logo, which is intended to symbolize the character and energy of this indigenous group, namely perseverance, strength and hope. In addition, there are many descendants of the Mahican and their affiliated groups in the Schaghticoke Indian Tribe (SIT) and in the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation (STN) in Connecticut .
See also
literature
- Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 15. Northeast . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1978 ISBN 0-16-004575-4
- William A. Starna: From Homeland to New Land: A History of the Mahican Indians, 1600-1830. University of Nebraska Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-8032-4495-5
Individual evidence
- ↑ Shirley W. Dunn: The Mohicans and Their Land 1609-1730, Publisher: Purple Mountain Press Ltd, August 1994, ISBN 978-0935796490
- ^ Shirley W. Dunn: The River Indians : Mohicans Making History, Publisher: Purple Mountain Press, October 30, 2009, ISBN 978-0916346782
- ↑ Welcome to Mohican Country
- ↑ The New Worlds - Beverwijck ( Memento of the original from February 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The Best of Albany ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Hodge, Frederick Webb: Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, pp. 925, 926 ( Memento of the original from July 9, 2010 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.
- ↑ Donald B. Ricky: Indians of Maryland Past and Present , Publisher: Somerset Pubs, 1999, ISBN 978-0-403-09877-4
- ^ Allen W. Trelease, William A. Starna: Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century , p. 8, University of Nebraska Press; 1997, ISBN 978-0-8032-9431-8
- ^ Franz L. Wojciechowski: The Paugussett tribes:: an ethnohistorical study of the tribal interrelationships of the Indians in the lower Housatonic River area, Catholic University of Nijmegen, 1985, 157 pages
- ↑ Mahican History ( Memento of the original from October 26, 2016 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.
- ↑ Battle of Wolf Hollow - 1669 ( Memento of the original from May 15, 2012 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.
- ↑ Mark Meuwese: Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade: Dutch-Indigenous Alliance in the Atlantic World, 1595-1674, Publisher: Brill Academic Publishing, October 31st 2011, ISBN 978-9004210837 , page 255 ff
- ^ Anishinaabe Nations by State or Province / Anishinaabe Akiing ( Memento from May 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Anishinaabeg or Anishinabek
- ↑ From the Mohawk-Mahican War to the Beaver Wars: Questioning the Pattern - Ethnohistory 51.4 (2004) 725-750
- ↑ The The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Wars, 1607-1890, ISBN 978-1851096978 , page 510-511 (The Mohawk-Mahican War, 1624-1628)
- ^ Daniel P. Barr: Unconquered: The Iroquois League at War in Colonial America, Praeger Frederick, February 28, 2006, ISBN 978-0275984663 , pp. 29-34
- ^ Mattabesic History
- ^ Metoac History
- ^ Wappinger History
- ↑ Schodack Town
Web links
- Mohican History on the Stockbridge-Munsee Community website, accessed September 25, 2012
- Mahican History by Lee Sultzman on dickshovel.com (1997), accessed September 25, 2012