Stockbridge (people)

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Stockbridge, Massachusetts town and traditional Indian neighborhoods circa 1600

Stockbridge Indians are the names of the members of a Native American group who lived in what is now Stockbridge , Massachusetts , in the 18th century . It consisted mainly of members of the Mahican , as well as the remnants of neighboring tribes.

history

The Housatonic , a group of Mahican, lived in western Massachusetts and northwestern Connecticut , and had grown rapidly after the King Philip's War from refugees from the east and the Hudson River Valley to the west, including Mahican, Wappinger , Wyachtonok, and a few people from other Connecticut - tribes. By 1720 the tribe had sold most of their land to the Massachusetts colony for use by the white settlers and kept two areas to themselves, one called Skatekook in Sheffield on the Housatonic River , the other Wnahktukook, 14 kilometers further upstream. Missionary John Sergeant began working there in 1734 with the permission of the tribe. Because they wanted to unite the two lands, the Housatonic swapped the land in Skatekook for land near Wnahktukook, an area that was then called Stockbridge. It was founded by the state and the church, and an experiment began in the city to enable whites and Indians to live together. The lands were jointly owned until 1740, after which they were divided. In the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) the conflicts between the white and Indian participants in the experiment grew blatantly and the white settlers pushed the Indians first out of the city government, then out of Stockbridge entirely. The experiment had thus failed at the expense of the Indians.

By the end of the American Revolution, the Stockbridge Indians were decimated, forced to sell their land and undesirable in their village where the whites had taken over the regiment. The discouraged remains of the Stockbridge Indians, a total of 420 tribesmen, accepted an invitation from the Oneida and in 1789 moved to a place on Oneida Creek in New York State, which they called New Stockbridge (now Stockbridge in New York). This group immigrated to Shawano County in Wisconsin around 1820 to the Munsee-Delaware living there . 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. Handbook of North American Indians - Chapter: Mahican, pp. 208f
  2. 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mpm.edu

literature

See also

List of North American Indian tribes

Web links