The Mohican Tribe, originally from the Hudson River Valley, were hunter-gatherers who spoke Algonquin. European contact in 1609 led to the erosion of traditional practices and the spread of disease. The Mohicans fought in the Revolutionary War but lost their land and were eventually removed from their homes. Many Mohicans now live in Wisconsin and operate a casino, community center, and historical society.
The Mohican Tribe, also known as the Mahican, is a band of American Indians currently based in Wisconsin. The tribe originally settled in the Hudson River Valley, an area that today includes parts of Vermont, Connecticut, and upstate New York. The Mohicans speak an American Indian language called Algonquin.
Before the arrival of white settlers, the Mohican tribe were hunter-gatherers. They lived in a heavily wooded and wild area populated by otters, deer, black bears, wild turkeys, oysters and fish. The men hunted meat and fish and the women gathered wild rice, berries and nuts. The women also smoked meat and fish to preserve and took care of the gardens. During the long, cold winters, the Mohicans told stories, built clay pots and repaired their tools to prepare for spring.
The Mohican tribe first made contact with European settlers in 1609 when a Dutchman named Henry Hudson began exploring what would become known as the Hudson River. Hudson was intrigued by the Mohican’s supply of beautiful furs. Word spread of the riches of the Mohican tribe, and in 1614 Dutch merchants established a trading post in the area. Thus began an infiltration into European culture that slowly eroded the traditional practices of the Mohican tribe.
The Mohicans sold their furs for beads, tools and guns. They stopped doing traditional crafts. English merchants replaced Dutch traders and began building fences and marking off property lines in what had been wilderness. Europeans also brought devastating diseases; hundreds of thousands of Native Americans died of smallpox, measles and scarlet fever.
In 1738, a missionary named John Sergeant founded a village called Stockbridge in Mohican lands. He converted many Mohicans to Christianity. Mohican beliefs and customs continued to be replaced by European ones.
When the Revolutionary War broke out, the Mohicans agreed to fight for the settlers. The war brought them nothing but trouble, however, as fighting slowly encroached on their land. The Mohican fighters returned to their territory, only to find it had been turned over to white settlers.
After the war, the New York government mandated that all Indians be removed from their lands. The Mohicans then began a long westward migration, looking for a new home. The community broke up and dispersed throughout Indiana, Kansas, and Oklahoma, but many Mohicans reformulated as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and settled in Wisconsin.
Most people know the Mohican tribe from James Fenimore Cooper’s book, The Last of the Mohicans, which has been made into a movie several times. The Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican descendants point out, however, that their community survived the book’s predictions. The tribe is “alive and thriving” in northern Wisconsin.
On their reservation, the Mohican tribe operates a casino, community center, and golf course. The community also started a historical society in the 1970s to research and preserve Mohican history. They sponsor research trips to the original village of Stockbridge and maintain artifacts in the Arvid E. Miller Library located on the reservation.
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