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The Mohican Indians were a Native American tribe from the Hudson River Valley, with their original home along the Delaware River. They had conflicts with the Mohawks and Europeans, leading to their displacement and eventual settlement in present-day Wisconsin. Mohican culture has influenced Western civilization, including the book “The Last of the Mohicans” and the “Mohican” haircut.
The Mohican Indians, also called Mahican Indians, are a Native American tribe originating in the Hudson River Valley. The tribe’s original home was along the Delaware River, which they named the Mahicannituck. They were called Muhheconneok, which translates to people of the waters that are never still. According to the tribe’s official history, before Europeans settled the area, the Mohican territory stretched north to south from Lake Champlain in Manhattan and west to east from Schoharie Creek in New York to Massachusetts, Vermont, and the Connecticut.
European contact with the Mohican Indians began in 1609 when a Dutch trader named Henry Hudson traveled to the territory. The Mohicans soon established trade with the Dutch, but the area quickly became unsettled. Much of the conflict stemmed from battles over the area’s dwindling fur trade between the Mohicans and the Mohawks, a rival Indian tribe. Furthermore both tribes would have been involved in conflicts between the Dutch, English and French.
In the early 1700s, the Mohicans were driven out of the area. Traveling east along the Hudson River, they eventually settled in areas that would become the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut. With land conquered by both the rival Mohawk tribe and European nations, the Mohicans found themselves relying more on the goods of the Europeans. Many also turned to Christianity during this period. Many of these Mohicans, along with members of other American Indian tribes who converted to Christianity, found homes in the town of Stockbridge. The Indians of this town, which resides in present-day Massachusetts, fought side by side with European troops in both the French and Indian Revolutionary War and the American Revolutionary War.
Over time the constant movement, conflicts and deadly diseases such as measles and smallpox, which were brought by the Europeans, decimated the numbers of the Mohicans. The remaining forces were not enough to fight the colonists, who later asked the Indian tribes to leave Stockbridge, even after they helped them fight British soldiers during the American Revolutionary War. The Mohican Indians moved further west, eventually settling in what is now Wisconsin. Together with the Munsee Indians, they form the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, a large Native American reservation in Bowler, Wisconsin.
Mohican culture has left an indelible mark on Western civilization. In 1826, author James Fenimore Cooper published his book “The Last of the Mohicans,” which has been adapted into film several times. A more recent sign of the tribe’s influence is what the British call a “Mohican” haircut, faded at the sides with a parting down the middle. Ironically, in the United States this haircut is called a mohawk, after the rival Mohican tribe.
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