Post by Okwes on Aug 26, 2006 13:16:16 GMT -5
Stockbridge tribe coming home
Mohican history on display
By Benning W. De La Mater, Berkshire Eagle Staff
Thursday, August 24
PITTSFIELD — Right now, as you read this, 18 members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Tribe of the Mohican Nation are making their way from Wisconsin to Pittsfield — 1,112 miles — to honor their history here.
The emphasis is on history, and it's this story — the reason the tribe has to travel at all — that held 40 people captive inside St. Stephen's Episcopal Church last night.
Mohican scholar and Stockbridge resident Lion Miles, 72, delivered the presentation "The First Peoples of Berkshire County" as a prelude to this weekend's happenings, which include a ceremony at City Hall, a Housatonic River celebration and a powwow in the Common.
Miles, who is currently working on a book about the Mohican tribe, said there's a great deal of controversy surrounding the subject, both in its conflicting scholarly views and in its theme of Europeans dominating native peoples.
The Mohicans are believed to have originated from the wave of tribes that crossed an ice cap on the Bering Strait more than 12,000 years ago. Roughly, 4,000 years ago, they settled in New York's Hudson River Valley; the word Mohican means great tidal water.
The first documentation of their existence is a 1614 Dutch map showing Mohican borders stretching from the Connecticut River, to Schenectady, N.Y., to Manhattan and Otter Creek, Vt.
Schodack Island, just under the I-90 bridge crossing the Hudson River, was their government seat, also known as their "council fire."
Along the fertile river banks, they grew "The Three Sisters," — beans, corn and squash — raised families and feuded with rival tribes.
"The women did all the work," Miles said. "Men hunted and laid around."
A some-things-never-change sigh was heard from a few women in the audience last night. Men laughed.
Miles said before the early 1700s, Mohican men used Berkshire County solely as their hunting ground, crossing the Taconic Range and setting up temporary villages during winter months and returning to New York with meat and pelts in the spring.
"They had a seasonal life here," he said.
Europeans started arriving in droves, bringing with them disease and breeding fur-trading competition between tribes, especially the Mohicans and the Mohawks of the Iroquois Nation.
Miles went on to say that it is believed that 90 percent of the Indians in the Northeast died within decades of the European arrival. The Mohicans, who at one time numbered more than 20,000, were reduced to 400 to 500.
Seeing that the Dutch and English were eating up all their land, the Mohicans decided to move. A band of less than 100 crossed the Taconic Range and settled in Stockbridge, which the Indians called "Wnahktakook," meaning river bend. They were first called "Housatunnuck," which means over the mountain, and later came to be known as the Stockbridge Indians.
In 1724, whites from Boston came to buy land from the Stockbridge tribe. Miles said for 460 pounds, three barrels of cider and 30 quarts of rum, the whites purchased between 50,000 and 60,000 acres. In 1736, the Massachusetts government set the tribe's land at 23,000 acres.
Miles used a time line of sketchings throughout the 1700s to show how the Stockbridge tribe slowly became Anglicized, adopting European dress, tools, customs and even Christianity. Concopod, the Stockbridge chief, fought hard to keep the tribe's identity intact.
"It was a clash of cultures from day one," Miles said.
At the hands of devious Englishmen, who used the court system to benefit themselves, the tribe's land was eventually carved up for new settlers. The Stockbridge tribe was left with less than 1,200 acres by the end of the Revolutionary War.
"They felt pressure from whites all around them," Miles said.
Defeated, they set out on their own diaspora, moving to New York and Indiana and finally settling in Wisconsin with the U.S.government's help in 1856.
Today, they have 1,500 enrolled members who can claim one-quarter Mohican blood.
Jeff Boody, 37, of Adams, said he's been itching to learn more about the American Indian history in Berkshire County as he's grown older, and that's why he came out last night. He called Indian life "the first communal living in the history of the world."
"When I was in school, I didn't like history at all," he said. "But living here, it's all around you. As you get older, the days get shorter, so I want to learn."
Mohican history on display
By Benning W. De La Mater, Berkshire Eagle Staff
Thursday, August 24
PITTSFIELD — Right now, as you read this, 18 members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Tribe of the Mohican Nation are making their way from Wisconsin to Pittsfield — 1,112 miles — to honor their history here.
The emphasis is on history, and it's this story — the reason the tribe has to travel at all — that held 40 people captive inside St. Stephen's Episcopal Church last night.
Mohican scholar and Stockbridge resident Lion Miles, 72, delivered the presentation "The First Peoples of Berkshire County" as a prelude to this weekend's happenings, which include a ceremony at City Hall, a Housatonic River celebration and a powwow in the Common.
Miles, who is currently working on a book about the Mohican tribe, said there's a great deal of controversy surrounding the subject, both in its conflicting scholarly views and in its theme of Europeans dominating native peoples.
The Mohicans are believed to have originated from the wave of tribes that crossed an ice cap on the Bering Strait more than 12,000 years ago. Roughly, 4,000 years ago, they settled in New York's Hudson River Valley; the word Mohican means great tidal water.
The first documentation of their existence is a 1614 Dutch map showing Mohican borders stretching from the Connecticut River, to Schenectady, N.Y., to Manhattan and Otter Creek, Vt.
Schodack Island, just under the I-90 bridge crossing the Hudson River, was their government seat, also known as their "council fire."
Along the fertile river banks, they grew "The Three Sisters," — beans, corn and squash — raised families and feuded with rival tribes.
"The women did all the work," Miles said. "Men hunted and laid around."
A some-things-never-change sigh was heard from a few women in the audience last night. Men laughed.
Miles said before the early 1700s, Mohican men used Berkshire County solely as their hunting ground, crossing the Taconic Range and setting up temporary villages during winter months and returning to New York with meat and pelts in the spring.
"They had a seasonal life here," he said.
Europeans started arriving in droves, bringing with them disease and breeding fur-trading competition between tribes, especially the Mohicans and the Mohawks of the Iroquois Nation.
Miles went on to say that it is believed that 90 percent of the Indians in the Northeast died within decades of the European arrival. The Mohicans, who at one time numbered more than 20,000, were reduced to 400 to 500.
Seeing that the Dutch and English were eating up all their land, the Mohicans decided to move. A band of less than 100 crossed the Taconic Range and settled in Stockbridge, which the Indians called "Wnahktakook," meaning river bend. They were first called "Housatunnuck," which means over the mountain, and later came to be known as the Stockbridge Indians.
In 1724, whites from Boston came to buy land from the Stockbridge tribe. Miles said for 460 pounds, three barrels of cider and 30 quarts of rum, the whites purchased between 50,000 and 60,000 acres. In 1736, the Massachusetts government set the tribe's land at 23,000 acres.
Miles used a time line of sketchings throughout the 1700s to show how the Stockbridge tribe slowly became Anglicized, adopting European dress, tools, customs and even Christianity. Concopod, the Stockbridge chief, fought hard to keep the tribe's identity intact.
"It was a clash of cultures from day one," Miles said.
At the hands of devious Englishmen, who used the court system to benefit themselves, the tribe's land was eventually carved up for new settlers. The Stockbridge tribe was left with less than 1,200 acres by the end of the Revolutionary War.
"They felt pressure from whites all around them," Miles said.
Defeated, they set out on their own diaspora, moving to New York and Indiana and finally settling in Wisconsin with the U.S.government's help in 1856.
Today, they have 1,500 enrolled members who can claim one-quarter Mohican blood.
Jeff Boody, 37, of Adams, said he's been itching to learn more about the American Indian history in Berkshire County as he's grown older, and that's why he came out last night. He called Indian life "the first communal living in the history of the world."
"When I was in school, I didn't like history at all," he said. "But living here, it's all around you. As you get older, the days get shorter, so I want to learn."