MAHICAN LOCATION...The original Mahican homeland was the Hudson River Valley from the Catskill Mountains north to the southern end of Lake Champlain. Bounded by the Schoharie River in the west, it extended east to the crest of the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts from northwest Connecticut north to the Green Mountains in southern Vermont.

POPULATION...

Because they include all Algonquin tribes between the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers, some estimates of the Mahican population in 1600 range as high as 35,000. However, when limited to the core tribes of the Mahican confederacy near Albany, New York, it was somewhere around 8,000. By 1672 this had fallen to around 1,000. At the lowpoint in 1796, 300 Stockbridge, the "Last of the Mohicans," were living with the Oneida and Brotherton in upstate New York. However, if the Mahican with the Wyandot and Delaware in Ohio were also included, the actual total time was probably closer to 600. The census of 1910 listed 600 Stockbridge and Brotherton in northern Wisconsin. Three years after the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, the Stockbridge became a federally recognized tribe. They currently have almost 1,500 members living on, or near, their reservation west of Green Bay. There are also 1,700 Brotherton Indians (without federal status) on the east side of Lake Winnebago.

NAMES
Both Mahican and Mohican are correct, but NOT Mohegan, a different tribe in eastern Connecticut who were related to the Pequot. In their own language, the Mahican referred to themselves collectively as the "Muhhekunneuw" "people of the great river." This name apparently was difficult for the Dutch to pronounce, so they settled on "Manhigan," the Mahican word for wolf and the name of one their most important clans. Variations were: Maeykan, Mahigan, Mahikander, Mahinganak, Maikan, and Mawhickon. In later years, the English altered this into the more-familiar Mahican or Mohican. The French name for the Mahican was Loup (French for wolf) and followed a similar reasoning. However, the French were prone to using this without distinction for most Algonquin-speaking tribes south of the St. Lawrence (Mahican, Delaware, and Abenaki). Other names: Akochakaneh (Iroquois), Canoe Indians, Hikanagi (Shawnee), Monekunnuk, Mourigan (French), Nhikana (Shawnee), Orunges, River Indians, Stockbridge, Tonotaenrat, and Uragees.

LANGUAGE

Algonquin. N-dialect, but in many ways more closely related to the L-dialect of the Munsee and Unami Delaware than the N-dialect spoken in eastern Massachusetts by the Wampanoag Massachuset and Nauset

CULTURE

When James Fenimore Cooper wrote "Last of the Mohicans" in 1826, he made the Mahican famous. Unfortunately, he also made them extinct in the minds of many people and also confused their name and history with the Mohegan from eastern Connecticut. Unfortunately, this misconception has persisted, and most Americans today would be surprised to learn the Mahican are very much alive and living in Wisconsin under an assumed name ...Stockbridge Indians. With a similar language and name, the Mahican (Mohican) and the Mohegan may have been members of the same tribe before contact. The Mohegan, however, migrated east as part of the Pequot and settled in eastern Connecticut sometime around 1500, while the Mahican stayed in the Hudson Valley. Afterwards, these two tribes followed separate paths.

Although culturally similar to other woodland Algonquin, the Mahican were shaped by their constant warfare with the neighboring Iroquois. Politically, the Mahican were a confederacy of five tribes with as many 40 villages. In keeping with other eastern Algonkin, civil authority was not strong. Mahican villages were governed by hereditary sachems (matrilineal descent) advised by a council of the clan leaders. The Mahican had three clans: bear, wolf, and turtle. However, warfare required a higher degree of organization. A general council of sachems met regularly at their capital of Shodac (east of present-day Albany) to decide important matters affecting the entire confederacy. In times of war, the Mahican council passed its authority to a war chief chosen for his proven ability. For the duration of the conflict, the war leader exercised almost dictatorial power.

Mahican villages were fairly large. Usually consisting of 20 to 30 mid-sized longhouses, they were located on hills and heavily fortified. Large cornfields were located nearby. Agriculture provided most of their diet but was supplemented by game, fish, and wild foods. For reasons of safety, the Mahican did to move to scattered hunting camps during the winter like other Algonquin and usually spent the colder months inside their "castles" (fortified villages). Copper, gotten from the Great Lakes through trade, was used extensively for ornaments and some of their arrowheads. Once they began trade with the Dutch, the Mahican abandoned many of their traditional weapons and quickly became very expert with their new firearms. Contrary to the usual stereotype, most Mahican warriors were deadly marksmen. The mother of the famous Miami chief Little Turtle was a Mahican.

HISTORY

Throughout the 1500s, European sea captains rode the Gulf Stream north along the east coast of the United States on their return to Europe. It became common practice to add some last minute profit to their voyage by stopping enroute to capture native slaves. For this reason, many coastal tribes became hostile to the pale-faced men from the big ships, but the Mahican lived well-inland and had no such experience. Employed by the Dutch East India Company to search for the Northwest Passage (a fabled shortcut to China), Henry Hudson sailed through the Verrazano strait and entered the Hudson River in September, 1609. For the reasons mentioned, the Wappinger on the lower river proved hostile, but Hudson continued upstream until stopped by shallow water near the Mahican villages just below Albany. The Mahican were not only friendly but eager to trade. Hudson exhausted his trade goods and returned to Holland with a cargo of valuable furs which immediately attracted Dutch merchants to the area. The first Dutch fur traders arrived on the Hudson River the following year to trade with the Mahican. Besides exposing them to European epidemics, the fur trade destabilized the region, and rather than prosperity, it brought the Mahican death and destruction.

The turmoil had started almost as soon as European fishermen visiting the Newfoundland's Grand Banks during the 1500s began exchanging metal knives and cooking pots for furs from the Micmac and Montagnais in the Canadian Maritimes. To protect this trade and gain additional hunting territory, these tribes had used their new steel weapons to drive their Iroquois rivals from the lower St. Lawrence River sometime after 1542. Although the French built their first trading posts near the Micmac in 1604, the quality of the fur from the St. Lawrence drew them north. Abandoning the Micmac, the French built new posts at Tadoussac, and then farther upstream at Quebec in 1608. The Iroquois, meanwhile, had organized into the Iroquois League, an alliance of five tribes (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca), and were once again formidable. After 50-years of warfare, which apparently started around 1560, they had driven an unknown Algonquin-speaking enemy who they called the Adirondack from the mountains in northern New York of the same name, and were in the process of reclaiming the St. Lawrence Valley from the Algonkin, Montagnais, and Maliseet.

However, this confrontation was far from over in 1608, and the St. Lawrence River west of Quebec was a war zone which blocked the expansion of the French fur trade to the west. The danger from Mohawk war parties made the Algonkin and their Huron allies reluctant to bring their furs to Quebec, and to win their loyalty, the French decided to help them against the Iroquois. In July of 1609, only two months before Henry Hudson reached the Mahican villages, Samuel de Champlain and six other French accompanied a combined Algonkin, Montagnais, and Huron war party south into New York. At the north end of Lake Champlain, they encountered a large force of Mohawk warriors massing for battle. French firearms broke the Mohawk formation killing several of their chiefs. Confronting a new weapon for the first time, the Mohawk broke and ran. The following year, the French joined their allies to destroy a Mohawk fort on the Richelieu River, and afterwards the Algonkin used the steel weapons gotten from the French to drive the Iroquois from the upper St. Lawrence.

If this unequal contest had continued long enough, the Iroquois might well have been destroyed, but they were saved by the beginning of Dutch trade on the Hudson River in 1610. The one obstacle for the Mohawk, however, was that to trade with the Dutch, they first had to cross Mahican territory. Relations between these two tribes had apparently been hostile for many years before contact, and in all likelihood, the Mahican were a part of the Adirondack. A further source of irritation appears to have been that the Mahican had better access to tribes in the wampum producing areas of Long Island sound which gave them control of the trade in this valuable commodity with the Iroquois. In any case, the Mahican were very reluctant to allow Mohawk access to the Dutch, while the Mohawk desperately needed to trade for steel weapons if they were to survive their war with their northern enemies.

At first, the Dutch traders came only in the summer, loaded their ships with fur, and then sailed back to Europe. By 1613 the fur trade on the Hudson River had grown so lucrative, it became organized, and the United Netherlands Company, a consortium of thirteen Dutch merchants, was granted a four-year charter by the Staten Generaal. It was decided to establish a permanent trading post, but the Dutch first had to arrange a truce to end the fighting which had erupted between the Mahican and Mohawk. Once this was done, the Dutch built Fort Nassau on Castle Island just south of present-day Albany in 1614. Just opposite a Mahican village, it was not easy for the Mohawk to visit, but Fort Nassau was also inconvenient for the Dutch. Prone to flooding, it was abandoned with the outbreak of another Mahican-Mohawk war in 1617. Dutch traders were inclined to favor the Mahican in these conflicts, but they had also ingratiated themselves to the Mohawk by arming them against the Munsee and Susquehannock during 1615. This gave the Dutch enough influence to negotiate another truce between the Mohawk and Mahican in 1618. A new Fort Nassau was built on higher ground near its former location.

The terms of this agreement gave the Mohawk unlimited access to the Dutch but required them to pay tolls to cross Mahican territory. This was not easy for the Mohawk to accept, but the peace endured for six years. During 1621 the United Netherlands Company was absorbed by the newly-formed Dutch West India Company, a commercial enterprise whose charter gave it exclusive authority to trade, govern, and settle New Netherlands. Settlement had been secondary to the fur trade, but after the establishment of an English colony at Plymouth (Massachusetts) in 1620, the Dutch West India Company began to encourage greater immigration. Thirty families under the direction of Willem Verhulst arrived from Holland in 1624. Most settled near Fort Nassau at a place which they called Maeykans "Home of the Mahican" and began to construct new trading post (Fort Orange) on the west side of the Hudson at present-day Albany. Since they no longer needed to cross the Hudson, the new location was more convenient for the Mohawk, but after 14 years of supplying the Dutch with fur, both the Mahican and Iroquois had just about exhausted the beaver in their homelands. As the fur reaching them began to dwindle, the Dutch asked the Mahican to arrange trade for them with the Algonkin and Montagnais (French allies and trading partners) in the St. Lawrence Valley.

The Mohawk had endured tolls for six years but would not tolerate trade with their northern enemies and attacked the Mahican in 1624. To protect their trade, the Dutch tried to arrange a truce, but this was a war they could not stop. The struggle between the Mahican and Mohawk during the next four years was a critical moment in the history of North America, and if the Mohawk had not won, Cooper's book might well have been called "Last of the Iroquois." Since they lived near their villages and often intermarried with them, the Dutch favored the Mahican, and in 1626, Krieckbeck, the commander at Fort Orange, and six Dutch soldiers joined a Mahican war party against the Mohawk. Running into an ambush, Krieckbeck and three of his men were killed, and the Mohawk warriors celebrated their victory afterwards by cooking and eating one of the dead. Rather than retaliate, Governor Pieter Minuit ordered the other Dutch to remain strictly neutral and evacuated the families near Fort Orange to Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. By 1628, the Mahican had been defeated and abandoned their villages west of the Hudson River.

When the Mahican-Mohawk war ended in 1628, the Dutch pragmatically accepted the outcome, and the Mohawk became their dominant trading partner. The peace not only bound the Mohawk and Mahican into an alliance but required the Mahican to pay an annual tribute of wampum to the Iroquois. The Dutch had become aware in 1623 of the value which natives placed on wampum from their dealings with the Pequot along the Connecticut River. Soon afterwards, they began accepting it as a medium of exchange in the fur trade which greatly increased its value. Using the wampum they were receiving from the Mahican, the Mohawk could purchase many of things they needed from the Dutch, but to continue to dominate the fur trade, they still needed to find new sources of beaver. For this reason, the Mohawk, after they made peace with the Mahican in 1628, continued their wars against the Mahican allies in western New England: Pennacook, Pocumtuc and Sokoki (western Abenaki). At the same time, they renewed efforts to retake the upper St. Lawrence which they had been forced to surrender to the Algonkin and Montagnais in 1610.

Strangely enough, it was a European war between Britain and France which allowed them to do this. In 1629 a British fleet captured Quebec, and for the next three years until it was returned to France by treaty in 1632, French trade goods (and weapons) came to a complete halt for the Algonkin and Montagnais. While their trade with the Dutch continued, the Iroquois seized this opportunity to attack their enemies while they were at a disadvantage. In 1629 a Mohawk war party destroyed the Algonkin-Montagnais village at Trois Rivieres. By the time France regained Canada in 1632, the Algonkin and Montagnais had been forced to abandon most of the upper St. Lawrence, and the Mohawk were close to cutting the vital trade corridor through the Ottawa River Valley to the western Great Lakes. To restore the previous military advantage, the French began selling their allies firearms for "hunting" which started an arms race. Dutch traders countered with similar sales to the Iroquois, and the result was seventy years of intertribal warfare to control the European fur trade known as the Beaver Wars (1629-1701).

Efforts by the Dutch West India Company to increase immigration proved unsuccessful, and in 1629 they offered large land grants with feudal authority to wealthy investors (patroons) willing to transport, at their own expense, fifty adult settlers to New Netherlands. Five patroonships resulted, but since there was little economic opportunity for anyone but patroons, most ended in failure. By 1635, the company had repurchased four of the original grants. The exception was Rensselaerswyck (Van Rensselaer Manoi) in the Mahican homeland which straddled both sides of the Hudson near old Fort Nassau. Since Dutch law required the purchase of native lands, Kiliaen van Rensselaer sent Sebastian Jansen Crol to Fort Orange in 1630 to negotiate the sale with the Mahican. His timing could not have been better. The Mahican were agreeable since they still claimed their old lands west of the Hudson, but after their defeat by the Mohawk in 1628, they no longer had any villages there. Besides the promise of trade, it also seems likely that, despite their recent alliance with the Mohawk, the Mahican felt more comfortable about their new "allies" with a Dutch settlement near them. Other purchases from the Mahican were added over the years, and Rensselaerswyck eventually grew to almost a million acres.

One of the effects of the prolonged Mahican-Mohawk war between 1624 and 1628 was that it had forced the Dutch to locate their settlements elsewhere. In 1626 Pieter Minuit purchased Manhattan Island from the Metoac tribe of the same name. Fort Amsterdam was built on the south end of the island along with the settlement of New Amsterdam, and farmers were brought to raise the food for the garrison. In 1639, the Company gave up its monopoly in the fur trade, and immigration to New Netherlands increased dramatically. As settlement spread across the lower Hudson Valley, native lands were often taken through fraud and intimidation. Unlike the friendly relations which the Dutch had enjoyed with the Mahican, conflict with the Wappinger, Unami Delaware, and Metoac on the lower river was immediate, and because of the growing hostility, the Dutch were reluctant to sell firearms to the tribes near their settlements.

Unfortunately, this was not the situation elsewhere. Although the Dutch and French sold firearms to their native allies, both were very careful to limit the amount of ammunition to prevent the use of these weapons against themselves. However, after the Swedes settled on the lower Delaware River in 1638, they tried to compensate for their late start in the fur trade with unrestricted sales to the Susquehannock who quickly became a threat to neighboring tribes. When the other latecomer, English traders along the Connecticut River, tried to lure the Mohawk away from the Dutch with offers of firearms in 1640, the Dutch reacted by providing guns and ammunition to the Iroquois and Mahican in any amount they wanted. While a brutal war raged to the north along the St. Lawrence between the Dutch supplied Iroquois League and the French allied Huron and Algonkin, the Mohawk and Mahican along the Hudson were at peace with each other. However, both tribes had become very heavily-armed compared to the Wappinger and other tribes on the lower river.

The Dutch were unable to prevent either tribe from using their new weapons against neighboring tribes. The European presence in the Hudson Valley had also introduced a series of new epidemics which further destabilized the situation. Smallpox started in New England and devastated the native population during 1634. Measles, influenza, typhus, and a host of other diseases took a similar toll. To maintain their dominant position in the trade with the Dutch, the Mahican and Mohawk needed additional hunting territory, but they had been hit as heavily as anyone else (perhaps moreso) and were forced to compensate for the fall in their populations by cooperating in warfare. After years of fighting, the Mahican and Mohawk had acquired a great respect for each other as warriors, and by 1642 they were forming joint war parties against the Sokoki and Montagnais. Despite military successes and territorial gains, beaver fur was becoming increasingly difficult to find, but the Dutch were also accepting wampum as payment.

The solution for the Mahican and Mohawk was to subjugate the weaker tribes to the south and demand tribute in wampum. While the Mohawk pressured the Munsee Delaware west of the river, the Mahican went after the Wappinger on the east side. During the winter of 1642-43, eighty heavily armed Mahican warriors arrived at the Wecquaesgeek (Wappinger) villages near present-day Yonkers to demand tribute. In the melee which resulted, 17 Wecquaesgeek were killed and many of their women and children taken prisoner. The Wecquaesgeek fled south to what they thought was the protection of the Dutch settlements on the south end of Manhattan Island. After a two-week stay, they moved across the river to the Hackensack and Tappan (Unami Delaware) villages at Pavonia (Jersey City). Because of a recent incident and near war with the Wecquaesgeek, the Dutch had little sympathy for their plight and considered them, at best, unwelcome guests.

There had also been trouble with the Raritan (Pig War, 1640) and Hackensack (Whiskey War, 1642), and when the Narragansett sachem Miontonimo, accompanied by 100 of his warriors, had visited the Metoac villages on Long Island that summer to recruit allies for a war against the Mohegan in Connecticut, Governor Kieft and the other Dutch became suspicious that a general uprising was being planned against themselves and the English. Ignoring the advice of his council, Kieft decided to exterminate the Wecquaesgeek to set an example to the other Wilden (wild men) near Manhattan. On the night of February 25th, 1643, the Dutch made two surprise attacks on the sleeping Wecquaesgeek villages near Pavonia and, without regard for sex or age, massacred at least 110. As word of the Pavonia Massacre spread to the other tribes along the lower river, they retaliated with attacks on the outlying Dutch farms. The Dutch were quickly driven inside the confines of Fort Amsterdam, and in preparing for siege, Kieft compounded the damage by stealing corn from the Metoac on Long Island.

The Wappinger War (Governor Kieft's War, 1642-45) quickly spread to at least 20 tribes: Tappan, Hackensack, Haverstraw, Navasink, Raritan, and a few Munsee in New Jersey; Wecquaesgeek, Kitchawank, Sintsink, Nochpeem, Siwanoy, Tankiteke, and Wappinger in the north; and Canarsee, Manhattan, Rockaway, Matinecock, Merrick, Secatoag, and Massapequa on Long Island. With only 250 men, the Dutch were nearly overwhelmed. Only the Mahican and Mohawk remained loyal, and Kieft took advantage of this to travel to Fort Orange and conclude a treaty of friendship and alliance with them. Although the Mohawk and Mahican did not intervene in the fighting, the mere threat of their doing so was sufficient to keep the war from spreading. Kieft then offered 25,000 guilders to the English in Connecticut for 150 men to help put down the uprising. Dutch and English forces combined with terrible effect during the 1644 and 1645 to crush the Wappinger and their allies. By the summer of 1645, more than than 2,600 had been killed, and the Wappinger asked the Mahican to mediate a peace for them with the Dutch. The Mahican were rewarded for their services. The treaty signed at Fort Orange that August made the Wappinger subject to the Mahican and required the Metoac on the western end of Long Island to pay them an annual tribute in wampum.

Since the Mahican were required in turn to pay tribute to the Mohawk, some of the Metoac tribute found its way to the Iroquois who also profited indirectly from the war. Without losing a single warrior in a war they had provoked between the Dutch and Wappinger, the Mahican and Mohawk gained control