You’ve probably heard of the movie “Last of the Mohicans.”
But did you know that there are actually still Mohicans right here in Wisconsin?
WTMJ’s Libby Collins sat down with Monique Tyndall, director of cultural affairs for the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans on this week’s episode of WTMJ Conversations.
Listen in the player above.
A portion of the conversation was transcribed below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters, Inc.
LIBBY COLLINS: You are in Wisconsin, but how were you moved? You mentioned before about property rights and a lot of things that members of the Mohican Nation were pretty much coerced into signing, were these territories taken away from them summarily? Were you forced to move to where you are in Wisconsin, or was it a gradual progress? Was it a choice? How did that occur?
MONIQUE TYNDALL: I think it was like a little bit of all — all the above, because by 1734 the Mohican Nation decided to accept an offer to move to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which was called Indiantown at that time, and co-governed the town with four English families. And then even after serving in the Revolutionary War and early colonial wars, our people found themselves to be no longer welcome in our own homeland.
So, then by 1780, we started to remove from Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and accept the invitation to live among the Oneida Nation in Western New York, so that’s where you had that New Stockbridge. Even during our time there, we found that the amount of violence and all the other things that come with colonization, like, we were still experiencing that.
We started looking into other opportunities to move further away because we were looking for a place where we could continue to have our nation, to preserve out rights and our way of life, and for a place for our people to be safe. This was like a whole period where it’s not just land lost, land theft, it’s also genocide. And there was a hope that after supporting the American colonists in the Revolutionary War that their promises by General George Washington and others, that they would be upheld, and they weren’t. And the killings continued, and land continued to be stolen.
There’s like this whole segue, too, where we look at the actions of the governor of New York of the state that — which also, like, sort of influenced the tribe to make a decision to look for land further out west. And a lot of it had to do to preserve ourselves, to preserve our people and make sure that we had a safe place to live.
