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.
OTHER NAMES:
Akochakanen - meaning "Those who speak a strange tongue." (Iroquois name.)
Canoe Indians - so called by Whites.
Hikanagi or Nhikana - Shawnee name.
Loups - "wolfs", so called by the French.
Mourigan - so called by the French.
Orunges - given by Chauvignerie (1736), in Schoolcraft (1851-57, vol. 3, p. 554).
Monekunnuk
Stockbridge
Tonotaenrat
River Indians - Dutch name.
Uragees - given by Colden, 1747.
The original Mahican homeland was on both banks of the upper the Hudson River Valley from the Catskill Mountains north to the southern end of Lake Champlain,
and eastward to include the valley of the Housatonic.
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.
SUBDIVISIONS
Mahican proper, Mechkentowoon, Wawyachtonoc, Westenhuck or Housatonic, Wiekagjoc
The traditional point of origin of the Mahican was in the West.
1600 - Mooney (1928) estimates that there were about 3,000 Mahican.
1609 - Henry 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.
1624 - The Mohawk had endured tolls for six years but would not tolerate trade with their northern enemies and attacked the Mahican.
1628 - Mahican-Mohawk war ended.
Mahican had been defeated and abandoned their villages west of the Hudson River.
1642 - 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.
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 Wappinger War (Governor Kieft's War, 1642-45) quickly spread to at least 20 tribes. Only the Mahican and Mohawk remained loyal.
1660 - Unfortunately, the Mahican and Mohawk were unable to guarantee peace between themselves. That same year, the Mohawk discovered the Mahican were once again trying to arrange trade between the Dutch and the Algonkin, Montagnais, and Sokoki.
1662 - After the Mahican ignored their warnings, the Mohawk attacked them.
1664 - After two years of fighting with battles at Wanton Island and Red Hook, the Mahican had abandoned almost all of the Hudson Valley, including their ancient capital at Shodac just opposite Albany, to the present Stockbridge. The fighting continued until 1672, but after 1664, the Mahican council fire was at Westenhuck on upper Housatonic River in western Massachusetts.
1664 - Only the Mahican still opposed the Iroquois, but by 1669 they had retreated to the Housatonic Valley in western Massachusetts, and despite the incorporation of small groups of Wappinger and Mattabesec, their population had fallen to less than 1,000.
1665 - In their search for beaver, Mahican hunters had ranged west into the Ohio Valley as early as 1665.
1670 - Governor Lovelace travelled to Albany to try to arrange peace between the Mohawk and Mahican.
1672 - The British continued to insist, and the peace which the Mahican finally made with the Iroquois League in 1672 was actually a total surrender.
After 1675 - Iroquois League handled all Mahican negotiations with Europeans, and two years later, the Mahican became the first members of the Iroquois "Covenant Chain."
1676 - During the winter, the Mahican were also instrumental in providing a sanctuary at their village of Schaghticoke on the Hudson River for 250 refugees from the King Philip's War (1675-76). Others followed, and by 1700 the number of refugees at Schaghticoke had grown to more to 1,000.
1680 - French encountered two groups of Mahican living with the Miami on the upper Kankakee River in northern Indiana. They were still there in 1721, when the French refused permission for other groups of Mahican to relocate to the Ohio country from New York.
1681 - Mahican warriors were recruited for Iroquois raids against tribes in Virginia and Carolina.
1683 - Sales of other lands along the Hudson were also made to Robert Livingston in 1683 and 1685 followed by the surrender of their claims in northwest Connecticut.
1690 - Even as they continued to absorb members of the Wappinger and Mattabesic, smallpox during 1690 reduced the Mahican to less than 800 (10% of their original number).
1692 - Although subject, the Mahican still exercised considerable respect and influence within the Iroquois councils, and under the protection of the Mahican, a group of Shawnee from South Carolina in 1692 were allowed to move in among the Munsee Delaware in northeast Pennsylvania. For this to be allowed, the Mahican had to overcome strong objections from the Iroquois who still thought of the Shawnee as enemies.
1702 - Shortly after the outbreak of the Queen Anne's War (1701-13), the Mahican sachem Minichque was mortally wounded by four free blacks during a visit to Albany in August of 1702.
1711 - Mahican, Schaghticoke, and Iroquois attended a conference at Albany with the British to plan an expedition to capture Quebec. The undertaking ended in disaster. The ships used to transport them to the Gulf of St. Lawrence became lost in fog off the coast of Nova Scotia, and after a collision, two sank with the loss of 840 men.
1721 - They gradually sold their territory and in 1721 a band was on Kankakee River, Ind.
1724 - As more and more English colonists moved into western Massachusetts, the Mahican began to sell their lands on the Housatonic. Konkapot, their chief sachem, sold one large section in 1724 for £460. Payment also included three barrels of cider and three quarts of rum, presumably to ease the pain of his decision. After the sale, the only Massachusetts land that the Mahican had left was a small area along the Housatonic River between Sheffield (Skatekook) and Stockbridge (Wnahkutook).
1730 - Keepedo (known later as Mohican Abraham) abandoned his lands and left Massachusetts with his people to settle among the Unami and Munsee Delaware in Wyoming Valley in northern Pennsylvania, afterward becoming merged with those tribes.
In 1730 those in the Housatonic Valley were gathered into a mission at Stockbridge and were ever afterward known as Stockbridge Indians.
1735 - John Sargeant (Sergeant) arrived in western Massachusetts in 1734 and, the following year, built a mission at Stockbridge, a place the Mahican called the Great Meadow.
1736 - Sargeant's growing congregation was joined during 1736 by other converts: Mahican from Schaghticoke and Potick (New York); Munsee; Wappinger; and several other New England tribes.
1740 - As their land and number dwindled, the Mahican began to scatter, and by 1740 most had disappeared from the Hudson Valley.
Moravians worked with the Mahican after 1740. A mission was established at Shekomeko (Pine Plains, New York) in 1749, but was closed after the start of the French and Indian War (1755-63) when its ministers protested white takeovers of native land and were arrested on the suspicion of being French agents.
1749 - Most of Unami and Munsee Delaware and Mahican had left the Wyoming and Susquehanna Valleys and moved to the Ohio country without bothering to ask for Iroquois permission.
One group of Mahican settled on the upper Sandusky River in northwest Ohio near the Wyandot.
1750 - The Mahican on the Kankakee had disappeared and are presumed to have been absorbed by the Miami.
1753 - Turning the other cheek as required by their new faith, the Stockbridge chose to not to retaliate for the unprovoked murder of a Mahican in 1753 by two whites, even when their punishment by a Massachusetts court was exceptionally lenient.
1756 - Large body of Mahican and Wappinger, along with Nanticoke and other people, settled in Broome and Tioga Counties under Iroquois protection.
Ohio Mahican joined the Pontiac Rebellion, and the following year their village (Mahican John's) was burned by Colonel John Bradstreet.
45 Stockbridge warriors joined Major Robert Roger's Rangers in 1756, and because of them, Abenaki and Schaghticoke raiders avoided English settlements along the Housatonic.
Although Konkapot and a few families refused to leave, many Stockbridge sold their Massachusetts lands in 1756 and, accepting the invitation of the Oneida, moved to upstate New York. These were soon joined by the last groups of Wappinger and Munsee from the lower Hudson Valley forced to relocate for similar reasons.
1758 - Mahican and Wappinger lands along the Hudson River confiscated by New York or occupied by white squatters after the Mahican and Wappinger families in the area had been forced to leave in 1758 by the threat of massacre.
1763 - To pay debts owed to white traders, Konkapot was forced to sell more land in 1763, and by the start of the American Revolution in 1775, the Stockbridge holdings in Massachusetts had been reduced to less than 1,200 acres.
1774 - As war approached, both the Mahican and Wappinger (now virtually the same tribe) sent wampum belts to other tribes advising neutrality. However, after a meeting with the Patriots at Boston in April, Captain Hendrick Aupamut changed his mind and decided to throw in with the rebels, and Nimham's Wappinger followed suit. The Stockbridge were one of the few tribes to support the American cause during the war.
They participated in the siege of Boston and fought at Bunker Hill that June.
1776 - Stockbridge saw service at White Plains.
1777 - Stockbridge served as scouts for the army of Horatio Gates at Saratoga and fought as a company-sized unit at the Battle of Bennington.
1778 - Stockbridge were at Barren Hill.
Nimham was killed at the battle of Kingsbridge in August. For their service, the Stockbridge received a land grant in Vermont (later sold). Unfortunately, the Stockbridge also paid a terrible price for their patriotism ...the war cost them almost half of their adult male population.
1782 - In March Mahican Abraham (by now an old man) and 90 peaceful Christian Delaware were massacred by American militia at Gnadenhutten, Ohio.
1786 - Last group the Stockbridge left western Massachusetts for New York.
1788 - Another body of Indians drawn from New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, including Mahican, settled near the Stockbridges at Marshall, N. Y. The Stockbridge and Brotherton Indians later removed to Wisconsin, where they were probably joined by part at least of the band last mentioned. A few Mahican remained about their old home on Hudson River for some years after the Revolution but disappeared unnoticed.
1793 - Although they maintained a separate identity until 1793, the Ohio Mahican eventually were absorbed by the Delaware.
Stockbridge volunteered for the thankless and dangerous role as American negotiators with the tribes of the western alliance in Ohio who were at war with United States. Two other government commissioners enroute to a meeting with the alliance had been murdered only the year before, but the Stockbridge delegation led by Hendrick Aupamut arrived safely in August, 1793, undoubtedly because they had so many relatives among the hostile Miami and Delaware. They were heard in council with respect, but unfortunately, the negotiations ended in failure and the war went on to its eventual conclusion at Fallen Timbers in 1794.
1796 - Stockbridges among the Iroquois numbered 300
1802 - Stockbridge community on the Oneida reserve had added several hundred Christian Brotherton Indians from Connecticut, Long Island, and New Jersey.
1812 - Stockbridge and Brotherton warriors also served in the American Army during the War of 1812.
1818 - As their landbase shrank, nearly one-third of the Stockbridge under the leadership of John Metoxin accepted an offer made in 1808 by their relatives among the Delaware and Miami and in 1818 moved to the White River in Indiana. Unfortunately, they had no sooner arrived than they learned the Delaware had sold their Indiana lands and were preparing for removal west of the Mississippi to southwest Missouri. Some Stockbridge continued on to Wisconsin, but many chose to stay and were joined later by a group of Munsee Delaware. This mixed group did not leave Indiana and rejoin the main body until 1834.
1822 - Meanwhile, the remaining Stockbridge in New York had sold their remaining lands in 1822 and agreed to move with the Oneida and Brotherton to a new reservation in northern Wisconsin on lands east of the Fox River which the government intended to purchase from the Menominee and Winnebago. The Menominee changed their minds about the amount of land they wished to sell, and it took some time to negotiate a new agreement.
1834 - After a new treaty signed in 1831, the move was completed by 1834 with the Oneida located just west of Green Bay and the Stockbridge and Brotherton settled on the east shore of Lake Winnebago. During the late 1830s the government made plans to send them to Oklahoma and Kansas. One group actually moved in 1839, but after extreme hardship enroute, they did not adjust well to life on the plains and returned to Wisconsin. By this time, the Stockbridge had decided they had moved enough.
1856 - However, serious internal divisions developed after the government offered citizenship if the the Stockbridge would end their tribal ownership of land. The majority of the Brotherton finally accepted this offer in a treaty signed in 1856, while the Stockbridge, Munsee, and a few Brotherton moved to a new 40,000 acre reservation west of Green Bay.
1910 - The census of 1910 gave 533 Stockbridges and 172 Brotherton.
1923 - Stockbridges among the Iroquois numbered 606, including some Munsee.
