[3] Fielding insisted upon retaining the everyday use of the Mohegan language during an era when most New England Native peoples were becoming increasingly fluent in English.

Her maternal grandmother Martha Uncas spoke it with family members, and other Mohegan people continued to speak and understand some of the language, but by 1900, few were as fluent as Fidelia and her sister.

[4] Many modern sources suggest that anthropologist Frank G. Speck, as a child, lived with Fidelia Fielding, but there is no evidence to support that in any Mohegan tribal records or oral memories.

Speck was in the midst of a camping trip to Fort Shantok, Connecticut, when he met up with several Mohegan young men—Burrill Tantaquidgeon, Jerome Roscoe Skeesucks, and Edwin Fowler—who introduced him to Fielding.

Speck interviewed Fielding, recording notes on the Mohegan language that he shared with his professor, John Dyneley Prince, who encouraged further research.

Years later, Gladys Tantaquidgeon, a Mohegan woman trained by Fielding who similarly insisted on preserving traditional ways, was also inducted into the Hall of Fame.

[2] During Fielding's lifetime, parents were reluctant to use or teach the Mohegan language to their children, for fear of prejudice or reprisals from the English speakers around them.