Mohegan

In 1637, English Puritan colonists destroyed a principal fortified village at Mistick with the help of their sachem Uncas, the Christian convert and sagamore Wequash Cooke, and the Narragansetts during the Pequot War.

This ended with the death of Uncas' cousin Sassacus near Albany, New York, where he had fled,[2] at the hands of the Mohawk, an Iroquois Confederacy nation from west of the Hudson River.

The Mohegan Indian Tribe was historically based in central southern Connecticut, originally part of the Pequot people.

[9] In 1933, John E. Hamilton[10][11] (Chief Rolling Cloud) was appointed as a Grand Sachem by his mother Alice Storey through a traditional selection process based on heredity.

In the 1960s, during a period of rising activism among Native Americans, John Hamilton filed a number of land claims authorized by the "Council of Descendants of Mohegan Indians."

[12] The group led by John Hamilton (although opposed by the Fowlers) worked with the attorney Jerome Griner in federal land claims through the 1970s.

The petition for federal recognition was revived in 1989, but the BIA's preliminary finding was that the Mohegan had not satisfied the criteria of documenting continuity in social community, and political authority and influence as a tribe through the twentieth century.

[14] In its 1994 "Final Determination", the BIA cited the vital statistics and genealogies as documents that were decisive in demonstrating "that the tribe did indeed have social and political continuity during the middle of the 20th century.

Despite their contentious histories and disagreements, both groups continued to participate in tribal activities and to identify as members of the Mohegan people.

The Hamilton band of Mohegans continues to function and govern themselves independently of the MTIC, holding periodic gatherings and activities in their traditional territory of south-central Connecticut.

The Mohegan language was recorded primarily in her diaries, and in articles and a Smithsonian Institution report made by the early anthropologist, Frank Speck.

The Mohegan people have always had extensive knowledge of local flora and fauna, of hunting and fishing technologies, of seasonal adaptations, and of herbal medicine, as practices passed down through the generations.

In the United States, both tribes have been referred to in various historic documents by the spelling "Mohican", based on mistakes in translation and location.

[20] But, the Dutch colonist Adriaen Block, one of the first Europeans to record the names of both tribes, clearly distinguished between the "Morhicans" (now the Mohegans) and the "Mahicans, Mahikanders, Mohicans, [or] Maikens".

During the 1820s the majority of these people removed further west, eventually settling in Wisconsin, where today they constitute the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians.

"[citation needed] Most of the descendants of the Mohegan tribe, by contrast, have continued to live in New England, and particularly in Connecticut, since the colonial era.