The last of the Mohicans is not the last!

The Last of the Mohicans is not the last!

Both Mahican and Mohican (often Mohegan) were from the New England area. There is still a Mohican tribe in Conn. Stockbridge-Munsee is the name of the Mohican community that is in Wisconsin just south of the Menominee reservation.

Mohican and Mahican refer to the same tribe from upper New York State. They are a distintly different tribe from the Mohegans in the Connecticut area.

Stockbridge-Munsee is the name the tribe took after leaving their homeland and joining the mission in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

There is no Mohican tribe in Connecticut. The Stockbridge-Munsees do have a reservation in Shawano County, in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. They have decided to change the name of the tribe back to Mohican. As of 2000, the population in Shawano County was 40,664. Its county seat is Shawano.

The oral histories of the Mohegan in Connecticut say that they moved to CT from the Hudson area just before whites arrived, but archaeologists think they have been in the CT area a lot longer than that.

The spelling “Mohican” is most remembered from James Fenimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans and confuses the independence of these nations by using historical names from the CT group in a story about the MA/NY folks. Remember that it is a story, and Cooper twisted it mightily for his books.

Some sources (books) about Indians:

Handbook of North American Indians (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978-). Volume 9 that covers the Northeastern tribes.

Shirley W. Dunn's The Mohicans and Their Land, 1609-1730 (Fleischmanns, NY: Purple Mountain Pr., 1994)

The Handbook of North American Indians that concerns the Northeast.

Patrick Frazier's The Mohicans of Stockbridge (Lincoln, 1992).

Melissa Fawcett, The Lasting of the Mohegans.

Read more about the Mohicans on our website: www.travelexploraitons.com

Stein Morten Lund, 27 January 2010