Uncas

Uncas
Author: Michael Leroy Oberg
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780801472947

Many know the name Uncas only from James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, but the historical Uncas flourished as an important leader of the Mohegan people in seventeenth-century Connecticut. In Uncas: First of the Mohegans, Michael Leroy Oberg integrates the life story of an important Native American sachem into the broader story of European settlement in America. The arrival of the English in Connecticut in the 1630s upset the established balance among the region's native groups and brought rapid economic and social change. Oberg argues that Uncas's methodical and sustained strategies for adapting to these changes made him the most influential Native American leader in colonial New England. Emerging from the damage wrought by epidemic disease and English violence, Uncas transformed the Mohegans from a small community along the banks of the Thames River in Connecticut into a regional power in southern New England. Uncas learned quickly how to negotiate between cultures in the conflicts that developed as natives and newcomers, Indians and English, maneuvered for access to and control of frontier resources. With English assistance, Uncas survived numerous assaults and plots hatched by his native rivals. Unique among Indian leaders in early America, Uncas maintained his power over large numbers of tributary and other native communities in the region, lived a long life, and died a peaceful death (without converting to Christianity) in his people's traditional homeland. Oberg finds that although the colonists considered Uncas "a friend to the English," he was first and foremost an assertive guardian of Mohegan interests.

Among the Mohegans

Among the Mohegans
Author: Howard Root
Publisher:
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2013-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1475983689

As the youngest son of a tenant farmer in England's Puritan heartland, twenty-year-old Jonathan Smythe foresees himself trapped forever in a life of servitude to his older brother. Anxious to temporarily escape his worries, Jonathan heads on a secret poaching trip with a friend that quickly turns disastrous when the men are captured by Lord Kingley's thugs. After his friend is mercilessly killed, Jonathan vows revenge and later bludgeons the thugs' leader to death. With a murder decree hanging over his head, Jonathan has no choice but to flee England. Following his father's plan, Jonathan travels to Barbados and begins a life of indentured servitude on his uncle's tobacco plantation. Jonathan arrives committed to five years of hard work that begins at sunrise and is motivated by the overseer's whip. Driven by dreams of owning fertile land without slaves, Jonathan fulfills his duty and embarks on a dangerous journey to the English colonies. But little does he know that his pilgrimage to a new life will be more demanding than he ever imagined, involving desperate battles and massacres with Native Americans after he finally reaches the Bay Colony. When Jonathan befriends Running Wolf, a Mohegan ally, he may finally find passage to his true passions and self. In this compelling tale, a young Puritan man must face raw challenges that test his faith and life in a new world as he searches for his destiny.

Medicine Trail

Medicine Trail
Author: Melissa Jayne Fawcett
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2015-09-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0816532559

Contrary to the fictional account of James Fenimore Cooper, the Mohegan/Mohican nation did not vanish with the death of Chief Uncas more than three hundred years ago. In the remarkable life story of one of its most beloved matriarchs—100-year-old medicine woman Gladys Tantaquidgeon—Medicine Trail tells of the Mohegans' survival into this century. Blending autobiography and history, with traditional knowledge and ways of life, Medicine Trail presents a collage of events in Tantaquidgeon's life. We see her childhood spent learning Mohegan ceremonies and healing methods at the hands of her tribal grandmothers, and her Ivy League education and career in the white male-dominated field of anthropology. We also witness her travels to other Indian communities, acting as both an ambassador of her own tribe and an employee of the federal government's Bureau of Indian Affairs. Finally we see Tantaquidgeon's return to her beloved Mohegan Hill, where she cofounded America's oldest Indian-run museum, carrying on her life's commitment to good medicine and the cultural continuance and renewal of all Indian nations. Written in the Mohegan oral tradition, this book offers a unique insider's understanding of Mohegan and other Native American cultures while discussing the major policies and trends that have affected people throughout Indian Country in the twentieth century. A significant departure from traditional anthropological "as told to" American Indian autobiography, Medicine Trail represents a major contribution to anthropology, history, theology, women's studies, and Native American studies.

The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan

The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan
Author: Samson Occom
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2006-11-09
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0195346882

This volume brings together for the first time the known writings of the pioneering Native American religious and political leader, intellectual, and author, Samson Occom (Mohegan; 1723-1792). The largest surviving archive of American Indian writing before Charles Eastman (Santee Sioux; 1858-1939), Occom's writings offer unparalleled views into a Native American intellectual and cultural universe in the era of colonialization and the early United States. His letters, sermons, journals, prose, petitions, and hymns--many of them never before published--document the emergence of pantribal political consciousness among the Native peoples of New England as well as Native efforts to adapt Christianity as a tool of decolonialization. Presenting previously unpublished and newly recovered writings, this collection more than doubles available Native American writing from before 1800.

Native American Tribes

Native American Tribes
Author: Jay Moore
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 34
Release: 2016-03-28
Genre:
ISBN: 9781530774838

*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts describing the Mohegans *Includes online resources, footnotes, and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "There were then given to Onkos, Sachem of Monheag, Eighty; to Myan Tonimo, Sachem of Narragansett, Eighty; and to Nynigrett, Twenty, when he should satisfy for a Mare of Edward Pomroye's killed by his Men. The Pequots were then bound by Covenant, That none should inhabit their native Country, nor should any of them be called PEQUOTS any more, but Moheags and Narragansatts for ever." - The Treaty of Hartford, made between the Mohegan and Narragansett after the Pequot War From the "Trail of Tears" to Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn, the narrative of American history is incomplete without the inclusion of the Native Americans that lived on the continent before European settlers arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the first contact between natives and settlers, tribes like the Sioux, Cherokee, and Navajo have both fascinated and perplexed outsiders with their history, language, and culture. In Charles River Editors' Native American Tribes series, readers can get caught up to speed on the history and culture of North America's most famous native tribes in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. Among all the Native American tribes, the Mohegan people are some of the most well documented Native Americans in history. Indigenous to the northeast region of what is now the United States, they were among some of the earliest contacts Europeans had with the native tribes. And yet they have remained a constant source of mystery. When European settlers began to colonize areas like Plymouth and New Amsterdam, they quickly came into contact with various natives, including the southeast Connecticut based Mohegan, who were once part of a unified tribe with the Pequot but now considered that group a mortal enemy. In fact, the entangled nature of the tribes meant that European colonists who could barely distinguish between the groups often found themselves in makeshift alliances, and during the Pequot War in the 1630s, the Pequot were nearly wiped out. Though the Mohegan helped the colonists during that war and benefited from it, the tribe itself would begin to languish as the United States expanded. By the 20th century, the Mohegan tribe was on the verge of having its last native speaker die, and suffering the extinction of their original language. Fortunately, anthropologists and some of the Mohegans remaining helped to keep their culture and language alive, and today there is a federally recognized Mohegan tribe that lives on a reservation near their original homeland in Connecticut. Native American Tribes: The History and Culture of the Mohegans examines the Mohegan people, from their origins to their decline, as well as their revival. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Mohegans like never before, in no time at all.

Native American Tribes

Native American Tribes
Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 68
Release: 2018-01-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9781983756160

*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts describing the Mohegans *Includes online resources, footnotes, and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "There were then given to Onkos, Sachem of Monheag, Eighty; to Myan Tonimo, Sachem of Narragansett, Eighty; and to Nynigrett, Twenty, when he should satisfy for a Mare of Edward Pomroye's killed by his Men. The Pequots were then bound by Covenant, That none should inhabit their native Country, nor should any of them be called PEQUOTS any more, but Moheags and Narragansatts for ever." - The Treaty of Hartford, made between the Mohegan and Narragansett after the Pequot War From the "Trail of Tears" to Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn, the narrative of American history is incomplete without the inclusion of the Native Americans that lived on the continent before European settlers arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the first contact between natives and settlers, tribes like the Sioux, Cherokee, and Navajo have both fascinated and perplexed outsiders with their history, language, and culture. In Charles River Editors' Native American Tribes series, readers can get caught up to speed on the history and culture of North America's most famous native tribes in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. Among all the Native American tribes, the Mohegan people are some of the most well documented Native Americans in history. Indigenous to the northeast region of what is now the United States, they were among some of the earliest contacts Europeans had with the native tribes. And yet they have remained a constant source of mystery. When European settlers began to colonize areas like Plymouth and New Amsterdam, they quickly came into contact with various natives, including the southeast Connecticut based Mohegan, who were once part of a unified tribe with the Pequot but now considered that group a mortal enemy. In fact, the entangled nature of the tribes meant that European colonists who could barely distinguish between the groups often found themselves in makeshift alliances, and during the Pequot War in the 1630s, the Pequot were nearly wiped out. Though the Mohegan helped the colonists during that war and benefited from it, the tribe itself would begin to languish as the United States expanded. By the 20th century, the Mohegan tribe was on the verge of having its last native speaker die, and suffering the extinction of their original language. Fortunately, anthropologists and some of the Mohegans remaining helped to keep their culture and language alive, and today there is a federally recognized Mohegan tribe that lives on a reservation near their original homeland in Connecticut. Native American Tribes: The History and Culture of the Mohegans examines the Mohegan people, from their origins to their decline, as well as their revival. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Mohegans like never before, in no time at all.

Spirit of the New England Tribes

Spirit of the New England Tribes
Author: William S. Simmons
Publisher: University Press of New England
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2018-03-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1512603171

Spanning three centuries, this collection traces the historical evolution of legends, folktales, and traditions of four major native American groups from their earliest encounters with European settlers to the present. The book is based on some 240 folklore texts gathered from early colonial writings, newspapers, magazines, diaries, local histories, anthropology and folklore publications, a variety of unpublished manuscript sources, and field research with living Indians.