Racial Identity Among the New York Indians - Chris Geherin Looks at "New Guinea"

The issue of African American blood running through the veins of the Stockbridge and Brothertown Indians has been a controversial one and I have avoided it for that very reason.  But today I surfed onto an award-winning journal article that is clearly part of Algonkian Church History.

Above: "Brothertown Descendant Greg Wilson, of Union Grove, Wisconsin, on a tour of Brothertown Indian Cemeteries" as noted in the blog "At Home in the Huddle 2."



The New York State Historical Association awarded its Kerr History Prize to Christopher Geherin for the best article in New York History in 2010.  The title itself says a lot:



New Guinea: Racial Identity and Inclusion in the Stockbridge and Brothertown Indian Communities of New York


The full text of the article - along with old photos and maps -  is found in the e-Journal, New York History.

Blogger's note:  Hey, I'm sorry, everybody.  It seems that the New York History e-journal is now a subscription site.  Here's their address: http://www.fenimoreartmuseum.org/digital_subscription_nyh




Here are a few things that Geherin addresses:

1. William Gardner's status is something I addressed in an earlier post, but Geherin has more to say:

In 1824 the Stockbridge tribal council formally adopted William Gardner, identifying him as Narragansett. But in 1826 the legislature of New York defined Gardner as "coloured," and by the 1870s the tribe sought to exclude the Gardners by characterizing the family as "negro."

2. Rev. John Sergeant [Jr.] "mentioned preaching to a small nearby settlement of mulattoes."

3. Names of those (apparently only "heads of families") who lived in the so-called "New Guinea" settlement: Nathaniel, Joshua, and Peter Pendleton; John Baldwin; Henry and George Cook; and Margaret Reid


It should go without saying that Geherin did careful research and documented his sources.  Please refer to his article if you would like to check them.


Citation:

Christopher Geherin, "New Guinea: Racial Identity and Inclusion in the Stockbridge and Brothertown Indian Communities of New York," New York History; Summer 2009 (2 Aug. 2012).

The Mohicans of Pachgatgoch: As told by Moravian Missionaries

The diaries of thirteen Moravian missionaries were recently translated (from German) into English. These translated diaries, along with a 73-page introduction, six appendices, and various other sections, were published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2009 under the title Gideon's People: Being a Chronicle of an American Indian Community in Colonial Connecticut and the Moravian Missionaries Who Served There. Corinna Daily-Starna and William A. Starna translated and edited the nearly 700 pages that make up a two volume set.



As far as the blogoshere is concerned, I've been beaten to the punch on this one. A Febrary 19, 2010 post to the Religion in American History blog by Linford D. Fisher was titled "The View from Pachgotgoch (or, Why Moravians Are Still Sexy)".




If Linford Fisher's post wasn't enough to convince you to read all 690-plus pages of Gideon's People, I'll just have to tell you a few other things about it.

Q: Who was Gideon?
A: Gideon was the headman of the village of Pachgatgoch, a unique community in the sense that it was a community of Christian Indians not organized by the missionaries (this is explained in the introduction, page 60).

Q: Is there any data in this book that I can use for genealogy?
A: Any of the Appendices might be helpful to you. they are, as follows:
Appendix 1 --> page 437: Catalogus of the Indian Congregation in Pachgatgoch
Appendix 2 --> page 447: Names Compoiled by Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg
Appendix 3 --> page 451: Catalogus of Baptized and Unbaptized Indians in Pachgatgoch
Appendix 4 --> page 461: Lists and Correspondence
Appendix 5 --> page 523: Biographical List; and
Appendix 6 --> page 537: the Gazatteer (a list of geographical names)

The Munsees in Wisconsin: We'll Keep Trying Until We Get it Right

I have already written a few posts in which I have focused on the Munsee element in the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians now residing in Shawano County, Wisconsin. It is a topic that is so complicated that I am resolved to keep trying until I get it right.



You might say that the Munsees were a 'political football' during the nasty citizen vs. Indian partisanship (and, of course, federal Indian policies of those times tended to encourage that kind of factionalism).




Diplomats in Buckskins (right) shows that The Stockbridge Mohicans weren't the only tribe that sent delegations to Washington asking the government to change their policies.






If you have read James Oberly's A Nation of Statesmen, you have a good idea of how strings were pulled in Washington D.C. for the Indian party when the Republicans were in power and for the Citizen party when the Democrats were in power. The result was a complicated mess of conflicting realities contested between various sub-groups of Indians.

It was an Indian party goal to exclude the Munsees. As a result, members of the Indian party, their lawyers, and other advocates worked to portray the Munsees as outsiders. There certainly was a time when outsiders were welcomed into the Stockbridge community, but you may remember that was stopped with the Quinney Constitution of 1837. (You may also remember that the arrival of a band of Munsees from Canada is one of the events that led John W. Quinney to write that constitution.)

And so we have documents that tell us that there are no Munsees living among the Stockbridge Mohicans. Actually, I think that there were times when the Indian party was largely successful in getting rid of all the other Indians that sought to be part of the tribe. As a result, Indian party documents that claim that few if any Munsees were around might be accurate. I really do have my doubts about the numbers of Munsees that today's Shawano County Indians are descended from. That is a viewpoint that I advanced in a post in my New York Indian removal series in the spring of 2009.

I'm grateful that Jeremy Mohawk submitted a comment to that post recently. Mr. Mohawk stated that he is a descendant of the New York Munsee rolls of 1839 and that (including his wife, three sons and a daughter) his family "still" lives on the Shawano County Reservation. However, I imagine that if we asked Jeremy Mohawk if his Munsee ancestors had ever left the rez, he would admit to gaps of time where they had to leave. He also said "alot of folks up here have Munsee lineage, well most do." As a matter of fact, I have observed that many or perhaps even most tribal members I know personally do claim to be part Munsee. How can we reconcile that with some of the Indian party documents?

Well, we will keep on trying until we get it right. And by "we," I mean that I don't think I can add or change much without the help of further genealogical data from tribal members.

The "York Tribe" in Indiana

<-- Yorktown, Indiana today.












Andy Olson, a reader from Indiana, contacted me a few months ago to tell me about his research of the New York Indians in Indiana. Although he was asking for some help with his project, I have also been able to learn things about the New York Indians from him, most significantly that the allied Brothertown, Stockbridge and Munsee Indians may have stayed in Indiana for longer than historians realize. Back in the 1820's they were known as "the York Tribe" and the modern town of Yorktown, Indiana (located in the Muncie metro area) is named after their settlement. (Of course, "Muncie" is one of the ways that "Munsee" used to be spelled.)

Andy Olson writes that he is part of the Kilgore family which owned a farm just outside of Yorktown from 1825 to 2002. And there was a " Kilgore family legend passed down" in the family that suggested that "David Kilgore [Olson's great, great, great grandfather] made a 'pact' with a departing 'York Indians' chief that neither Kilgore nor any of his descendants would disturb a burial ground on his property."

That is where it began for Andy Olson. He has now read a lot of papers at the Indiana Historical Society.

As you may remember, by the time the Stockbridges and other New York Indians made it to Indiana's White River, that land had already been purchased by the federal government for white settlement. While tribal petitions to re-designate the land did not accomplish their goal, the bureaucrats of the day at least left us with a record of New York Algonkians (men only) that were settled in the White River area as of 1819. This list is provided here courtesy of Andy Olson:

Jonas Littleman, Nicholas Jourdan, David Abrams, Johiakim Youcum, Jonas Thompson, John Littleman, Cornelius Aaron, Jehoiakim Abram, Sampson Pauskemp, Thomas Hickman, James Joshua, Henry Sukhukowrooh, Joseph Pewauqkuewheek, Abram Konnookhauthe, Cornelius Doxstater. David Neesonnuhhuk, John Baldwin, Abram Kauwaukheck, Daniel Aupehiheukum, John P. Konkpot, Aaron Nohsowwaunmut, Absalom Quinney, Isaac Littleman, [and] Sampson Owwohthemmauq.

Stockbridge Indians Appeal to the King

The Hudson Valley Land Case as told by Patrick Frazier, Part 2



















The 13th chapter of Patrick Frazier's The Mohicans of Stockbridge (pages 160-171) is called "Learning the King's Limitations." It begins with our Indian heroes of Stockbridge, Massachusetts - the Wappinger Chief Daniel Nimham, as well as the Mohican patriarchs Jacob Cheeksaunkun (believed to be the father of the Chicks family), Solomon Uhhaunauwaunmut (the father of Hendrick Aupaumut and the Hendricks family), and John Naunauphtaunk - striking a deal with "William Gregg, Jr., a well-to-do New Englander." Essentially, Gregg was paying the four Indians and their four wives to go to England, and paying them to reside there for three years while they appealed their land case (as discussed in the previous post) to the King. In return, Gregg would receive a twelve square-mile tract of land and, while in England, the three Mohicans (but not Chief Nimham) would "act as Gregg's servants" (page 160).

Below: The Salisbury Cathedral is just one of the remarkable sights seen by the delegation of eight Indians when they arrived in England in 1766.

Frazier's account of the visit - as you might imagine - is quite remarkable. Nevertheless, in the limited space I have, I'll stick to the appeal of the land case itself, the reason for the trip.

At the end of August [1766] the Lords of Trade reported their findings to the King, focusing on the Wappinger claim. In their opinion there were grounds for further investigation into the facts, especially since 'frauds and abuses in respect to Indian lands...have so notoriously prevailed and been complained of in the American colonies and in [the colony of New York] in particular' (page 163).

Frazier continues in the next paragraph:

The earl of Shelburne had taken [the Indians'] affairs under his wing. After consulting with the king, the earl informed the Indians that he would instruct Governor Moore to give their case serious consideration and to find a just and speedy solution.

My guess is that the delegation had hoped for more when they set off across the Atlantic. Nevertheless, the "Indian land case" was at least taken seriously in London and Daniel Nimham and the rest prepared to pursue the case with the Governor.

1900 Census: Menominee and Shawano Counties (Wisconsin)

The German Lutheran Church, Rev. Nickel's (inset) congregation before his ministry to the Stockbridge Indians. This photo and others can be found on the Shawano County Genealogy website.

A local group of genealogists created Shawano County Genealogy a while back. Last month they added a "1900 Menominee/Stockbridge Census" page.

Jean Barkow and Cathe Ziereis transcribed a listing of people - Indian and non-Indian - who lived in Indian Country in Shawano and Menominee Counties who were counted in the 1900 federal census. I'm calling your attention to the list, partly because you may want to use it, but also because of how Cathe introduces the list:

I personally feel like we killed these names in transcribing them as they were written.

On the plus side, you may be able to provide Cathe with the correct spellings.

Also available on the site are lists of Stockbridge Indians buried at The Old Stockbridge Cemetery and the Red Springs Cemetery. This article is at the bottom of the Red Springs Cemetery page:

The Stockbridge-Munsee Community, Genealogy, and a lot more

Do you remember this magazine cover? In 2006, Time named "You" as their person of the year. Blogs are part of the "social media," and Algonkian Church History is no exception. Although I have lots of ideas about where this blog is headed, I also like to respond to your questions and comments. I've had a few of them recently, plus a few that I've put on the "back burner," so let's get to it.

Scott Seaborne pointed out that the tribe which I refer to here as the "Stockbridge Mohicans" legally adopted "Stockbridge-Munsee Community" as their name in their 1937 constitution. He asked me if I knew why and added that he'd heard that the federal government expected or required once-unrecognized tribes to use the word "community" in their name. I don't know how the name "Stockbridge-Munsee Community" was chosen, or who chose it. All I can say is that the tribe is in the process of writing a new constitution now and maybe they'll give themselves a different name.

Genealogist Debra Winchell has agreed to write a guest-post for Algonkian Church History. She is from New York State and one of a number of people that I had a chance to talk to when I attended the Algonquian Peoples Conference in Albany during the spring of 2007. Starting from nothing more than a rumor that there was Indian blood in her family, Debra researched her ancestors all the way back to John Van Gelder, a Mohican-Wappinger.

I'm also looking forward to a guest post from an accomplished blogger whose screen name is Dumneazu. Since he has formal training in Algonkian languages, his contribution should be valuable.

Daniel Burr is trying to prove that he's a descendant of both the Housatonic Mohican Chief Konkapot and the renowned Mohegan/Brothertown minister Samson Occom (also spelled Occum). Although I do not question that some of his ancestors were named Konkapot, one expert, Lion Miles, of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, says that not all of the Konkapots were descendants of the original Konkapot. One family apparently took on that name in honor of the chief. Whether or not Daniel Burr is descended from Samson Occom depends on the truth or falsehood of a statement preserved in the old book Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New England by W. DeLoss Love.

I'll quote from Daniel Burr's e-mail here:

I am looking for a Samson Occum who was a grandson of Rev.Samson Occum from his son Andrew Gifford Occum.W. Deloss Love's book Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New England states this under Rev Samson's family son Andrew Gifford, born 1774 went to Brothertown, and had a lot there which he leased April 12,1792. He married, and his death occurred before 1796, when "widow Patience Occum" was given lot 41. They had a son, Samson Occum, who lived at Brothertown, received part of lot 19 in 1827, and removed, it is said, with his wife Elizabeth to the White River, Some Indians say he joined the Stockbridge tribe. Writing his name Yoccum,and has descendants among them.

There was a Housatonic Mohican living in the 1700's whose name was spelled "Yocun," "Yokun," "Yocon," "Yokim," and "Yocum," (according to page 367 of Shirley Dunn's book The Mohican World 1680-1750,) it is more likely (in my opinion) that Daniel Burr is descended from that Housatonic Mohican than he is from Samson Occom.

Another reader, Carleen Vandezande, has taken the trouble to get me some papers form the Madison County Historical Society in New York. According to one of the papers, Samson Occom returned from his preaching tour in Britain with a gold-plated walkingstick. There was also a lot of information on an Iroquois chief named Skenendoah. As a convert to Christianity, his story could become the topic of a future post.

The Underground Railroad in Eastern Wisconsin

Much detail is lost in the forms of history that usually play to a nationwide audience. I'm sure many people that have seen the map below would be surprised to know that it isn't quite accurate; in addition to the routes you see below, the Underground Railroad also ran through eastern Wisconsin - and not just through the Kenosha/Racine area as the map suggests, but up to Fond du Lac, Sheboygan County, Calumet County, and at least as far north as Green Bay.


Being the secret and illegal organization that it was, there are gaps in our knowledge of the Underground Railroad in eastern Wisconsin, but here's the data I've gathered:

***Fond du Lac: The Octogon House on Linden Street is now a tourist attraction. It features "fascinating underground tunnels" that were used to hide escaped slaves (it was featured on The History Channel).

***Sheboygan County:
Jonathan Walker's main claim to fame was that his hand was branded "SS" for "slave stealer" after he was caught sailing away from the coast of Florida with several escaped slaves on board. Years after that (in 1852), Walker and his family moved to Wisconsin and eventually to Sheboygan County. After Walker moved again, it was reported that there had been a trench on his property, covered with boards and "deep enough for a man to stand"(according to Dennis McCann's article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel March 22, 2000).


***Stockbridge/Chilton/Calumet County :

1) Lemuel Goodell, a white resident of Stockbridge, delivered escaped slaves from Calumet County to a church in Green Bay. Nevertheless, there were escaped slaves who felt they were safe enough in rural Calumet County and settled there. One built himself a small dwelling (J.N.Davidson referred to it as a "shanty"), and upon realizing that his former master had learned of his whereabouts, he fled to the town of Stockbridge. There he was befriended by Indians and whites who told the former master to leave the area. Unfortunately, another slave who later moved into the same dwelling was tracked down and returned to slavery (Davidson, 1897, 66). The last page of J.N. Davidson's (1893) Muh-He-Ka-Ne-Ok, includes this sentance, "Fugitives from slavery found shelter in their [the Stockbridge Mohicans'] settlement." This is built on in the addendum (page 58):

"The slaves whom the writer had in mind were brought by a Mr. Goodell to Green Bay and hidden there in the belfry of the church by Pastor and Mrs. Porter. That was probably in 1855."

2) Moses Stanton's father was black and his mother was a Narragansett. (He wasn't technically a Brothertown Indian, but associated with that tribe informally.) He was the founder of Chilton (now the seat of Calumet County) and also a participant in the Underground Railroad, as the newspaper article below attests. (It was written by Kara Patterson for the Oshkosh [WI] Northwestern where it appeared on February 23, 2005):

William Gardner: Mohican or Narragansett?

The State Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin --->

A document that I found in the John C. Adams Papers (box 1, folder 1) at the State Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin, a few years ago, says something in its own right, but I think I also learned something about "Mohican" identity when I shared it via an online community.

Since the document I found is basically a handwritten copy of an earlier document, the quotation marks you see are as they appear in the original. Due to the nature of blogger technology, I had to add the three lines on the bottom in order to indent those lines. Otherwise, I consider this to be a faithful transcription:

"At a legal council called and [illegible] by the inhabitants of the Town of Stockbridge, this 4th day of April, A.D. 1825, at the School House near Capt. Hendricks[;]
In the first place unanimously voted to adopt William Gardner of the Narragansett Tribe of Indians, he is hereby adopted into the Stockbridge Tribe of Indians conditional for him to go with our people to Green Bay this ensuing season and there to enjoy Equal privilege of said Tribe."
A true copy of the "Town Records"
________________John N. Chicks
________________Secretary of the Stockbridge
________________Tribe of Indians
Stockbridge
Wis. Ter.
Oct. 1839

Let me explain the context of this document. As James Oberly has noted, the "Quinney Constitution" of 1837 put an end to adopting into the tribe Indians that weren't from the Stockbridge community. Therefore, the "Town Records" from 1825 had become relevant because there was apperently some controversy over whether or not William Gardner and his descendants belonged to the Stockbridge or Mohican nation.

Ethnically, nobody questioned the facts. Gardner was a Narragansett. Oh yeah, he had African-American blood too and that may have been part of the controversy. But my point here is that William Gardner had no "Mohican" blood. But he was a full-fledged Stockbridge Indian, or Stockbridge Mohican, if you prefer.



I subscribe to an online community, a Yahoo newsgroup, called The Mohican 7. It was founded by a descendant of William Gardner who I have not met in real life. Several weeks ago, the Gardner descendant who founded the Mohican 7 sent a message out to the group rejoicing that she had located some documentation of the fact that her ancestor, William Gardner, was a "real" Mohican.

At that point I sent out a message which included the same transcription of the document I quoted above and I told the Gardner descendant that I thought she was wrong, because my document clearly said that her ancestor was a Narragansett. But she came back with another message saying that the document I found proved that she was right, because it said that William Gardner was adopted into the Stockbridge Mohicans.

There are still members of the tribe who prefer to abbreviate the name of their tribe to "Stockbridge" rather than "Mohican," because "Stockbridge" makes more sense from a historical perspective. But right now more people are proud to call themselves "Mohicans."

Weequehela and his Descendants

A document which I consider to be "good" genealogy is The Descendants of Weequehela by Caroline Andler, the tribal genealogist of the Brothertown Indians of Wisconsin. Weequehela's descendants belong to the interconnected Brotherton, Stockbridge, and Brothertown Indian tribes. (Intermarriage between the Stockbridge, Brotherton, and Brothertown Indians occurred when they lived as neighbors in New York State and Calumet County, Wisconsin.)

It seems that it was Rich Walling who put something up about Weequehela, a very prosperous New Jersey Delaware Indian, on the net a few years ago. Use this link to read about Weequehela's crime and apparently unlawful execution.

Weequehela and his wife, Sarah Store, had a daughter who was also named Sarah Store. The younger Sarah Store was (according to a statement her son made to Rev. Cutting Marsh) brought to the Christian faith by the mission work of David Brainerd. Use this link to read about the Brainerd brothers.

The younger Sarah Store married the Brotherton interpreter and schoolmaster, Stephen Calvin (the surname of Calvin was common among Presbyterians/Congregationalists/Puritans at that time). Stephen and Sarah had at least two children, Hezekiah, and Bartholomew.



Bartholomew S. Calvin's Indian name was Shawuskhkung, which is interpreted either as "Wilted Grass," or "Place of the Wilted Grass."


I will have more about Bartholomew Calvin and his descendants in future posts. But for now, I'll leave you with part of the statement he made to the New Jersey legislature. As a relatively old man living in Stockbridge, Wisconsin, Bartholomew Calvin went back to New Jersey to collect $2000 that the state owed the remnant of his people for their treaty rights, and made a speech to their lawmakers with this rather often-quoted line:

"Not a drop of our blood have you spilled in battle; not an acre of ground have you taken but by our consent. These facts speak for themselves and need no comment. They place the character of New Jersey in bold relief and bright example to those states within whose territorial limits our brethren still remain. Naught save benisons can fall upon her from the lips of a Lenni-Lenape."

Descendants of King Ben

When I'm not blogging, I work as a librarian. As it is with other professions, we librarians share tips of the trade with each other over the internet. One librarian, Bob from the public library in Lincoln, Nebraska, told the group

"There's a lot of bad genealogy out there, and people need to be aware of the pitfalls.
When we lead people to a source, we need to tell them that there may be other sources they need to check, and that even the most authoritative sources may have errors."

That comment began an active thread of messages and everybody seemed to feel Bob had made an important point.

<---The gravesite of Hannah Chicks (Since there were two Hannah Chickses, the stone clarifies that this was the wife of John Chicks) Stockbridge Indian Cemetery, Stockbridge, WI.


I know a member of the Chicks family who has done some really good genealogical work. However, he has shared his family tree only with people he knows and not publicized it.

On the other hand, my acquaintance from the Chicks family met with another genealogist who was doing Stockbridge Mohican genealogy poorly. The other man's family tree had already been circulating over the internet by the time "Mr. Chicks" told me about their meeting. He said that the other fellow was doing an ambitious tribal genealogy by getting names and dates of the ancestors of people that he came in contact with. Apparently he was accepting input from a number of people and adding it to his database or family tree uncritically.

Since I have two printouts of that family tree, and since it has circulated over the internet, misleading who knows how many people, I feel no qualms about criticizing it now.


Several years after the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts was established, the Chief Sachem of the Mohican nation came to town and made Stockbridge the main council fire or capital city of the once-mighty nation. That Chief Sachem was Benjamin Kokhkewenaunaunt, or King Ben for short. Patrick Frazier tells us that King Ben was David Naunauneekanuk's father (see pages 55 and 254). Naunauneekanuk was John W. Quinney's grandfather (Quinney said so in front of the United States Congress).

Another one of King Ben's sons was Joseph Shauquethquet. According to Lion Miles, his descendants took on the the surname of "Pye," which was certainly easier to pronounce than Shauquethquet. In the 1800's there were three Benjamin Pyes. (Duplicate names are another thing about Stockbridge genealogy that is problematic. There were also three Levi Konkapots.)


The gravesite of Lucy Pye. Stockbridge Indian Cemetery, Stockbridge, WI. ----->


The document that I somehow got ahold of a few years ago is called
"The Descendants of Benjamin Kokhkewenaunaunt."

Although I noticed a number of (arguably) relatively minor errors in this family tree, I will focus on one particularly significant error. This error is the kind of thing that sometimes results when people who speak only English may run into when they read names in another language. The genealogist who circulated his family tree on the internet listed one person as "Mary Waunquauwasquoh Naukhaunuhoshuoh." Maybe "Waunquauwaquoh" and "Naukhaunuhoshuoh" seem to be quite similar to us, but a big mistake was made in assuming that this was one person.

Based on that assumption, The Quinneys are related to the Chickses. If that were true, it would give new significance to the Citizen vs. Indian conflict. (For a number of years, the Citizen party was commonly known as the "Chicks party," and the Indian party was commonly known as the "Quinney party.") If the author of "The Descendants of King Ben" was correct, the longstanding intertribal feud would have been a feud within one extended family.

The member of the Chicks family who does good genealogy talked to Lion Miles, a current resident of Stockbridge, Massachusetts who has studied the Mohican language. According to Miles, Mary Waunquauwasquoh and Mary Naukhaunuhoshuoh are two diferent people, and, as a result, it cannot be said that the Chicks family and the Quinney family are closely related.

Jotham Meeker and the Two Minute Books

New York Indian Removal, Part XVII:
Jotham Meeker and the Two Minute Books

Maybe you're wondering if we have any record of the Indians who left Cutting Marsh's church and then left Wisconsin after signing the treaty of 1839. The answer is: do we ever!...thanks to a Baptist missionary named Jotham Meeker....who owned a printing press!

Meeker learned a number of Algonkian languages and printed various scriptures, hymns, and other religious works in many small books during his career. Another Baptist missionary, John G. Pratt, also knew the printing trade. It seems Pratt was more directly involved in what we might call the church of the Hendricks-Konkapot faction.

As you may have already figured, having two missionary-printers around in a small church community meant that our old friends from "the Disaffected party" may have gotten a little more exposure than they should have. Actually, I don't know if church minutes were ever actually printed (or 'published') by Meeker or Pratt, but it seems that the preservation of Meeker's body of work led to the publication of "Two Minute Books of Kansas Missions in the Forties" in the Kansas Historical Quarterly (August 1933, Vol 2, no. 3), and it is now online.

As the Kansas Historical Society described it, the Minute Books "show that faith was weak at times, and temptation strong, but zeal burned like a bright white flame."

The last page of the Two Minute Books lists the members of the congregation as of 1848 (although some were recently deceased or excluded).
The Baptist contingent of Algonkian church history:

Stockbridge Mohicans: Hannah Konkapot, Eli Hendrick, Sally Hendrick, Jacob Littleman, Nancy Konkapot, Louisa Littleman, Susan Charles, Cornelius Charles.

Munsee Delawares: Joseph Killbuck, Abigail Killbuck, James Rain, Susan Killbuck, Sally Johnnycake, Charles Johnycake, Jane Johnycake, William Kaleb.

Other church members (tribal affiliation and, in some cases, race, is unknown): Betsy Ziegler, Francis Pokelas, Eunice Eaton,
Ar-nark-tun-dut, Wul-lun-da-nat-o'kwa, Hipelas, Hannah Hipelas, Macharch, Mrs. Jacob Skicket, E.S. Morse.

A Genealogical Puzzler

A reader sent me an e-mail hoping that I could help him with a genealogical "dead-end," that he admits is "certainly a longshot." After thinking about his question for a while, I consider him an optimist.

The reader wants help identifying the biological parents of an ancestor of his who was "found along the side of the road as an infant...in 1807." The infant was given the middle name of "Shaw" because the adoptive parents figured that - because they found her in a certain part of Ohio - she was a Shawnee.

I'm really not an expert on the Shawnee, but I highly doubt that an Indian born in Ohio around 1807 would have a birth certificate or baptism papers or anything like that. I also think that being born to people who aren't able to take care of you would make it less likely that there is any documentation.

Okay... I'm an optimist too. I want to give my reader some possible sources.

One is the Ohio-based Amy's Genealogy, etc. Blog.

Then there's the National Archives. The problem you're likely to run into with them, however, is they don't claim to maintain records from before 1830. The Shawnee nation had already begun to fade away by that time and besides, you're looking for somebody born more than twenty years before that.

But why not try to talk to a real expert on this kind of thing?
The National Archives has two regional facilities in Ohio:
Dayton (937) 425-0600,
and Miamisburg (937) 425-0601.

If my reader never finds the answer he's looking for, I still think he has a great story to tell at parties and genealogical society meetings.

Fowler Family Genealogy

If you're interested in Brothertown genealogy, this website might be a good resource for you. It contains data (more than just the basic essentials) on members of the Fowler family, including ancestors such as Mary Occom, George Pharaoh, Wyandanch and Wuchikittaubut.



Wyandanch is shown here holding a war club. You may recognize the background as a map of Long Island, New York, and southern Connecticut.
Read about Wyandanch

New York Indians in Wisconsin and Elsewhere

Every federally recognized Indian nation has an enrollment officer, a tribal employee who uses census records and various other historical and genealogical sources to determine who has a sufficient blood quantum to be enrolled in that particular tribe. The situation has brought on controversy throughout Indian country for a number of reasons. Possibly the most controversial aspect of the blood quantum issue is that it doesn't really matter how much "Indian blood" you have, but rather what percentage of your ancestry belonged to the particular tribe that you want to be enrolled in.

The enrollment issue is further complicated by tribes such as the Stockbridge Mohicans who base their 1/4 blood quantum not on having 1/4 "Mohican" blood, but rather it is based on having 1/4 of your blood traceable back to the Stockbridge-Munsee Census of 1906 (or was it the census of 1895?, I'll have to check on that). Anyway, I already addressed the question of how "Mohican" the Stockbridge Indians are, so right now I want to share a genealogical resource that applies to all the New York Indians that came to Wisconsin.

Indians From New York in Wisconsin and Elsewhere: A Genealogy Reference compiled or edited by Toni Jollay Prevost is a book that I can only recommend with reservations (no pun intended). I looked at this book a couple years ago and remembered it as being "homemade," because of the "classic typewriter font" that is used. However, when I located the book today in my public library I found that it was published by Heritage Books in 1995. I had to wonder if the typewriter font was some kind of a marketing tool to get families to purchase a corporate project. Well, I know what they say about not judging a book by its cover (or its font), but I believe this is a book that has its share of errors. For example, if you wanted to know the chief sachem of the Stockbridge Mohicans in the 1820's where would you look? Ms. Prevost used a book about the Oneidas to get that information and as a result she claims that a Samuel W. Hendricks was the chief. (The author of the book on the Oneidas must have been referring to Solomon U. Hendricks, a chief for a few years before his early death.)

Anyway, I do recommend New York Indians in Wisconsin and Elsewhere for its duplication of census records and other lists. Included are census records from Brown, Shawano, and Calumet Counties in Wisconsin and Bucks County in Pennsylvania, census records of the Oneidas and Stockbridges, and a list of Iroquois Indians at boarding schools in Virginia, Kansas (Haskell) and Pennsylvania (Carlisle).

The Stockbridge Iroquois?

In the last few decades, many of the Stockbridge Mohicans have gone from shortening the name of their people from the "Stockbridges" to the "Mohicans." Of course, there are reasons for this. First of all, the word "Stockbridge" couldn't have been picked by Indians. The name "Stockbridge" was taken from an English town with that name. And now that Indians can be proud of being Indians, why not refer to themselves by an authentic Indian name?

Now I'm going argue that the name "Stockbridge Indians," though not as romantic as "Mohicans," is more historically or genealogically accurate. It is a rather simple argument, really. Many of the Indians that joined the Stockbridge community over the years, were non-Mohicans. It began with Algonkians that had lived among or been politically influenced by the Mohicans since the 1600's. These groups would include (probably the Schaghticoke's and) the Wappingers. In 1756 the remnant of the Wappingers, numbering 227 souls, joined the Stockbridge community. At that time there were probably only about 200 Stockbridge "Mohicans," but the community became larger by taking on the Wappingers.

Then of course, there are the Munsees, they are not Mohicans. There are the Brotherton Delawares (but they might not have many descendants left among the Stockbridges). And the Gardner family were Narrangansetts.

So far, I've only mentioned other Algonkians, but there were also Indians from Iroquois nations who joined the Stockbridge community. The treaty of 1856 included language that encouraged the Munsees and all other Indians that were still in New York State to settle in the new Stockbridge-Munsee reservation. Some of the New York Iroquois took the government up on this. J.N. Davidson (page 44) says he was told that Senecas, Onondagas, and Cayugas, "about eighty in all," joined the Stockbridge community in the 1850's.

There were also escaped slaves and others with African blood marrying into the Stockbridge community, and white people, what about the white people?! There is a lot of German and other white blood among those who are members of the Stockbridge community. Maybe they could call themselves the Stockbridge Tri-racial Community - If you can think of something more genealogically accurate than that, please let me know.

Riding the Frontier's Crest

There's more to the Algonkian Church History Blog than comparing the mission philosophies of various church bodies. This blog is also about more general Algonkian history questions, like "who are the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians?"
"who are the Brothertown Indians?" and
"who were the Brotherton Delawares?"

I think Christianity was an important element in the history of each of these communities.

Anthropologist Ted J. Brasser worked for a place in Ottowa, Canada that in the 1970's was called "The Museum of Man." Brasser wrote a book about the Mohicans which was part of a Museum of Man series (published by the National Museums of Canada in 1974), it is called Riding the Frontier's Crest: Mahican Indian Culture and Culture Change. (Ethnologists usually prefer to spell and pronounce it "Mahican" instead of "Mohican.") In Brasser's Appendix (p. 65-73) he gives us a "Chronological List of Mahican Locations."

Brasser's list is complex, but I can make a few generalizations about it. There were many moves, and there were several bands or villages of Mohicans in the 1600's and 1700's. The travels of most of the bands wind up in non-Mohican communities, often either an Algonkian or Iroquois community but Brasser even makes an attempt to follow "Meztizos," which he notes were locally known as "Bushwackers, Pondshiners, Basketmakers," or "Jukes."

Here's how we might sum up Brasser's list: while most of the Mohican settlements bacame remnants that joined larger Native communities, the Stockbridge Mohicans - despite the diseases, war, and other hardships that American Indians faced - held their own and even adopted non-Mohican individuals, families, and larger non-Mohican remnants (certainly the remanants of the Brotherton Delaware of New Jersey are one example).

The support of Christian mission societies was one of the biggest reasons for non-Mohican Indians to join the Stockbridges as they "rode the frontier's crest."