Mohegan

Related Topics:
Mohegan_Lake :: Mohegan :: Mohegan-Pequot

The Mohegans are a Native American tribe originally from southeastern Connecticut. Their descendants live in southeast Connecticut and Wisconsin, but are also situated throughout New England. The tribe was formed after Chief Uncas and his allies split from the Pequot tribe. The Pequot chief Sassacus began a war with the English, but Chief Uncas had a worthwhile trade with the English. He wanted no war with these people and formed a new tribe. These two branches thenceforward faced each other with continuing hostility. In the following war Uncas advanced himself as a true ally of the English, and was a great force toward the destruction of his erstwhile people. But Sassacus and some other Pequots managed to flee from the massacre. He went with his followers back to the Mahicans, with whom he hoped to hide. However, the Mahicans, in the meantime, had become subject to the Mohawks, who had conquered them. The Mohawks beheaded Sassacus and sent his head to Hartford, Connecticut as proof of their loyalty.

Mohegan language

Mohegan is a dialect of a larger language sometimes known as Mohegan-Pequot. The dialects include:

Mohegan
Pequot
Montauk (a.k.a. Montauketts)
Niantic

The Mohegans and the Pequots lived in southeastern Connecticut. The Montauks lived across the Long Island Sound on eastern Long Island. The Niantics lived along the coast in southeastern Connecticut and southern Rhode Island.

Fidelia Fielding, the last known native speaker of Mohegan, died in 1908. Her vocabulary of 446 Mohegan-Pequot words was preserved by J. Dyneley Prince and Frank Speck.

Mohegan vs. Mahican (and Mohican)

The names Mohegan and Mahican, having similar pronunciations, are often confused. However, the two names refer to different ethnolinguistic groups. These two groups are often mistakenly conflated into a single group. To add to further confusion, a separate term Mohican has often been used to refer to both Mohegans and Mahicans.

The Mahicans were an Algonquin tribe living in and around the Hudson Valley, and are the tribe referred to in James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Last of the Mohicans (which does confuse the Mahicans with the Mohegans to some extent). Cooper's novel is blamed in part for perpetuating the confusion between the two groups.

The Mohegans today

They continue to live today, still primarily in Connecticut. Under their chief Ralph W. Sturges the tribe gained federal recognition and won the right to build and operate a casino and hotel, the Mohegan Sun, on their reservation in Uncasville, Connecticut. There have also been projects to record as much as the Mohegan language as possible from the tribe's elders and record it on CD-ROM to teach to younger generations. They also own a Women's National Basketball Association team, the Connecticut Sun, which plays its home games on the tribe's resort.

External links

Bibliography

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