Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes back guest historian Larry Howard.
Introduction
From 1775 to 1777, Mohican Indians from Stockbridge, Massachusetts, formed a Patriot militia company that served in the American revolution, including the siege of Boston, the capture and siege of Fort Ticonderoga, the Battle of Saratoga, and the Battle of Monmouth. In the summer of 1789, while patrolling in the Kingsbridge, New York, area in what is now the Bronx, the Stockbridge company was attacked by British Lt. Col. John Simcoe’s Loyalist Queen’s Rangers in a battle alternately known as the Battle of Kingsbridge, the Battle of Cortland Ridge, or the Battle of Van Cortlandt’s Woods. It is also known as the Stockbridge Massacre, because the Queens’ Rangers killed an estimated forty Stockbridge Indians. The Rangers had one soldier killed and three wounded. This ended the Stockbridge Indian militia company’s service.
This article explores the background of the Mohican people in the Hudson River valley which includes what is now western Massachusetts, specifically the town of Stockbridge. It will explain why the Indians formed a militia company that was part of the Massachusetts militia, serving initially in the French and Indian War, and later in the American Revolution. After discussing the various campaigns the Stockbridge militia company participated in, ending with Kingsbridge and honors bestowed by General George Washington, the article concludes by highlighting the forced departure of the Mohicans from Stockbridge, ultimately settling in Wisconsin, where today they are known as the “Stockbridge-Munsee Community, Band of Mohican Indians.”
Who Were the Stockbridge Indians?
The indigenous peoples known as the Mohicans once occupied territory ranging along the entire Hudson River valley from Lake Champlain to Manhattan, New York, and included parts of Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.[i] According to oral tradition, the Mohican people migrated from other parts of the continent to the Hudson River valley, along the river they named Mahicannituck. They called themselves the Muh-he-con-neok, or the People of the Waters That are Never Still.[ii]
The Mohicans first encountered Europeans in 1609 with the arrival of Henry Hudson, a trader for the Dutch. This began lucrative fur trading and new technologies like iron kettles and guns to the Mohicans, but created new tensions with neighboring tribes like the Mohawk over control of the trade, as well as drawing them into the conflict between the Dutch, English, and French as those European powers wrestled for control of North America.[iii] The Europeans introduced not only new trade goods and new wars to the area, but also new diseases, such as smallpox, measles, and scarlet fever, which the Mohicans and other Indians had no immunity to, resulting in a drastic population decline.[iv]
By the early 1730s, the combination of cultural and economic pressures, including indebtedness and questionable land deals, pushed the Mohicans eastward into the Housatonic River Valley in western Massachusetts, where they encountered Christian missionaries in 1734.[v] Responding to a complex mix of spiritual curiosity and a pragmatic need for new strategies of survival, the Mohicans permitted Englishman John Sergeant to establish a mission in the village of Wnahktukuk in 1738, which the English called Stockbridge. The tribe was then commonly known as the “Stockbridge Indians.”[vi]
Continue reading “The Stockbridge Mohican Militia Company in the American Revolution”
