The Mohicans of Stockbridge

by Patrick Frazier

Few American Indian tribal names are as well recognized as that of the Mohicans. Yet little is actually known about the people themselves, despite legendary images fixed by James Fenimore Cooper. Now we have the first thoroughly researched and documented study of the Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Mohicans, and it reveals a story fully as interesting as any fiction and more meaningful.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

307 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1992

Reviews

[Adam Gutschenritter · Rating 5 out of 5]

More a book of adaptation and colonial mismanagement/greed, this book follows the "fall" of the Mohicans in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York (Eventually Vermont) through their settlement of Stockbridge. This tribe consistently sided with the colonists through the French and Indian War and the American Revolution and attempted to adapt colonial values/religion. Ultimately they would be forced to move to western New York as colonial land greed forced them off their land, but their story was extremely interesting.

[Jeffrey Siemers · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first few chapters of this book clearly deserve 5 stars.

The rest of the book is probably equally well-written and equally well-researched, but it didn't do for me what the beginning did.

Frazier starts out by answering the question of how and why a Native nation would accept Christianity. The short answer is that the fur trade had destroyed so much of their traditional ways in the first 100 (or 115) years of white contact that the Indians were looking for new structures to hang onto. That willingness to try something different in the face of generations of grave losses was of great interest to me.

Others will be interested in the rest: war, litigation over land, getting cheated by white traders, these things are important aspects of American history that many will want to read about.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heartbreaking story of Amerindians and their dealings with Europeans and Americans. A group of Amerindians offer to begin assimilation and are offered a township of their own. From the beginning whites set out to use and fleece them, even taking the ability to name their township away. Thus is Stockbridge born. For half a century the Mohicans suffer the sling and arrows of financial charlatans and the pains of being drawn into the wars of the whites. Two generations of Mohicans make their best shot in Stockbridge before finally receiving some small semblance of what they had originally been offered.

While the greater atrocities Europeans carried out against the indigenous peoples of north america get larger coverage, it is easier to forget the pervasive, casual evil they suffered under. The story of the Mohicans of Stockbridge is a needed reminder of those wrongs.