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Beyond Manhattan: A Gazetteer of Delaware Indian History

Robert S. Grumet (2014) 800 words

[Robert S. Grumet (2014)] a tributary of the Red just north of the present-day Village of Stockbridge, contains the River that flows through Stockbridge-Munsee Indian Reservation final resting places of many Stockbridge-Munsee Indian people. land into Lower Red Lake at Gresham, bears the surname of a STOCKBRIDGE-MUNSEE (Shawano County). Many descenprominent Stockbridge-Munsee Indian family. dants of Munsees who formerly resided at Stockbridge, Brothertown, Kansas, and other way stations along the Delaware diaspora, MOH-HE-CON-NUCK (Shawano County). Stockbridge-Munsee 140 Beyond Manhattan, Robert S. Grumet currently live in the Stockbridge-Munsee Reservation. A substantial TACONIC (Shawano County). The Stockbridge-Munsee commupercentage of Stockbridge-Munsee tribal members trace descent to nity’s Taconic residential subdivision (Mohican for “in the forest”) ancestors who moved to the mission established in 1736 at Stock- was in the planning stages in 2013. bridge (see in Massachusetts in Part 1 above) in the Berkshire Mountains. The first Mahican converts from the Stockbridge area were soon joined by Brothertown Movement Christian Indian adherents from elsewhere in New England, and a number of Munseespeaking Wappingers (see above in New York in Part 1) from the Hudson River valley. The sacrifices made by the mission community on behalf of the American cause during the Revolutionary War (see Nimham in New York in Part 1 above) were disregarded by non-Indian newcomers that flooded into the area. Pressed to leave by their new neighbors, most Stockbridge Indians took up an invitation made by Oneidas who had also supported the Americans to settle among them. Many Stockbridge Indians subsequently moved to the New Stockbridge (see in New York in Part 2 above) community established on Oneida land in 1785. Most Delaware Indians still living in New Jersey after the Revolutionary War subsequently moved to New Stockbridge after selling their Brotherton Reservation in Indian Mills (see above in New Jersey South in Part 1) in 1801. Harried by agents of syndicates pressing the Oneida’s for their lands and longing for a home of their own, the Stockbridge Indians accepted an invitation to join the Delaware Indian main body in Indiana. The exploratory party of 75 Stockbridge Indians, led by the Mohican sachem Metoxen (see Metuchen in New Jersey Central in Part 1 above), arrived in Indiana only to find that the Delawares had given up their lands along the White River at the Treaty of St. Mary’s signed on October 3, 1818 (Oklahoma State University Library 1999-2000). Unable to return home, Metoxen’s party took refuge for a time with the Shawnees in nearby Ohio. Most of the group subsequently joined other Stockbridges who began moving, along with Oneidas and other native expatriates collectively referred to as New York Indians, to Menominee lands in Wisconsin along the Fox River southwest of Green Bay between 1822 and 1830 (Oberly 2005:36). The first contingent of Stockbridgers coming to Wisconsin settled along a stretch of rapids that local Metis called Le Petite Chute at the present-day Village of Little Chute between the cities of Kaukauna and Appleton. Also known as Little Kakaulin, the settlement was located some two miles upstream of larger rapids called Grand Kakaulin in present-day Kaukauna. The bulk of the New Stockbridge community relocated to the latter locale by 1831 (Oberly 2005:38-51). Today, places like Kankapot Creek (bearing the name of a prominent Stockbridge Indian family), and the Quinney Elementary School, preserve the memory of the Stockbridge community of Statesburg located in Kaukauna. After much struggle and further dislocations, the ancestors of the present-day Stockbridge-Munsee Tribe of Mohican Indians settled on a reservation situated farther north and west on lands provided by the Menominees in 1856. The reservation was dissolved and divided into private allotments in 1910 under the terms of the Dawes Act. Restored in 1937, after the tribe regained federal recognition in accordance with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the nation currently exercises sovereignty over lands held in trust by the federal government in Bartelme and Red Spring townships within the original 1856 reservation. Beyond Manhattan, Robert S. Grumet Court in the City of Topeka, and Half Moon Road farther up the Kansas River in Belvue, both bear the name borne by a prominent Delaware Indian family active in the affairs of their reservation in Kansas during the mid-nineteenth century. The name may also hearken back to memories of Henry Hudson’s ship and the Half Moon community located at the mouth of the Mohawk River just north of Albany, New York. LENAPE (Leavenworth County). The name Lenape adorns a hamlet and a road and cemetery associated with the now largely defunct community situated on the north shore of the Kansas River on former Kansas Delaware Indian Reservation land several miles upriver from the City of Bonner Springs. MILL CREEK (Wyandotte County). Mill Creek is located just west of Muncie Creek (see below) at the west end of Kansas City. The name refers