Mohegan-Pequot language

In 1933 John E. Hamilton, also known as Chief Rolling Cloud, was appointed Grand Sachem for Life of the Mohegan by his mother, Alice Storey.[4][5] The Mohegan had a matrilineal kinship system, and male leaders were chosen by women elders from families with hereditary claims to the position. Storey was a direct descendant of Uncas, the great 17th-century leader of the Mohegan Nation, and of Tamaquashad, Grand Sachem of the Pequot Nation. In Mohegan tradition, the position of tribal leadership called Grand Sachem had always been hereditary through the maternal line.

Gladys Tantaquidgeon, who died at the age of 106 in 2005, served for years as the Tribe's medicine woman and unofficial historian. She became an anthropologist and worked for a decade with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Returning to Connecticut, she operated her family's tribal Tantaquidgeon Museum for more than 50 years, beginning in 1947.[6] It was one of the first museums to be owned and operated by Native Americans.[7]

John Hamilton was a key figure among Native American leaders initiating late twentieth century land claims suits. Tribes in the Northeast had long interaction with European Americans. There was continued encroachment of their lands, even when colonial-era reservations were established. By the early 20th century, many of the tribes in the Northeast were essentially landless.

In the period of mid- and late-20th century increased Native American activism, the Mohegan and other Northeast tribes filed federal land claims suits seeking to recover land or compensation for what they had lost. The courts ruled in their favor, in cases in which states had conducted illegal arrangements with tribal leaders, without gaining US Senate approval. Congress passed bills to ratify these settlements, which often involved compensation for lands lost, or land set aside for the tribes, and sometimes compensation, in addition to official federal recognition of the groups as tribes. The so-called "state tribes" were those along the East Coast who had been recognized by the English Crown through treaties and other documentation long before individual colonial or state governments had been established. But, as the Native people lost their traditional lands and were not assigned reservations, they did not maintain their sovereign legal status associated with federal recognition.

In the 1960s, during a period of rising activism among Native Americans, Hamilton filed a number of land claims authorized by the "Council of Descendants of Mohegan Indians." The group had some 300 members at the time.

In 1970 the Montville, Connecticut faction of the Mohegan expressed its dissatisfaction with Hamilton's land-claims litigation. They wanted a change in direction. When the Hamilton supporters left a council meeting, the remainder elected Courtland Fowler as their new leader. Notes of that Council meeting referred to Hamilton as Sachem.[8]

The group led by John Hamilton worked with the attorney Jerome Griner in federal land claims through the 1970s. The Fowler faction opposed this. In addition, a Kent, Connecticut property owners' organization, with native and non-native members, opposed the Hamilton land claims and the petition for federal recognition. These people were worried that their property values might be affected.

In response to the petitions by additional tribes seeking federal recognition, in 1978 the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) established a formal administrative process and criteria to be satisfied to prove cultural continuity; they established these in consultation with federally recognized tribes. That year, as authorized by the Council of Descendants, Hamilton submitted the Mohegan Tribe's first petition for federal recognition.

John Hamilton died in 1988. In his will, he named Eleanor Fortin as the Grand Sachem of the Mohegan people. She became the leader of the "Hamilton group," which continued to contend with the "Fowler faction" over tribal policy. Despite their disagreements, both groups continued to participate in tribal activities and to identify as Mohegan people.

By 1989, the Fowler faction had revived Hamilton's 1978 petition for federal recognition, which had been dormant for some years. The BIA's preliminary finding was that the Mohegan had not satisfied the criteria of documenting continuity in social community, and demonstrating political authority and influence as a tribe, through the twentieth century.

In 1990, the Mohegan under Fowler submitted a detailed response to address the BIA's concerns. They included compiled genealogies and other records, some of which had been collected and preserved by Hamilton and his followers. For instance, Eleanor Fortin had allowed the MTIC (Mohegan Tribe of Indians of Connecticut) researchers access to records pertaining to the Mohegan Congregational Church in Montville. The researchers had assured Fortin that if federal recognition were achieved, it would cover the entire surviving Mohegan population. They also used records maintained by Gladys Tantaquidgeon, who had kept genealogy and vital statistics of tribal members for her anthropological research.[6][9]

In 1990, the MTIC ruled the tribe's membership be restricted to documented descendants from a single family, ca. 1860. This criteria excludes some of the Hamilton followers. By law, a federally recognized tribe has the authority to determine its own rules for membership. The MTIC tried to sue other Mohegan over their use of the tribal identity as well as their crafting, but they were unsuccessful.[10]

In its 1994 "Final Determination," the BIA cited the vital statistics and genealogies as documents that were decisive in demonstrating "that the tribe did indeed have social and political continuity during the middle of the 20th century."[11] The former Fowler group gained federal recognition as the Mohegan Tribe of Indians of Connecticut (MTIC). They do not acknowledge John Hamilton as Grand Sachem in their history, but say that Harold Tantaquidgeon was their chief prior to the era of federal recognition.

That same year, Congress passed the Mohegan Nation (Connecticut) Land Claim Settlement Act, which authorized the United States to take land into trust to establish a reservation for the Mohegan and settle their land claim. The final 1994 agreement between MTIC and the State in the settlement of land claims extinguished all pending land claims.[11]

The Mohegan Tribe of Indians of Connecticut is the only federally recognized tribe of the Mohegan people.

Descendants of the followers of John Hamilton continue to function as a Mohegan band independently of the MTIC. They hold periodic gatherings and activities.

As of 2014, there are between 1,400 and 1,700 recorded tribal members (these figures vary by source). The Mohegan language has been dormant for approximately 100 years; the last native speaker, Fidelia A.H. Fielding, died in 1908. Fielding, a descendant of Chief Uncas, is deemed the preserver of the language. She left four diaries that are being used in the 21st-century process of restoring the language. She also took part in preserving the traditional culture. She practiced a traditional Mohegan way of life and was the last person to live in the traditional log dwelling.

Another important tribal member was Gladys Tantaquidgeon, who was the tribe's medicine woman from 1916 until her death in 2005. She too assisted greatly in maintaining the Mohegan culture, as she collected thousands of tribal documents and artifacts. These documents were of critical importance to supporting the tribe's documentation for its case for federal recognition, which was approved in 1994.

As of 2010, the Shinnecock and Unkechaug nations of Long Island, New York, had begun work with the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Southampton Campus, to revive their languages, or dialects of the above.[12]

As of 2012, the Mohegan Language Project had created lessons, a dictionary, and other online learning materials to revive their language.[13] The project also has a complete grammar in the works, which has been put together by Stephanie Fielding. The primary goal of the project is for the next generation of Mohegan people to be fluent.

Many of the dictionaries circulating are based on Prince and Speck's interpretation of testimony by the Mohegan woman, Dji's Butnaca (Flying Bird), also known as Fidelia A.H. Fielding.[14]

The Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center collection includes a 1992 menu "which attempts to translate such words as hamburger and hot dog into Mohegan-Pequot."[15]

The language was documented as early as the 17th century.

"In 1690, a Pequot vocabulary list was compiled by Rev. James Noyes in Groton. In 1717, Experience Mayhew, a Congregational Minister translated the Lord's Prayer into Mohegan-Pequot. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale University collected Pequot linguistic data in Groton in 1762."[15]

Bahá'í prayers have been translated into the Mohegan-Pequot language.[16]

"It is a sacred obligation," says the Golden Hill Paugussett Chief, Big Eagle. "Indian people must keep their languages alive. If the language is not spoken, it must be made to live again."[15]

The nasal /ɔ̃/ sound can range to being an oral /ɔ/ sound. "a" written with an acute accent (á) represents a long aː sound.

• Cowan, William. Pequot from Stiles to Speck. International Journal of American Linguistics. The University of Chicago Press. Vol. 39, No. 3 (Jul., 1973), pp. 164–172
• De Forest, John W. "The Lord's Prayer in the Pequot Tongue." In History of the Indians of Connecticut. 1852. Reprint, Brighton, MI: Native American Book Publishers, 1994.
• Michelson, Truman. "The Linguistic Classification of Pequot-Mohegan." American Anthropologist 26 (1924): 295. doi:10.1525/aa.1924.26.2.02a00240
• Pickering, John, ed. "Doctor Edwards' Observations on the Mohegan Languages." Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Series 2 Volume 10 (1823): 81-160.
• Prince, J. Dyneley and Frank G. Speck. "Glossary of the Mohegan-Pequot Language." American Anthropologist 6 (1904): 18-45. doi:10.1525/aa.1904.6.1.02a00030
• Prince, J. Dyneley and Frank G. Speck. "The Modern Pequots and Their Language." American Anthropologist 5 (1903): 193-212. doi:10.1525/aa.1903.5.2.02a00010
• Speck, Frank. "A Modern Mohegan-Pequot Text." American Anthropologist 6 (1904): 469-76. doi:10.1525/aa.1904.6.4.02a00070
• Speck, Frank and Fidelia Fielding. "A Pequot Mohegan Witchcraft Tale." Journal of American Folklore 16 (1903): 104-6.
• Speck, Frank. "Native Tribes and Dialects of Connecticut: A Mohegan-Pequot Diary." Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Annual Report 43 (1903): 199-287.
• Speck, Frank. Speck Papers and Photograph Collection. (17 microfilm reels)
• Speck, Frank. "Text of the Pequot Sermon." American Anthropologist 5 (1903): 199-212.