Stockbridge-Munsee Community
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 1,565 [1] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 United States (Shawano County, Wisconsin) | |
| Languages | |
| English, (originally Mahican and Munsee) | |
| Religion | |
| Moravian Church, Christian | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Lenape, Mohegan, Pequot |
The Stockbridge-Munsee Community is a federally recognized Indian tribe consisting of Mohican and Munsee (Lenape) peoples. Their land-base, the Stockbridge-Munsee Indian Reservation, is 22,000 acres located at 44°53′55″N 88°51′42″W / 44.89861°N 88.86167°W in Shawano County, Wisconsin, which encompasses the towns of Bartelme and Red Springs. Among their enterprises is the successful North Star Mohican Resort and Casino.
In settlement of a longstanding land claim in New York, in 2010, the state of New York agreed to give the tribe 330 acres in Sullivan County in the Catskills and 2 acres in Madison County in exchange for dropping their larger claim for 23,000 acres of land in Madison (near the city of Syracuse), which they had occupied in the early nineteenth century. The state granted them the right to develop the Catskills property as a gaming casino. The deal is controversial and opposed by numerous interests, including other federally recognized tribes in New York.
History
The Stockbridge-Munsee members are descendants of tribes located in the Hudson River valley, New England and the mid-Atlantic areas, respectively, at the time of European encounter. The Stockbridge were Mahican from the upper Hudson area, who migrated into western Massachusetts before the American Revolutionary War. They became Christianized Indians. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they migrated west to central New York. They shared a 22,000-acre portion of the Oneida Reservation south of Syracuse.
The Munsee were Lenape located in the northern part of their total territory. As they spoke the Munsee dialect, one of the major three branches of the language, they were sometimes referred to by colonists and settlers by that term. They occupied coastal areas around present-day New York City, the western part of Long Island, and northern New Jersey. Lenape to the South spoke two other dialect variations.
Many Munsee-speaking Lenape had migrated from New Jersey to western Oneida County, New York by 1802 after the American Revolutionary War. They were joined by Brotherton Indians of New Jersey (from a reservation in Burlington County, New Jersey), as well as by the Stockbridge Mahican. Eventually the two groups agreed to removal together to present-day Wisconsin. They share a 22,000-acre reservation in Shawano County, Wisconsin that was taken from land initially reserved for the Menominee, whose homelands these were. Since the late twentieth century, they have developed the successful North Star Mohican Resort and Casino to generate revenues for welfare and economic development.
Land issues and claims
The Stockbridge-Munsee have continued to negotiate with local and state governments over land and tax issues. For instance, in 2012 they were working with the Tribal Affairs Committee of Shawano County on issues related to the potential impact of their converting purchased land to trust lands. They thought they had reached agreement to pay the towns and county $140,000 annually for ten years in exchange for the county's support for their land-to-trust deals in Red Springs or Bartelme, which had been part of the reservation in the 1850s. While the Committee had reached agreement with the tribe, the County Board did not approve the deal.[2]
In the late twentieth century, the Stockbridge-Munsee were among tribes filing land claims against New York, which had been ruled to have unconstitutionally acquired land from Native Americans in the post-American Revolutionary War years without United States Senate ratification. The Stockbridge-Munsee filed a land claim against New York state for 23,000 acres in Madison County, the location of its former homelands.[3]
In November 2010, the outgoing New York governor David Paterson announced having reached a deal with the tribe. They would be given nearly 2 acres in Madison County and give up their larger claim in exchange for the state's giving them 330 acres of land in Sullivan County in the Catskill Mountains, where the government was trying to encourage economic development. The federal government had agreed to take the land in trust, making it eligible for development as a gaming casino, and the state would allow gaming, an increasingly important source of revenue for American Indians. The state believed this would help stimulate other development in the region. Race track and casinos, private interests and other federally recognized tribes opposed the deal.[3]
In popular culture
- The West Wing episode "The Indians in the Lobby" features the Stockbridge-Munsee Community.
See also
- Stockbridge, Massachusetts, a town in which the ancestors of the Stockbridge Mahican once lived. Their traditional territory was along the Hudson River Valley, particularly on the east side.
- Lenape Indians
References
- ↑ "Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians", Wisconsin Tribes, official state website
- ↑ Lee Pulaski, "County, tribe relationship on the rocks: Tribal council miffed over perceived rejection of land-to-trust deal", Shawano Leader, 6 June 2012
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Gale Courey Toensing, "Seneca Upset Over N.Y. Casino Agreement", Indian Country Today, 26 January 2011
External links
"Munsees". The American Cyclopædia. 1879.