The Hudson Area Library and the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History have announced “The Mohicans’ Incorporation into the Iroquois League, 1671-1675,” a virtual lecture with Dr. Evan Haefeli set for Thursday, June 24th.
Dr. Haefeli will base his lecture on current research projects on the history of the Iroquois Confederacy’s relations with its Indigenous neighbors to the east and south, especially the people of the Hudson Valley. The incorporation of the Mohicans into the Iroquois League has remained obscured to history but was pivotal to the history of the colonial northeast. It explains why the Mohicans and the Munsee neighbors did not join in King Philip’s War and so prevented that conflict from spilling over into the Hudson Valley. It also clarifies the nature of Indigenous politics in the region in the era of Jacob Leisler.
An historian of colonial North America and the Atlantic world at Texas A&M University, Evan Haefeli has a particular interest in the political, religious, Indigenous, and imperial history of the colonial northeast. Born and raised on eastern Long Island, New York, he previously taught at Princeton University, where he received his PhD, as well as Tufts, Columbia University, and the London School of Economics. He has held a variety of fellowships, most recently from the NEH. His published books relating to colonial American and early New York history include New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty, Accidental Pluralism: America and the Religious Politics of English Expansion, and (with Kevin Sweeney), Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield.
This lecture will be held via Zoom and will take place from 6 to 7:30 pm. For more information or to register for the lecture, visit the Hudson Area Library website, or contact Brenda Shufelt at (518) 828-1792 x106 or brenda.shufelt@hudsonarealibrary.org.
Illlustration: The Mohican Chief Etow Oh Koam, referred to as one of the Four Mohawk Kings, in a state visit to Queen Anne in 1710 by John Simon, c. 1750.
The Iroquois conquered the Mahicans and their neighbors militarily after a long war, and the Iroquois considered the Mahicans inferior. They were not members of the Iroquois League equal to the other Five Nations. The Mahicans were subjugated and degraded in ther eyes of thr Iroquois. See “The Delaware Indians as Women: Were the Original Pennsylvanians Politically Emasculated?” by Frank G. Speck. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Oct., 1946), pp. 377-389.