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9. Stockbridge and Its Companions
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170 Nine Stockbridge and Its Companions Spaces The second and third decades of the eighteenth century found Mahicans at several locations in the Hudson and Housatonic Valleys. A small number, it is generally believed, resided at Schaghticoke until its abandonment shortly after 1750, leaving these Indians to seek shelter elsewhere in the region. Although there is little direct evidence that at the turn of the eighteenth century Mahicans lived in the Schodack Islands area, the traditional core of their homeland, the continued sales of lands there suggest otherwise. This, even as Dutch settlement was rapidly expanding, putting pressure on however many Mahicans were there. Even so, a hamlet of these Indians was reported to be on Moesmans (Lower Schodack) Island in 1730. And in June 1744 Alexander Hamilton, M.D. (1715–1756), in his famous itinerarium , entered the following observation: “Att five we sailed past Musman’s Island, starboard, where there is a small nation of the Mochacander Indians with a king that governs them.”1 But Mahicans also lived in other places, although the time when these communities were first established is impossible to fix. Some twenty-five miles east of Rhinebeck, in the highlands of the town of Northeast, Dutchess County, was Shekomeko (map 8).2 This was a mixed community of Esopus, Wappinger or Highland Indians, Minisinks, and also Wompanoos from the Housatonic Valley, dominated in voice and number by Mahicans . Its importance is tied to the fact that in 1740 it became the first Indian mission of the Moravian Church in North America.3 map 8. Eighteenth-Century Mahican Locations. [3.80.155.163] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:09 GMT) 172 Stockbridge and Its Companions Shekomeko does not seem to have been a recently built place, perhaps having been occupied for a decade or two, yet little is known about it before the Moravians’ arrival. In 1724 a one-mile square of land, “Shekomakes,” is mentioned, likely containing an Indian community, although this cannot be verified.4 There is, however, much more known about Shekomeko from 1740 to its demise in 1746, information tied directly to the Moravians’ presence and the community’s political and social relationships to Indians in other areas. It was from Shekomeko that the Moravians made their way to Mahicans living at Wechquadnach, in the town of Sharon, Connecticut, and also to those resident in the large praying town of Stockbridge, discussed later. A 1745 drawing of Shekomeko by Moravian John (Johannes) Hagen shows a line of fourteen houses with three others close by (fig. 2). Another house is a short distance away. A cluster of three buildings outside of the village is assigned to a non-Indian , “Hendrijsens” (Hendricksen). Also depicted is the mission house and church, a workshop, two root cellars, a fenced garden, a four-pole hay barrack, and a cemetery.5 Except for the portrayal of a single dome-shaped wigwam, all of the Indians’ dwellings are bark-covered half-pole frame structures with vertical or near vertical walls and pitched roofs. Incorporated here and there are rough-hewn planks. Most houses have a smoke hole on the roof ridge, indicating a central hearth. At least one has an external chimney. Similarly constructed houses are known from elsewhere in the Northeast, such as at mid-eighteenth-century Pachgatgoch, a Wompanoo village and the location of a second Moravian mission a short distance east near Kent, Connecticut, and in the several refugee villages on the upper Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers in New York Colony.6 The population of Shekomeko is difficult to estimate, as Indians from neighboring communities—Freehold, Pachgatgoch, Wechquadnach, Stockbridge, a couple of poorly known settlements in western Dutchess County, and Potatik, farther down the Housatonic—came and went, visiting relatives and acquain- fig. 2. Shekomeko, 1745. Reel 2, box 112, folder 7, item 1. Records of the Moravian Mission among the Indians of North America. Microfilm, 40 reels. Primary Source Media. 174 Stockbridge and Its Companions tances but also becoming curious about the Moravians. The number of houses in the hamlet, however, suggests a resident population of sixty to seventy persons, who together pursued a subsistence economy based on raising corn, to which was likely added beans. The Indians supplemented these foods by hunting deer, occasionally taking fish and waterfowl, and with seasonal maple sugar making. The Moravians did much the same, lending to the mix of crops turnips, beets, wheat for making flour, and cabbages, from which sauerkraut was made...