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580 Gladys Tantaquidgeon (1899–2005) Gladys Tantaquidgeon, revered medicine woman, studied Mohegan traditions with such leaders as Emma Baker, Lydia Fielding, and Mercy Ann Nonesuch Mathews (Nehantic); she also studied professional anthropology with Frank Speck at the University of Pennsylvania. Speck is controversial among some Native people and anthropologists today, but in the selections below Tantaquidgeon speaks of him fondly. She also reveals her love of travel, which she pursued during her career, working around the country with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Arts and Crafts Board. At home in Connecticut, she founded the Tantaquidgeon Museum with her father, John, and brother Harold. She published widely; the unpublished manuscripts below, typed and undated, were selected by Faith Davison and Melissa Zobel from among the Gladys Tantaquidgeon Papers in the Mohegan Tribal Collections and are used with permission. See the Beauty Surrounding Us I never could understand why so seldom is mention made of the wonderful forms of nature that lie so close to our view, almost within sight of our own immediate environment. Have our senses become so dulled by our occupations that we cannot see the woods, the seas, the skies just beyond the horizon of the metropolis or the work fields into which we are sunk? Or have our fancies been moulded and our perspectives of nature been distorted by the lust for achievement in covering great distances to enjoy what is so often not more thrilling as such experiences go far afield than experiences to be had nearby? Or perhaps it is the contagious urge of competition in voyaging afar, to conquer new realms of adventure in travel, since the Poles have at last been reached, the dim mysterious islands of the south, the stern rocky crags and barrens of the north and the mirages of western deserts, have been opened to the emotionless intrusion of the tourist. We learn hard the lesson of Rasselas the monk who wandered in a life-long quest to seek what he left at his own hearth. Multitudes have sailed in and out of a familiar harbor through a panorama of islands rounded with crowns of moorland and grass, set in a Gladys Tantaquidgeon 581 visa of distant horizon rivalling the bays of the Mediterranean in the impressive though cold beauty of the northern zone, yet its islands set amid colors of sky and seas fully as stimulating in their influence upon the freed mind, as the famed approaches to the showplace harbors of the southern seas. Yet it is only Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay of which we write! Widening out eastward over waters gleaming under the early morning sun in October only a sodden heart could remain indifferent to its appeal to the sense. And among the feelings aroused is that of wonder and historic curiosity in regard to the fancies entertained for the self-same scene long ago by the now almost forgotten aborigines who saw it before the Mayflower and knew it not only by eye and sense as we do and before we did, but knew it enhanced by poetic traditions which we do not know. What would the Old World historic shrines and scenes be without their traditions and classical associations? And what would the New World scenes be without their human traditions recited as the ancients knew them to lift our imaginations above the land and sea into the clouds? But where are the spokesmen for the age of legend of the natives? Who is to tell us now that the islands of the Massachusetts coast were the central scene of an epic, a national legend of an almost unknown tribe of natives? What link have we with the last, two centuries behind us now, to help us conjure up the sagas of sea and islands, of heroes, of whales, or islands of shoals, dunes and forests coming and going as the heroes will it? The following transcript is the answer. Glance over it and ponder the wonder that has happened to preserve the sagas of beautiful regions redeemed at the last moment and enjoy it. It is almost a miracle for the literature of the land. An Affectionate Portrait of Frank Speck It was during the summer of 1902 while vacationing with his family in Niantic, Connecticut, that Frank Speck first visited Mohegan in the town of Montville, Connecticut about 30 miles north of Niantic. The members of this small group trace their ancestry back to Chief Uncas who with...

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