Great Warriors: the Stockbridge Militia

The American Revolutionary War, as with Queen Anne's War, King George's War and the Seven Years War, was primarily a colonial war fought over ownership of land.  As Americans prepared to face down one of the largest and best-trained armies then on earth, Natives, as they always had during these wars, had to decide whether to back the British, in the hopes of getting protection from American trespassing on tribal hunting range.  Back the Americans, with hopes of the same, or try to remain neutral and hopefully left alone.  Joseph Brant, a war chief of the Mohawk, urged the Iroquois Confederacy to the side of Great Britain, and some of the Ohio Valley tribes followed suit.  Other tribes threw in their lot with the Patriot cause.

Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in Berkshire County, was located in an area that was still mostly frontier at the time.  Local Native population including Algonquian-speaking Munsee/Delaware, Wappinger, and Mahican people.  As they saw their White neighbors forming into militias and drilling in preparation to meet the British threat, Christianized Munsee Jehoiakim Mtohksin and Abraham Nimham, son of Wappinger Sachem Daniel Nimham, gathered like-minded warriors at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge and pledged their loyalty to the Patriot cause in words taken straight from the Old Testament story of Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi.  "Wherever your armies go, there we will go; you shall always find us by your side; and if providence calls us to sacrifice our lives in the field of battle, we will fall where you fall, and lay our ones by yours.  Nor shall peace ever be made between our nation and the Redcoats until our brothers-the White People-lead the way." 

The soldiers were issued linen hunting shirts, linen trousers and leather moccasins.  A brimmed hat made of plant fiber covered a traditional shaved head with a single scalp-lock.  The men were proficient with a rifle and musket, as well as bows and arrows and hunting axes.  The militia served in the Siege of Boston, the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga.  They disbanded soon after, and many veteran Stockbridge warriors served in the more traditional capacity of auxiliaries to various units, scouts and skirmishers.  Then, in 1777, Massachusetts reorganized its militia companies.  The Stockbridge Regiment was reformed as part of the 8th Massachusetts, General John Nixon's Brigade, and made a formal part of the Continental Army.  Mtohksin led the unit, with the younger Nimham as his Second in Command.  They participated in the Battle of Saratoga and the Siege of Monmouth.

Then, disaster struck.  In August, 1778, the militia was attached to Mordecai Gist's Light Infantry Corps and stationed at what is now Yonker's New York.  There, they were beset by a company of Queen's Rangers, in particular Joseph Brant's militia which was attached to that British Loyalist Unit.  The two sides fought, with the Stockbridge Militia taking heavy casualties.  Among those who fell was the last Wappinger Sachem, Abraham's father, Daniel.  The losses decimated the local Native communities.  The few men who were left had to return to their families, who might at any time be open to reprisals from Loyalist Native units.  George Washington paid the regiment 1,000 to be pieced out among the men and disbanded their unit in September, 1778.

The Stockbridge Militia rallied again, to protect their town of Stockbridge from insurgents during Shays Rebellion of 1786-87.  Around this time, Massachusetts redrafted its constitution, specifically excluding Natives from the right to vote.  That constitution was voted down in favor of one that promised universal manhood suffrage, Native and White.  Many Stockbridge veterans eventually settled in Oneida, New York, and later moved to Wisconsin, forming the Munsee-Stockbridge Indian Reservation.