Honors Theses
Advisor
Dr. Shannon Toll
Department
English
Publication Date
4-22-2026
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Abstract
Between 1734 and 1856, the Stockbridge Mohicans and Munsee Lenape endured five major displacements from their ancestral homelands in Massachusetts and New York to their present-day reservation in Wisconsin. Despite shifting federal structures and nation-to-nation policies, these two distinct peoples formed a unified political entity: the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. This thesis examines the colonial systems that enabled, complicated, and recorded how this community engaged in their own nation-building through their interpretation and production of religious, economic, and political documents. This documentary culture is highlighted by the exclusion of John Lewis from the nation following his 1856 killing of a fellow tribal member. Lewis’s continued correspondence after fleeing to Moraviatown, Ontario, blurs the line of belonging, revealing how citizenship under federal recognition gets questioned, enacted, and reinforced by this community. His correspondence reveals some of the questions of nationhood that demonstrate the contested nature of belonging in a nation defined by both Indigenous kinship practices and federal bureaucratic requirements. The Stockbridge-Munsee Community was formed through a deliberate process of creating collective identity using the documentary tools of settler colonialism.
Permission Statement
This item is protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code) and may only be used for noncommercial, educational, and scholarly purposes.
Keywords
Undergraduate research
eCommons Citation
Molseed, Caleb, ""Of Good Blood in Good Standing”: Nation-Building and the Politics of Belonging in the Stockbridge-Munsee Community" (2026). Honors Theses. 516.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/uhp_theses/516
COinS
