Definitions for mahicanməˈhi kən

This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word mahican

Random House Webster's College Dictionary

Ma•hi•canməˈhi kən(n.)(pl.)-cans; -can.

  1. a member of an American Indian people who lived in the middle and upper Hudson River valley in the 17th century.

    Category: Peoples

  2. the extinct Eastern Algonquian language of the Mahican.

    Category: Peoples

Princeton's WordNet

  1. Mohican, Mahican(noun)


  2. Mohican, Mahican(noun)

    the Algonquian language spoken by the Mohican


  1. Mahican

    The Mahican are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe, originally settled in the Hudson River Valley and western New England. After 1680, many moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Since the 1830s, most descendants of the Mahican are located in Shawano County, Wisconsin, where they formed the federally recognized Stockbridge-Munsee Community with Lenape people and have a 22,000-acre reservation. Following the disruption of the American Revolutionary War, most of the Mahican descendants first migrated westward to join the Iroquois Oneida on their reservation in central New York. The Oneida gave them about 22,000 acres for their use. After more than two decades, in the 1820s and 1830s, the Oneida and the Stockbridge moved again, pressured to relocate to northeastern Wisconsin under the federal Indian Removal program. The tribe's name for itself was Muhhekunneuw, Muh-he-con-neok, or "People of the waters that are never still", referring to their tribal territory in the Valley of the Hudson River. Therefore, they along with tribes also living along the Hudson River - like the Munsee and Wappinger, were called "the River Indians" by the Dutch and English. The Dutch botched the name of the Wolf Clan in Mahigan, Mahikander, Mahinganak, Maikan and Mawhickon, which the English simplified later to Mahican or Mohican. The French translated the Clan name and therefore called them Loups.


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