Brothertown

Brotherton; Eeyawquittoowauconnuck

42.9317° N, 75.3767° W

Jarvis, Brad D.E. The Brothertown Nation of Indians: Land Ownership and Nationalism in Early America, 1740-1840. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. Print. Silverman, David J. Red Brethren: The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of Race in Early America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010. Print. http://www.brothertownindians.org/heritage/tribal-alliance/. http://www.mpm.edu/wirp/icw-157.html.

Brothertown was a multi-tribal Indian settlement in the center of what is now New York state. In the 1760s, Indians in New England and New York were devastated by war, disease, and European settlement, and many who had converted to Christianity believed that pressures and influences from surrounding European settlers impeded them from living Christian lives. The Brothertown Indians began as a group of Christian Indians including members of the Mohegan, Pequot, Narragansett, Montauk, Tunxis, Wangunk, and Niantic tribes. In the 1770s, led by Occom and Joseph Johnson, this group of Indians moved to land granted to them by the Oneida in New York. They named the land Brothertown to both reflect their intention to live with fellow tribes as brothers and also to pay tribute to Brotherton, a Delaware Indian reservation in New Jersey that served as an inspiration for the Christian Indian settlement. When the Revolutionary War began, the Indians of Brothertown sided with the Patriots, and as a result, British sympathizers burnt the Brothertown settlement in 1777. After this, many Brothertown settlers moved east while others remained and fought alongside the colonists.In the 1780s, many more New England Indians, including Occom and his family, moved to Brothertown and the nearby settlement of New Stockbridge, forming a town government, church and schools. In the early 1800s, the state of New York began to purchase tracts of Oneida land, and the Indians were forced to leave New York and settle in Greenbay, Wisconsin.