Fighting for the Tribal Bible: Mohican Politics of Self-Representation in Public History

Abstract

Fighting for the Tribal Bible:Mohican Politics of Self-Representation in Public History Rose Miron (bio) in 1951 Jim and Grace Davids traveled from Wisconsin to the East Coast of the United States to see the homelands of their ancestors. Jim was an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans,1 while Grace was from the nearby Oneida reservation.2 On their trip, they stopped in Stock-bridge, Massachusetts, where Jim's ancestors, the Mohicans, lived for twenty-five years in the eighteenth century as a part of the Stockbridge mission settlement, led by the Reverend John Sergeant.3 Today, the Mission House, where Sergeant and his family lived from 1734 to 1749, still stands and is open daily for tours. While visiting the museum, Jim and Grace were surprised to recognize a two-hundred-year-old two-volume Bible set and a four-piece pewter Communion set that had previously been held on the Mohican reservation in Wisconsin.4 Although it had been a while since Jim and Grace had seen the objects in person, it was not until they traveled to Stockbridge that they even realized the objects were missing from the reservation. Most tribal members had heard about the Bible and Communion set from elders, but few had seen them in person. Most assumed they were in a safe place on or near the reservation but would not have guessed that they had been taken from central Wisconsin. Beyond their initial shock that the Bible and Communion set were no longer on the reservation, tribal members still wondered: How had the items ended up in Stockbridge, and what could the Mohicans do to get them back?5 In the fifty-five years following Jim and Grace's discovery of the items, the Mohicans began to strategize and then formally asked the Mission House Museum to return the Bible and Communion set to the Mohican people. What started as a request, however, would become nothing short of an all-out battle for possession and control. While a word like "battle" may seem extreme in regard to retrieving objects, I use this and similar terms because the immense struggle the Mohicans engaged in was multipronged, required extensive labor and resources, and took more than three decades [End Page 91] following their formal request. What follows is the story of the Mohicans' fight to retrieve their Bible and Communion set, make these items accessible to tribal members, and represent themselves and their histories on their own terms and in their own space. While a Bible and Communion set may not immediately be conceived as sacred or cultural Indian objects, these items and their place on the Mohican reservation were and continue to be a critical issue for the Mohican people. Material culture theory suggests that groups of people can have myriad attachments to objects based on the groups' cultural background, status, and education.6 In that sense, different individual Mohicans perceive the Bible and Communion set as important for different reasons. While some find their importance chiefly related to Christianity, for others, they are important because they connect the Mohicans to a specific historical time period. As tribal leader Dorothy Davids noted, "The Bible links the old people to us today. … A lot of sweat and spirit is there. … The Bible is a chance to bring us together."7 Given the sacredness of these items, the desire to return them to the Mohican reservation and represent their history in the Mohican tribal museum was paramount. As Amy Lonetree argues, "Objects in museums are living entities. … Every engagement with objects in museum cases or collection rooms should begin with this core recognition. We are not just looking at interesting pieces. In the presence of objects from the past, we are privileged to stand as witnesses to living entities."8 The importance of living entities such as these mandates that American Indian nations should have the right not only to possess these objects but also to choose how and if they are displayed in museums. Since European American settlers arrived in North America, the rights of Indigenous nations to possess and represent their own sacred items has been mired in...