The Stockbridge Munsee experienced multiple relocations in the 1800s as a result of changing policies and continued white encroachment on Native land. The Stockbridge Indians who had relocated to Stockbridge, Massachusetts after being removed from their ancestral homelands in 1734 moved to New Stockbridge in Oneida territory within New York State after the Revolutionary War. Though this band of Mohican and Munsee sided with the Americans during the American Revolution, the treaties and promises to the Stockbridge did not prevent the continued pressure to sell their land.
A group of Stockbridge chose to sell their land in New York in 1818 and move with their leader, John Metoxen, to the White River area in Indiana to live with the Miami and Delaware. However, the Delaware had already been coerced to move, and they followed other Native groups that were negotiating for land in what is now Wisconsin. Metoxen’s group arrived in Wisconsin in 1822, and many other Stockbridge and related bands arrived from New York over the next several years, including a large group of Munsee.
The group first settled and built a village on the Fox River at Grand Kakalin in Wisconsin. However, this group was moved again to the east shore of Lake Winnebago in 1834. During this period, the United States government was pressuring all Indians to move to Indian territory, and some Stockbridge moved preemptively. Though some stayed in what is now Kansas and Oklahoma, many returned to Wisconsin. In 1835, a large group of Munsee arrived in Wisconsin hoping to join their Mohican brothers and the band formally became known as the Stockbridge and Munsee in 1836.
One notable leader who embodied the combining of the Stockbridge and the Munsee to make one nation was Ziba (Zeiba) T. Peters. He was Tribal Councillor of the Stockbridge Munsee in 1839, 1848, and 1855, and signed treaties in those years. He then became Sachem in 1856, and was the first Sachem to have Munsee lineage in the combined tribe, as Peters was half Munsee and half Mohican. He is credited with negotiating the treaty that solidified the founding of the current home of the Stockbridge in Wisconsin, signed on February 5, 1856. This treaty marked the final move for the Stockbridge and Munsee to the reservation in Shawano County, Wisconsin. He was also a key member of the committee who wrote the 1856 constitution for the Stockbridge and Munsee. Peters served in leadership roles in the tribe throughout his life.
Ziba T. Peters and his wife, Polly Marvin Calvin, who was Lenni Lenape from eastern New Jersey, had three children: Livingston, Stevens, and Sterling. It appears that, though Native language and culture were being seriously oppressed, Ziba and his wife taught their children both Mohican and Lenni Lenape. At the age of 72, Sterling Peters provided stories and language to a researcher. At the risk of retaliation for his knowledge of language and traditions, he provided information that helped distinguish between the two languages, which had become intertwined.
The nation still commemorates the final move to Wisconsin in March of each year to commemorate the nation’s establishment of a permanent homeland in the face of further pressure from the American government and white settlers to move.
