The fieldstone museum, built by Mohegans in 1930 (Photos by Carolyn Battista)

In 1930, two Mohegan Indians—John Tantaquidgeon and his son, Harold—began building a museum, stone by stone. The next year Gladys Tantaquidgeon joined her father and brother in opening the one-room Tantaquidgeon Indian Museum, in the Uncasville section of Montville, Conn., 80 miles east of New York City. Ever since, family and friends have maintained the modest fieldstone building as a place that preserves treasured artifacts and gives visitors a glimpse of the Mohegan way of life.

The family has looked after a beaded belt from the 1700s, hung portraits of Mohegan leaders on pegboards, and arranged traditional baskets of oak and ash (some more than 200 years old) on homemade shelves. They've made repairs and even added two small no-nonsense wings of concrete blocks. More than 6,000 people a year visit what’s become a one of the oldest Indian-run museums in the country.

Connecticut has several state-recognized Indian tribes but only two Federally recognized ones, the Mohegans and the Mashantucket Pequots. Melissa Tantaquidgeon, tribal historian and John's great-grandniece, explains that the Mohegans have lived in what's now Montville since the 1600s, when the leader Uncas and his band allied with English settlers there. Many became Christians, and in the 1830s, when the Federal government was removing "uncivilized, un-Christianized" Indians to distant places, the Mohegans built a church so they could stay in Montville. They had no reservation, just the church and burial grounds. As the years went by, they attended local schools, took jobs, and fought in their country's wars. Today the tribe has some 1,400 members, about half of whom live within an hour's drive of Mohegan Hill.

Melissa Tantaquidgeon welcomes high school students

On a late spring morning this year, Tantaquidgeon smiled at students who'd just arrived from Tolland High School in Tolland, Conn., some 30 miles away. "Aquai," she said. "Greetings." She told them that "Tantaquidgeon" means "going along fast," that "Mohegan" means "wolf," and that Indian history is part of American history.The visiting students were soon inspecting the baskets, portraits, tools, utensils, beads, birch art, a little doll made from a turkey wishbone, a sifter used for yokeag (ground corn), Gladys' ceremonial regalia, and other artifacts.

The museum will remain a small, homey place, although the tribe has recently experienced an enormous shift: In 1996, the Mohegan Tribal Nation opened a casino resort in Uncasville that attracts more than 12 million visitors a year. The casino’s profits have allowed tribal members to provide their children with material goods and college educations, and the tribe itself to undertake projects like the renovation and new addition completed last year at its 1831 Congregational church, just up Mohegan Hill from the museum.

"If we transformed [the museum] into something extravagant, we'd lose the message," Tantaquidgeon says. She remembers that as a child, she learned about medicinal plants from her Great Aunt Gladys (who'd learned about them from her grandmother). She also remembers helping her great aunt make exhibit signs for the museum, using the backs of Lipton tea boxes. The place "offers a tremendous grounding for our young people," she says.

Tantaquidgeon enjoys explaining to young people the history of the building’s construction. She relates the story her great aunt, Gladys, told about how John, a woodcarver and basketmaker, nearly blind and on crutches, somehow moved the large stones that form the foundation into place. The result was a sturdy building, about 10 by 20 feet, with a tall chimney bearing a diamond mark that means "good medicine." The Mohegan symbol—an X with four dots, representing the four directions and four Mohegan leaders—was placed below the roof peak. Inside, rafters and walls were left exposed, and the completion date, 1931, was inscribed in a hearthstone.

Handmade baskets

"These people, with no resources, put forth their culture," Tantaquidgeon says. After John died in 1949, Harold, a Mohegan chief, and Gladys, a medicine woman, were often in charge of the museum. He had served in the armed forces; she'd worked for the Federal government with tribes around the country. Both came home to live in the family house next door to the museum, and Harold tended museum affairs until a few years before his death in 1989, at age 85. Gladys, now 103, worked at the museum until five years ago. She and her sister Ruth, 93, still live next door. "They still give us direction," Tantaquidgeon says, though she and other tribal members now handle regular operations.

Locals have long been devoted to the place. Gertrude M. Minson, a retired Montville teacher, remembers visiting every year with her fourth graders. "Chief Tantaquidgeon would have us sit in the council ring outside," she says. "We could ask questions; then we'd tour the museum. Gladys—a remarkable, well-informed woman—would help."

Howard R. Beetham, Jr., the mayor of Montville, has known the Tantaquidgeons and their work all his life. "This family has preserved history," he says. "I hope the museum will be preserved for many years."

Visitors keep coming "from all over," says Angela Soulor, a tribal member who helps out when not attending college in Massachusetts. "The same people come back, with their kids and grandkids."

Soulor and other young members of the tribe helped clean artifacts last year, when the museum closed for the summer because it needed a new roof, new shelves, and general cleaning and organizing.

It was important, says Tantaquidgeon, to involve the young people in the project. "We wanted them to be part of the nitty-gritty," she says. "They learned from intimate experience with the objects. Now they can say, 'I touched something that my grandfather made.'"

Everything was shipshape when the museum opened on May 24 for the first group of this season—the Tolland students, who also visited an exhibit of Mohegan artifacts recently installed in the new addition to the 1831 church.

In the museum, the students squeezed around display cases and one another to peer at everything, talking all the while. "We're seeing things from a Native perspective," said senior Amanda Martin.

Somehow, the museum thrives in tight quarters, with only basic lighting and simple displays. "With money," Tantaquidgeon says, "we couldn't do it any better."

The Tantaquidgeon Indian Museum is open from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, June through August. It is open for scheduled groups in May and September. For more information, write to 1819 Norwich-New London Turnpike, Uncasville, Conn., 06382; call (860-862-6100); or e-mail museum@moheganmail.com.

Carolyn Battista is a freelance writer living in Connecticut.

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