HUDSON — The Hudson Area Library and the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History present “The Mohicans’ Incorporation into the Iroquois League, 1671-1675” by Evan Haefeli 6-7:30 p.m. June 24. This talk derives from one of Dr. Haefeli’s current research projects on the history of the Iroquois Confederacy’s relations with its Indigenous neighbors to the east and south, especially the people of the Hudson Valley. The incorporation of the Mohicans into the Iroquois League has remained obscured to history but was pivotal to the history of the colonial northeast. It explains why the Mohicans and the Munsee neighbors did not join in King Philip’s War and so prevented that conflict from spilling over into the Hudson Valley. It also clarifies the nature of Indigenous politics in the region in the era of Jacob Leisler.
The Jacob Leisler Library Lectures are made partially possible through the generous support of the Van Dyke Family Association.
An historian of colonial North America and the Atlantic world at Texas A&M University, Evan Haefeli has a particular interest in the political, religious, Indigenous, and imperial history of the colonial northeast. Born and raised on eastern Long Island, New York, he previously taught at Princeton University, where he received his PhD, as well as Tufts, Columbia University, and the London School of Economics. He has held a variety of fellowships, most recently from the NEH. His published books relating to colonial American and early New York history include New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty, Accidental Pluralism: America and the Religious Politics of English Expansion, and (with Kevin Sweeney), Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield.
The Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History is an independent, not-for-profit study and research center devoted…