speck] a MOHEGAN-PEQUOT DIARY 223 



tive feeling supporting these relationships is further strengthened by 

 the consideration of the characteristics of cultural life, in society and 

 in industry, in religious behefs and in mythology, so far as we have 

 records of it. 



With these tentative summaries in view, then, I may venture to 

 suggest a few supplementary hypotheses in harmony with those pro- 

 posed in 1914 by Doctor Dixon. Southern New England Algonkian 

 culture shows two phases, one early and archaic, which is over- 

 topped by another bearing certain hnprints of conformity with an 

 Iroquoian culture. Hence, the assumption follows that the southern 

 New England tribes were settled in their territories some time before 

 the Iroquois migration toward the Hudson, a migration which is 

 generally believed in by most American ethnologists. If the Iroquois 

 migration dates back to about 1400, then the southern New England 

 Algonkian might have been several centuries earlier in their arrival. 

 This would correspond to the assumption already entertained that 

 the Virginian Powhatan tribes migrated into the tidewater region 

 about tlie same time. Granting, accordingly, some value to the tes- 

 timony of the Delaware migration legend, these secondary migrations 

 of the Mohegan and the southern Algonkian would seem to coincide. 



Turning for a moment to northern New England and eastern 

 Canada, we miss the evidences of an Iroquois cultural invasion. 

 There was only a relatively late political and military pressure. The 

 conditions are totally different. The historic Algonkian of the 

 lower St. Lawrence Valley, embracing the Montagnais and Naskapi 

 divisions and the Wabanaki and Micmac bands, evidently came in 

 from the northwest and west, and carried eastward to the Atlantic 

 an early form of Cree and Ojibwa culture, the former keeping more 

 to tlie northern coast of the St. Lawrence and the latter crosssing and 

 following the southern shore thence to the ocean in northern New 

 England. Beneath the cultures of this Middle Age Algonkian host, 

 and anterior to it in point of time, there is still good reason to believe 

 another stratum of proto-Algonkian resided in the north Atlantic 

 coastal belt. To untangle the ethnological snarl will prove to be no 

 easy task for those who have started the undertaking. 



REMARKS ON THE LIFE OF MRS. FIELDING 



Having developed a point of view as to the probable position of 

 the Mohegan-Pequot group among the surrounding peoples, let us 

 turn directly to the subject material itself and to some of the circum- 

 stances involved in its history. The person to whom we owe a debt of 

 gratitude for having taken such a vital interest in her tribe's language 

 and history was a woman of a somewhat unusual cast of mind. 

 Born September 15, 1827, at Mohegan, Mrs. Fielding spent her girl- 

 hood among a number of old Indians whose familiar language was 



