spECKl A MOHEGAN-PEQUOT DIARY 225 



odd scntimentalisni, one difficult for most Europeans to appreciate. 

 She had the fancy of applying to herself an Indian name, Djits Bud'- 

 anaca, "Flying Bird," though I never learned from her what cir- 

 cumstances were involved in its selection. 



She was intensely nationalistic in her views, a staunch believer in 

 the valor and nobility of the ancient Mohv'lcsv'mig, "Mohegan men," 

 and in the degeneracy of character of the contemporary genera- 

 tion. Like most Indians of the East, she never forgot to lament the 

 political and moral injuries done her race by the whites. Her most 

 cordial feelings toward me during the time of our friendship were 

 occasionally interrupted by outbreaks of racial antipathy on her 

 part, reawakened by the memory of the Yankees, whose name she 

 derived from the active verb denoted in the first syllable of the word. 



In her diary she expresses herself better than she probably in- 

 tended. She betrays her biased attitude, religious fanaticism, her 

 moral inconsistency, egoism, and fundamental native superstition. 

 Yet her declarations manifest a deep human sympathy. How she 

 commiserated those sinners whom she knew so well among her 

 neighbors m the settlement, making her appeals to Ma'ndu in their 

 behalf, her mention of the poor and starving, the victims of the Long 

 Island Sound steamboat wreck, and of the sick. 



Her general style of expression is monotonous, evidently another 

 portrayal of nature thought, together with the deep feeling for 

 nature's turns, as though the diurnal flight of time, soberly recorded 

 in the sounding cham of reflective phrases "it is already noon, already 

 night, the sun is gone," would interest anyone but a connoisseur. 



The poor old woman, I have always felt, never intended that her 

 simple emotions should be so exposed to the eyes of the bustling 

 world of Wan''aJcsag, "white men," with whom she had but little 

 in common, for at the time they were penned by her no other indi- 

 vidual besides myself was taking any pains whatsoever to master 

 her speech, a fact which she knew and lamented so frequently. 

 Much more could be said of her personal idiosyncrasies, but let 

 us turn to her self-declarations. They convey the most real pictiu"e 

 of the aged, lonely, and profoundly reflective Mohegan woman, an 

 assuredly interesting ca.se for the social psychologist. 



The original manuscript of the diary consists of four notebooks in 

 Mrs. Fielding's handwriting, which is clear and legible. Her orthog- 

 raphy is the ordinary English system, which I have had to put into 

 consistent phonetic form, a task impossible had it not been for the 

 circumstance that she had schooled me in her method and dictated, 

 at difl'erent times during her life, her words to me so that most of 

 them had been recorded previously in a phonetic system. The 

 diaries themselves are now in the possession of the Museum of the 

 American Indian (Heye Foundation). Through the kindness of 

 Mr. George G. Heye, the dh'ector, permission has been given to 

 present them in this form. 



