November 5, 2025
Introduction: In this article Melissa Davenport Berry writes about 106-year-old Gladys Iola Tantaquidgeon, a Mohegan Medicine Woman who preserved her people’s heritage. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
Today I recall the devoted and selfless work of Dr. Gladys Iola Tantaquidgeon (1899-2005), anthropologist, author, preservationist, and Mohegan Medicine Woman.
Gladys Tantaquidgeon was born to John Winslow Tantaquidgeon (1865-1949) and Harriet W. (Fielding) Tantaquidgeon. She is a direct descendant of famed Mohegan Chief Uncas.
Gladys is featured in an article in the Watertown Daily Times titled, “Museum Preserves Legacy of the Mohegans,” published in 1991. I have included photographs and added history.
This article reports:
“I let the cause down. I never married, never had any children,” sighed Gladys Tantaquidgeon, one of the last of the Mohegans still living in Uncasville, Conn., the traditional home of the once-powerful tribe.
The lively 91-year-old is the ninth-generation direct descendant of Chief Uncas and a descendant of a long line of Mohegan chiefs. Her brother, Harold, who died last year, was a chief of the Mohegans for many years.
[Here is a photo of Chief Harold Tantaquidgeon in 1933 at Camp Wakenah, a Boy Scout camp in Salem, Connecticut, where he taught survival skills. He was also known as Chief Tom Hat, because his initials, “H.A.T.,” were carved into a knife made for him by his father.]
The small village (population 1,600) on the Thames River 15 miles upstream from New London and the Atlantic Ocean, is named after Uncas, the grand sachem of the Mohegans who lived at the time of the first English settlement here in the 1600s.
Tantaquidgeon is the official caretaker and protector of the Mohegans’ traditions, heritage, and artifacts. A three-room stone museum was erected on Mohegan Hill in 1931 by her father and brother [Harold] to house the tribe’s treasures. The name Mohegan means “wolf people.”
“Contrary to James Fenimore Cooper’s famous book ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ published in 1826, my tribe, obviously, did not die out. And, I might note, one of the heroes of Cooper’s historical novel was a Mohegan named Uncas,” the museum curator said.
[Editor’s note: in his novel The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper created confusion that has remained to this day. The Mohicans and the Mohegans are two distinct, separate tribes. Cooper used “Mohicans” in his title and set the story in the Upper Hudson River Valley in New York where the Mohicans lived. The Mohegans are from the Thames River Valley in southeastern Connecticut, yet Cooper inserted into his book plot elements from the Mohegans’ history, including most prominently naming one of the novel’s two “last Mohicans” after the Mohegan’s famous sachem, Uncas. The story was not the “last” of either tribe, as both exist today.]
She lives in a modest home near the crest of Mohegan Hill. The museum is in her back yard. Only 35 Mohegans are left in Uncasville. The Mohegans are a relatively small band of Indians with only 600 scattered throughout the United States. An annual homecoming of Mohegans is held in Uncasville every August.
Tantaquidgeon Mohegan Museum is filled with baskets, bowls, beadwork, jewelry, clothing, dolls, wampum, eagle-feather headdresses, hand crafted stone, bone, and wood objects, axes, tools, arrowheads, war clubs, bows, arrows, a birchbark canoe, caribou bone necklaces, and other artifacts.
[Here is a photo of a wolf-headed spoon with a decorative wedge between the bowl and handle, shaped like a slanted letter “L,” for Lucy Occum Tantaquidgeon (1733-1830) who, along with her daughters Lucy Teecomwas and Cynthia Hoscott, offered a portion of their land to the tribe for the building and founding of Mohegan Church in 1831.]
[Note: Mohegan Tribe artifacts were transferred from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History to the tribe’s Tantaquidgeon Museum. Dr. Tantaquidgeon was posthumously awarded an honorary degree from Yale in 1944.]
“My family has the responsibility to care for and protect the legacy of the Mohegans, to inform all who come here about our people, about the rich Mohegan culture and traditions,” explained Gladys, who added with a chuckle:
“Most people who come here are amazed that Mohegans are still alive. All their lives they’ve heard the old saying about the last of the Mohegans.”
The name Tantaquidgeon was a family name among the Mohegans long before the Mayflower came to New England shores. The name means “going fast.” Gladys Tantaquidgeon’s aunt, Fidelia Fielding, who died in 1908, was the last speaker of the ancient Mohegan language.
[Here is a photo of Fidelia Ann Hoscott (Smith) Fielding (1827-1908), aka “Jeets Bodermasha” or “Flying Bird,” born to Bartholomew Valentine Smith and Sarah A. (Wyyougs) Smith, granddaughter of Martha Shantup Uncas, and wife of Mohegan mariner William H. Fielding.]
Glady’s father, John Tantaquidgeon, who lived from 1865 to 1949, was the last Mohegan basket maker.
“My father was a quiet man. He would sit for hours weaving his baskets out of oak splints,” she recalled. Many of his baskets are in the museum and a photograph of him at work weaving is prominently displayed.
Also on exhibit are several traditional Mohegan dolls and colorful tribal dress created by the museum curator when she was a young woman. For her work in preserving the heritage of the Mohegans, Gladys Tantaquidgeon received the prestigious Distinguished Connecticut Citizen Award this year. Three years ago, the University of Connecticut awarded her an honorary doctorate degree.
When her brother died last year, President Bush sent a letter of condolence to all members of the Mohegan Tribe. The letter, which hangs in the Mohegan Museum, says in part:
“It was with great sadness I noted the passing of Chief Harold Tantaquidgeon. He will always be remembered as an American hero. In World War II he led comrades out of the jungles of New Guinea with skills taught by his Indian forefathers. He exemplified the proud history of the Mohegans.”
During World War II, Harold Tantaquidgeon was an Air Force combat gunner. When his plane was shot down over New Guinea, he and surviving crew members were trapped behind enemy lines for 23 days before he led them out of the jungle to rescue by U.S. forces.
Years later, he ran a summer camp in the woods behind the museum where he taught young people about Indian life. They all slept in wigwams.
In her younger years, Gladys Tantaquidgeon was a librarian. During the 1930s, she worked with Plains Indians in the Dakotas. But for the last 50 years, she has dedicated her life to the Tantaquidgeon Mohegan Museum.
Check out this video: “Gladys Tantaquidgeon 100th Birthday Tribute.”
To be continued…
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Note on the header image: Dr. Gladys Iola Tantaquidgeon. Credit: Mohegan Tribe; https://www.mohegan.nsn.us/about/our-tribal-history/in-memoriam/gladys-tantaquidgeon