Gladys Tantaquidgeon: Caretaker of Mohegan Tribe’s Heritage (part 2)

By November 21, 2025
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Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry writes more 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 continue the story of anthropologist, author, preservationist, and Mohegan Medicine Woman Dr. Gladys Iola Tantaquidgeon (1899-2005), focusing on her study of the Wampanoag people in the 1920s.

To recap: Gladys Tantaquidgeon was born to John Winslow Tantaquidgeon (1865-1949) and Harriet W. (Fielding) Tantaquidgeon. She is a direct descendant of Mohegan Chief Uncas, who, according to the article below, “broke from the Pequots in the 1600s with other tribe members and sought to work with English settlers in the region now known as Connecticut.”

Part 1 covered Gladys’ role as the co-founder (with her father and brother Chief Harold Tantaquidgeon) of the Tantaquidgeon Museum.

Photos: Tantaquidgeon Museum, located at 1819 Norwich-New London Turnpike, Uncasville, Connecticut. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Photos: Tantaquidgeon Museum, located at 1819 Norwich-New London Turnpike, Uncasville, Connecticut. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

When Gladys passed away in 2005 at age 106 newspapers across the country covered her great accomplishments, including a Boston Globe original which ran in the San Diego Union-Tribune titled “Gladys Tantaquidgeon: Spiritual Guide of Mohegan Tribe.” Gladys appears in a photo sitting in front of her brother’s portrait at the museum.

An article about Gladys Tantaquidgeon, San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper 6 November 2005
San Diego Union-Tribune (San Diego, California), 6 November 2005, page 141

The article states that when she was a young girl, the elders saw Gladys’s unique talent and recognized her strong potential to help her people. They believed she “could become a spiritual force and a leader in the community,” and that would hold true.

From an early age Gladys served as a representative of her people and she accompanied tribe members to important events, such as the time President William Taft visited Norwich, Connecticut, on 5 July 1909, as part of the city’s 250th anniversary celebration. She was presented to him and shook his hand.

One important influence on Gladys was Professor Frank Gouldmith Speck, anthropologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who befriended her in her childhood. Prof. Speck studied the Mohegan people. Below is a photograph of Gladys and friends taken by Speck.

In this photo we see (left to right): Esther Nelson (Rappahannock); Gladys Tantaquidgeon (Mohegan); Rebecca Nelson (Rappahannock); and an unidentified young girl seated in the woods in Indian Neck, Virginia, with another unidentified girl in the background.

Photo: Gladys Tantaquidgeon and friends. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
Photo: Gladys Tantaquidgeon and friends. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

The article cites Gladys’ own words from the book Medicine Trail: The Life and Lessons of Gladys Tantaquidgeon, written by her grandniece Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel, a medicine woman who received her training from Gladys. It states:

When Frank Speck first met me, he said, “Hurry up and grow up, little girl, and when I get married, I’ll come back with my wife and take you away with me. And he did.”

Gladys attended the University of Pennsylvania. She was assistant to Prof. Speck and traveled with him and his family around Cape Ann, Massachusetts, and met with other tribal leaders in the 1920s and 1930s.

She lived at Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, among the Wampanoag people and published her study in “Indian Notes, Volume VII, No. 1” (January 1930), pp. 1-26.

Below is another photo taken by Speck in 1922 of Gladys with Nanticoke Chief Russell Clark when they were members of a delegation lobbying for a “Native American School System,” or a “legal” Nanticoke Indian Association. They are sitting on the steps of the Dover, Delaware, state courthouse.

Photo: Gladys Tantaquidgeon and Russell Clark, 1922. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
Photo: Gladys Tantaquidgeon and Russell Clark, 1922. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

In the summer of 1929 she visited Ipswich, Massachusetts, and met with Mrs. Emma Jane (Mitchell) Safford (1846-1932) and her family. The family had been basket makers for generations.

After her observation work with Emma and her family, Gladys published her study in “Indian Notes,” supported by the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, and titled, “Newly Discovered Straw Basketry of the Wampanoag Indians of Massachusetts.”

Below is one of Emma’s baskets made in 1870, part of the series of examples of the handicraft produced during her youth. This basket was maintained in Emma’s possession until 1929, when it was collected by Gladys Tantaquidgeon. It was purchased by the former Museum of the American Indian in New York City from Gladys Tantaquidgeon in 1930.

Photo: basket by Emma Jane Mitchell. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
Photo: basket by Emma Jane Mitchell. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

Emma Jane Mitchell was born in Ipswich to Thomas Carr and Zerviah (Gould) Mitchell. Below is photo of Emma at age 26.

Photo: Emma Jane Mitchell, 1872. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
Photo: Emma Jane Mitchell, 1872. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

She married Jacob Cheever Safford on 1 January 1873, in Ipswich.

Photo: Jacob Safford. Credit: Ipswich Historical Society, part of the Safford Papers Collection.
Photo: Jacob Safford. Credit: Ipswich Historical Society, part of the Safford Papers Collection.

In her “Indian Notes” basketry article, Gladys notes the following information on the genealogy of Emma’s family:

Among the most noteworthy of these families were the Mitchells, whose connection with the old reservation at Betty’s Neck on Lake Assawampset, about ten miles south of Middleboro, had been passed on and approved by Massachusetts genealogists as lineal descendants of both Massasoit and King Philip.

On such considerations it might be expected that certain folk-industries and arts would have survived in the family traditions of the more Indian-minded of these descendants. Expectation has been borne out in fact in the case of the Mitchell family, whose ancestress in the second generation from the youngest living descendant was, socially speaking, a pure Wampanoag of Tuspaquin’s band.

Gladys further notes:

In discussing the survival of such indigenous art products, it is interesting to note some facts concerning these people which were recorded in 1861, as the result of a census of the Indians of Massachusetts, conducted by J. M. Earle. (View list here from “Indians of Massachusetts, Senate Papers, no. 96,” 1861.)

Here is a photo of Emma in her later years.

Photo: Emma Safford. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
Photo: Emma Safford. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

I found an obituary for Emma in the New York American titled “Wampanoag Tribe’s Last Princess Dies.”

An article about Emma Safford, New York American newspaper 26 March 1932
New York American (New York, New York), 26 March 1932, page 4

Much more to come on Gladys’ visit to Ipswich and the family history.

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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

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