Lion Miles Rips on of William Starna's "From Homeland to New Land"

When I was putting the finishing touches on my own book about the Stockbridge Mohicans (it covers the years 1734 to 2014), I became aware of another book that deals with essentially the same people. The author prefers to call them Mahicans (more on that later) and his book covers the tribe from 1600 until their removal to present-day Wisconsin.

Admittedly, I myself have yet to read From Homeland to New Land, A History of the Mahican Indians, 1600-1830, by anthropologist William Starna. But - believe me - enough information is available on the book to justify a  blogpost.

In particular, I'm referring to a rather nasty review of Starna's book that Lion Miles posted on Amazon a few months ago. This is one of those critiques that, when you first read it, you are impressed and almost ready to dismiss the book which is being criticized. But William Starna wisely disregarded the advice that authors should always ignore bad reviews. Starna fought back, responding to every detailed criticism coming from Miles. And he adds a somewhat personal criticism: "Readers may be interested to learn that this is not the first time that Miles has taken wild swings at my work."

On specific points, I doubt that either scholar is completely correct. Both are experts on a tribe that is undergoing rapid change, first with the fur trade and later with missionization, not to mention a series of wars and other tensions. The result of that change - and the fact that much of the data is secondhand -means that the surviving data on these Indians and their neighbors has inconsistencies. I believe that the identifying and disentangling of these inconsistencies is a very important skill in historical scholarship.

In a perfect world, Starna and Miles would have gotten together as friends and disentangled the inconsistencies they found in the data they gathered. Instead, they butted heads and future scholars will be left to follow their bread crumbs to historical truth. I am interested in giving William Starna's book a chance. I'll probably want to give it more than the two stars it got from Lion Miles.

( By the way, Proud and Determined, the book I wrote about the Stockbridge Mohicans, has been favorably reviewed, both on Amazon and Goodreads. )

One of the things that Miles and Starna clashed on is the name of the people they were dealing with. Starna uses the term "Mahicans," while Miles insists on "Mohicans." Let's find out their reasons.

According to Lion Miles:

The first error is the use of the spelling “Mahican” in the title. That spelling was used almost exclusively by Europeans in the 17th century. When members of the tribe learned to write, they adopted the spelling “Mohican” and that has been the accepted usage for the past 200 years.

Starna responds:

On the "error" Miles claims was committed in using "Mahican" in the title: The etymology and historical application of "Mahican" is fully discussed in the book's introduction, including the reasons for employing the term throughout as a linguistic rather than a cultural designation. Miles either didn't read or chose to ignore that discussion.

The argument, of course, is entirely academic. The descendants of the Indians in question - the real people that are living and breathing today - use "Mohican," not "Mahican."