The Mohicans were an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe that was Algonquian-speaking. As part of the Eastern Algonquian family of tribes, they are related to the abutting Lenape, who occupied territory to the south as far as the Atlantic coast. The Mohicans occupied the upper tidal Hudson River Valley, including the confluence of the Mohawk River (where present-day Albany, New York, developed) and into western New England centered on the upper Housatonic watershed. After 1680, due to conflicts with the Mohawk during the Beaver Wars, many were driven southeastward across the present-day Massachusetts western border and the Taconic Mountains to Berkshire County around Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Since the forcible relocation of American Indian populations to reservations in the American West during the 1830s, most descendants of the Mohicans are located in Shawano County, Wisconsin. Decades later they eventually formed the federally recognized Stockbridge-Munsee Community with registered members of the Munsee people and have a 22,000-acre reservation.

Following the disruption of the American Revolutionary War, most of the Mohican descendants first migrated westward to join the Iroquois Oneida on their reservation in central New York. The Oneida gave them about 22,000 acres for their use. After more than two decades, in the 1820s and 1830s, the Oneida and the Stockbridge moved again, pressured to relocate to northeastern Wisconsin under the federal Indian Removal program. A group of Mohicans also migrated to Canada to live with Iroquois Six Nations.