The Mohican Blessing Fountain was erected by the New Lebanon Garden Club in 1941 to give thanks to the Mohican Indians for giving the healing waters of the thermal mineral springs to all people forever. The Mohicans were the original inhabitants of New Lebanon, Columbia County, and a vast territory that included significant parts of New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut. The first reported gift of the water came in 1756, when Mohicans from their village at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, carried James Hitchcock, a British army member stationed near Stockbridge, to the healing springs to cure a severe skin disease that doctors could not cure, then bathed and tended him for a few weeks until his symptoms disappeared. The second recorded gift came in 1759, when the Mohicans sold the land of their former village of Kaunaumeek, present-day New Lebanon, to Charles Goodrich on the condition that the healing waters would remain free for all people forever. Goodrich kept that promise during his ownership and, when he sold the property containing the springs in 1778, he restated the Mohicans' original wishes by giving the springs to the Town of New Lebanon with language intended to ensure free use of the waters for all time. In three later court cases over ownership brought before the NYS Supreme Court, the court ruled each time that the waters of the springs would be free for all peoples forever. The fountain was designed by the sculptor Henry Hudson Kitson, who searched the area for the boulders and stones that form its base and created the bronze sculpture of a Native American drinking water from his cupped hands.