Dictionary:
Shaw·nee (shô-nē') 
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[Back-formation from obsolete Shawnese, from Shawnee shaawanooki, those of the south, Shawnee.]
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| US History Encyclopedia: Shawnee |
Ancient residents of the Ohio Valley, the Shawnees ("Shawanos" or "Southerners") are an Alqonquian-speaking people who were living in villages scattered across southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois when they first encountered the French in the 1670s. During the next two decades, as the Iroquois expanded west, part of the Shawnees sought refuge among the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama, while others fled to northern Illinois, where they established new villages near Fort St. Louis, a French post at Starved Rock, on the Illinois River. By 1715, the Shawnees had reassembled in southern Pennsylvania, erecting villages along the Susquehanna and Monongahela rivers. As the Iroquois threat diminished, they gradually reoccupied their old homelands along the Muskingum, Scioto, and Mad Rivers in southern and central Ohio, often crossing the Ohio River to hunt deer and bison in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky.
During the colonial period the Shawnees divided their loyalties between the British and French, often attempting to "play off" both sides to their own advantage. Although ostensibly friendly to the French, they readily accepted presents from colonial legislatures in Pennsylvania and Virginia and welcomed British traders into their villages. At the beginning of the Seven Years' War, the Shawnees participated in Braddock's Defeat and initially raided the Virginia frontier, but after the British captured Fort Duquesne, they temporarily withdrew from the fighting. In 1763 they joined with other tribes to support Pontiac's Rebellion and besieged Fort Pitt, but were defeated by the British at the Battle of Bushy Run (August 1763) and again made a reluctant peace with the Redcoats. Yet in the early 1770s, as the Virginians, or "Long Knives," crossed the mountains onto Shawnee hunting lands in Kentucky, Shawnees resisted, precipitating what the colonists called Lord Dunmore's War. The Shawnees eventually were defeated at the Battle of Point Pleasant (October 1774) and reduced their attacks upon American settlements in the Bluegrass region, but their bitterness toward the Long Knives continued.
The American Revolution provided the Shawnees with arms and allies to renew their war against Virginia. Led by their war chief Black Fish, the Shawnees assisted the British and spearheaded Indian attacks upon the settlements in Kentucky. In return, their villages were attacked by the Americans, and in 1779, about 1,000 Shawnees (one-third of the tribe) abandoned their Ohio villages and migrated to Spanish Missouri. The Shawnees who remained in Ohio continued to raid Kentucky throughout the war, and following the Treaty of Paris, they opposed any American settlement north of the Ohio. During the early 1790s, they combined with other tribes to defeat American armies led by Josiah Harmer (October 1790) and Arthur St. Clair (November 1791). In August 1794, they were defeated by Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, and with no prospect of further British support, they signed the Treaty of Greenville, relinquishing most of Ohio to the United States.
In the first decade of the nineteenth century, the Shawnee Prophet and his brother Tecumseh attempted to unite the tribes of the Midwest and Southeast into a pan-Indian coalition designed to prevent the further sale of Indian lands to the government. Their efforts were thwarted by the jealousy of traditional tribal chiefs, and by William Henry Harrison who attacked and destroyed their village, Prophetstown, at the Battle of Tippecanoe, in November 1811. During the War of 1812, part of the Shawnees supported Tecumseh who allied with the British, but the majority of the group followed Black Hoof, who sided with the Americans. When Tecumseh was killed by American militia at the Battle of the Thames (October 1813), Shawnee resistance to the Americans crumbled.
In the decades following the War of 1812, most Shawnees were removed from Ohio to Kansas and Missouri. Some sought temporary refuge with Cherokees in Texas, but after Texas became independent of Mexico, they returned to the United States. In the aftermath of the Civil War, most were assigned reservations in Oklahoma where they formed three separate bands. Today the Absentee Shawnees maintain a tribal office at Shawnee, Oklahoma; the Loyal Shawnees, closely allied with the Western Cherokees, have a tribal building at White Oak Oklahoma; while the Eastern Shawnee Tribe is headquartered at Seneca, Missouri, near the Oklahoma border. Other small communities of Shawnees, while not officially recognized by the federal government, still reside in Kansas, Missouri, and Ohio.
Bibliography
Edmunds, R. David. The Shawnee Prophet. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
———. Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1984.
Kohn, Rita, and W. Lynwood Montell, eds. Always a People: Oral Histories of Contemporary Woodland Indians. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
McConnell, Michael M. A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its People, 1724–1774. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
Sugden, John. Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
———. Tecumseh: A Life. New York: Holt, 1998.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Shawnee |
Bibliography
See H. Harvey, History of the Shawnee Indians, 1681-1854 (1855, repr. 1970).
| History Dictionary: Shawnees |
A tribe of Native Americans who inhabited Ohio, Indiana, and other parts of the Middle West during the early nineteenth century. The most famous Shawnee leader was Tecumseh, who joined with the British against the Americans during the War of 1812.
| Wikipedia: Shawnee |
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| Total population |
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| 14,000 (7584 enrolled)[1] |
| Regions with significant populations |
| Oklahoma[1] |
| Languages |
| Religion |
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traditional beliefs and Christianity |
| Related ethnic groups |
The Shawnee, Shaawanwaki, Shaawanooki and Shaawanowi lenaweeki, [2] are an Algonquian-speaking people native to North America. Historically they inhabited the areas of Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Western Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Today there are three federally recognized Shawnee tribes: Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, and Shawnee Tribe, all of which are headquartered in Oklahoma.
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The prehistoric origins of the Shawnees are uncertain. The other Algonquian nations regarded the Shawnee as their southernmost branch. Algonquian languages have words similar to the archaic shawano (now: shaawanwa) meaning "south". However, the stem shaawa- does not mean "south" in Shawnee, but "moderate, warm (of weather)". In one Shawnee tale, Shaawaki is the deity of the south. Some scholars have speculated that the Shawnee are descendants of the people of the prehistoric Fort Ancient culture of the Ohio country; other scholars disagree. No definitive proof has been established.[3]
Europeans reported encountering Shawnee over a widespread geographic area. The earliest mention of the Shawnee may be a 1614 Dutch map showing the Sawwanew just east of the Delaware River. Later 17th-century Dutch sources also place them in this general location. Accounts by French explorers in this same century usually located the Shawnee along the Ohio River.[4]
According to one legend, the Shawnee were descended from a party sent by Chief Opechancanough, ruler of the Powhatan Confederacy 1618-1644, to settle in the Shenandoah Valley, and led by his son, Sheewa-a-nee, for whom they were named. [5] Edward Bland, an explorer who accompanied Abraham Wood's expedition in 1650 and wrote The Discoverie of New Brittaine, noted that in Opechancanough's day there had been a falling-out between the "Chawan" chief and the weroance of the Powhatan proper (also a relative of Opechancanough's family), and that the latter had murdered the former. Explorers Batts and Fallam in 1671 reported that the Shawnee were contesting the Shenandoah Valley with Iroquois in that year, and were losing. By the time European-American settlers began to arrive in the Valley (c. 1730), the Iroquois had departed. The Shawnee were then the sole residents of the northern part.
Sometime before 1670, a group of Shawnee migrated to the Savannah River area. The English of the Province of Carolina, based in Charles Town, were contacted by these Shawnees in 1674. They forged a long-lasting alliance. The Savannah River Shawnee were known to the Carolina English as "Savannah Indians". Around the same time, other Shawnee groups migrated to Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and other regions south and east of the Ohio country.
Historian Alan Gallay speculates that the Shawnee migrations of the middle to late 17th century were probably driven by the Iroquois Wars that began in the 1640s. The Shawnee became known for their widespread settlements and migrations, and their frequent long-distance visits to other Indian groups. Their language became a lingua franca among numerous tribes. Together with their experience, this helped make them leaders in initiating and sustaining pan-Indian resistance to European and Euro-American expansion.[6]
Prior to 1754, the Shawnee had a headquarters at Shawnee Springs at modern-day Cross Junction, Virginia near Winchester. The father of the later Chief Cornstalk held his court there. Two other Shawnee villages existed in the Valley: one at Moorefield, West Virginia, and one on the North River. In 1753, messengers came from Shawnees to the west, inviting the Virginia people to leave the Shenandoah Valley and cross the Alleghenies. The Shawnee migrated west the following year, [7][8] joining Shawnee on the Scioto River in the Ohio country.
The Iroquois later claimed the Ohio Country region by right of conquest, and treated the Shawnee and Delaware who resettled there as dependent tribes. Many Iroquois also migrated westward, becoming known as the Mingo. These three tribes—the Shawnee, the Delaware, and the Mingo—became closely associated in the Ohio country.
In their movements over the centuries, Shawnee established villages in numerous locations, such as Illinois, New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and as far south as Georgia. These included:
After the Battle of the Monongahela in 1755, many Shawnee fought as allies of the French, with whom they had long traded, during the early years of the French and Indian War. In 1758 they settled with the British colonists, signing the Treaty of Easton in 1758. When the British defeated the French in 1763, other Shawnee joined Pontiac's Rebellion against the British, which failed a year later.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763, issued during Pontiac's Rebellion, drew a boundary line between the British colonies in the east and the Ohio Country west of the Appalachian Mountains. This was an attempt to establish a reserve for the Indians. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, however, extended that line westwards, giving the British a claim to what is now West Virginia and Kentucky. The Shawnee did not agree to this treaty: it was negotiated between British officials and the Iroquois, who claimed sovereignty over the land although Shawnees and other Native American tribes also hunted there.
After the Stanwix treaty, Anglo-Americans began pouring into the Ohio River Valley for settlement. Violent incidents between settlers and Indians escalated into Dunmore's War in 1774. British diplomats managed to isolate the Shawnee during the conflict: the Iroquois and the Delaware stayed neutral. The Shawnee faced the British colony of Virginia with only a few Mingo allies. Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, launched a two-pronged invasion into the Ohio Country. Shawnee Chief Cornstalk attacked one wing but fought to a draw in the only major battle of the war, the Battle of Point Pleasant. In the Treaty of Camp Charlotte, Cornstalk and the Shawnee were compelled to recognize the Ohio River boundary established by the 1768 Stanwix treaty.
Many other Shawnee leaders refused to recognize this boundary, however. When the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, several Shawnees advocated joining the war as British allies to drive the colonists back across the mountains. The Shawnee were divided: Cornstalk led those who wished to remain neutral, while war leaders such as Chief Blackfish and Blue Jacket fought as British allies.
After the Revolution, in the Northwest Indian War between the United States and a confederation of Native American tribes, the Shawnee combined with the Miami into a great fighting force. After the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, most of the Shawnee bands signed the Treaty of Greenville a year later, in which they were forced to cede large parts of their homeland to the United States.
Other Shawnee groups rejected this treaty and migrated to Missouri, where they settled near Cape Girardeau. By 1800, only the Chillicothe and Mequachake tribes remained in Ohio while the Hathawekela, Kispokotha, and Piqua had migrated to Missouri.
From 1805, a minority of Shawnee joined the pan-tribal movement of Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa. This led to Tecumseh's War and his death at the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813. This was the last attempt by the Shawnee nation to defend the Ohio country from European-American expansion.
| “ | "(Governor William Harrison), you have the liberty to return to your own country ... you wish to prevent the Indians from doing as we wish them, to unite and let them consider their lands as common property of the whole ... You never see an Indian endeavor to make the white people do this ... Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children? How can we have confidence in the white people?" | ” |
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—- Tecumseh, 1810, The Portable North American Indian Reader[9] |
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Several hundred Missouri Shawnee left the United States in 1815 together with some Delaware people and settled in Texas, which was controlled by Spain. This tribe became known as the "Absentee Shawnee"; they were expelled in 1839 after Texas had gained its independence three years earlier. They settled in Oklahoma, close to present-day Shawnee, Oklahoma, where they were joined by Shawnee from Kansas who shared their traditionalist views and beliefs.
In 1817, the Ohio Shawnee signed the Treaty of Fort Meigs, ceding their remaining lands in exchange for three reservations in Wapaughkonetta, Hog Creek (near Lima) and Lewistown, Ohio (to be shared with the Seneca).
Missouri joined the Union in 1821. After the Treaty of St. Louis in 1825, the 1,400 Missouri Shawnees were forcibly relocated from Cape Girardeau to southeastern Kansas, close to the Neosho River.
During 1833, only Black Bob's band of Shawnee resisted removal. They settled in northeastern Kansas near Olathe and along the Kansas (Kaw) River in Monticello near Gum Springs. The Shawnee Methodist Mission was built nearby to minister to the tribe. About 200 of the Ohio Shawnee followed the Prophet Tenskwatawa and joined their Kansas brothers and sisters in 1826.
The main body followed Black Hoof, who fought every effort to force the Shawnee to give up the Ohio homeland. In 1831, the Lewistown group of Seneca-Shawnee left for the Indian territory (present-day Oklahoma). After the death of Black Hoof, the remaining 400 Ohio Shawnee in Wapaughkonetta and Hog Creek surrendered their land and moved to the Shawnee Reserve in Kansas.
During the American Civil War, Black Bob's band fled from Kansas and joined the "Absentee Shawnee" in Oklahoma to escape the war. After the Civil War, the Shawnee in Kansas were expelled and forced to move to northeastern Oklahoma. The Shawnee members of the former Lewistown group became known as the "Eastern Shawnee".
The former Kansas Shawnee became known as the "Loyal Shawnee" (some say this is because of their allegiance with the Union during the war; others say this is because they were the last group to leave their Ohio homelands). The latter group was regarded as part of the Cherokee Nation by the United States because they were also known as the "Cherokee Shawnee". In 2000 the "Loyal" or "Cherokee" Shawnee finally received federal recognition, independent of the Cherokee Nation. They are now known as the "Shawnee Tribe". Today, the largest part of the Shawnee nation still resides in Oklahoma.
Before contact with Europeans, the Shawnee tribe consisted of a loose confederacy of five divisions which shared a common language and culture. The division names have been spelled in a variety of ways, but the phonetic spelling is added after each, following the work of C. F. Voegelin.
Membership in a division was inherited from the father. Each division had a primary village where the chief of the division lived. This village was usually named after the division. By tradition, each Shawnee division had certain roles it performed on behalf of the entire tribe. These customs were fading by the time they were recorded in writing by European-Americans. They remain poorly understood. Because of the scattering of the Shawnee people from the 17th century through the 19th century, this role arrangement changed.
Today there are three federally recognized tribes in the United States, all of which are located in Oklahoma:
As of 2008, there were 7584 enrolled Shawnee, with most living in Oklahoma.[10] At least four bands of Shawnee: the Blue Creek Band, the East of the River Shawnee, the Piqua Sept of Ohio Shawnee, and the United Remnant Band of the Shawnee Nation[11][12][13][14] reside in Ohio but are not federally recognized.
 Flag of the Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma |
 Flag of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma |
 Flag of the Shawnee Tribe |
 First coin issue of 2002 - one dollar |
 Tecumseh commemorative dollar |
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
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| History Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more |
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