People of the South: the Shawnee

Sources debate over the exact etymology of the name "Shawnee", with most indicating that the word is an Algonquian term for "southerners".  Algonquian tribes in Canada consider the Shawnee their southernmost branch.  In the United States, the Shawnee were a semi-nomadic people.  Their home range centered on Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, though they could be found as far East as Pennsylvania and as far South as Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.   Part of the confusion over where they came from and how they got there lies in the fact that the Shawnee organized themselves into various bands and were willing to roam far and wide in search of hunting grounds, to keep up with allies, or to avoid constant war with enemies. 

The first European encounters with the Shawnee were with Dutch traders.  A Dutch map of 1614 lists "Sawanew" living east of the Delaware River.  Later French explorers encountered them in the Ohio Valley.  They lived in towns of "forty to one hundred bark-covered houses, similar in construction to an Iroquois longhouse."  The Shawnee regarded the Lenape/Delaware as grandfathers, and often allied with them in various disputes with Settlers.  Other sources indicate that the Shawnee may have descended from the Powhatan Indians in Virginia, though there was an eventual rift between the two tribes.  They constantly skirmished with the Iroquois over hunting range the Ohio Valley, although they later became allied with the Seneca. No matter where they were and whoever encountered them, the Shawnee were formidable warriors, loyal allies and dangerous enemies.  Their Algonquian language served as a common language for communication with other tribes in the backcountry.  They often took a leading part in various pan-Indian alliances opposing White incursion into their territory, and no one took them lightly.

American settlers in the 1700's encountered bands of Shawnee in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where they fought with Seneca and Lenape allies against bands of Catawba coming up from the South to hunt.  Shawnee in Pennsylvania were actively engaged in the fur trade on the Pennsylvania frontier, though friction with settlers drove them back into the Ohio Valley.  Initially allies of the French, the Shawnee switched to British allegiance around 1758.  They concluded a treaty with the British which recognized the Allegheny Ridge as their eastern border.  White encroachment into this territory was already eroding the agreement by the time it was signed.  The Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768 set the boundary further west, at the Ohio River.  Settlers began coming into the Ohio River Valley, leading to an outright Shawnee revolt during Lord Dunmore's War in 1774.  Eventually, the Shawnee were forced to accept the Ohio River as the boundary for White settlement, ceding claims to hunting grounds in Kentucky and West Virginia. 

The Shawnee were loosely allied with the British during the American Revolution (1775-1782), with some bands preferring to stay neutral.  They allied with the Cherokee during the Cherokee Indian Wars which plagued the back country during the Revolution.  Later, they were part of the Western Confederacy during the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795).  Most of the Shawnee bands accepted the treaty of Greenville of 1795, while others chose to migrate to Missouri to escape further White harassment.  The height of Shawnee resistance occurred during Tecumseh's War 1811-13, and the War of 1812 (1812-1814).  Tecumseh succeeded in bringing together a large pan-Indian confederacy prepared to resist any more White settlement on Native land, and any further land concessions by tribes.  The alliance suffered two crushing defeats.  The Battle of Tippecanoe (1811) and the Battle of the Thames (1813), where Tecumseh was killed. 

After these disasters, the Shawnee began migrating in groups further West.  One band, known as Absentee Shawnee, migrated from Missouri into Mexico, before later returning to settle in Oklahoma.  Others remained in Ohio, sharing reservation land with the Seneca before most of them removed after the Civil War to Oklahoma.  Other Shawnee, known as Loyal Shawnee because of their support for the Union, migrated to Kansas and later to Oklahoma.  Today, there are three federally recognized groups of Shawnee based in Oklahoma.  The Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Indians, Eastern Shawn Tribe of Oklahoma, and Shawnee Tribe.