Shawnee

SHAWNEE

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

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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.

R. David Edmunds

See also Battle of Tippecanoe ; Dunmore's War ; French and Indian War ; Pontiac's War ; Tecumseh, Crusade of .