|
The
Shawnees are an Eastern Woodlands tribe pushed west by white
encroachment. In 1793, some of the Shawnee Tribe's ancestors
received a Spanish land grant at Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
After the 1803 Louisiana Purchase brought this area under
American control, some Cape Girardeau Shawnees went west to
Texas and Old Mexico and later moved to the Canadian River
in southern Oklahoma, becoming the Absentee Shawnee Tribe.
The 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs granted the Shawnees still in
northwest Ohio three reservations: Wapakoneta, Hog Creek,
and Lewistown (see map below). By 1824, about 800 Shawnees
lived in Ohio and 1,383 lived in Missouri. In 1825, Congress
ratified a treaty with the Cape Girardeau Shawnees ceding
their Missouri lands for a 1.6 million-acre reservation in
eastern Kansas. After the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the
Ohio Shawnees on the Wapakoneta and Hog Creek reservations
signed a treaty with the US giving them lands on the Kansas
Reservation. |
Spanish
land grant in 1793 at Cape Girardeau, Missouri
(Click
for a larger map) |
| |
Treaty
of Fort Meigs land grant in 1817
Wapakoneta, Hog Creek, and Lewistownin NW Ohio
(click
for larger map) |
The Lewistown Reservation Shawnees, together with their Seneca
allies and neighbors, signed a separate treaty with the federal
government in 1831 and moved directly to Indian Territory (Oklahoma).
The Lewistown Shawnees became the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma,
while their Seneca allies became the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of
Oklahoma.
In 1854, the US government decimated the Kansas Reservation
to 160,000 acres. This, coupled with the brutal abuses perpetrated
against them by white settlers during and after the Civil War,
forced the Kansas Shawnees to relocate to Cherokee Nation in
northeastern Oklahoma. The 1854 Shawnee Reservation in Kansas
was never formally extinguished and some Shawnee families retain
their Kansas allotments today.
The federal government caused the former Kansas Shawnees and
the Cherokees to enter into a formal agreement in 1869, whereby
the Shawnees received allotments and citizenship in Cherokee
Nation. |
|
The Shawnees settled in and around White Oak, Bird Creek (Sperry),
and Hogan Creek (Fairland), maintaining separate communities
and separate cultural identities. Known as the Cherokee Shawnees,
they would also later be called the Loyal Shawnees.
Initial efforts begun in the 1980s to separate the Shawnee Tribe
from Cherokee Nation culminated when Congress enacted Public
Law 106-568, the Shawnee Tribe Status Act of 2000, which restored
the Shawnee Tribe to its position as a sovereign Indian nation.
|
Indian Lands in Kansas
|
|
Email