Shawnee

Shawnee
The Shawnee Prophet, Tenskwatawa (1775–1836), ca. 1820, portrait by Charles Bird King
Total population
7,584 enrolled[1]
Regions with significant populations
United States (Oklahoma), formerly Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and surrounding states[2][1]
Languages
Shawnee, English
Religion
Indigenous religions, Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Miami, Menominee, Cheyenne[3]

The Shawnee (/ʃɔːˈni/ shaw-NEE) are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands. Their language, Shawnee, is an Algonquian language.

Their precontact homeland was likely centered in southern Ohio.[2] In the 17th century, they dispersed through Ohio, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.[4] In the early 18th century, they mostly concentrated in eastern Pennsylvania but dispersed again later that century across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, with a small group joining Muscogee people in Alabama.[2] In the 19th century, the U.S. federal government forcibly removed them under the 1830 Indian Removal Act to areas west of the Mississippi River; these lands would eventually become the states of Missouri, Kansas, and Texas. Finally, they were removed to Indian Territory, which became the state of Oklahoma in the early 20th century.[2]

Today, Shawnee people are enrolled in three federally recognized tribes, all headquartered in Oklahoma:

  1. ^ a b Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commission. Oklahoma Indian Nations Pocket Pictorial. Archived February 11, 2009, at the Wayback Machine 2008.
  2. ^ a b c d Callender, "Shawnee," 623.
  3. ^ "Algonquian, Algic". Ethnologue. Retrieved October 5, 2021.
  4. ^ Callender, "Shawnee," 623–24.

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