A once powerful family of the Algonquian nation, supposed to have been originally of the
Kickapoo tribe, a larger portion of whom moved eastward, and a part removed in 1648 to the
Fox River country, in
Wisconsin.
The
Iroquois drove them back from the point of emigration south of
Lake Erie, when they took a stand in the basin of the
Cumberland River, where they established their great council-house and held sway over a vast domain.
Some of them went south to the region of the Carolinas and
Florida, where those in the latter region held friendly relations with the Spaniards for a while, when they joined the
English in the Carolinas, and were known as Yamasees and Savannahs.
At about the time that the
English settled at
Jamestown (1607), some Southern tribes drove the Shawnees from the
Cumberland region, when some of them crossed the
Ohio and settled on the
Scioto River, at and near the present
Chillicothe.
Others wandered into
Pennsylvania, where, late in the seventeenth century, and also in 1701, they made treaties with
William Penn.
They also made treaties with the
Iroquois after joining the Eries and Andastes in war against the Five Nations in 1672, when the Shawnees were defeated and fled to the land of the Catawbas in
South Carolina, but from which they were soon expelled, taking refuge with the
Creeks.
Finally, they joined their kindred in
Ohio when those in
Pennsylvania went thither.
The
Iroquois, who claimed sovereignty over them, drove them farther westward, where they joined the
French and were active in the events of the
French and Indian War. They continued hostile to the
English after the conquest of
Canada, and were in
Pontiac's confederacy.
Afterwards they made war on the
Virginia frontier in connection with other Western tribes.
In 1774 they had a severe battle with the
Virginia militia at
Point Pleasant.
Under English influences they took part with the Miamis in the war from 1790 until 1795, and participated in the treaty at
Greenville in 1795.
At that time the main body of the Shawnees were on the
Scioto River, but some passed into
Missouri and received land from the Spaniards.
Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet, were Shawnees, and attempted to confederate Western tribes against the white people in 1811, but most of his people in
Ohio remained loyal to the
United States then and in the
War of 1812.
Those in
Missouri ceded their lands to the
United States in 1825, and those in
Ohio did the same in 1831.
In 1899 there were ninety-three Eastern Shawnees at the Quapaw agency in
Indian Territory, and 493 absentee Shawnees at the
Sac and
Fox agency in
Oklahoma.
