SHAWNEE

Shawnee, pronounced shaw-NEE or SHAW-nee, is derived from the Algonquian word chawunagi, meaning “southerners” in the Algonquian language, a name resulting from the fact that for most of their history the Shawnee lived south of other ALGONQUIANS. The Shawnee split up into different groups and migrated often. The Cumberland River in what is now Tennessee is given as their original homeland, but perhaps it is more accurate to think of their territory as lying to the west of the Cumberland Mountains of the Appalachian chain, with the Cumberland River at the center. At one time or another, the Shawnee had villages along many other rivers of that region, including the Ohio and the Tennessee, an area now comprising parts of the states of Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio.

When non-Indians first crossed the Appalachians, they found very few Indian villages in Kentucky and West Virginia. It is known that early Native Americans spent time there from archaeological evidence. Farmers still plow up spear points and arrowheads, and both amateur and professional archaeologists have found grave sites. Scholars theorize that perhaps this territory of forested mountains, hills, and valleys, plus rolling blue-grass prairies, served not so much as a homeland for the Shawnee and other tribes of the region, such as the CHEROKEE, but as sacred hunting grounds.

But the Shawnee also ranged far to the north, south, and east of this core area, on both sides of the great

Appalachian Divide—especially as non-Indians started entering the Indians’ domain. In the course of their history, in addition to the states mentioned above, the Shawnee had temporary villages in northern parts of present-day South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama; western parts of present-day Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York; and southern parts of present-day Indiana and Illinois. And then in the 1800s, Shawnee bands also lived in present-day Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas, most of them ending up in Oklahoma.

As wanderers, the Shawnee had a unique place in Native American history and culture, introducing cultural traits of the northern tribes to the southern tribes and vice versa. The Shawnee are generally classified as NORTHEAST INDIANS, since they hunted, fished, gathered, and farmed in ways similar to the more northern Algonquians. But they picked up lifeways of SOUTHEAST INDIANS too. They are sometimes referred to as PRAIRIE INDIANS because they ranged as far west as the prairies of the Mississippi River valley.

The Shawnee not only changed territory but also their allegiances among different colonial powers. Like most other Algonquians, they usually sided with the French against the British during the many conflicts from 1689 to 1763 known as the French and Indian wars. But some Shawnee bands considered British trade goods better than French goods. Pickawillany, in Shawnee territory in Ohio, became a major British trading post. Moreover, some Shawnee groups were conquered by the IROQUOIS (HAU-

DENOSAUNEE), and, as their subjects, fought alongside them and the British against the French.

Yet the majority of Shawnee joined the OTTAWA and other tribes in Pontiac’s Rebellion of 1763 against the British. Then in 1774, one year before the start of the American Revolution, the Shawnee fought Virginians in Lord Dunmore’s War.