| Group: | Miami Myaamiaki |
| Population: | 3,908 (2011)[1] |
| Popplace: | United States Oklahoma and Indiana |
| Rels: | Christianity, Traditional tribal religion |
| Langs: | English, French, Miami–Illinois |
| Related: | Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankashaw, Wea, Illinois, and other Algonquian peoples |
The Miami (Miami–Illinois: Myaamiaki) are a Native American nation originally speaking one of the Algonquian languages. Among the peoples known as the Great Lakes tribes, they occupied territory that is now identified as north-central Indiana, southwest Michigan, and western Ohio. The Miami were historically made up of several prominent subgroups, including the Piankeshaw, Wea, Pepikokia, Kilatika, Mengakonkia, and Atchakangouen. In modern times, Miami is used more specifically to refer to the Atchakangouen. By 1846, most of the Miami had been forcefully displaced to Indian Territory (initially to what is now Kansas, and later to what is now part of Oklahoma). The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma are the federally recognized tribe of Miami Indians in the United States. The Miami Nation of Indiana, a nonprofit organization of self-identified descendants of Miamis who were exempted from removal, have unsuccessfully sought separate recognition.
The name Miami derives from Myaamia (plural Myaamiaki), the tribe's autonym (name for themselves) in their Algonquian language of Miami–Illinois. This appears to have been derived from an older term meaning "downstream people." Some scholars contended the Miami called themselves the Twightwee (also spelled Twatwa), supposedly an onomatopoeic reference to their sacred bird, the sandhill crane. Recent studies have shown that Twightwee derives from the Delaware language exonym for the Miamis, tuwéhtuwe, a name of unknown etymology.[2] Some Miami have stated that this was only a name used by other tribes for the Miami, and not their autonym. They also called themselves Mihtohseeniaki (the people). The Miami continue to use this autonym today.
| Name | Source[3] | Name | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maiama | Maumee | later French | |
| Meames | Memilounique | French | |
| Metouseceprinioueks | Myamicks | ||
| Nation de la Grue | French | ||
| Omameeg | Omaumeg | Chippewa | |
| Oumami (or Oumiami) | Oumamik | 1st French | |
| Piankashaw | Quikties | ||
| Tawatawas | Titwa | ||
| Tuihtuihronoons | Twechtweys | ||
| Twightwees | Delaware | Wea | band |
| Known locations of the Miami during the Iroquois War years | |
| Label1: | 1654 |
| Data1: | Fox River, southwest of Lake Winnebago |
| Label2: | 1670–95 |
| Data2: | Wisconsin River, below the Portage to the Fox River |
| Label3: | 1673 |
| Data3: | Niles, Michigan |
| Label4: | 1679–81 |
| Data4: | Fort Miamis, at St. Joseph, Michigan |
| Label5: | 1680 |
| Data5: | Fort Chicago |
| Label6: | 1682–2014 |
| Data6: | Fort St. Louis, at Starved Rock, Illinois |
| Label7: | 1687 |
| Data7: | Calumet River, at Blue Island, Illinois |
| Label8: | c. 1691 |
| Data8: | Wabash River, at the mouth of the Tippecanoe River |
| Below: | [4] [5] |
See main article: Prehistory of Ohio. Early Miami people are considered to belong to the Fischer Tradition of Mississippian culture.[6] Mississippian societies were characterized by maize-based agriculture, chiefdom-level social organization, extensive regional trade networks, hierarchical settlement patterns, and other factors. The historical Miami engaged in hunting, as did other Mississippian peoples.
Written history of the Miami traces back to missionaries and explorers who encountered them in what is now Wisconsin, from which they migrated south and eastwards from the mid-17th century to the mid-18th century, settling on the upper Wabash River and the Maumee River in what is now northeastern Indiana and northwestern Ohio. By oral history, this migration was a return to the region where they had long lived before being invaded during the Beaver Wars by the Iroquois. Early European colonists and traders on the East Coast had fueled demand for furs, and the Iroquois – based in central and western New York – had acquired early access to European firearms through trade and had used them to conquer the Ohio Valley area for use as hunting grounds, which temporarily depopulated as Algonquin woodlands tribes fled west as refugees. The warfare and ensuing social disruption – along with the spread of infectious European diseases such as measles and smallpox for which they had no immunity – contributed to the decimation of Native American populations in the interior.
Historic locations
| Year | Location | |
|---|---|---|
| 1658 | Northeast of Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin (Fr) | |
| 1667 | Mississippi Valley of Wisconsin | |
| 1670 | Head of the Fox River, Wisconsin; Chicago village | |
| 1673 | St. Joseph River Village, Michigan (River of the Miamis) (Fr), | |
| Kalamazoo River Village, Michigan | ||
| 1703 | Detroit village, Michigan | |
| 1720–63 | Miami River locations, Ohio | |
| Scioto River village (near Columbus), Ohio | ||
| 1764 | Wabash River villages, Indiana | |
| 1831 | Indian Territory (Oklahoma) |
When French missionaries first encountered the Miami in the mid-17th century, generating the first written historical record of the tribe, the indigenous people were living around the western shores of Lake Michigan. According to Miami oral tradition, they had moved there a few generations earlier from the region that is now northern Indiana, southern Michigan, and northwestern Ohio to escape pressure from Iroquois war parties seeking to monopolize control over furs in the Ohio Valley. Early French explorers noticed many linguistic and cultural similarities between the Miami bands and the Illiniwek, a loose confederacy of Algonquian-speaking peoples. The term "Miami" has imprecise meaning to historians. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the term "Miami" generally referred to all of these bands as one grand tribe. Over the course of the 19th century, "Miami" came to specifically refer to the Atchakangoen (Crane) band.[7]
Around the beginning of the 18th century, with support from French traders coming down from what is now Canada who supplied them with firearms and wanted to trade with them for furs, the Miami pushed back into their historical territory and resettled it. At this time, the major bands of the Miami were:
In 1696, the Comte de Frontenac appointed Jean Baptiste Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes as commander of the French outposts in northeast Indiana and southwest Michigan.[14] He befriended the Miami people, settling first at the St. Joseph River, and, in 1704, establishing a trading post and fort at Kekionga, present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana, the de facto Miami capital which controlled an important land portage linking the Maumee River (which flowed into Lake Erie and offered a water path to Quebec) to the Wabash River (which flowed into the Ohio River and offered a water path to the Mississippi Valley).[15]
By the 18th century, the Miami had for the most part returned to their homeland in present-day Indiana and Ohio. The eventual victory of the British in the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War) led to an increased British presence in traditional Miami areas.
Shifting alliances and the gradual encroachment of European-American settlement led to some Miami bands, including the Piankeshaw, and Wea, effectively merging into what was sometimes called the Miami Confederacy. Native Americans created larger tribal confederacies led by Chief Little Turtle; their alliances were for waging war against Europeans and to fight advancing white settlement, and the broader Miami itself became a subset of the so-called Western Confederacy during the Northwest Indian War.
The U.S. government later included the Miami with the Illini for administrative purposes. The Eel River band maintained a somewhat separate status, which proved beneficial in the removals of the 19th century. The Miami nation's traditional capital was Kekionga.
French years
British years
The Miami had mixed relations with the United States. Some villages of the Piankeshaw openly supported the American rebel colonists during the American Revolution, while the villages around Ouiatenon were openly hostile. The Miami of Kekionga remained allies of the British, but were not openly hostile to the United States (except when attacked by Augustin de La Balme in 1780).
In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolutionary War, Britain transferred its claim of sovereignty over the Northwest Territory – modern-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin – to the new United States. White pioneers pushed into the Ohio Valley, leading to disputes over whether they had a legal right to carve out homesteads and settlements on land the tribes considered unceded territory. The Miami invited tribes displaced by white settlers, the Delaware (Lenape) and Shawnee to resettle at Kekionga, forming the nucleus of the pan-tribal Western Confederacy. War parties attacked white settlers, seeking to drive them out, and whites – including Kentucky militia members – carried out sometimes indiscriminate reprisal attacks on Native American villages. The resulting conflict became known as the Northwest Indian War.
Seeking to bring an end to the rising violence by forcing the tribes to sign treaties ceding land for white settlement, the George Washington administration ordered an attack on Kekionga in 1790; American forces destroyed it but were then repulsed by Little Turtle's warriors. In 1791, Lieutenant Colonel James Wilkinson launched what he thought was a clever raid. At the Battle of Kenapacomaqua, Wilkinson killed 9 Wea and Miami, and captured 34 Miami as prisoners, including a daughter of Miami war chief Little Turtle.[16] Many of the confederation leaders had been considering terms of peace to present to the United States, but when they received news of Wilkinson's raid, they readied for war. Wilkinson's raid thus had the opposite effect and united the tribes for a war. Later in 1791, the Washington administration organized a second expedition to attack Kekionga with further orders to build a fort there to permanently occupy the region, but the Western Confederacy attacked its camp en route and destroyed it; the battle, known as St. Clair's Defeat, is recognized as the worst defeat of an American army by Native Americans in U.S. history.[17] In 1794, a third invading force under General "Mad" Anthony Wayne defeated the confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, burned tribal settlements along dozens of miles of the Maumee River, and erected Fort Wayne at Kekionga. Wayne then imposed the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which ended the Northwest Indian War. Under it, confederacy leaders like Little Turtle agreed to cede most of what is now Ohio, along with other tracts to the west including what is now central Detroit, Chicago, and Fort Wayne, in exchange for annual payments.
Those Miami who still resented the United States gathered around Ouiatenon and Prophetstown, where Shawnee Chief Tecumseh led a coalition of Native American nations. Territorial governor William Henry Harrison and his forces destroyed Prophetstown in 1811, and in the War of 1812 – which included a tribal siege of Fort Wayne – attacked Miami villages throughout the Indiana Territory.
Although Wayne had promised in the Treaty of Greenville negotiations that the remaining unceded territory would remain tribal land – the origin of the name "Indiana" – forever, that is not what happened. Wayne would die a year later. White traders who came to Fort Wayne were used by the government to deliver the annual treaty payments to the Miami and other tribes. The traders also sold them alcohol and manufactured goods. Between annuity days, the traders sold them such things on credit, and the tribes repeatedly ran up more debts than the existing payments could cover. Harrison and his successors pursued a policy of leveraging these debts to induce tribal leaders to sign new treaties ceding large swaths of collectively-held reservation land and then to agree to the tribe's removal. As incentives to induce tribal leaders to sign such treaties, the government gave them individual deeds and other personal perks, such as building one chief a mansion. In 1846, the government forced the tribe's rank-and-file to leave, but several major families who had acquired private property to live on through this practice were exempted and permitted to stay in Indiana, creating a bitter schism.
Those who affiliated with the tribe were moved to first to Kansas, then to Oklahoma, where they were given individual allotments of land rather than a reservation as part of efforts to make them assimilate into the American culture of private property and yeoman farming. The U.S. government has recognized what is now the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma as the official tribal government since 1846.
In the 20th century, the Indiana-based Miami unsuccessfully sought separate federal recognition. Although they had been recognized by the U.S. in an 1854 treaty, that recognition was stripped in 1897. In 1980, the Indiana legislature recognized the Eastern Miami as a matter of state law and voted to support federal recognition, but in 1993, a federal judge ruled that the statute of limitations on appealing their status had expired. In 1996, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma changed its constitution to permit any descendant of people on certain historical roles to join, and since then hundreds of Indiana-based Miami have become members. Today the Oklahoma-based Miami tribe has about 5,600 enrolled members. However many other Indiana-based Miami still consider themselves a separate group that has been unfairly denied separate federal recognition. The Miami Nation of Indiana does not have federal tribal recognition. Senate Bill No. 311 was introduced in the Indiana General Assembly in 2011 to formally grant state recognition to the tribe, giving it sole authority to determine its tribal membership,[18] [19] but the bill did not advance to a vote.
United States years
A number of places have been named for the Miami nation. However, Miami, Florida is not named for this tribe, but for the Miami River in Florida, which is in turn named after the unrelated Mayaimi people.[22]