Shawnee Sources/Resources

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: Shawnee Native_American

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

The Shawnee are an Eastern Woodlands tribe that lived in what is now southeastern Pennsylvania. They may have originally been part of the Lenni Lenape/Delaware tribe. In the 1600's and early 1700's the Shawnee spread into several groups in what are now western Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Alabama, and Ohio but by the time of the American Revolution, the tribe had coalesced in the Ohio area. The first Shawnee groups began moving west from Ohio to Missouri about 1790 and the Shawnee were forced to give up all of their eastern lands by 1835.

There are currently three Federally-acknowledged Shawnee tribes:

• Absentee Shawnee (Shawnee, Oklahoma) web site Absentee The Absentee Shawnee Tribe gained their “absentee” distinction because their groups were not present at the signing of the 1854 treaty for a Kansas Reservation. Instead of settling on surplus lands in Kansas, these Absentee Shawnees had opted to migrate into Indian Territory (Oklahoma) or Mexico territory (Texas).

• Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma (Ottawa County, Oklahoma) web site ESTOO The progenitor group of the Eastern Shawnee was the Lewistown Band of Shawnee, granted reservations in Ohio in 1817. 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).

• Shawnee Tribe (Miami, Oklahoma) web site Shawnee These are the Kansas Shawnee who were forced to join with the Cherokee in 1869. The Shawnee Tribe Status Act of 2000 restored the Shawnee Tribe to its position as a sovereign Indian nation.

Contents 1 WARNING 2 List and links to reliable Shawnee records 2.1 Censuses and Rolls 2.2 Treaties 2.3 Resources 2.4 Books

WARNING

Many people researching possible Shawnee ancestors come upon Don Greene's "Shawnee Heritage" books. Greene's books are completely unsourced and consist mostly of fabricated lineages, many with invented "people" in them. See: Shawnee Heritage Fraud

List and links to reliable Shawnee records

Censuses and Rolls

The 1857 Shawnee Census This was taken as part of the Kansas Territorial Censuses, 1855-1859. At the end of roll 1 of the 1857 census is a census of Shawnee Indians in Kansas Territory, taken in conjunction with the treaty made with the tribe on May 10, 1854. The census is in two parts. Each part has a rough alphabetical index preceding it. In the index to part one, personal information such as relationships to other enumerated Shawnees has been added beside some of the names. In the 1858 census of Johnson County, Shawnee Indians in Shawnee County are listed. There is no name index for this census.

• 1857 Kansas State census, Shawnee list of allottees, with description of allotment portion digitized at Ancestry.com beginning at 1857

• Records of the Quapaw Agency -Includes Eastern Shawnee census records from 1887-1940. Digitized at archive. org at Quapaw

After the Civil War most of the Shawnee living in Kansas were forced to move and live with the Cherokee in Indian Territory; they are sometimes identified in Cherokee records as "Adopted Shawnee"

• 1871 Register of Shawnee Indians Admitted to Cherokee Citizenship digitized at Ancestry.com at 1871
• Dawes Roll cards and applications, digitized at ancestry.com Dawes

Treaties

• Treaties from 1786 onward are digitized at Treaties, enter "Shawnee" for tribe.

Resources

• Ohio Memory
• Eastern Shawnee Educators Guide
• Eastern Shawnee Digitial collection at Ohio Memory The collection includes census records, maps, correspondence for all Shawnee, not just the current Eastern Shawnee
• Kansas Historical Society Shawnee

Books

• Harvey, Henry. History of the Shawnee Indians 1641-1854 (use with caution, dated language, unsourced. Henry Harvey was a Quaker missionary who lived with the Shawnee for several years)
• Sugden, John. Bluejacket, Warrior of the Shawnees
• Sugden, John. Tecumseh: A Life. New York: Holt, 1997

• Warren, Stephen. The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma