Miami people

The Miami (Miami–Illinois: Myaamiaki) are a Native American nation originally speaking the Miami–Illinois language, 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. 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.

Early Miami people are considered to belong to the Fisher Tradition of Mississippian culture. 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

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.

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. 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).