Shawnee

The Shawnee (/ʃɔːˈni/ shaw-NEE) are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands. Their language, Shawnee, is an Algonquian language.

Their precontact homeland was likely centered in southern Ohio. In the 17th century, they dispersed through Ohio, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. In the early 18th century, they mostly concentrated in eastern Pennsylvania but dispersed again later that century across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, with a small group joining Muscogee people in Alabama. In the 19th century, the U.S. federal government forcibly removed them under the 1830 Indian Removal Act to areas west of the Mississippi River; these lands would eventually become the states of Missouri, Kansas, and Texas. Finally, they were removed to Indian Territory, which became the state of Oklahoma in the early 20th century.

Today, Shawnee people are enrolled in three federally recognized tribes, the Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, and Shawnee Tribe, all headquartered in Oklahoma.

Shawnee has also been written as Shaawana and Shawanese. Individuals and singular Shawnee tribes may be referred to as šaawanwa, and the collective Shawnee people as šaawanwaki or šaawanooki.

Algonquian languages have words similar to the archaic shawano (now: shaawanwa) meaning "south". However, the stem šawa- does not mean "south" in Shawnee, but "moderate, warm (of weather)": See Charles F. Voegelin, "šawa (plus -ni, -te) Moderate, Warm. Cp. šawani 'it is moderating...". In one Shawnee tale, "Sawage" (šaawaki) is the deity of the south wind. Jeremiah Curtin translates Sawage as 'it thaws', referring to the warm weather of the south. In an account and a song collected by C. F. Voegelin, šaawaki is attested as the spirit of the South, or the South Wind.

The Shawnee language is known as saawanwaatoweewe. In 2002, the Shawnee language, part of the Algonquian family, was in decline but still spoken by 200 people. These included more than 100 Absentee Shawnee and 12 Shawnee Tribe speakers. By 2017, Shawnee language advocates, including tribal member George Blanchard, estimated that there were fewer than 100 speakers. Most fluent Shawnee speakers are over the age of 50.

The language is written in the Latin script, but attempts at creating a unified spelling system have been unsuccessful. The Shawnee language has a dictionary, and portions of the Bible have been translated into Shawnee.

Some scholars believe that the Shawnee descend from the precontact Fort Ancient culture of the Ohio region, although this is not universally accepted. The Shawnee may have entered the area at a later time and occupied the Fort Ancient sites.