Shawnee

Shawnee, cities, United States

Shawnee (1 shô`nē', shô'nē`; 2 shô'nē`).

1 City (1990 pop. 37,993), Johnson co., NE Kans., a residential suburb of Kansas City; founded 1857, inc. 1922. Consumer goods, lumber, honey, concrete, terra cotta, metal products, and machinery are produced, and farm and dairy products are shipped. The city was the original site of the Shawnee Indian Methodist Mission (1830). A re-creation of an old Shawnee town is in Bluejacket Park.

2 City (1990 pop. 26,017), seat of Pottawatomie co., central Okla., on the North Canadian River; inc. 1894. Shawnee boomed with the discovery of oil there in 1926. The city is the trade and rail center for a rich farm, dairy, and oil area. Electronic goods, machinery, apparel, chemicals, and metal products are manufactured. Shawnee is the seat of Oklahoma Baptist Univ. and St. Gregory's Univ. Art and Native American museums are in the city. Jim Thorpe was born nearby.

---

Shawnee, indigenous people of North America

Shawnee (shô'nē`) or Shawano (shô`wənō), Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Algonquian branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). Their earliest known home was in the present state of Ohio. In the mid-17th cent. part of the tribe was settled in W South Carolina and part in N Tennessee. These two bodies, divided by the Cherokee, migrated constantly, from South Carolina to S New York, then to W Pennsylvania and into Ohio, where they finally united in the mid-18th cent. They then numbered some 1,500. After their reunion in Ohio the warlike Shawnee participated in almost every war of the Old Northwest (see Northwest Territory). By the Treaty of Greenville (1795) they were obliged to give up their lands in Ohio and move to Indiana. About 1800 the Shawnee Prophet (Tenskwatawa) arose. He and his followers, cooperating with Tecumseh, established themselves in a village at the mouth of the Tippecanoe River in Indiana. It was this village that William Henry Harrison destroyed in the battle of Tippecanoe. The Shawnee were thereafter moved to Missouri, to Kansas, and finally to Oklahoma. Today they live on reservations in Oklahoma and Missouri. In 1990 there were over 6,600 Shawnee in the United States.

Bibliography

See H. Harvey, History of the Shawnee Indians, 1681–1854 (1855, repr. 1970).

---

Shawnee

Algonquian-speaking North American Indian people from the central Ohio River valley. Closely related in language and culture to the Fox, Kickapoo, and Sauk, the Shawnee were also influenced by the Seneca and Delaware. Traditionally the Shawnee lived in bark-covered houses grouped into large villages near cornfields. Women farmed and the primary male occupation was hunting. In winter the village broke into small patrilineal family groups, which moved to dispersed hunting camps. In the 17th century the Shawnee were driven from their home by the Iroquois and scattered into widely separated areas. After 1725 the Shawnee reunited in Ohio. Following their defeat by Gen. Anthony Wayne (1794), they broke into three independent branches that eventually settled in Oklahoma. Early 21st-century population estimates indicated some 12,000 individuals of Shawnee descent. See also Tecumseh.