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Part II: The Land of the Indians
Part II: The Land of the Indians
The history of Indiana doesn’t begin just with the arrival of the Europeans. For a thousand years, long before the white man, this land was Indian land. The origin story of the Miami people took place at the mouth of what is now the St. Joseph River near South Bend.
Native Americans had a sophisticated civilization. Much of our modern society — medicines and health care practices, corn, cotton, commerce, ecology, even the U.S. Constitution and the model of our federal union — can be traced to Native American contributions.
The tragic historic irony about Indiana is that at the very time this land was being forever dubbed “the land of the Indians” — the Native Indian people were being pushed off their homeland by pioneers and annihilated and removed by the fledgling U.S. government.
The 1795 Treaty of Greenville was supposed to bring peace to the territory. But a series of subsequent treaties forced the indigenous tribes into debt and onto ever smaller parcels of land. Then came events like the 1838 removal of the Potawatomi from northern Indiana. At gunpoint, 859 Potawatomi people marched 660 miles to Kansas. So many died along the weary way, their trek became known as “The Trail of Death.”
In 1846, groups of the Miami were forced to leave, too. At Peru, 327 Miami members boarded riverboats on the Wabash for relocation to Kansas. The group was later moved to Oklahoma.
Five clans of the Miami who had amassed some wealth and land, however, were allowed to stay. These included the family of Frances Slocum, the white settler kidnapped by Delaware Indians in eastern Pennsylvania when she was 5. She later married Miami chief Shepoconah and lived as a Miami named Maconaquah. The family of Francis Godfroy was another. He was a Miami leader who owned a trading post and was one of the most influential and wealthiest Hoosiers at the time.
About 300 Miami Indians stayed behind. Many later moved to towns, took jobs and intermarried with other Hoosiers. To some in the government, the Indiana Miami had assimilated and were no longer living as a tribal “community.” In 1897, the tribe’s federal recognition was revoked.
For the past 110 years, Indiana’s Miami Indians have worked tirelessly but unsuccessfully through the courts and Congress to overturn what they say was an illegal act. Without federal recognition, groups like the Miami are denied educational, cultural and other considerations given to members of federally-recognized tribes.
“We’ve been a separate community,” said Erin Dunnagan Oliver, public relations director for the Indiana Miami. “There are uniquenesses about our lives, our culture and the way we live our lives. It’s not something you do. It’s something you are.”
Today, the tribe operates from the former Peru High School complex in the heart of the county that bears the tribe’s name. There are some 6,000 members of the Miami Nation of Indiana. About 3,600 of them live in the state.
The tribe actively provides community services through three not-for-profit organizations at the complex, including the Little Turtle Day Care Ministry. It maintains four tribal cemeteries in the area, including the Slocum cemetery.
The Miami also own about 40 acres of wooded land along the Mississinewa River in Miami County where spiritual ceremonies are held. The land is directly across from the “Seven Pillars,” an impressive series of natural limestone formations deeply carved from the steep bank by the flowing river. The Pillars once were used for various Miami tribal activities.
The tribe also owns 150 acres in Parke County and the restored Miami Indian Village School north of Marion. The school was built in 1860 to integrate the Miami into the white culture. Today, it’s used to teach Miami people their language and culture that was nearly lost.
Go to Part III: The way the ‘old folks’ taught
Go back to Part I: Introduction
Go back to “Following the Path” index
Go back to August 2007 contents
Written By: eceditor
Date Posted: 7/19/2007
Number of Views: 484
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