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Roger L. Nichols, The Shawnees and Their Neighbors, 1795–1870, Journal of American History, Volume 93, Issue 2, September 2006, Pages 513–514, https://doi.org/10.2307/4486269
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This slender volume traces some of the history and culture of the Shawnee Indians as they moved gradually west from Ohio to the Indian Territory by the late nineteenth century. The author presented his central theme clearly. For him, the Shawnee tribe, or nation, evolved gradually from a society originally living in some two hundred scattered villages under local chiefs to a group with leaders claiming the exclusive right to deal with the U.S. government for all Shawnee people. He called the notion that a distinct Shawnee voice existed, “fiction at best” (p. 7). Instead, he depicted a process in which economically successful mixed-race men chose accommodation with the United States as their central goal. The book traces three types of Shawnee identities that ebb and flow for several generations.
It analyzes intra- and inter-tribal actions as well as relations between the tribe and the federal government, in several distinct stages. Before the War of 1812, Ohio Shawnees experienced continuous pressure from Americans to either sell their land and move west or become acculturated. Most rejected those options for a time, but eventually a majority of the Indians migrated to Missouri hoping to escape the ongoing efforts to remake tribal society along American lines. In its efforts to force basic social changes among the Shawnee, the United States sought to find or create tribal leaders with whom it could negotiate. Hoping to forestall a forced removal a few Ohio Shawnee leaders gradually bowed to American desires. In return the United States recognized a few individuals in each community as what later came to be called “treaty chiefs,” a label that only deepened the gulf between those members and the other villagers.