Following the United States Civil War, in 1867 the Ottawa sold their land in Kansas to move again, to purchase land in another section of Indian Territory, in what would become northeast Oklahoma. They were authorized by Congress to buy land from the Quapaw, the predominant tribe in this area.
The headquarters of the Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma is Miami. Their tribal jurisdictional area is in Ottawa County. In the early 21st century, the tribe has 2,500 enrolled members; some 737 live within the state of Oklahoma.[1] The tribe bases membership qualifications on direct lineal descent;[1] that is, they have no minimum blood quantum requirement.[1]
Todd was a descendant of former Ottawa Chief: Joseph,[Badger], King and Chief Pontiac.[3]
The Ottawa Tribe is working to modernize its Constitution. It was to be voted on at the general council in 2019. The current Business Committee consists of Ethel Cook, Suzy Crawford, J.C Dawes, Mikal Scott-Werner, Mary King and Charles Ulrey. The previous administration included Dr. Kevin Dawes, Dr. Charla Dawes, Bert Kleidon, and John Robert Ballard, who have all been instrumental in helping to update the constitution.
Economic development
The Ottawa Tribe issues its own tribal vehicle tags. They operate two tribal smoke shops, two gas stations, the Otter Stop Convenience Store, and the Adawe Travel Plaza. In addition, they operate the High Winds Casino. In 2021 the tribe opened its first restaurant, the Otter Cove Diner. Their annual economic impact is estimated by the Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commissions to be $3 million.[1]
Cultural, language, and programs
The tribe operates a Community Health Program and the Healthy Living Center in Miami, as well as a Department of Environmental Protection.[4] The tribe publishes the Adawe News for its tribal members.[4] It offers Ottawa language classes.[5]
The Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma's annual powwow is held every Labor Day weekend.
History
Ottawa homelands
"Ottawa" or "Odaawaa" comes from the word Adaawe, which means "to trade".[6] Long before European explorations began, the Ottawa were known among other Native American tribes as important traders. The French quickly realized how influential they were and used them as middlemen to the tribes to the north and west of them, who supplied them with furs from the 17th well into the 18th century.
They were pressured to move again by the United States, after Congressional passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which authorized the government to make land exchanges with Native American tribes in order to remove them from east of the Mississippi River and extinguish their land titles there. The Ottawa of the Blanchard's Fork, Roche de Bœuf and Auglaize reserves of Ohio signed a treaty with the US in 1833. The treaty ceded their lands in Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois in exchange for lands in Iowa, then Kansas, part of what was known as Indian Territory under the federal government's plan.
The Ottawa did not relocate from Ohio until April 1837. Of the 600 Ottawa who migrated to Kansas, "more than 300 died within the first two years, because of exposure, lack of proper food, and the great difference between the cool, damp woods of Ohio and the dry, hot plains of Kansas."[8]
To survive as a people, the tribe made a remarkable investment in their children's future. Of the 74,000 acres (300km2) the Ottawa controlled in Kansas, they set aside 65 acres (260,000m2) for an upper-level school and sold 20,000 acres (81km2) of land to fund its construction and maintenance. Affiliated with the Baptist Church, which operated missions in Kansas, Ottawa University educated both Indians and non-Indians.[6] The university still offers free tuition today to any enrolled member of the Ottawa tribe.[9]
The present-day town of Ottawa, Kansas, developed because of the Ottawa Reservation. The Ottawa people remained in Kansas until 1867, after the American Civil War. Under the leadership of Chief John Wilson, the tribe sold their lands in Kansas and purchased 14,863 acres (60km2) of land in Indian Territory from the Eastern Shawnee.[5] More of the tribe died during relocation and only 200 Ottawa arrived in their new lands.[6]
Two decades later, Congress passed the Dawes Act of 1887, designed to encourage Native American assimilation by having households establish subsistence farming in the European-American model. It dissolved the communal tribal lands and governments, and required communal lands to be divided and allocated in 160-acre plots to individual households of registered members of each tribe in the Indian Territory. The land was so poor in many areas that this amount of farmland proved insufficient even for subsistence farming. In 1891, 157 Ottawa were finally allotted plots of land in Indian Territory; under provisions of the law, the US federal government declared the remainder of their land as surplus and sold it, primarily to non-native buyers. The Dawes Rolls are records for each tribe of their members registered at that time. A number of tribes have used the Dawes Rolls as a basis for establishing membership among descendants in their tribes at a particular time.
In 1936 the Ottawa tribe in Oklahoma organized their government again under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act and regained federal recognition as a tribe. This entitled them to certain benefits in education, for instance.
But in the 1950s federal policy changed again, and Congress decided it was time to encourage tribes to give up their special status in relation to the federal government. Congress and the Bureau of Indian Affairs determined that some tribes were ready to be 'terminated'; that is, their special status would end and their citizens would be considered simply US citizens. The Ottawa of Oklahoma were one of the tribes whose federally recognized government was terminated in 1956. This deprived them of benefits needed in the harsh environment of Oklahoma, and disrupted their society.[5]
The tribe persevered to regain their status; federal recognition was restored under a bill signed by President Jimmy Carter on May 15, 1978.[5] In 1979 the US Congress recognized the tribal council and ratified the tribal constitution.[6]
The Dawes Act of 1887 regulated land rights on tribal territories within the United States. Named after Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, it authorized the President of the United States to subdivide Native American tribal communal landholdings into allotments for Native American heads of families and individuals. This would convert traditional systems of land tenure into a government-imposed system of private property by forcing Native Americans to "assume a capitalist and proprietary relationship with property" that did not previously exist in their cultures. Before private property could be dispensed, the government had to determine which Indians were eligible for allotments, which propelled an official search for a federal definition of "Indian-ness".
Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States government for the relocation of Native Americans who held original Indian title to their land as an independent nation-state. The concept of an Indian territory was an outcome of the U.S. federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the U.S. government was one of assimilation.
The Potawatomi, also spelled Pottawatomi and Pottawatomie, are a Native American people of the Great Plains, upper Mississippi River, and western Great Lakes region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a member of the Algonquian family. The Potawatomi call themselves Neshnabé, a cognate of the word Anishinaabe. The Potawatomi are part of a long-term alliance, called the Council of Three Fires, with the Ojibway and Odawa (Ottawa). In the Council of Three Fires, the Potawatomi are considered the "youngest brother". Their people are referred to in this context as Bodéwadmi, a name that means "keepers of the fire" and refers to the council fire of three peoples.
The Sac and Fox Nation is the largest of three federally recognized tribes of Sauk and Meskwaki (Fox) Indian peoples. Originally from the Lake Huron and Lake Michigan area, they were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma in the 1870s and are predominantly Sauk. The Sac and Fox Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area (OTSA) is the land base in Oklahoma governed by the tribe.
The Odawa are an Indigenous American people who primarily inhabit land in the Eastern Woodlands region, now in jurisdictions of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. Their territory long preceded the creation of the current border between the two countries in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Peoria are a Native American people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma headquartered in Miami, Oklahoma.
The Wyandotte Nation is a federally recognized Native American tribe headquartered in northeastern Oklahoma. They are descendants of the Wendat Confederacy and Native Americans with territory near Georgian Bay and Lake Huron. Under pressure from Haudenosaunee and other tribes, then from European settlers and the United States government, the tribe gradually moved south and west to Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, and finally Oklahoma in the United States.
The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma is a federally recognized tribe of Cherokee Native Americans headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. According to the UKB website, its members are mostly descendants of "Old Settlers" or "Western Cherokees," those Cherokees who migrated from the Southeast to present-day Arkansas and Oklahoma around 1817. Some reports estimate that Old Settlers began migrating west by 1800, before the forced relocation of Cherokees by the United States in the late 1830s under the Indian Removal Act.
The Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians is a federally recognized Native American tribe located in northwest Michigan on the Leelanau Peninsula. Sam McClellan is the current tribal chairman, elected in June 2016 to a four-year term after succeeding Al Pedwaydon, who served from 2012 to 2016.
The Shawnee Tribe is a federally recognized Native American tribe in Oklahoma. Formerly known as the Loyal Shawnee, they are one of three federally recognized Shawnee tribes. The others are the Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.
The Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians is a federally recognized Native American tribe of Odawa. A large percentage of the more than 4000 tribal members continue to reside within the tribe's traditional homelands on the northwestern shores of the state of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. The historically delineated reservation area, located at 45°21′12″N84°58′41″W, encompasses approximately 336 square miles (870 km2) of land in Charlevoix and Emmet counties. The largest communities within the reservation boundaries are Harbor Springs, where the tribal offices are located; Petoskey, where the Tribe operates the Odawa Casino Resort; and Charlevoix.
The Curtis Act of 1898 was an amendment to the United States Dawes Act; it resulted in the break-up of tribal governments and communal lands in Indian Territory of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indian Territory: the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), Cherokee, and Seminole. These tribes had been previously exempt from the 1887 General Allotment Act because of the terms of their treaties. In total, the tribes immediately lost control of about 90 million acres of their communal lands; they lost more in subsequent years.
The Quapaw Indian Agency was a territory that included parts of the present-day Oklahoma counties of Ottawa and Delaware. Established in the late 1830s as part of lands allocated to the Cherokee Nation, this area was later leased by the federal government and known as the Leased District. The area that became known as the Quapaw Agency Lands contained 220,000 acres and was located in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma where that state adjoins Missouri and Kansas.
Little River Band of Ottawa Indians is a federally recognized Native American tribe of the Odawa people in the United States. It is based in Manistee and Mason counties in northwest Michigan. It was recognized on September 21, 1994.
Petosegay or Biidassige was a 19th-century Odawa merchant and fur trader. Both present-day Petoskey, Michigan, Petoskey State Park, and nearby Emmet County park Camp Petosega are named in his honor. A particular variety of stone was found in abundance on his former lands and named after him, and the Petoskey stone was designated as the official state stone. His granddaughter, Ella Jane Petoskey, was asked by Michigan Governor George W. Romney to be an honored signatory on the bill assigning the Petoskey Stone as the state stone.
The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma is one of three federally recognized Shawnee tribes. They are located in Oklahoma and Missouri.
The Mingo people are an Iroquoian group of Native Americans, primarily Seneca and Cayuga, who migrated west from New York to the Ohio Country in the mid-18th century, and their descendants. Some Susquehannock survivors also joined them, and assimilated. Anglo-Americans called these migrants mingos, a corruption of mingwe, an Eastern Algonquian name for Iroquoian-language groups in general. The Mingo have also been called "Ohio Iroquois" and "Ohio Seneca".
On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861, a significant number of Indigenous peoples of the Americas had been relocated from the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the Indian Territory, the Five Civilized Tribes, were suzerain nations with established tribal governments, well established cultures, and legal systems that allowed for slavery. Before European Contact these tribes were generally matriarchial societies, with agriculture being the primary economic pursuit. The bulk of the tribes lived in towns with planned streets, residential and public areas. The people were ruled by complex hereditary chiefdoms of varying size and complexity with high levels of military organization.
The Miami Nation of Indiana is a group of individuals who identify as Miami and have organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The group's headquarters are at Peru, Indiana.
Waunetta McClellan Dominic was an Odawa rights activist who spent her career advocating for the United States government to adhere to its treaty obligations to Native Americans. She was one of the founders of the Northern Michigan Ottawa Association and her influence was widely recognized, especially after winning a 1971 claim against the government for compensation under 19th-century treaties. She was also a proponent of Native American fishing rights being protected. In 1979, she was named by The Detroit News as "Michiganian of the Year" and in 1996, she was posthumously inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
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