From The History of Clark County, Ohio
Chicago: W.H. Beers & Co., 1881 - Page 223

The following paper, prepared by Mr. C. C. Royce, attache of the Interior Department at Washington, D.C., which preparation was by request of Gen Keifer, gives in complete form, but condensed, a history of the Shawnees, from the earliest days of the country to the present, taken from ancient records preserved at Washington. It formed a portion of hte papers introduced at the celebration and can be read at leisure with interest and profit:

Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology,
Washington, D.C., August 4, 1880

Hon. J. Warren Keifer, Springfield, Ohio:
     My dear General: Our conversation of Friday last has troubled me a little. Your suggestion that I prepare an article on the history of the Shawnee tribe of Indians to be read at the approaching centennial anniversary of the victory of Gen. George Rogers Clark over that unfortunate people, was one in which it would under favorable circumstances have been especially gratifying to me to comply. There are two reasons, however, why it would be next to impossible for me now to give such a full and satisfactory account of the Shawnees as would stand the test of reasonable criticism:

First — The time between now and the occurrence of the anniversary is too brief, and, second — My investigations of the subject-matter of such an article are as yet by no means complete.

In spite of these serious drawback, however, I am willing to give a brief outline of my investigations and deductions, with the full understanding that it is to be considered as merely tentative and subject to such corrections — either of a minor or radical character — as the results of more elaborate inquiries may seem to justify.

The Shawnees were the Bedouins, and I may almost say the Ishmaelites of the North American tribes. As wanderers tehy were without rivals among their race, and as fomentors of discord and war between themselves and their neighbors their genius was marked. Their original home is not, with any great measure of certainty, known. It is altogether improbable that it ever will be. Many theories on the subject have been already advanced, each with a greater or less degree of plausibility. More doubtless will, from time to time, be offered, but after all, the general public will be restricted to a choice of probabilities and each must accept for himself that which to his mind shall seem most satisfactory and convincing.

First — in the year 1608, Capt. John Smith, of the Jamestown colony, in Virginia, proceeded upon an exploring expedition up the Chesapeake Bay. In the course of this expedition, he encountered and held communication with numerous nations or tribes of Indians then occupying the shores of the bay and its immediate vicinity. All these Indians lived in continual dread of a tribe known to them by the name of "Massawomekes." In the language of Smith: "Beyond the mountains whence is the head of the river Patawomeke (Potomac) the savages report, inhabit their most mortal enemies, the Massawomekes, upon a great salt water, which by all likelihood is either some part of Canada; some great lake or some inlet of some sea that falleth into the South Sea. These Massawamekes are a great nation and very populous." Smith further relates that the other tribes, especially teh Pottawomekes, the Patuxents, the Sasquesahannocks and the Tockwoughes, were continually tormented by them, complained bitterly of their cruelty and were very importunate with him that he should free them from their assaults. This Smith determined to do, and, had not his project been vetoed by the Colonial Council, the history and identity of this people would not now, in all likelihood, be enshrouded in such a mantle of doubt.

He did, in fact, encounter seven canoes full of them at the head of Chesapeake Bay, with whom he had a conference by signs, and remarks that their implements of war and other utensils showed them to be greatly superior to the Virginia Indians, as also their dexterity in their small boats made of the bark of trees, sewed with bark and well "luted" with gum, gave evidence that they lived upon some great water. When they departed for their homes, the Massawomekes went by the way of what Smith denominates Willoughby's River, and which his map and description show to be the modern "Bush River," which is on the west side of the bay and trends in a northwest direction.

The map accompanying the London edition of 1629, of Smith's Travels, located the Massawomekes on the south shore of a supposed large body of water in a northwest direction, and distant from the head-waters of the Patawomeke (Potomac) River some twenty-five leagues. This, making reasonable allowances for the discrepancies in topography, places them without doubt along the south shore of Lake Erie, with an eastern limit not remote from the present city of Erie, Penn., and extending thence westward.

I am aware that at least two eminent authorities (Gallatin and Bancroft), whom it would almost seem the height of presumption for me to dispute, have assumed that the Massawomekes and the five nations were identical. The more closely I have examined the evidence, the more thoroughly am I convinced of their error in this assumption.

At that date the most westerly of the five nations — the Seneca — was not in possession of hte country west of the Genesee River. Extending from that neighborhood westward to and beyond the Niagra River and along the south-east shore of Lake Erie, the country was occupied by a numerous nation known to history as the Attiwandaronk or Neutral Nation, whose power was broken and the tribes destroyed or dispersed by the Five Nations, but not until 1651, more than forty years subsequent to Smith's observations. To reach the country of the Five Naitons from Chesapeake Bay, an almost due north course, or that of the Susquehanna River, would have been the natural and most convenient route to pursue. A route leading beyond the mountains, in which the Potomac River had its sources, would have been neither a natural nor convenient one for reaching the shores of Lake Ontario and vicinity, then the country of the Five Nations.

It is highly improbable that war parties of this great Iroquois confederacy should have followed such a route in the face of the fact that the only tribes living along the line of the more direct route held them in great fear, and would gladly have allowed them to pass without molestation.

I assume, then, that the villages of the Massawomekes occupied the south and southwest shore of Laek Erie, and that they controlled the intermediate country to the Alleghany Mountains as a hunting range, frequently extending their war and predatory excursions to the territory of tribes east of the mountains and along the upper portions of Chesapeake Bay. Second — from the accounts of early French travelers and the relations of the Jesuit missionaries, we are advised for the existence during the first half of the seventeenth century of a nation of Indians who were called bythe Hurons, "Eries," by the Five Nations, "Rique," and by the French, the "Chat, or Cat Nation." According to Sagard's History of Canada, published in 1636, the naem of Chat, or Cat, is thus accounted for: "There is in this vast region a country which we call the Cat Nation, by reason of their cats, a sort of small wolf or leopard found there, from the skins of which the natives make robes, bordered and ornamented with tails."

This nation occupied a tract of country on the south shore of Lake Erie, identical with that to which I have assigned the Massawomekes of Smith. They were visited as early as 1626, according to the Jesuit relations, by two missionaries, Lagard and d'Allyon, who made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a mission among them; nor did the Jesuits, with the constant zeal and persistence so characteristic of them, ever succeed in obtaining a foothold with the tribe.

At this time and for many years thereafter, they are spoken of as very numerous and powerful. A war having broken out between them and the Five Nations, the Eries were utterly overthrown and dispersed about the year 1655. From this date we find no mention of their existence as a nation.

Schoolcraft, in his bulky and ill-assorted work on the "History, Conditon and Prospects of the Indian Tribes," adopts the theory that the Eries and Neuters were one and the same people. That he is certainly mistaken, I hardly think there is room for reasonable doubt. The evidence of his error is abundant in the Jesuit relations, but I have only space to cite the testimony of Father Breboeuf, who visited the Neutral Nation in 1640, and remarked that onoy four towns of the latter nation lay east of the Niagra River, ranging from east to west, toward the Erielhonous or Chats. Also in speaking of Niagra River he says: "It falls first into Lake Erie or of the Cat tribe, and then it enters the Neutral grounds." Bressani, who spent some years in the country, also in his Breve Relatione, as is remarked by Shea, places the Neuters north of Lake Erie, and the Eries, south.

Third — Cadwallader Colden published his History of theFive Naitons in London in 1747. He begins with the traditional period of their history. Tradition, with Indians as with white people, is often utterly unreliable and not unfrequently totally incredible. The traditions of the events immediately preceding European settlement, from the recentness of their occurence and their consequent freshness in the Indian mind, notwithstanding the average tendency to exaggeration and boastfulness, may, however, be esteemed as not wholly unworthy of confidence in the general facts related, regardless of their highly colored details. These traditions all concur in the assertion that the Five Nations, a short time previous to the period of French settlement in Candad, lived near the present site of Montrea; that, as a result of a war with the Adirondacks, they were forced to leave their own country and fly to the banks of hte lakes on which they subsequently lived, where the war was at intervals renewed and was still in progress at the time of the French occupation of Canada. Here they applied themselves to increasing their proficiency in the use of arms, and in order to raise the spirits of their peole to the sachems, "turned them against the Satanas, a less warlike nation who then lived on the banks of the lakes, and who, in the course of a few years, were subdued and driven out of their country."

Colden doubtless borrows this relation from the account of Bacqueville de la Potherie, who was in Canada for several years anterior to 1700, and whose history of America was published about 1720. Charlevoix also has a similar relation. Both these authors, doubtless, as Judge Force has remarked, borrowed from the narrative of Nicholas Perot, who lived among the Indians for more than thirty years subsequent to 1665, and who enjoyed their confidence in an unusual degree. He relates that the Iroquois had their original home about Montreal and Thre eRivers; that they fled from the Algonquins to Lake Erie, where lived the Chaouanous, who waged war against them and drove them to the shores of Lake Ontario. That after many years of war against the Chaouanous, and their allies, they withdrew to Carolina, where they now are. That the Iroquois (Five Nations) after being obliged to quit Lake Erie, withdrew to Lake Ontario, and that after having chased the Chaouanous and their allies toward Carolina, they have ever since remained there in that vicinity.

Here, then, we have in the earliest history of the country the names of three tribes or nations, who, by the accounts of different and widely-separated travelers, occupied the same region of the territory, viz.:

First — The "Massawomekes" of Smith, who lived upon some great lake beyond the mountains in which the Potomac River has its sources, and which Smith's map shows to be in the location of Lake Erie.

Second — The "Eries, or Chats," of the Jesuit relations, who occupied almost the entire south shore of Lake Erie; and

Third — The "Satanas," of Colden, (who, in the vocabulary preceding his work, gives the name as the equivalent of Shaonous and) the "Chaouanous," Perot, who lived on Lake Erie, and from the text of the narrative, evidently on the south shore to the west of the Five Naitons.

By all the accounts given of these people, they were, comparatively speaking, very numerous and powerful. Each occupied and controlled a large region of territory in the same general locality; each had, so far as history and tradition can throw any light upon the subject, long been the occupant thereof. The fact that neither of these authorities speaks of more than one nation occupying this region of country, and neither seems to have had any knowledge or tradition of any other nation having done so, coupled with the improbability that three numerous and warlike nations should, within the historic period, have occupied so limited a region as the south shore of Lake Erie — and one which by water communication would have been so easily accessible for each to the other — without any communication would have been so easily accessible for each to the other — without any account or tradition having survived of their intercourse, conflicts and destruction of one another, to my mind is little less than convincing evidence of the fact that three such distinct nations never had a cotemperaneous existence, and that the Massawomekes, Eries and Satanas, or Chaouanous, were one and the same people.

I am aware that the Chaouanous, or Shawnees as we now denominate them, speak the Algonquin tongue, and that the Eriees have ever been linguistically classed as of Iroquois stock; but of the latter fact there seems to be no more convincing proof than a passage in the Jesuit relations of 1648, asserting that the Cat nation have a number of permanent towns, * * and they have the same language with our Hurons. The Jesuits never succeeded in establishing a mission among the Eries; their intercourse with them was almost nothing, and they have left us no vocabularies by which their linguistic stock can be determined. I regard, therefore, the singelvolunteer remark as to their having the same language with the Hurons, as having less weight in the scale of probabilities than the accumulated evidence of their identity with the Massawomekes and Chaounous.

Their identity having been assumed, and the Eries having, by all accounts, been conquered and dispersed about 1655, it remains to trace the remnant in their wanderings across the face of the country. This is perhaps the most difficult and most unsatisfactory task that enters into the consideration of the subject. I could not, even were it desirable, in the space allotted to such a communication, give more than a few of the most general facts. To do otherwise would occupy much more time and space than my present object would justify or require.

At this point I may remark that there is a manuscript map still in existence in Holland which accompanied a report made to the States General in1614 or 1616, of the discoveries in New Netherlands, upon which a nation of Indians called "Sawwoaneu" is marked as living on the east bank of the Delaware River.

De Laet also, in the Layden edition of his history, published in 1640, enumerates the "Sawanoos" as one of the tribes then inhabiting the Delaware River.

It is of course impossible at this late day, in the absence of further data, to determine whether this tribe which seems to have been known on the Delaware for more than a quarter of a century, bears any relationship to the modern Shawnees. It is not impossible that in the course of the conflicts between the Satanas" and the Five Nations, a body of the former may have become seggregated from their frineds and have terminated their wanderings by a settlement to the Delaware. The probabilities seem to be unfavorable to this hypothesis.

The solution is more likely to be found in the fact that the word "Sawanoo" signified southern. The Delaware river was at that date known as South River, and "Sawanoo" or Southern may have been a sort of general term applied to Indians residing on that river.

The Eries after their overthrow do not again appear in the contemporary relations or maps under that name except as a destroyed nation. Their former location is shown on De l'Isle's maps of 1700 and 1703, Senex's map of 1710 and numerous others. The survivors being driven from their ancient homes; their villages and property destroyed, and deprived of hte lake as a principal source of food supply, were forced to resort to the chase more exclusively as a means of subsistence. These things would have a tendency to divide the tribe into small hunting parties and to encourage the wandering propensities so often remarked of the Shawnees.

In 1669 we find La Salle who was at that time among the Iroquois at the head of Lake Ontario, projecting a voyage of discovery down hte Ohio, acknowledging the welcome present from the Iroquois of a Shawanee prisoner, who told him that the Ohio could be reached in six weeks, and that he would guide him to it. This would indicate that the Shawnees or a portion of them, at that date, were familiar with the Ohio country and probably residents of it.

Marquette, who was at La Pointe on Lake Superior in 1670, writes that the Illinois have given him information of a nation called "Chaouanous" living thirty days' journey to the southeast of their country.

In the Jesuit relations of 1671-72, the name of "Chaouanong" appears as another name for "Ontouagannha," which is said in the relation of 1661-62 to mean "where they do not know how to speak," but their location is not given. De l'Isle's map of 1700, however, places the "Ontouagannha" on the headwaters of the Santee and Great Pedee Rivers in South Carolina, and the same location is marked on Senex's map of ten years later as occupied by the villages of "Chaouanous."

In 1672, Father Marquette in passing down the Mississippi River remarks upon reaching the mouth of the Ohio, that "This river comes from the country on the east inhabited by the people called Chaouanons, in such numbers that they reckon as many as twenty-three villages in one district, and fifteen in another, lying quite near each other; they are by no means war-like, and are the people the Iropuois go far to seek in order to wage an unprovoked war upon them."

In 1680, as related by Father Membre in his account of the adventures of La Salle's party at Fort Crevecoeur, the "Illinois" who were allies of the "Chaouanous," were warned by one of the latter tribe who was returning home from a trip to the "Illinois" country, but turned back to advise them of the discovery of an Iroquois army who had already entered their territory. During the same year a "Chaouenou" chief who had 150 warriors and lived on a great river emptying into the Ohio, sent to La Salle to form an alliance.

On the map accompanying Marquette's journal published in 1681, the "Chaouanous" are placed on the Ohio River near the Mississippi, while on his original manuscript map — a fac-simile of which will be found in French's Historical Collections of Louisiana — they are located in a blank, unexplored region, a long distance to the east of the Mississippi, probably meant to be in the neighborhood of the Ohio River, though that river is not laid down upon the map, and its course was not definitely known to Marquette.

In 1682, M. De La Salle, after exploring the Mississippi River to the gulf, formally took possession of the country from the mouth of the river to the Ohio, on the eastern side with the consent of the "Chaouanous," "Chichachas" and other people dwelling therein.

At page 502 of the third volume of Margry it is recorded that "Joutel, the companion of La Salle, in his last voyage says, in speadking of the Shawanoes in Illinois: They have been there only since they were drawn thither by M. de La Salle; formerly they lived on the borders of Virginia and the English colonies.

Father Gravier led an expedition down the Mississippi to its mouth in the year 1700. He speaks of the Ohio River as having three branches; one coming from the northeast called the St. Joseph, or Ouabachie; the second from the country of the Iroquois called the Ohio; the third on which the "Chaouanoua" live, comes from the south southwest. The latter was evidently the Tennessee.

On De l'Isles' map of 1700 previously alluded to, the "Outonigauha" are placed on the head-waters of the great rivers of South Carolina, and the "Chiononons" on the Tennessee River near its mouth. It appears however, from the report of an investigating committee of the Pennsylvania Assembly, made in 1755, that at least a portion of this band of the Shawnees or "Outonigauha" living in South Carolina, who had been made uneasy by their neighbors, came with about sixty families to Conestoga about the year 1698, by leave of the Susquehanna Indians who then lived there. A few of the band had about four years previously, at the solicitation of the "Minsis" been allowed to settle on the Delaware River among the latter. Other straggling parties continued from time to time for a number of years, to join their brethren in Pennsylvania, until they finally became among the most numerous and powerful tribes in the States.

In 1700, William Penn visited the chiefs of the band at Conestoga, and in the same year the Council of Maryland resolved, "that the friendship of the Susquehannock and Shawnee Indians be secured by making a treaty with them, they seeming to be of considerable moment and not to be slighted."

The map of North America by John Senex in 1710, indicates villages of "Chaouanous" on the head-waters of South Carolina, but apparently places the main body along the upper waters of Tennessee River, a short distance west of the Appalachian Mountains. This would make them very close neighbors of the Cherokees and probably places them too high up the river. Ten years later (1720) a map of the north parts of America, by H. Moll, does not indicate the presence of any "Chaouanous" on the Tennessee River, but shows their former territory to be occupied by the "Charakeys." This corresponds with the statement in Ramsey's Annals of Tennessee, page 45, that M. Charleville, a French trader near New Orleans, came among the Shawnees, then (1714) inhabiting the country upon the Cumberland River and traded with them, and that about this period the Cherokees and Chickasaws expelled them from their numerous villages upon the lower Cumberland (there denominated the Sault) River, the designation of "Savannah Old Settlement," indicating the probable abandonment at least several years previously of the last Shawnee village in the Cumberland and Tennessee Valleys, in their gradual withdrawal to the north side of the Ohio River. As late as 1764, however, according to Ramsey, a straggling band of them moved from Green River in Kentucky, where they had been residing (though as I surmise, only temporarily), to the Wabash country.

It seems also, that at some period anterior to 1740, a band of "Chaouanous," wanderers in all likelihood from the Cumberland and Tennessee country, had lived for a long time within two leagues from the fort at Mobile, Ala., for in that year M. de Bienville, the commandant assigned the place, which had been abandoned by them, to the use of some fugitive "Tænsas."

Another band, probably an offshoot from those who had wandered to South Carolina, found a home at the place now known as Oldtown, Alleghany County, Md., a few miles below the Cumberland, on the Potomac River, and, in 1738, we find by reference to Volume I, Page 63 of the Virginia State Papers, that "the king of the Shawanese living at Alleghany sends friendly messages to Gov. Gooch * * * desires peace," etc. This is likely the same band who, in 1701, concluded a treaty with William Penn at Philadelphia, and is referred to in the preamble to the treaty, as inhabiting in and about the northern parts of the River Potomac. The nucleus for the Shawnee village which long occupied the neighborhood of Winchester, Va., is likely traceable to this band.

But I have already far exceeded the proper limts of such an article, and am yet more than a century behind in my story. I can give but the merest outline of their subsequent history. I shall be unable to consider and discuss the probabilities of their identity with the "Savannah" Indians and their former residence on the Savannah River in Georgia; the story of their chief, Black Hoof, relative to their home on the Suwanee River in Florida; their asserted consanguinity with the Sacs and Foxes, or any other of the numerous suggestions and theories concerning their origin and primal abode.

Between the date of the ejection of the western portion of the Shawnees from the valleys of the Cumberland and the Tennessee Rivers, and the middle of the eighteenth century, their appearance in history is rare. They were doubtless scattered in several bands along the Ohio River and in the interior of what is now the States of Ohio and Indiana. The oldest map on which I have noticed the location of the Shawnees within the limits of Ohio, is that of Emanuel Bowen, published in London in 1752, which places a "village d'Chouanon" on the north side of the Ohio River about midway between the mouths of the Kanawha and Scioto.

That branch of the tribe living in Pennsylvania had in the meantime become decidedly the most numerous and important portion of the Shawnee people.

Their history is a part of that of the State in which they lived, and need not here be recited. It is sufficient to state the fact that owing to the aggressiveness and encroachments of the increasing white population, they were gradually crowded from their lands and homes until about the year 1750, when they began their migrations to the west of the Ohio River, and within a few years had united with their western brethren and were quite numerous in the Muskingum and Scioto Valleys. They sided actively with the French in the war of 1755; aided materially in the defeat of Braddock and were a terror to the border settlements of Pennsylvania and Virginia.

In 1756, an expedition under Maj. Lewis, against their upper town on the Ohio River, three miles above the mouth of the Kanawha, was a failure. In 1764, Col. Boquet's expedition to the Muskingum resulted in securing temporary peace with them. In 1774, Col. McDonald destroyed their town of Wappatomica, a few miles above Zanesville.

In the same year they received a severe blow in the defeat at Point Pleasant. In 1779, Col. Bowman's expedition destroyed the Shawnee village of Chillicothe on the Little Miami River, three miles north of Xenia.

In 1780, Gen. George Rogers Clark burnt the Piqua town on Mad River, the centennial anniversary of which is responsible for this lengthy disquisition. In 1782, Gen. Clark repeated his expedition and destroyed the Upper and Lower Piqua towns on the Great Miami within the present limits of Miami County. In 1786, Col. Logan destroyed the Mack-a-cheek towns in Logan County.

In 1790, the Shawnees suffered from the expedition of Gen. Harmar, but had a share with the Miamis in his final defeat.

In 1791, they glutted their vengeance at the cruel defeat of St. Clair, and, in 1794, were among those who were made to feel the power of the Federal troops at Fallen Timbers, under Gen. Wayne, which brought the peace of 1795.

In the meantime, the Shawnees had been parties to a treaty of peace with the United States in 1786, at the mouth of the Great Miami, but it failed of its object.

As the result of Wayne's victory, came the treaty of Greenville in 1795, participated in by the Shawnees and eleven other tribes, whereby all the territory south and east of a line beginning at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River; thence up the same to the portage leading to the Tuscarawas River; down the Tuscarawas to the crossing above Fort Laurens; thence westerly to Lorain's store on the Great Miami; thence to Fort Recovery (the place of St. Clair's defeat), and thence southwesterly to the Ohio River, opposite the mouth of the Kentucky River, was ceded to the United States. This tract comprised about two-thirds of the area of Ohio and a portion of Indiana.

July 4, 1805, the Shawnees were again parties to a treaty wherein was ceded to the United States a large tract of country lying north and west of the Greenville treaty line, and east of a north-and-south line 120 miles west of the Pennsylvania boundary.

By treaty of November 25, 1808, in conjunction with other tribes, they ceded the right of way for two roads; one running from Fort Meigs, on the Maumee, to the Western Reserve, and the other from Fremont, south to the Greenville treaty line.

Prior to the war of 1812, the Shawnees had become hostile to the United States. The great Tecumseh and his scheming brother, the Prophet, with their allies, were defeated by Harrison at Tippecanoe in 1811, and the Indian alliance was finally broken and dissolved, by the death, in 1813, of Tecumseh, at the battle of the Thames.

By the treaty of 1817, the Wyandots, Pottawatomies and other tribes made a cession to the United States (in which the Shawnees concurred) of almost the entire Indian territory within the present limits of Ohio.

Out of this cession the United States in turn granted them sundry small reservations upon which to live. Among these reservations there were for the Shawnees a tract ten miles square, with Wapakoneta as the center; a tract adjoining the above of twenty-five square miles on Hog Creek, as well as a tract of forty-eight square miles surrounding Lewistown for the mixed Senecas and Shawnees. The treaty of 1818 added twenty square miles to the reserve at Wapakoneta, and fourteen square miles to the one at Lewistown.

By the treaty of July 20, 1831, the Lewistown Reserve was ceded to the United States and those at Wapakoneta and Hog Creek were ceded on the 8th of the succeeding month, by which transaction the last vestige of Shawnee right or claims to lands in Ohio became extinguished, and they agreed to move west of the Mississippi River.

With this end in view a tract of 60,000 acres of land was granted to the Lewistown band of mixed Senecas and Shawnees, which was subsequently selected in the northeast corner of Indian Territory, to which they removed, and where, with some subsequent modifications of boundaries, they now reside.

It is necessary here to state that a band of Shwnees some years prior to 1793, becoming dissatisfied with the encroachments of the white settlers, removed west of the Mississippi River, and in that year were, in connection with certain Delawares who accompanied them, granted a tract of land by Baron de Carondelet, the French Governor. The Delawares having in 1815 abandoned this region, the Shawnees, in 1825, ceded the land to the United States and accepted in lieu thereof for the accomodation of themselves and such of their brethren as should remove from Ohio, a tract in the eastern part of the present State of Kansas, 100x25 miles in extent, and removed thereto.

By the treaty of 1854, the Kansas Shawnees ceded to the United States all of their reservation but 200,000 acres, within which, allotments of land in severalty were made to the individiuals of the tribe, who from time to time with the consent of the Secretary of the Interior sold the same, and under the provisions of an agreement entered into in 1869 with the Cherokees, they removed to the country of the latter and merged their tribal existence with them.

A number of the Kansas Shawnees who, just prior to and during the late rebellion, wandered off to Texas and Mexico, returned after the war and were provided with a home in the Indian Territory alongside of the Pottawatomies, and are known as "Absentee Shawnees." These, together with those confederated with the Senecas in the northeastern part of Indian Territory, are all of the once numerous and powerful "Massaowmekes" now left to maintain the tribal name of "Shawnee."

C. C. Royce

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