Tribe: The Shawnee, not to be confused with the Pawnee.
Meaning of Name: Shawnee may come from the Algonquin term "Shaawanwa," which means "warm weather," "south" or "southern" which may refer to the Southern (Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky) branch of the Lenape tribe from Delaware. On the other hand, the Shawnee may be descended from Shewa-a-nee, the son of a Powhatan Chief, who was sent by his father to settle in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.
Location: According to one of their "grandfather stories," the Shawnee were a branch of the Algonquin-speaking Lenape tribe of Delaware and so were related to the other Algonquin tribes of the East Coast. In the 1600's AD, this particular branch drifted south, and then west, and wandered around Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, Kansas, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Florida. Unfortunately, their philosophy about the land, that it belonged to everyone and as such, should be freely shared, was not embraced by all of the other tribes and the encroaching whites who claimed the hunting ground as their own. In the 1830's, the Shawnee were relocated to Oklahoma, with one federally-recognized remnant remaining in Ohio.
Original Language: Algonquin.
Tribal Affiliations: From time to time, the Iroquois, the Lenape, the Mingo, the British and the French, the Miami, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Creek, the Seminole, the Kickapoo, the Muscogee, and the Seneca.
Traditional Enemies: The British, the French, the Germans, the Spanish, the Americans.
Traditional Style of House: Wigwams or wickiups, rounded igloo-like homes made of bark, boughs, cattails, deer grass and other natural greenery. Like the Iroquois and other eastern seaboard tribes, they held their tribal meetings in extremely long wooden longhouses.
Traditional Attire: Before the white man came, Shawnee men and women wore buckskin leggings, which the men wore under their buckskin breechcloths and the women wore under their buckskin wraparound skirts. Both wore ponchos and moccasins. After the white man came, Shawnee women adopted the caped-blouse style of the Delaware and Caddo tribes, and wore long skirts decorated with ribbons, appliques, beading, jingle-bells and quill-work. They did not seem to mind adopting the clothing styles or hairstyles of the tribes upon whose land they happened to be squatting.
Traditional Foods: What they ate depended completely on where they had short-term settled at the time. The men hunted deer, turkey and bison, or whatever small game they could catch, and fished. The women planted their gardens of beans, squash and corn, and gathered local wild fruits, greens, herbs, nuts, seeds and berries. Their main contribution to American cuisine was "Shawnee Cake," which is a pancake made of cornmeal and water, and adopted by the Americans as "Johnny Cake." It is especially good fried in bacon grease and served with honey. They did not seem to eat pemmican.
Position of Women: The Shawnee royalty used to be matrilineal. A Shawnee king (chief, called a "sachema," which is also an Iroquoian term) could not leave his kingdom to his son, but to his sister's son. No woman could inherit the Shawnee throne. On the other hand, the non-royal Shawnee were completely patrilineal, and descent went through the father's line. The women did the farming, the crafts, the hemp rope-making, the domestic chores, tanned the hides, and did the childcare and the men did the hunting and the fishing, and occasionally went to war to protect their families, but not to gain territory, domination or count coup.
Shawnee Courtship: I couldn't find anything on Shawnee courtship, specifically. The young Shawnee men, usually in the mid-to-late teens, probably kept their eyes open for someone they liked at the Green Corn Dance or the Crane Dance, when the single young women, usually around fifteen years-old, were dressed in their best and brightest clothes. Nonetheless, they had to be careful, because they could not marry someone of their mother's division or clan or their father's division or clan. Otherwise, the Shawnee were not part of the buffalo-hunting horse culture, so they probably didn't offer horses as a bride-price, but they may have offered deer meat, which, if the woman was willing, she would cook and serve to the groom or his family. Or the Shawnee suitor could have played a courting flute outside the maiden's family's wickiup until she invited him in. Given that their society was patriarchal, I doubt that the maidens or their mothers and grandmothers had the final say regarding matchmaking, but that permission to marry had to be granted by the fathers and the grandfathers.
Interesting Tidbits: The Shawnee, who as a group are very conservative, seemed to have resented and resisted white encroachment of Native American lands more than any other tribe. It is possible that, because of this, there are almost as many unregistered Shawnee as there are registered Shawnee on the federal rolls.... There are now three federally-recognized Shawnee tribes: the Shawnee Tribe, the Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. There are five political divisions of these three tribes: the Chillicothe, the Hathawekela, the (royal) Kispoko, the Mekoche, and the Pekowi. And finally, there are six spiritual/social clans, and the five Shawnee divisions had six clans attached to each. These clans in English (because their Shawnee names are very long) were the Turkey Clan, the Turtle Clan, the Dog/Wolf Clan, the Horse Clan, the Raccoon Clan and the Rabbit Clan.
Traditional Religion: Traditional tribal religion and Christianity.
Slavery and the Shawnee: Not surprisingly, in light of their history, the Shawnee were abolitionists and did not think that any man, especially a Shawnee, should grovel before another. On the other hand, they didn't seem to have a problem with selling members of other tribes into slavery.
Current Population: There are approximately 7600 registered Shawnee.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: The Shawnee have casinos in Oklahoma, smoke shops and gift shops.
Famous Shawnee: Tecumseh, famous rabble-rousing Shawnee Chief and a fantastic orator.
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