Indiana Native Peoples
Written histories of the native peoples in the Great Lakes region begin in the 1600s when French Jesuit missionaries described the people they encountered. Oral histories of the native peoples who were living there, however, extend thousands of years earlier, describing important developments in the creation of the land, the people, and their traditions.
Many Indigenous groups lived in what is now the state of Indiana, including the Myaamiaki (Miami), Bodewadmi (Potawatomi), Lenape (Delaware), Saawanwa (Shawnee), Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo), and Peouaroua (Peoria). These groups were all named in the Treaty of St. Mary’s (1818) which ceded lands to the United States. Historical records name other Indigenous groups that lived in Indiana as well, including the Ottawa, Wea, Piankashaw, Wyandot, Kaskaskia, and Eel River.
Within only a few years, however, government officials in Indiana began petitioning the federal government to invalidate this and other treaties and remove Native Peoples entirely from the state. Eventually they succeeded. In November 1840, the Miami signed The Treaty of the Forks of the Wabash which ceded all of their land in Indiana in exchange for lands in the Kansas Territory. Despite efforts by some Miami to remain on family allotments established years earlier, the U.S. Army rounded up and forcibly expelled the Miami from their ancestral homelands in 1846 as part of a larger federal policy of Indian Removal to remove all Native Peoples east of the Mississippi.
While this Removal was devastating, it was not entirely successful. Some Native Peoples remained. Others returned in the decades that followed. Today, there are approximately 25,000 Native American people living in Indiana. However, this number is less than 1% of the population, and none of the three largest groups represented are from the ancestral tribes who lived in the state before Removal.
While there are no federally recognized tribes in Indiana, two—the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi based in Michigan and the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma—have regained lands in Indiana. Further, the many Native Peoples who live in Indiana continue to practice their traditional customs as they “walk in two worlds,” an expression that captures the challenges of living in ways faithful to one’s ancestors in a world structured by capitalism and settler colonialism.
To learn more about Indiana’s Native communities, check out the resources below and look for local events such as powwows to witness firsthand the resiliency, power, and vibrancy of contemporary Indiana Native cultures today. As you do, be sure to explore each Native community to get a sense of the diverse traditions that distinguish one group from another.