Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma
Traditional Territory
Historically resided in the upper Eastern United States including Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and neighboring states, ranging from Canada to Florida and from the Mississippi River to the eastern continental coast
Overview
The Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma is one of three federally recognized tribes of Shawnee people. Historically residing in the upper Eastern United States, the original Shawnee occupied large territories from Canada to Florida. After Indian Removal, most settled in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and in 1936, the Absentee Shawnee Tribe reorganized their government and became federally recognized.
Historical Notes
Shawnee bands began resettling in Indian Territory around 1839; Absentee Shawnee relocated to Oklahoma after the Texas-Mexico War
Language and Culture
The Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma speak a language belonging to the Algonquian language family, with historical presence recorded across Texas, documented from 1839 to present. Language family affiliation is one of the primary means by which historians and anthropologists identify historical connections between Indigenous peoples across time and geography.
Federal Recognition
The Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma hold federal recognition from the United States government, administered through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Federally recognized tribes have a government-to-government relationship with the United States and are eligible for services and protections under federal Indian law. There are currently 574 federally recognized tribal nations in the United States.
Indigenous peoples had inhabited North America for at least 15,000 years before European contact, developing complex societies across every region of the continent. The Mississippian culture, centered on the city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, reached its peak around 1100 AD with a population estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 — larger than contemporary London. The Ancestral Puebloans built multi-story stone complexes at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde between the 9th and 13th centuries. The Iroquois Confederacy, formed between roughly 1450 and 1600, united five nations under a constitution that influenced later American democratic thinking. Across the eastern woodlands, the Great Plains, the Pacific Coast, and the Southwest, hundreds of distinct nations maintained sophisticated trade networks, agricultural systems, and governance structures. European contact beginning in the late 15th century introduced epidemic disease — smallpox, measles, influenza — which devastated Indigenous populations by an estimated 50 to 90 percent within a century.
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source: Wikipedia.
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