In our last post, we took a look at the tumultuous years that followed the arrival of various groups of Europeans in North America.  Disruptions from disease and war eventually escalated into a series of conflicts called the Beaver Wars (1640-1701).  These conflicts forced Myaamia people to flee the Wabash River Valley and take refuge primarily near what is today Green Bay, Wisconsin.  Following the end of the Beaver Wars, Myaamia people returned home to the Wabash River Valley.  The formal end of this period of disruption and war came at the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701.  At this negotiation, our ancestors recognized the Meehtikoošia (French) as the head of a new “family” alliance.  The Meehtikoošia took on the responsibility of providing for their “children” and peacefully mediating disputes.  In return, the many tribes of the Great Lakes Region promised to heed the advice of the French and to avoid conflict within the group as much as possible.[1]

This map shows the major village sites that Myaamia people reoccupied after the Beaver Wars. The three starred locations mark the locations of early French trading posts. The black star, Detroit, did not have a Myaamia village but was visited regularly by Myaamia people throughout the fur trade era.

The Great Peace of Montreal opened of one of the longest periods of stability in our recorded history (1700-1780).  In this period, Myaamia villages were largely left to govern themselves as they had prior to the Beaver Wars.  Important decisions took into account the need to compromise with various groups, but at the heart of the decision-making process lay Myaamia knowledge, values, and beliefs.  No group, European or indigenous, had the power to force their beliefs or ways onto Myaamia people in this period.[2]  No group had the power to force Myaamia people to leave their villages, and for the most part, Myaamia people could travel unimpeded throughout Myaamionki.  As before the Beaver Wars, travelers had to respect their neighbors’ homes and resources and they still had to fear attacks from enemy groups.  However, in this period of stability, none of these concerns could completely stop Myaamia people’s movements.

In approximately 1700, Myaamia people began to live a “normal” life again.  This period was certainly not free of violence, disease, hunger, or other disruptions, but the level of disruption was less dramatic than what was experienced during the Beaver Wars.  Generations before the Beaver Wars, our ancestors settled the Wabash River Valley.  Over many generations their lives became shaped by the rhythms of Myaamionki (Myaamia places).  Following the return to the Wabash, Myaamia people were able to realign their lives with the ebbs and flows of the ecological cycles of their homelands.  Once again they could utilize generations of experience and knowledge and change their practices, habits, and actions to be in tune with subtle shifts in an environment that they knew intimately.

Myaamia women could plant their fields with the certainty that as long as they worked hard and the weather was stable, they would be able to harvest and store the fruits of their labors.  They did not have to constantly worry about warfare driving them away from their villages, fields, or stored produce.  Myaamia women and children were able return to gathering tubers in the wetlands, collecting greens and berries in disturbed areas, and drawing on the many sources of sustenance produced by the trees of the forests of Myaamionki.  While there were minor risks to traveling outside of the village on gathering journeys, these risks were familiar and smaller in scope in this period.

Myaamia men could travel widely within Myaamionki and hunt in relative safety.  Conflicts still occurred on the hunting grounds, as they did prior to the Beaver Wars, but these conflicts were culturally familiar to our ancestors.  Conflict on the hunting grounds was usually avoided through the practice of humble generosity.  In 1824, Pinšiwa (J.B. Richardville) and Meehcikilita (Le Gros) described how Myaamia hunters avoided conflict on the hunting grounds.  “It often happens,” they said, “that when one has shot a deer he will see at the same moment some other hunter coming towards him, and will immediately abandon his prize, pointing to it as to the property of the person approaching, and will march off to seek some other game.”[3]  This cultural tradition limited some but not all conflicts on the hunting grounds.

Seasonal raiding returned to a smaller scale with groups of 30 or so Myaamia men engaging in guerilla style attacks, which sought captives and or the deaths of a few enemy villagers.  In return, Myaamia people suffered the same kinds of raids on their villages.  But these raids did not cause the kind of upheaval experienced in the Beaver Wars or later in our wars with the Americans (1780-1815).  In short, these conflicts were of a size and scope that did not disrupt their lives to the degree that the entire community was unstable.

This takaakani (hatchet) is a presentation piece from the 1800s, but it represents the style of hatchet or tomahawk traded for from Europeans and used by Myaamia people as both as a tool and a weapon.

The Waapaahšiki Siipiiwi (Wabash River) formed the heart of Myaamia homelands, and its fertile valleys were ideal for hunting, gathering, and agriculture.  In addition, the Waapaahšiki Siipiiwi was a vital means of travel for many groups.  The river was a critical link in a chain of travel, trade, and exchange that connected communities throughout North America.  This system ran in many directions, but the main path nearest our ancestors’ homelands ran from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, through the Great Lakes, into the Maumee River, overland to the Waapaahšiki Siipiiwi, to the Mihšisiipi (the Myaamia believed that the Wabash ran all the way to the Mississippi), finally reaching the Gulf of Mexico.  Our villages of Kiihkayonki (Ft. Wayne) and Wiipicahkionki (Huntington, Indiana) occupied opposing ends of the only significant portage on this route.  A portage is a system of trails that links one navigable river to another, along which canoes and baggage must be carried.  This was an advantageous location for Myaamia people, and it allowed them to participate in and benefit from the continental trade networks in a unique way.  Prior to the arrival of Europeans, people exchanged objects, material resources, and ideas that were unique to their homelands for objects, material resources, and ideas of other peoples.  For example, Myaamia people grew a unique corn that other tribal communities desired and we often traded it with them for goods that were rare within Myaamionki.

Following the end of the Beaver Wars, these trade networks resumed and valuable resources, objects, and ideas once again moved across the continent.  But these old networks were infused with a new people and new objects, material resources, and ideas.  The new “father” figure, the Meehtikoošia (French), brought massive change to these old networks.  In return for the furs and hides of animals like amehkwa (Beaver), nalaaohki-alenaswa (Bison), moohswa (White Tailed Deer), and mihšiiwia (Eastern Elk), the French provided metal tools and weapons, firearms, and new types of cloth.

This šaaponaakani (mat needle) is a fine example of a smaller metal tool that made the production of traditional materials easier. This needle was used to weave together the leaves of the cattail plant in order to make the exterior mats that covered a Myaamia wiikiaami (home or wigwam).

Early on, the character of this trade was much the same as prior to the Beaver Wars.  But by the 1720s, Myaamia people began to develop a dependence on French goods.  Metal tools made it possible for more work to be completed in shorter periods.  Metal kettles made it possible to cook at hotter temperatures and process more food, as with Maple sugar, for example.  Firearms and metal tools increased the volume of animals that could be hunted and butchered, and these same tools soon became vital to the practice of warfare.  As everyone acquired firearms and metal knives and hatchets, bows and wooden war clubs became less and less effective.  Myaamia ways adapted to these new resources very rapidly in this period of stability, and within one generation people were hard pressed to maintain their standard of living without these trade goods.

As the fur trade progressed, more and more Meehtikoošia (French) visited Myaamia villages and stayed for longer periods of time.  The Meehtikoošia also began to build trading forts in and around Myaamionki (Place of the Myaamia).  After the Beaver Wars the nearest trading post was at Detroit, but in the years that followed they built a fort near Saakiiweeyonki (Coming Out Place) and by 1722 they completed a fort at Kiihkayonki (Ft. Wayne, Indiana).  The increased presence of the Meehtikoošia made it easier to acquire their trade goods and helped to strengthen the bonds established between the groups during the Beaver Wars.[4]

This šiipaakani (awl) is a great example of the hybrid use of European trade goods. The pointed tip came from European trade and greatly aided Myaamia women in the making of clothing, but the bone handle was likely carved by a Myaamia person according to their own preferences.

It was in this period, that Myaamia people began to bring individual Meehtikoošia traders into their immediate families.  At the Great Peace of Montreal, our ancestors recognized the Meehtikoošia as the “father” of a large family that included many different tribal groups.  Within individual villages, many Myaamia families made this bond even more personal as they facilitated the marriage of Myaamia women with Meehtikoošia men.  Intermarriage was a long established cultural norm often used to create alliances between families, different Myaamia villages, or between Myaamia people and other tribal groups.  As Meehtikoošia men spent increasing amounts of time in our villages, this same cultural norm was applied to them.

Some of these marriages produced children and lasted for the lifetimes of the married couple.  Other marriages were much shorter and ended when the trader left the region.  In either event, the marriages helped renew and reinforce the sense of alliance and relatedness that took root at the Great Peace.  Through intermarriage Myaamia people became familiar with the language and culture of the Meehtikoošia and the traders became a part of a Myaamia family network, which they could turn to when challenges arose in their work.  The children of these marriages became living symbols of the alliances between the groups, and as they matured they often served as interpreters at negotiations.  Europeans were often puzzled and confused by these individuals, labeling them “mixed-bloods” in English or “métis” in French.  However, their Myaamia relatives did not share this confusion.  If these individuals lived in the community and dedicated their lives to the community, then they were usually viewed as full members of that Myaamia community.  This was the only means of determining whether someone belonged or not.  There were no “half-members” or “quarter-members,” one either was or was not Myaamia.

Like all parental figures, the Meehtikoošia struggled to be good “fathers” according to the Myaamia understanding of the role.[5]  Our ancestors expected “koohsina” (our father) to provide for his children’s needs and to work to help mediate disputes as they arose within the family of tribes.  Koohsina was not supposed to demand obedience; instead he was to offer advice.  Koohsina was not supposed to punish his children; instead he was to offer forgiveness and the means to heal hurt feelings.  At times the Meehtikoošia succeeded in living up to these expectations, and at other times they failed miserably.  In 1747, these failures produced enough ill feelings that hundreds of Myaamia people left the Wabash River Valley to rebuild a village at Pinkwaawilenionki (Piqua, OH) and thereby distance themselves from what they perceived as a negligent and abusive “father.”  The story of the village of Pinkwaawilenionki was the largest disruptive event during this period of stability.  This story highlights the interesting ways that Myaamia people perceived their relationships within the family created during the Beaver Wars.  In our next post we will pick up the story by looking at the village of Pinkwaawilenionki, the Place of the Ash People.

If you would like to comment on this post, ask historical questions, or request a future post on a different topic, then please use the comments feature at the ending of this post or email me at ironstgm@muohio.edu.  This blog is a place for our community to gather together to read, learn, and discuss our history.  Our history belongs to all of us and I hope we can use this blog as one place to further our knowledge and or strengthen connections to our shared past.

šaaye,

George

In our last post we took a look at the two foundational elements that bound together the independent Myaamia (Miami) villages of the Waapaahšiki Siipiiwi (Wabash River Valley). We found that a common language and a shared landscape helped to maintain a shared identity amongst these villages. We also summarized the extended “family” with whom we peacefully shared our homelands: our close siblings the Inoka (Illinois) and our elder brothers the Ojibwa, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Ottawa, and Wyandot. Outside of our homelands, we found groups that we often made war on: the Osage, Quapaw, Lakota, Dakota, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Haudenosaunee (Iroquois).

In this article we are going to examine the Myaamia experiences in the early years of contact with Europeans and the massive disruptions of our ancestors’ lifeways that accompanied these new arrivals. During this period, our ancestors were forced to flee from their homelands in order to survive. Together with our near neighbors and relatives we formed an alliance with one group of newcomers, the Meehtikoošia (French). The formation of this alliance required substantial change in our ancestors’ lives, but this new “family” also allowed them to return and rebuild their villages within their beloved homelands.

If you look in most books that address Miami Indian history, you are likely to find a story that begins with a series of French names: Médard Chouart des Groseilliers, Pierre-Esprit Radisson, Nicolas Perrot, Jean Nicolet, or Robert de LaSalle. These men were French explorers or coureurs des bois (runners of the forest) involved in the early years of the North American fur trade, and we know of their exploits from their own diaries or from the writings of Jesuit Priests.

In contrast to the European record of the early period of contact, very few sources produced by our ancestors have survived to the current day. This makes it very difficult to balance the “outsider” perspective of the French with the “insider” point of view of our ancestors. We must also keep in mind that many of the earliest French visitors did not have a deep familiarity with our ancestors’ language or culture. Many of their observations were made solely from the perspective of French culture. Eventually, French Jesuits did become fully fluent in the Miami-Illinois language and had substantial knowledge of Myaamia and Inoka cultures, but in this early period of disruption and warfare (1640s-1680s) it was the French fur traders who were on the front lines making contact with our ancestors, and it is their notes, their stories, and their point of view that has survived.

One Myaamia story that does survive from this period, describes how and where the Myaamia believe they first met the Meehtikoošia (French). The Myaamia word Meehtikoošia is most likely a reference to the wooden boats that the French used to traverse the Great Lakes, and these boats show up in our very first story of the Meehtikoošia. Pinšiwa (J.B. Richardville) and Meehcikilita (Le Gros) recounted the event in 1824. According to this story, the Myaamia first encountered the Meehtikoošia (French) on Lake Huron.[1] The Myaamia and their neighbors the Potawatomi learned of the arrival of a “strange people” on the lake from their elder brothers, the Wyandot. When the Myaamia and Potawatomi “arrived they found four vessels loaded with French.” The Wyandot, Myaamia, and Potawatomi waited patiently and ambushed the French when they came ashore. According to this story, the attack was so successful that the French were forced to flee by setting sail across the lake. The French, however, have no record of this event. It may be that the ambush merely scared the French away and no one was harmed. Perhaps this event was viewed as insignificant by the French and therefore not widely reported or recorded.[2] It is extremely difficult to fix an exact date to this story, but it likely occurred sometime before 1640.

This direct contact with the French was not the first time our ancestors felt the effects of European arrival in North America. European contact in the Caribbean Islands and mainland North America began in 1492 and surged in the first decades of the 1500s. As they made contact on the coasts, Europeans set off powerful waves of change deep within the continent among peoples they never met face-to-face. This indirect contact came in the most lethal of forms: disease. Like a monstrous tsunami, European diseases spread inland in powerful waves that overwhelmed populations with no natural immunities.

Between 1519 and 1524, the Myaamia suffered two outbreaks of small pox. The Spanish carried this virulent disease onto islands in the Caribbean Ocean and to mainland North America, what is today Mexico. From these locations other indigenous peoples carried the disease with them throughout North America. As communities were afflicted, people tried to flee to protect themselves and unknowingly carried the sickness with them.[3]

Small pox, which the Myaamia called meemhkilookinki (a reference to the wart-like sores which cover the afflicted), spreads from human to human by breathing in the virus, which can travel in minute particles of mucus and blood. The disease begins with a fever and eventually progresses to a rash of sores, which can cover the body and even erupt in the mouth and throat. The pain of the disease can be immense and the appearance of afflicted individuals can be extremely shocking. Most shocking of all, death rates from small pox range from 30%-50% and in some extreme cases rates of 90% occurred in a single outbreak.[4] Europeans had been exposed to small pox for thousands of years at home and had some immunity to the disease, but North America was “virgin soil” for small pox and the rates of death were astronomical.

In 1633-34, the Myaamia suffered an outbreak of measles, which they called niihpikilookinki (red skin). This illness has lower mortality rates than small pox, but it can still cause death among those who lack immunity. Five years later, in 1639, these same communities were hit with another wave of small pox.[5] Together, these four outbreaks decimated Myaamia villages in the Wabash River Valley. Whole communities may have even ceased to exist. Today, we cannot fully comprehend the horrors that these communities experienced. Our people survived, but stories of these outbreaks were not passed on. We only know of them from the European historical record.

The horrors of this period only worsened as these waves of disease were quickly followed by waves of war. Beginning in the 1640s, the five nations of the Haudenosaunee (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk) pushed into our ancestors’ homelands with hundreds and eventually thousands of warriors. They came seeking furs – to trade for European firearms and metal tools – and captives to adopt into their home villages in order to replace their own losses from disease and war. These invasions set in motion a sixty-year period of war and disruption. Our ancestors, still greatly weakened from the impacts of disease, were forced to make a difficult choice: remain in their homelands and risk further destruction or flee to the north in order to survive and hopefully recover. Sometime in the late 1640s or early 1650s our ancestors chose to flee.

The map shows the Haudenosaunee invasion and the Myaamia exodus from our homelands.

They left their beloved Waapaahšiki Siipiiwi (Wabash River) and eventually relocated along the Fox River near what is today Berlin, Wisconsin. This was originally the homelands of the Ho Chunk, who are also known as the Winnebago. In this location the Myaamia built an unusually large village with a population of around 20,000. A typical Myaamia village before this time period may have had a population of 2,000 to 3,000. This village was also multi-ethic and multi-lingual. It contained Myaamia, Inoka (Illinois), Mascouten, and Kickapoo peoples.  Some Myaamia people relocated to other smaller villages in the same region, but it seems that this supersized village was the main center of Myaamia organization during this period of exodus from our homelands.[6]

This new location presented many challenges. First, the size of the village made it very difficult to feed the population, and the tight living conditions only furthered the easy spread of disease. Second, the village was hundreds of miles north of the Wabash River Valley and as a result the climate was significantly different. Average winter temperatures were 10 degrees lower. Winter also came earlier in the north and the growing season for agricultural plants like corn, beans, and squash was 20 to 30 days shorter. Third, there were hundreds of subtle regional differences in the plants, trees, and animals that our ancestors relied on for additional sources of food. These challenges must have made life in this large village quite a struggle.

At this strange moment in our history, we met up again with the Meehtikoošia (French). Unlike our first meeting on the shores of Lake Huron, this meeting was peaceful. The first Meehtikoošia to have sustained contact with the Myaamia was Nicolas Perrot. Perrot was a fur trader and an ambassador of sorts who sought to help unify refugee indigenous groups into a military alliance. His hope was that this alliance could push the Haudenosaunee back to their homelands in the east and allow groups like our ancestors to return to their homes. In exchange, the French would gain access to the fur trade in the region and be better able to protect tribal peoples who had converted to Catholicism and lived nearby the major French settlements.

In 1665, Perrot arrived at the village our ancestors shared with the Inoka, Kickapoo, and Mascouten. His original journal has been lost, but the writings of a French historian, Claude-Charles Bacqueville de la Potherie have survived. La Potherie read Perrot’s journals and spoke with him extensively. According to La Potherie, Perrot and his entourage arrived at the Myaamia section of the village, and “the great chief of the Miamis came to meet them, at the head of more than three thousand men, accompanied by the chiefs of other tribes who formed part of the village. Each of these chiefs had a calumet [a decorated pipe]… they were entirely naked, wearing only shoes, which were artistically embroidered… they sang, as they approached, the calumet song, which they uttered in cadence.”[7] After completion of the formal greetings, Perrot was then escorted to the Mascoutens who had the honor of housing him for the night.

After a week of visiting and gift giving, the akimaahkwiaki (female village leaders)
organized a feast in order to give thanks for Perrot’s visit. Perrot told La Potherie that “[i]n the cabin of the great chief of the Miamis an altar had been erected, on which he had caused to be placed a… warrior’s pouch, filled with medicinal herbs wrapped in the skins of animals, the rarest that they can find; it usually contains all that inspires their dreams.” Perrot told the Myaamia leader that he “did not approve this altar.” He “told the great chief that he adored a God who forbade him to eat things sacrificed to evil spirits or to the skins of animals. They were greatly surprised at this, and asked if he would eat provided they” put away the warrior’s pouch. Perrot agreed and the feast continued.[8]

This brief conversation around the “warrior’s pouch” highlights the significant misunderstandings that occur when two or more new groups come into contact with each other. The Myaamia seem to have understood that Perrot desired a military alliance and as such he was probably meeting with a prominent Myaamia neenawihtoowa (war leader). The “warrior’s pouch” that Perrot found objectionable was a symbolic means by which individual Myaamia men demonstrated their willingness to go on the war trail. The “warrior’s pouch” was not a religious object. It was a symbol of commitment. Each man who wished to join the war party would add a token or symbol of his strength to the bag. The bag would then be carried by the war party as it made its attack. Upon returning to the village the contents of the bag would be returned to each man who participated. This act symbolized the end of that particular military effort. The neenawihtoowa (war leader) may have been expecting Perrot to symbolically add his “medicine” to the collective war effort. It must have struck them as odd, when Perrot, who had been calling for war, seemingly declined to participate.

In fact, Perrot seems to have misunderstood the situation entirely. He mistook an influential war leader for the akima (village civil leader). Perrot told La Potherie that this Myaamia leader had the ability to command people like a king and from this he concluded that Myaamia akimaki (civil leaders) were more powerful than the civil leaders of other tribes. During times of war, a neenawihtoowa (war leader) often gave direct commands to men who had agreed to fight with him. If they respected his leadership, they would often do as told without hesitation. War and warfare defined the entire period of time that Perrot interacted with the Myaamia (1665-1701) and as such his observations tell us far more about the Myaamia practice of warfare than about the nature of civil leadership.[9]

Despite these initial misunderstandings, Perrot continued to interact with the Myaamia and other refugee groups, and he continued to learn. He became much more fluent in all of the languages of the region. By 1701, he was capable of serving as a translator for a negotiation that involved numerous languages. We can reasonably guess that he eventually came to better understand the cultures of these groups, but without his writings we will never know for sure. Throughout the 1670s and 1680s, Perrot and other Frenchmen continued to trade firearms and metal weapons for furs and continued to work to unify the refugee groups in order to push back the Haudenosaunee. Eventually this new alliance was successful and by the 1690s the Haudenosaunee were suing for peace. Perrot then helped to bring this violent conflict to a close by helping to arrange a massive treaty negotiation in Montreal in the year 1701.

In the summer of 1701, ambassadors representing 38 tribal nations arrived in Montreal to bring 60 years of warfare to an end. As many as 3,000 representatives arrived over a span of weeks. The negotiations were quite lengthy as each nation’s representative delivered speeches on their community’s behalf. After a month of speeches, negotiation, and the ritual exchange of gifts the leaders shared a pipe filled with ahseema – tobacco – to symbolize their commitment to peace and their recognition of the French as a new “father” figure among an extended family of elder and younger siblings. This new “father” would be responsible for mediating disputes within the family and providing for the material needs of his “children.” In return, our ancestors promised to heed the advice of their father and avoid conflict amongst siblings as much as possible. The negotiations closed as the French had each of the leaders affix a mark to a treaty parchment – the European symbol of peace (see below).

The part of the Great Peace of Montreal that contains Myaamia, Inoka, and Tawaawa signatures. The rest of the document can be viewed at http://cacouna.net/paixmtl1701_e.htm

To my knowledge this is the oldest surviving document that our ancestors had a hand in creating. The mark of the Myaamia leader Chichicatalo (#18 circled in blue) probably represents a Sandhill Crane. Ceecaahkwa – the Sandhill Crane – has long been a symbol of our people and today it occupies the center of the national symbol of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. Sadly, Chichicatalo contracted an unknown illness during the negotiations, and he died on his journey back to his people. His efforts, and the efforts of many others, did allow our ancestors to return to their beloved homelands along the Waapaahšiki Siipiiwi – the Wabash River Valley. We can only imagine the honors they must have paid to the memories of those, like Chichicatalo, who sacrificed to make that return possible.

The signatures of other near relatives can also be seen on this document: the mark of the Peeyankihšia (Piankashaw) leader is a scalp pole (#17); the mark of the Waayaahtanwa (Wea) leader is possibly a rock quarry (#27); the mark of the Peewaalia (Peoria) leader is a long tailed turtle (#21); the mark of the Kaahkaahkia (Kaskaskia) leader is possibly a notched feather (#26); and the marks of three other Inoka leaders can also be seen circled in blue (#’s 20, 22, and 23). The two signatures circled in red are the marks of two Tawaawa (Ottawa) leaders.

Stomp Dance 2009 in the Ottawa-Peoria Cultural Center

Today all three of these groups – the Myaamia, Inoka, and Tawaawa – are represented in Miami, Oklahoma. The picture from 2009 Stomp Dance is a great symbol of the constancy of our interactions with each other. The gathering occurred in the Ottawa-Peoria Cultural Center and Kevin Dawes, an elected leader of the Ottawa Tribe, led this particular dance. In the crowd you can find many folks related to those who signed the Great Peace. For over three hundred years our peoples have worked together, and hopefully that is another tradition will continue on for at least another three hundred years.

If you would like to comment on this post, ask historical questions, or request a future post on a different topic, then please use the comments feature at the ending of this post. This blog is a place for our community to gather together to read, learn, and discuss our history. Our history belongs to all of us and I hope we can use this blog as one place to further our knowledge and or strengthen connections to our shared past.  You can also email me at ironstgm@muohio.edu.

Šaaye,

George

The daily stuff of life, the boring humdrum that fed, clothed, housed, and educated the community didn’t require governance.  Individuals and family groups worked this stuff out for themselves. In short, leaders had no control over the lives of their people. Instead, leaders were perceived as servants, and it might be more aptly stated that their people controlled them. Additionally, no village could dictate to other villages.  A particular village might be more influential than others, but there was no control exerted. Below, is a list of Myaamia leadership positions that would have existed in a typical village in the 1700s.

akima (male civil leader) – Within each politically autonomous village there was typically one akima, although at times some villages were known to have civil leaders working in pairs or triads.  The akima served his community as an ambassador and as a mediator in disputes or discussions that the community desired to create consensus around.

akimaahkwia (female civil leader) – Each village also had one akimaahkwia, though just like their male counterparts there could be more than one.  There was usually a family relationship between the akima and akimaahkwia. The akimaahkwia served her community as a mediator in disputes or discussions that the community desired to create consensus around.  She worked with female heads of families in this endeavor.

kaapia (the chief’s assistant) – The kaapia was responsible for advising the akima and for equitably dividing things that the village had gained collectively.

neenawihtoowa (war party leader) – they served their villages primarily as the leaders of war parties, which were small groups of 30 men who sought to attack an enemy villages to take captives for adoption or for killing in reprisal for a death within their home village.  War leaders also served as village police, who enforced restrictions regarding disruptions of group hunts and abuse of resources important to the group.

maawikima (council chief) – the maawikima was selected when multiple villages came together for negotiations and needed to send a representative to speak for the whole group.  This role became increasingly important during the decades that followed the Treaty of Greenville (1795).

maamiikaahkia akima (large scale war leader) – this war leader worked to coordinate the efforts of many war party leaders from many villages.  Sometimes this leader coordinated war efforts between Myaamia villages and near neighbors like the Wyandot, Shawnee, Delaware, etc. The maamiikaahkia akima is a newer position that evolved during the heightened conflicts of the 1780s and 1790s.

Disputes and disagreements of less a serious nature were also handled by family groups unless they appealed to a civil leader to intervene and mediate.  Most disputes were solved through gift giving, but sometimes other measures were taken.  The most severe punishment a community could use was banishment from the community (for many this was worse than death).

The neenawihtoowa (war leader) served as a kind of village police, but this role was extremely limited as there were very few criminal behaviors.  The best example of the work that a neenawihtoowa might do is stopping individuals or small groups from leaving a village and heading in a direction that might disrupt a herd of bison or some other large game for which the community was staging a large hunt.  They often used fire to hunt bison (pre-gun), and for simple issues of safety and coordination community members needed to be reminded not to disrupt the group effort.

What Europeans called “Nations” and later “Tribes” and or “Confederations” were originally groupings of villages that shared common traits.  These groupings could work together and achieve goals, but for the most part they lacked any firm hierarchical political structure.

Q: What groups of people were living around what is now Chicago in the late 1700s?

George Ironstrack: In the late 1600s and early 1700s, there were Myaamia (Miami) villages in the Chicago region.  But there is not a long tradition of summer agricultural villages in the area.  1701 was the year of the Great Peace of Montreal which marked the end of the Fur Trade Wars and generally is the point that Myaamia people began returning to the Wabash River Valley from villages to the south of Green Bay.

Q: So before the wars, they lived south of Lake Michigan in the Wabash River Valley, but during the wars were driven all the way north to Green Bay? Or did they live in a territory that stretched across the west coast of Lake Michigan, and the war pushed them out of the southern half of their territory?

George: It’s our belief that Myaamia agricultural villages were centered in the Wabash River Valley prior to the Fur Trade Wars (1640s-1701).  This is supported by linguistic evidence in that the Miami-Illinois place names existed prior to the wars.  However, the Myaamia hunted, traveled, and traded regularly over all of Myaamionki: current day Illinois, Indiana, western Ohio, southern Wisconsin, and southern Michigan.

Q: The “research” I’ve done (mostly on Wikipedia) tells me that at that time there were several political organizations in the area, each organization composed of tribes. My understanding here is that tribes are mostly genetic, like very widely-extended families, and tribes banded together into confederations, which were mostly geographic (how similar is this idea to the idea of a nation-state?).

George: tribes, nations, and confederations are all terms commonly used to refer to indigenous North American political groupings; however, the terms are ahistorical for the most part regarding the period of time that you are interested in.  Tribes, nations, and confederations can be argued to exist by the early 1800s, but all evidence indicates this wasn’t the case in the 1600s.  The only exception that jumps to mind are the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) who functioned as a true confederation prior to contact with Europeans.

Myaamia political life was originally organized around the village.  Each village had male and female civil leaders and male and female war leaders.   The civil leaders together with the heads of families formed two separate councils – a men’s council and a women’s council – for discussing important decisions that affected the whole village. These decisions were usually made with consensus and required a lot of time and negotiation.  Male civil leaders served as the ambassadors of the village and were responsible for greeting and caring for distinguished visitors to their village as well as carrying messages to the villages of other groups.  

Q: Was there any reason multiple villages might come together (perhaps for trade, or to exchange marriages?)

George: One or two related villages may have met together to handle disputes over farm fields (if they were geographically close enough to have overlapping fields) and the use of hunting and gathering grounds (here there was a lot of overlap and therefore a lot of need for negotiation).  All of the related villages would come together over issues that affected the whole “family.”  This could be larger concerns about hunting grounds, issues of peace, and issues of war. Marriages, however, were decided among family groups and not through village councils.  

Q: Did villages have agreed-upon territories? (as in, this is my village’s territory, you can’t hunt or farm here). If so, then I suppose each village would be the state (sovereign legal entity) of that village’s akima.

George: Yes, but this territory was defined solely by use.  If a group wasn’t using a space they couldn’t restrict someone else’s use of it.  So rather than borders, I tend to think of concentric circles of decreasing influence as one moves away from one’s village.  The center or core heartland of this place was the sovereign territory of the community (not the akima).

Q: I often see “Miami” used interchangeably with Illinois (or Illinwa, etc.) or I see combination like Miami-Illinois. It looks to me like Miami describes a group of people who all speak the Miami language, though they aren’t necessarily of the same tribe or part of the Illinois Confederation. Or am I wrong?

George: The Miami and the villages that the French called Illinois spoke separate dialects of the same language.  Linguists use the term “Miami-Illinois” to refer to the language group.  Originally, there were twenty or more villages that spoke this language and today there are two federally recognized tribes that share a heritage with this language: the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and the Peoria Tribe of Oklahoma.

Daryl Baldwin: This discussion hinges on a fundamental concept that people can be related linguistically, geographically and culturally, but remain politically autonomous.  That is still the case today between the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and the Peoria Tribe of Oklahoma.  So from each of the tribal perspectives there exists a Myaamia language dialect separate from, but related to the Peoria (Illinois) language dialect.  But linguists don’t recognize political autonomy and therefore they use Miami-Illinois as a cover term for the related dialects as a single language.  So with this said, we Miamis speak the Miami Language and the Peorias refer to their language as the Peoria Language.  I believe this was the case historically.  How you talk about this is all about context.

Q: So what would make a 17-18th century person say “I am a Myaamia” rather than “I am an Inoka”?

George: Myaamia people lived in the Wabash River Valley and Inoka people lived in the Illinois River Valley.  The spoke the same language but the landscapes of the two valleys are different enough that their lives were different enough to become separate groups.

Q: Could a speaker of Myaamia understand a Peoria speaker and vice-versa?

George: Yes, the Jesuits in the 1700s said that it was only a difference of accent.  Today we say it’s like the different between Southern English and Northern English in the states.

Q: Why do I see other groups mentioned within the Miami? For example, Atchakangouen, Kilatika, Mengkonkia, Pepikokia, Piankeshaw, and Wea?

George: Each of the names you list for the Myaamia (Miami) are, for the most part, village groups.  Each of these villages operated as its own largely independent community. They all shared the same language; stories; ecological patterns and behaviors (culture); and the same or very similar landscapes.  Most of these village groups literally descend from each other like family.  As a village grew too large to support itself, a group would split off and form a new village downstream.  These related villages could come together in times of war and to negotiate the group peace required to end a conflict (see the Great Peace of Montreal for an example of this – Wikipedia’s entry on this is satisfactory).

What Europeans called “Nations” and later “Tribes” and or “Confederations” were originally groupings of villages that shared common traits.  These groupings could work together and achieve goals, but they lacked any firm hierarchical political structure (again excepting the Haudenosaunee.)

Q: I get the picture that there were many villages, and the farther away you got from your village, the harder it got to understand people and the less closely related to you they were. At a certain point, you couldn’t understand them, and you weren’t related to them, and so they were a different nation (traveling from Spain to Portugal, say).

George: Yes, as a general rule this is likely how it worked.  However, prior to contact a group of people we called “grandfathers” lived on the Atlantic seaboard.  Today they’re called the Delaware.  So in distant journeys it was possible to come across related groups.  

Q: Or as you travel you might enter a different habitat, and the customs of the people there could be strange even if they were relatively closely related to you and able to communicate with you (traveling from one English-speaking country to another)?

George: Yes, but the Inoka (Illinois) people wouldn’t have been strange to the Myaamia, just slightly different, kind of like the American perception of English-speaking Canadians (though I know Canadians would disagree with this perception).

Q: What did it mean to be part of one of these village groups?

George: To be a part of a community was to own a share of the responsibility for communal health.

Q: When you say “own a share” it makes it sound like villages distributed wealth evenly (for example, spreading food from people with to people without). Is that right? What were the responsibilities of a villager? What if you couldn’t fulfill your responsibilities? (for example if you were crippled or insane?) What if you refused to fulfill your responsibilities? (which may again be because you were insane)

George: Within Myaamia culture we see responsibility as a graded scale – those who have more knowledge and influence have higher degrees of responsibility and therefore higher community expectations.  A small village in the 1700s couldn’t survive through absolute equality, instead they practiced a diligent equity – giving people what they need rather than giving everyone the exact same amount of some resource.  Those who couldn’t care for themselves: the young, the elderly, the sick, and the mentally imbalanced were cared for by those who were more able.  When a kaapia divided up community goods, people were given what their family needed.  Those who needed more got more.  There was no wealth to distribute, only goods to use and food to eat.  A healthy village might have a 3-4 year surplus of crops in storage pits, but since the fields were communal the stored food was communal.  

If a healthy individual – physically and mentally – continually refused to act responsibility, then he or she would be first shunned and then banished from the community.  

Q: How did the Miami people govern themselves? Who governed what? I’ve read about “peace chiefs” and “war chiefs,” but also about tribal councils. What were their different responsibilities? How did these people achieve their status? How were councils formed at different levels (was it like the US government, where states elect representatives in the national government)? How much control did the confederation as a whole have over tribes? How much control did either of these have over the lives of individual people?

George: This is a difficult question and one that is perhaps heavily influenced by your contemporary understandings of the governments of cities, states, and nations.  A better starting point is to ask, “what is there to govern?”  Individual independence was highly valued in these village communities and examples abound of leaders informing Europeans that they could “order” nothing and that in fact the more they gave orders the more they diminished their status.  In 1721, Father Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix stated: “These chiefs generally have no great marks of outward respect paid them, and if they are never disobeyed, it is because they know how to set bounds to their authority.  It is true that they request or propose, rather than command; and never exceed the boundaries of that small share of authority with which they are invested.”

The daily stuff of life, the boring humdrum that fed, clothed, housed, and educated the community didn’t require governance.  Individuals and family groups worked this stuff out for themselves. In short, leaders had no control over the lives of their people. Instead, leaders were perceived as servants, and it might be more aptly stated that their people controlled them. Additionally, no village could dictate to other villages.  A particular village might be more influential than others, but there was no control exerted. Below, is a list of Myaamia leadership positions that would have existed in a typical village in the 1700s.

akima (male civil leader) – Within each politically autonomous village there was typically one akima, although at times some villages were known to have civil leaders working in pairs or triads.  The akima served his community as an ambassador and as a mediator in disputes or discussions that the community desired to create consensus around.

akimaahkwia (female civil leader) – Each village also had one akimaahkwia, though just like their male counterparts there could be more than one.  There was usually a family relationship between the akima and akimaahkwia. The akimaahkwia served her community as a mediator in disputes or discussions that the community desired to create consensus around.  She worked with female heads of families in this endeavor.

kaapia (the chief’s assistant) – The kaapia was responsible for advising the akima and for equitably dividing things that the village had gained collectively.  

neenawihtoowa (war party leader) – they served their villages primarily as the leaders of war parties, which were small groups of 30 men who sought to attack an enemy villages to take captives for adoption or for killing in reprisal for a death within their home village.  War leaders also served as village police, who enforced restrictions regarding disruptions of group hunts and abuse of resources important to the group.  

maawikima (council chief) – the maawikima was selected when multiple villages came together for negotiations and needed to send a representative to speak for the whole group.  This role became increasingly important during the decades that followed the Treaty of Greenville (1795).

maamiikaahkia akima (large scale war leader) – this war leader worked to coordinate the efforts of many war party leaders from many villages.  Sometimes this leader coordinated war efforts between Myaamia villages and near neighbors like the Wyandot, Shawnee, Delaware, etc. The maamiikaahkia akima is a newer position that evolved during the heightened conflicts of the 1780s and 1790s.

Q: Was there a stigma associated with participation in warfare?

George: Warfare stained the character of individuals who participated in it.  This stain had to be washed away by a series of intentional actions and the passage of time.  In simple terms, how could a village send out a leader on the dangerous journey to an “enemy” community to negotiate peace, if their “enemies” were deeply familiar with the man as the killer of their kin?  The journey was risky enough for the akima who was only known as a civil leader.  In more complicated philosophical terms, the mindset of war was fundamentally different than the mindset required of civil leadership.  Quickly moving between the two mindsets was not something most individuals could do.

Q: It sounds like the role of akima was perceived as higher than being a war leader. One graduated from war to peace leadership.

George: One MIGHT move from war leadership to peace leadership.  Peace was the norm, war the exception – albeit an exception regularly entertained.  The skills of a civil leader were far more demanding and challenging to attain, and it took far more communal effort to educate and train an akima than it did a neenawihtoowa.  Knowledge was the only comparable thing to wealth in the European sense and therefore the village had invested far more wealth in an akima than in a neenawihtoowa.

Q: What about leadership during a war? Surely a war leader would have to be confident his orders were followed. And what about coercion? I’m stronger than you, or I have more weapons and resources. I can reward you if you do what I say, or hurt you if you don’t. What prevented people from accumulating wealth and declaring themselves kings?

George: War leaders probably gave direct commands, but even here I see many examples of their orders going ignored.  More successful war leaders, and maybe more physically imposing ones, might have been obeyed because lives were more immediately on the line.

Q: What sort of decisions did the councils make? Redistribution of food? Trade control? Land and water allocation? Did they need complete unanimity to achieve consensus or would a majority do?

George: There aren’t a lot of examples from the early 1700s of the work of councils, because Europeans weren’t usually allowed to watch this process (and/or it took so long days/weeks/months that few Europeans had the patience for it).  However, the councils would have handled all decisions that were group related: moving a village, shifting farm fields (more of a women’s council decision), making peace alliances (a process that Europeans called “trade” but culturally alliance was created through exchange of goods and people, i.e. marriage) and making war.  As near as we can tell they sought to produce near consensus.  In a small village community this was easier than today.  A lack of consensus could produce dissention that would disrupt communal harmony.  It’s my belief that when consensus couldn’t be reached it was usually a result of the village growing too large, and it was at that point that a group would split off and form a new village.

Q: I assume you got to be part of the council by being the head of a family. Were there any families or groups of people who did NOT get representation? Could an individual lose a seat on the council? Could a family?

George: I think this was informally decided.  If someone was respected and therefore influential they would sit with the council.  If an individual tried to sit in, but was not deemed ready by the group, he or she would be asked to leave.  This would have been damaging to the reputation of an individual in a village and so most wouldn’t attempt to sit in on a council until they knew they were going to be accepted.  Each village probably had its own ways of making this known.  The exception would be war councils, which would draw any interested male who was physically capable of making the effort.  Keep in mind that the “family” institution that structured Miami-Illinois speaking villages was the clan, which was generally patrilineal in descent.  Clans ceased to function within our community prior to removal in the 1800s and the internal workings of clans remains a mystery to me.

Q: What qualities were worthy of respect for both men and women?

George: Keep in mind this is my individual opinion and is based partly on historical examples and partly on my own experiences learning from our traditional stories.  Key cultural values and personal attributes that earned an individual the respect of his or her community over a lifetime were/are: generosity; humility; a calm and placid mind (to anger easily was a sign of immaturity and or insanity); forbearance of physical pain, hunger, etc.; knowledge; wisdom; and oratorical ability.

Q: Would this be oration during council meetings? Did people also orate for other purposes (like storytelling or religious rites)? Were there standardized modes of oration (like modes of rhetorical style, storytelling tropes, poetic forms)?

George: Storytelling and oratory for leadership would have been different but related skills. Oratory for leaders was however quite poetic and utilized a “high” form of the language that no longer exists.  The poetic tone and the repetitious use of metaphor was partly about engagement of the audience and partly about increasing the audience’s ability to remember the exact details of the speech.  Physical mnemonic devices were also used, like painted and quilled hide blankets, wampum belts, strings of painted bird bones, large painted shells, decorated pipes, etc.  Orations were also given at funerals.

Q: On the day-to-day level, how did people settle disputes? How did they prevent and punish crime? Did they have anything like a police force? Also, how did they wage war? Was it possible for one member of a confederation to wage war on another?

George: Disputes were handled by family groups unless they appealed to a civil leader to intervene and mediate.  Most disputes were solved through gift giving, but sometimes other measures were taken.  The most severe punishment a community could use was banishment from the community.  However, there were very few behaviors that were considered “criminal.”  Murder is the most discussed crime in the historical record and in most cases the treatment of the murderer was decided by the victim’s family.  They could avenge their relative’s death by executing the murderer or they could accept gifts to “cover their dead” (symbolically burying the diseased through expressions of genuine sorrow).  In some cases the murderer was even adopted into his victim’s family to take the place of the dead relative.

The neenawihtoowa (war leader) served as a kind of village police, but this role was extremely limited as there were very few criminal behaviors.  The best example of the work that a neenawihtoowa might do is stopping individuals or small groups from leaving a village and heading in a direction that might disrupt a herd of bison or some other large game for which the community was staging a large hunt.  They often used fire to hunt bison (pre-gun), and for simple issues of safety and coordination community members needed to be reminded not to disrupt the group effort.

War was a seasonally based activity that happened with regularity.  Prior to the Fur Trade Wars (1640-1701), warfare was conducted as low intensity guerilla style raiding.  The object of these small groups of 30 or so men was to take a few captives from an enemy village.  These captives could either be adopted into families or ritually killed to atone for a prior death from war or disease.  For the Myaamia, enemy villages were not near neighbors.  A short list of these enemy villages includes groups that came to be called Lakota, Dakota, Osage, and Quapaw (across the Mississippi); Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw (across the Ohio River); and the Iroquois (across the Scioto River).

There are examples of Myaamia villages and Inoka (Illinois) villages coming to blows with each other.  However, these were rare occurrences and look more like interfamily disputes gone horribly awry.  They weren’t carefully planned and executed war parties like were organized against the groups I listed above.

Q: You argue “there were very few behaviors that were considered ‘criminal.’”  But you also say that people might misuse resources or in other ways anger their neighbors? Were these a kind of punishable behavior?

George: Conflicts on the hunting grounds were quite common.  In response to this the Myaamia developed a tradition that if there was a conflict over game, one would always defer to the other hunter.  But sometimes people are hungry, tired, etc. and a particular hunting conflict might turn violent.  The misuse of resources did happen and groups might come to together to address this, but cultural traditions also indicate that there was a belief that things would take care of themselves – if a village behaved poorly they would receive poor harvest/hunts/etc. in return.

Q: Could banished people settle in other villages (away from their bad reputation) or were they doomed to live alone forever?

George: They could move into another village, perhaps with relatives.  But the new community would have the same expectations of them.

Q: So within the village, the neenawihtoowa (war leader) acted like modern-day police, coordinating a big sporting event.

George: Yes, they were more like crowd control.

Q: So Myaamia people focused their warfare on people who were not of their language-group. You say there isn’t a word for “tribe” or “nation” in Myaamia, but is there a concept for “people who we communicate with” or “people it’s not okay to raid”? That seems to be something like a nation.

George: This is conceptually like a Nation only in the old French use of the term as “those united by common language, culture, and lineage.”  Most students and teachers I work with only understand nation in the modern day sense of the nation-state.  The Myaamia used general terms to refer to whole groups of villages, but these terms were usually either a reference to the language the group spoke or a particularly unique feature maintained by the entire group of villages. But they didn’t perceive the group the way Europeans perceived them – as a group with a defined boundary and unified political structure.  They still understood that in most cases each village was its own entity.  Their view of outside groups was an inversion of their own peoplehood – Miami-Illinois speaking peoples of the Wabash knew there was no one more like them in the whole wide world than the other villages of the Wabash, but this still didn’t constitute a nation in the European sense.

Q: What if a neighboring village did something bad with space and resources (denied access to it, for example, or over-hunted it). Was there any way for one village to negotiate this sort of problem with another (a meeting between councils or akimaki, for example)?

George: Yes, this is the exact kind of problem akimaki and village councils would have been called on regularly to address.

Q: For what reasons did the Myaamia fight wars?

George: Smaller raids were undertaken as a part of a cultural norm, which was widespread in North America, called the Mourning War.  An untimely death (from disease, murder, or war) within a family required either a balancing death or an adoption to fill the hole created by the loss.  These families would sometimes request that a war party be assembled to take a captive, kill, etc.  This is where a neenawihtoowa (war leader) would step in.  Smaller raids could also be undertaken to maintain control of hunting grounds, especially near the “enemy” groups I mentioned above.

Larger wars were not normal prior to the Fur Trade wars.  In each of these abnormal cases, Myaamia villages came together to defend their villages.  External attacks on settlers were always done in the raiding style and not in the large groupings of hundreds that were used in the Fur Trade Wars (1640-1701), Harmar’s Defeat (1790), St. Clair’s Defeat (1791), and Fallen Timbers (1794).  

Q: So a war party could be requested as an act of direct revenge, or it could be because of an untimely death or other catastrophe in the community, right?

George: Yes, but it is interesting to note though that the norm seems to have been gift giving (“covering of the dead”) and revenge killings were the exception.  Europeans and Americans constantly wanted to execute young indigenous men through their systems of justice and were frustrated by attempts to circumvent this process through the giving of gifts.  Europeans and Americans saw gift giving as an unsatisfying resolution.

Q: So captives might be adopted or killed. Was there any reason the captors might choose one or the other? Perhaps adopting children, but killing adults?

George: Yes that’s the general rule that I see in operation – children and women were perceived as more easily absorbed into their captors’ community.  Adult males were often, but not always, killed.  Sometimes anger factored in as well.  It doesn’t make sense from the perspective of contemporary human rights, but sometimes the community was healthier if they could vent their anger by torturing and killing a prisoner.  They believed that if these feelings weren’t displaced, it would turn inwards in the form of sickness within the community, specifically within the family of the deceased.

Q: What form did gifts take? Food? Artwork? Rights? Services?

George: The most valued gifts were rare items that one people possessed but others didn’t, or gifts that obviously took the whole effort of a community to produce (this demonstrated that a community supported a particular alliance). In the pre-contact period this would have been agricultural goods (the Myaamia were known for their distinct flour corn), rare rocks that were manufactured into tools or decoration, and or the parts of animals that were geographically isolated (the best example here is the wampum beads made from the shells of mollusks only available on the east coast.)

Q: Is there a word, in Myaamia, for the Mississippian culture, the mound-builders? And is there a noun in Myaamia for the mounds? Or is there a descriptive name for the people who built them (like English “mound-builder.”)?

Daryl: We have never found any language relative to the mound complexes or mound building in general.  It is also interesting to note that in the vast historical record there is no mention of the Myaamia having any association with the mounds other than they knew they were there and did not disturb them.  There are, however, extensive mound vocabularies in other non-Algonquian languages like Muskogean languages.

In the post “Walking Myaamionki” we explored how Myaamia people first settled the Waapaahšiki Siipiiwi (Wabash River).  That post left off with the question: what held all these unique villages, spread over hundreds of miles, together as a group?  Prior to contact with Europeans, each village had their own leaders and made most of their own decisions, and no village could command the allegiance of any other village.  Yet, when the need arose, these villages could come together and work for a common purpose.  Our ancestors recognized their interdependence and interrelatedness.  They saw themselves as relatives of an extended family of villages physically connected by the rivers and trails that ran throughout Myaamionki.  They saw this Myaamia family as unique and different from other “families” in their area like the Ojibwa, Potawatomi, Ottawa, Shawnee, Wyandot, and Kickapoo.[1]

This map is based on approximately where people were living in the early years of French interaction (1720-61). It shows the Illinois and Wabash River Valleys (in white) and the other tribal families that were our neighbors and relatives in our historic homelands

So what made our Myaamia family unique, and what held us together as a separate group from other neighboring families with whom we shared our homelands?  In these early years, there were two foundational elements that made us unique: the language we spoke and the specific place where we lived.

Today, linguists call our language Miami-Illinois, because both the Miami and Illinois people spoke different dialects of the same language.  The Myaamia people of the Waapaahšiki Siipiiwi (Wabash River) and the Inoka people of the Inoka Siipiiwi (Illinois River) both spoke Miami-Illinois.  It was the means of communication used by these people in their daily lives.  Through their shared language our ancestors preserved the stories of their past experiences and made decisions about what to do in their contemporary lives.

Miami-Illinois was the language in common in these villages, but it was not the only language spoken there.  The villages of both these river valleys were always multilingual.  Within the village there would have been spouses, adoptees, and captives from other language groups. Each community valued the ability to communicate with groups that spoke other languages.  These multilingual individuals helped their home community build and maintain the alliances that established peace and allowed for the exchange of important goods.  Often, the children would be taught all of the languages spoken by their parents so that they could continue this important work.  These language skills would also allow them to visit with extended family in other villages.

The presence of all of these languages within each village did not, however, create competition among languages.  Miami-Illinois was always the central language of the village; it was the communications glue that bound these groups together.

Miami-Illinois also connected all of the Myaamia and Inoka villages of the Wabash and Illinois River Valleys.  Through this shared language, the villages passed on information, stories, songs, speeches, and other meaning filled messages.  This ease of communication and the feelings of being collectively understood bonded these villages together in a comforting closeness.  This linguistic bond is one major reason why the Myaamia and the Inoka (Illinois) saw themselves as extremely close relatives.  They often referred to each other as siblings.

The second foundational element that linked the Myaamia villages of the Waapaahšiki Siipiiwi together as a unique group was the place where they lived.  The villages of the Waapaahšiki Siipiiwi had much in common as a result of living in nearly the same environment for untold numbers of generations.  We call this place Myaamionki (the place of the Myaamia).  Myaamionki continues to include: landscape features; the earth beneath the surface of the land; rivers and other bodies of water; the sky and celestial objects like the sun, the moon, and the stars; the plants and animals with whom we share our place; and many different groups of humans.

Within Myaamionki the soils, earth, and rocks beneath the feet of our ancestors were very similar.  This led the villages to farm in the same way and to make their tools from the same materials.  The river valleys of Myaamionki flooded regularly and fertilized the flood plains near their villages.  The river valley also had a shared climate and nearly the same quantity of frost free growing days.  In general, this environment was suited to the farming of Myaamia miincipi (Miami corn).  It was something that all our ancestors’ villages participated in and as a result each village would have been heavily influenced by the agricultural cycle of their corn.[2]

The forests of the Wabash River Valley also tended to be either oak-hickory or beech-maple.[3] Within these forested environments all Myaamia people would have generally found the same plants and animals and therefore eaten the same roots, nuts, greens, berries, and animal meats.  These villages would have also shared the same overlapping hunting and gathering grounds.  Hunting and gathering regularly occurred as far west as the Mihšisiipi (Mississippi River), as far east as the Scioto River, and as far south as the Kaanseenseepiiwi (Ohio River).  This was a landscape shared by many villages and the use of these resources required a lot of negotiation and communication.

The Wabash River Valley was also pocketed with hundreds of wetland areas where Myaamia people gathered tubers, roots, and greens for their daily diet as well as medicinal cures to typical ailments.[4]

Each village along the Waapaahšiki Siipiiwi would have differed only slightly from the others in terms of available plants and animals.  These variations were noted in the names of some villages.  For example, Aciipihkahkionki – the place of roots – was unique for the abundance of edible tubers that could be found in the surrounding wetlands (see the post “Walking Myaamionki” on this blog).  These differences would have given each village a unique flavor, but they would not have created a radical sense of difference between the related villages.

All of the Myaamia villages of the valley used nearly the same lunar calendar system.    The lunar calendar was used to track the ecological changes occurring over the course of the year.  It was this system that helped each village know when it was time to plant, hunt, harvest, and rest.  The lunar calendar embodied our ancestors’ knowledge of the rhythms of climate, weather, plants, animals, and humans that was key to thriving in Myaamionki.  The villages lived in tune to the same rhythms and as a result their collective lives – the things they did every day – ran parallel to each other.  These habits contributed to the sense of sameness established by shared language and a similar historical experience.

Within Myaamionki (the place of the Miami) most of the rivers and trails linked villages together in a peaceful way.  Most of our ancestors’ near neighbors were considered relatives.  The Inoka (Illinois) were considered close siblings; the Ojibwa, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Ottawa, and Wyandot were elder brothers; and the Delaware we called grandfathers.  These alliances were reaffirmed on a regular basis by exchanging gifts, visiting each other regularly, and giving long speeches that recounted the history of the alliance and reaffirmed each community’s commitment to the relationship.

Outside of Myaamionki, most of the rivers and trails were utilized for less than peaceful purposes.  At rare moments our ancestors left Myaamionki to hunt or trade, but more commonly they journeyed beyond Myaamionki to make war.  Prior to contact with Europeans, war usually involved groups of twenty-five to thirty men.  This group, or war-party as it is often called in English, would journey for weeks in order to attack an enemy village and take a few captives back home to their village.  In cases of revenge, the war-party might make the journey with express purpose of killing a few adult males in an enemy community.  Most captives were brought back to the home village in order to be adopted into the community, thereby adding new strength to the village.

This map shows the Illinois and Wabash River Valleys in white. The red arrows show the directions that Myaamia men would have typically gone when raiding an enemy village

Prior to contact, the groups our ancestors most commonly made war against were the Osage, Quapaw, Lakota, Dakota, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Haudenosaunee.  These groups would often make revenge raids on the villages of our ancestors as well.  These back and forth raids often led a cycle of violence, which historians have called “mourning wars.”  In these kinds of conflicts, the grief and loss of power caused by the death of community members pushes the community to seek vengeance or to replace the loss with captives.

When these conflicts cycled out of control, a community could choose to send an ambassador to negotiate a peaceful settlement.  This dangerous task was undertaken by an akima (civil leader) at the request of his village.  He would then journey via river and trail to the village of an enemy and request a peace negotiation.  This was a dangerous journey and the akima had to travel unarmed as a visible sign of his community’s peaceful intent.  If he arrived safely at his destination he would then have to convince the leaders of that village that peace was desirable.  If this initial meeting was successful, then the communities would come together at a later date to exchange gifts and give formal speeches that would firmly establish a new peace.[5]

In many cases, but not all, Myaamia villages would communicate with each other regarding issues of both war and peace.   Enemies may have been unable to distinguish between Myaamia villages and as a result a revenge raid could hit any village.  In the same vein, a sustainable peace required that other Myaamia villages were also in agreement.  Without unity among Myaamia villages no peace agreement would be lasting.  In this way, both war and peace served to keep Myaamia villages in communication with each other and unified to certain degree.  This unity had to be constantly negotiated and required a lot of compromise, but we know that for the most part our ancestors were successful in maintaining the close ties within the Myaamia family and their extended ties to the related families who lived all around them.

The rivers and trails that crisscrossed Myaamionki were the pathways by which communities were connected to each other.  Some of these connections were peaceful, filled with exchange, good words, and negotiated agreements for how to share the resources of our homelands.  Other connections were violent and were used to achieve revenge, vent grief, and to steal power from an enemy community through capturing their people.

These connections combined with a shared language, a common place, and a similar historical experience created a sense of family unity among Myaamia villages.  This close-knit Myaamia family was unique and separate from other groups, but it was also loose and flexible.  No village could be forced to do anything.  The family stayed together because they worked diligently to create compromise within the group.  This Myaamia family is what Europeans encountered and gave the foreign label: tribe.

Today, Myaamionki has grown to include our place in Kansas and the sovereign center of our Nation in Oklahoma.  Our population lives just about everywhere in the United States and even beyond, and as a result the trails that link us together have stretched and expanded far beyond Myaamionki.  Some of these trails are highways and interstates, while others pass through the sky by airplanes or by along the rails by train.  Some of these linkages are virtual, as a lot of our communication occurs on aacimwaapiikwi (the internet).  Much has changed for us as a people, but these paths still link us to Myaamionki and to each other.  These connections are used, just as our ancestors used the trails of their time, to maintain our big Myaamia family.

If you would like to comment on this story, ask historical questions, or request a future post on a different topic, then please enter a comment using the comments feature on this blog.  This is a place for our community to gather together to read, learn, and discuss our history.  Our history belongs to all of us and I hope we can use this blog as one place to further our knowledge and or strengthen connections to our shared past.  You can also email me at ironstgm@muohio.edu .

Šaaye,

George

Myaamia clothing – like the clothing of all cultural groups – has changed a lot over time.  These changes have been affected by the availability of resources, shifts in technology, and radical shifts in our historical and cultural circumstances.

In the post contact period, Myaamia people began to wear items made from various trade cloths: wool, linen, silk, and cotton.  Some of the clothes made from trade cloth were reserved for special events like treaty negotiations, funerals, and community dances.  Other items, like cloth shirts, were worn more frequently.[1] These newer materials were used in combination with hides, which they continued to wear for leggings and moccasins.  Myaamia people also perfected a unique form of ribbonwork that created complicated geometric patterns through the layering and cutting of silk ribbons.  These ribbonworked strips were appliquéd onto moccasins, leggings, woolen wrap blankets, wrap skirts, and bags.  You can see a few examples of the Myaamia style of ribbonwork by searching “ribbon” at the Myaamia Exhibit home page.

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mahkisina - silk ribbon, wool, and beads on hide. From the early 1800s collected in Indiana. This pair of moccasins is currently held by the Cranbrook Institute of Science.

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If you are interested in seeing more images of clothing from the early 1800s, see the book: “Indians and a Changing Frontier the Art of George Winter” (see endnotes).  You can also find many of Winter’s paintings online here and here.  You can see other examples of the clothing in paintings by another artist – James Otto Lewis – by searching “Miami chief” on the Indiana Historical Society’s images database.

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Painting of Palaanswa (Francis Godfroy) by George Winter completed in the 1840s from earlier sketches. Note the broad bands of color running down his legs. These were very likely ribbonworked strips of complex diamonds patterns. In all of his paintings Winter tended to gloss over the geometric ribbonwork of Myaamia people.

Ribbonwork close up on a wool legging. This might have been the kind of pattern found on Myaamia leggins during the period of time George Winter painted Myaamia people.

Ribbonwork close up - the free ends of ribbon at the bottom of the legging give the viewer a sense of how many layers of ribbons are used to create these complicated diamond patterns.

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By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Myaamia people’s daily clothing did not differ much from the settlers who surrounded them.  For an example of this, see the images of our leaders who visited Washington D.C. in the late 1800s by searching “Miami Indian” on the Smithsonian’s Collections Search Center.  However, for special occasions like weddings, funerals, feasts, and public performances, Myaamia people continued to wear the combination of wool, cotton, and hide decorated with ribbonwork that was developed in the trade era.

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J.B. Roubideaux (right) and David Geboe (left) were photographed while visiting Washington D.C. in the late 1800s. In this photo, their cloting was probably representative of their "Sunday best," and it would have looked similar to other 19th century visitors to the capital.

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Today, the daily clothing of most Myaamia people does not differ all that much from our neighbors.  But on special occasions like social dances, political gatherings, weddings, funerals, parades, and other community gatherings many Myaamia people still wear a combination of wool, cotton, and hide decorated with beadwork and or ribbonwork.

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These full sets of Women's and Men's Regalia by Larry Daylight represent the style that evolved during the fur trade and continues to be utilitzed by Myaamia people.

Lacrosse game at the 2009 Eewansaapita Program - today the t-shirt is just as common among the Myaamia as it is among most North Americans.

Across the Midwest and the West the word Miami is still found on rivers, towns, counties, schools, and parks.  This phenomenon is not surprising as most of these places fall within Myaamionki: the places that the Myaamia have called and continue to call home (Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio).  However, we did not give our name directly to these places.  The Miami name was placed there by outsiders, either other indigenous groups or Europeans, who associated these places with our people.  Place names in our heritage language almost always reflect the ecological importance of a particular place or the story of an event that happened there in the past.  For example, the Great Miami River in western Ohio likely got its current name from the indigenous peoples of eastern Ohio – Shawnee, Delaware, and Haudenosaunee – who used that river as a means to travel to our villages to the north.  The British and later the Americans learned the name of this river from those groups.  Our people call that river the Ahsenisiipi (Rocky River) based on an old story of the river and its rocky bottom during the dry summer months.

The lone exception to this tradition of not naming places after ourselves is the name of the town of Miami, Oklahoma.  This name reportedly came from the Myaamia leader Thomas F. Richardville who had an agreement with the Ottawa chief that the Miami Tribe would name the town and the Ottawa Tribe the county.  That story explains why the town of Miami sits within Ottawa County in northeastern Oklahoma.

Note: Miami, Florida does not come from the word Myaamia. The word for that city comes from one of the languages indigenous to the region and is a reference to the geography/hydrology of the area.

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