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Language Lineage

Shawnee

A single language, named from the Algonquian word for 'southerner', whose speakers were scattered across eastern North America before regrouping in Ohio and then being removed west; it is usually placed closest to Meskwaki-Sauk-Kickapoo.

Recorded since the 18th century – presentFormerly the Ohio valley, with 18th-century settlements from South Carolina to Illinois; today central and northeastern Oklahoma
On this page
  1. A People on the Move
  2. The Shawnee Sun and After
  3. Where it's spoken
  4. Turning points

01

A People on the Move

Shawnee takes its name from an Algonquian word meaning 'southerner'. In the 17th century the Shawnee seem to have lived in the middle Ohio valley, though their location before European records is debated. The wars of the later 17th century, in which the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy fought its neighbours for control of the fur trade, scattered them widely. By about 1700 there were Shawnee towns on the Savannah River in South Carolina, in Pennsylvania, on the Cumberland River, among the Creeks in Alabama and in Illinois. Many regrouped in the Ohio country by the 1750s.

Ohio was then fought over by Britain, France and the young United States. Early in the 19th century the Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, 'the Prophet', led a movement that sought to unite the peoples of the Ohio valley and the Great Lakes against American expansion; it collapsed with Tecumseh's death in 1813. Over the following decades the Shawnee were removed, some to Missouri and Texas, most to Kansas and finally to Indian Territory. Three federally recognised tribes are now based in Oklahoma: the Absentee Shawnee, the Eastern Shawnee and the Shawnee Tribe.

The language is Algonquian throughout, with a large vocabulary and many grammatical features in common with Meskwaki-Sauk-Kickapoo, the Shawnee's neighbours and allies at several points in their history. No shared subgroup of the two has been demonstrated.

02

The Shawnee Sun and After

In 1834 the Baptist missionary Jotham Meeker set up the first printing press west of the Missouri at the Shawnee Baptist Mission in what is now Johnson County, Kansas. In February 1835 he printed the first issue of Siwinowe Kesibwi, the Shawnee Sun, in an alphabet of his own devising. It appeared irregularly until about 1844 in runs of perhaps a hundred copies, and is often described as the first periodical printed entirely in a Native American language. Only one issue, from November 1841, is known to survive. Meeker's alphabet never caught on.

The first modern description came from C. F. Voegelin, who worked with Shawnee speakers in Oklahoma in the 1930s and published on its sounds and verb forms. Among its sounds is θ, the th of English thin, which is unusual among the languages around it.

Today most speakers are Absentee Shawnee in central Oklahoma. Nearly all are older adults, and the tribes run classes and make recordings to pass it on; the Shawnee Tribe has also revived the custom of telling traditional stories in winter.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. United Statesfewer than 100

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. SplitLate 17th – mid-18th centuryContested

    Scattered and regrouped

    Warfare in the Ohio valley scatters the Shawnee to South Carolina, Pennsylvania, the Cumberland valley, Alabama and Illinois. Many reunite in Ohio by the 1750s. Where the Shawnee lived before the wars, and how they relate to earlier archaeological cultures of the Ohio valley, is disputed.

    Sources (2)
    • Callender, Charles. 1978. Shawnee. In Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15: Northeast, ed. Bruce G. Trigger. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
    • Warren, Stephen. 2014. The Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
  2. Writing1835 – 1844

    The Shawnee Sun

    Jotham Meeker prints Siwinowe Kesibwi at the Shawnee Baptist Mission in Kansas, the first periodical published in Kansas and, as usually counted, the first printed entirely in a Native American language. His alphabet was not taken up by the Shawnee at large.

    Figures · Jotham Meeker (1804–1855)

    Sources (1)
  3. Contact1831 – 1870s

    Removal to the west

    The Ohio Shawnee cede their last lands in 1831 and move to Kansas; other bands have already gone to Missouri and Texas. After the Civil War most are moved again to Indian Territory, where the three present-day Shawnee tribes take shape.

    Sources (1)
    • Callender, Charles. 1978. Shawnee. In Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15: Northeast, ed. Bruce G. Trigger. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.