Kickapoo

1. 1. A Native American people formerly inhabiting southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois, with small present-day populations in Kansas, Oklahoma, and northern Mexico.
   2. A member of this people.
2. The Algonquian language of the Kickapoo.

For more information on Kickapoo, visit Britannica.com.

The exact origins of the Kickapoo re-main uncertain, though tribal tradition tells of their separating from the Shawnee after a dispute over a bear's foot. Equally unknown is the meaning of "kiikaapoa," the name Kickapoo call themselves. The Kickapoo have maintained a marked independence from outside influences. To this day, they remain an exceptionally conservative people, as evidenced by their reluctance to marry outside the tribe. In addition to the Shawnee, the Kickapoo are strongly related to the Miami, Sauk, Fox, and especially the Mascouten.

The Kickapoo reckoned kinship patrilineally, and were organized into clans bearing the names of animals. They also had a Berry clan and a Tree clan, though clans named after plants were unusual in most tribes. Leaders from the clans formed a council, which governed along with a hereditary chief, usually from the Eagle clan. Women sometimes acted as chiefs, although in a religious, not political, role. By the 1950s, traditional organization became largely ceremonial, and matrilineal chiefs were acceptable. Kickapoo religion centers on relations with several important deities, including Creator, the four winds, the sky, moon, sun, stars, and earth.

Kickapoo women provided much of the tribe's food through agriculture and gathering. Men hunted and fished. Hunting and gathering are still important to a band of Kickapoo who settled in Mexico. Women also constructed the rectangular, bark-over-pole lodges in Kickapoo villages, and made clothing.

The Kickapoo migrated frequently both before and after encountering Europeans. They first met the French in the mid-seventeenth century when they lived in southern Wisconsin, and initially resisted any attempted control by France. Kickapoo hostility against the French increased in the 1680s, as they blamed French influence for Iroquois and Siouan invasions. The Kickapoo also fought France's Illinois allies, though their longest standing enemies were the Chickasaw and the Osage.

Kickapoo-French relations improved considerably in 1729, and they joined France for a time in the war against the Fox. The Kickapoo remained allied to France, and also the Spanish, even after France's surrender to England in 1763. They joined Pontiac's war against the English in 1763–1764. In the late 1760s they, along with the Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Chippewa, drove the Illinois tribes from the Illinois River, and the Kickapoo moved into central Illinois. During the American Revolution (1775–1783) the Kickapoo were largely neutral or even pro-American, until American land hunger led them to side with Britain. They joined the Miami's confederacy against the Americans in the 1790s, and for years after the Treaty of Greenville (1795) refused to even pick up their annuities from the United States.

Never a huge tribe, the Kickapoo combined with the Mascouten (whom they gradually absorbed) to number only about 2,250 people in 1700, and 1,500 by 1750. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Kickapoo divided into two principal bands, about equal in size. The Prairie Kickapoo lived in central Illinois, while the Vermilion Kickapoo inhabited the western fringes of the Wabash River Basin, between modern Danville, Illinois, and Lafayette, Indiana. After 1800, small groups also migrated west of the Mississippi River. The Vermilion Kickapoo became fierce adherents to Tenskwatawa (the Shawnee Prophet) and Tecumseh. The Prairie Kickapoo joined the Vermilion Band against the United States during the War of 1812 (1812–1815). Even after 1815, some Kickapoo resisted further American settlement. By 1819, however, both bands ceded their lands in Illinois and Indiana, and were ordered west in 1832. The last holdouts went west in 1834. By the twentieth century, the Kickapoo had three main bands in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Mexico, numbering 185,247, and approximately 400, respectively.

Bibliography

Gibson, A. M. The Kickapoo: Lords of the Middle Border. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.

Trigger, Bruce G., ed. Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15 Northeast. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978.

This article is about the Native American people. For other uses, see Kickapoo (disambiguation).

Kickapoo

Total population
5,000
Regions with significant populations
USA  (Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona)  Mexico  (Coahuila)
Languages
Spanish, English, Kickapoo
Religion
Native American Church, Christianity (many Catholic, some Protestant) and tribal religious practices;
Related ethnic groups
other Algonquian peoples

The Kickapoos (Kickapoo: Kiikaapoa or Kiikaapoi) are one of the Algonquian-speaking Native American tribes. According to the Anishinaabeg, the name "Kickapoo" (Giiwigaabaw in the Anishinaabe language and its Kickapoo cognate Kiwikapawa) means "Stands Here and there". It referred to the tribe's migratory patterns. The name can also mean "wanderer". This interpretation is contested and generally believed to be a folk etymology.

There are three recognized Kickapoo tribes remaining in the United States: Kickapoo Tribe of Indians of the Kickapoo Reservation in Kansas, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas. Another band is located in the Mexican state of Coahuila. There is also a large group in Arizona. The former two groups have been politically associated with the Texas band. Others live in small groups throughout the western United States. Around 3,000 people claim to be tribal members.

Contents 1 History 2 Language 3 Kickapoo tribes and communities 3.1 Kickapoo Indian Reservation of Kansas 3.2 Kickapoo Indian Reservation of Texas 3.3 Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma 4 References 5 External links

History

The earliest European contact with the Kickapoo tribe occurred during the La Salle Expeditions into the Illinois Country in the late 17th century, as the French set up remote fur trading posts throughout the region, including on Wabash River. The Kickapoo at that time inhabited a large territory along the Wabash in the area of modern Terre Haute, Indiana. They were confederated with the larger Wabash Confederacy, that included the Piankeshaw to their south, the Wea to their north, and the powerful Miami Tribe, to their east.

As white settlers moved into the region beginning in the early 19th century, the Kickapoo participated in several treaties, including the Treaty of Vincennes, the Treaty of Grouseland, and the Treaty of Fort Wayne. They sold most of their lands to the United States and moved north to settle among the Wea. Rising tensions between the regional tribes and the United States led to Tecumseh's War in 1811. The Kickapoo were one of Tecumseh's closest allies. Many Kickapoo warriors participated in the Battle of Tippecanoe and the subsequent War of 1812.

The close of the war led to a change of Indian policy in the Indiana Territory, and later the state of Indiana. American leaders began to advocate the removal of the tribes to land west of the Mississippi River. The Kickapoo were among the first tribes to leave Indiana. They accepted land in Kansas and an annual subsidy in exchange for leaving the state.

Language

Kickapoo people building a Winter House in the town of Nacimiento Coahuila, México, 2008

Kickapoo speak an Algonquian language closely related to that of the Sauk and Fox.

Kickapoo tribes and communities

There are three federally recognized Kickapoo communities in the United States: one in Kansas, one in Texas, and the third in Oklahoma.

Kickapoo Indian Reservation of Kansas

The Kickapoo Indian Reservation is located in the northeastern part of the state in parts of three counties, Jackson, Brown, and Atchison. It has a land area of 612.203 square kilometres (236.373 sq mi) and a resident population of 4,419 as of the 2000 census. The largest community on the reservation is the city of Horton. The other communities are:

• Muscotah
• Netawaka (most of the city, with all of the population)
• Powhattan
• Whiting
• Willis

Kickapoo Indian Reservation of Texas

The Kickapoo Indian Reservation of Texas is located on the Rio Grande River on the U.S.-Mexico border in western Maverick County, just south of the city of Eagle Pass, as part of the community of Rosita South. It has a land area of 0.4799 square kilometres (118.6 acres) and a 2000 census population of 420 persons. The Texas Indian Commission officially recognized the tribe in 1977.^[1]

There are undetermined numbers of other Kickapoo in Maverick County, Texas, who constitute the "South Texas Subgroup of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma". That band owns 917.79 acres (3.7142 km²) of non-reservation land in Maverick County, primarily to the north of Eagle Pass. It has an office in that city.^[2]

Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma

A Kickapoo wickiup, Sac and Fox Agency, Oklahoma, ca. 1880.

After being expelled from the Republic of Texas, many Kickapoo moved south to Mexico, but the population of two villages settled in Indian Territory. One village settled within the Chickasaw Nation and the other within the Muscogee Creek Nation. These Kickapoo were granted their own reservation in 1883. The reservation was short-lived, because in 1893 their tribal lands were broken up by the Dawes Act. The tribe's government was dismantled by the Curtis Act of 1898, which encouraged assimilation.

In 1936, the tribe organized as the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act.^[3]

Today the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma is headquartered in McLoud, Oklahoma. Their tribal jurisdictional area is in Oklahoma, Pottawatomie, and Lincoln Counties. They have 2,719 enrolled tribal members.^[4]

References

1. ^ Miller, Tom. On the Border: Portraits of America’s Southwestern Frontier, pp. 67.
2. ^ Maverick County Appraisal District property tax appraisals, 2007
3. ^ Kuhlman, Annette Kickapoo. Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture., Oklahoma Historical Society, 2009 (accessed 21 February 2009)
4. ^ Oklahoma Indian Affairs. Oklahoma Indian Nations Pocket Pictorial Directory. 2008:21

External links

• First nations - Kickapoo from Lee Sultzman
• The Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas
• Kickapoo Reservation, Kansas and Kickapoo Reservation, Texas United States Census Bureau
•  "Kickapoo Indians". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Kickapoo_Indians. 
• Kickapoo State Park
• Kickapoo, The Novel

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