Dictionary:

Miami¹

  (mī-ăm'ē, -ăm'ə)

1. 1. A Native American people originally of the Green Bay area of Wisconsin, with various groups later inhabiting parts of southern Michigan and northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Present-day populations are in northern Indiana and northeast Oklahoma.
   2. A member of this people.
2. The variety of Illinois spoken by the Miami.

An Algonquian-speaking Indian tribe located in what is now the states of Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio. The Miami joined Pontiac's Rebellion against the British in 1763-65 and together with the Shawnee opposed the westward expansion of American settlers into the Ohio Valley in the 1790s. After several victories over ill-led U.S. troops, the Miami were decisively defeated by Gen. Anthony Wayne at the battle of Fallen Timbers (1794), and subsequently signed the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 ending the conflict in the Old Northwest.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

For more information on Miami, visit Britannica.com.

In the 1670s, the Miamis first encountered the French in Wisconsin, where the tribe had fled to avoid the Iroquois, but by the 1740s they had returned to their homeland in the Maumee and Wabash valleys of Indiana. There they divided into four separate bands. The Miamis proper occupied the upper Maumee Valley, including the portage between the Wabash and Maumee rivers. The Eel Rivers maintained villages on the Wabash tributary, while the Ouiatenons or "Weas" dominated the central Wabash valley from towns near the mouth of the Tippecanoe. The Piankashaws established villages along the lower Wabash, near modern Vincennes.

In the colonial period, the Miamis were allied with the French, but between 1748 and 1752, dissident Miamis led by La Demoiselle (or Memeskia) established a pro-British trading village on Ohio's Miami River until French allied Indians forced them back to the Wabash. The Miamis supported the French during the Seven Years' War but were divided between the Americans and British during the American Revolution. During the 1790s, the Miami chief Little Turtle led the initial Indian resistance to American settlement north of the Ohio but made peace with the Americans following the Treaty of Greenville (1795).

Successful traders, the Miamis intermarried with the Creole French and adopted much of their culture. They were removed from Indiana to Kansas in the 1840s. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma resided near tribal offices at Miami, Oklahoma, while the Indiana Miamis, although not "recognized" by the federal government, maintained tribal offices at Peru, Indiana.

Bibliography

Anson, Bert. The Miami Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970.

Kohn, Rita, and W. Lynwood Montell, eds. Always a People: Oral Histories of Contemporary Woodland Nations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Rafert, Stewart. The Miami Indians of Indiana: A Persistent People, 1654–1994. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1996.

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