Peoria people
Template:Short description Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox ethnic group The Peoria (Miami–Illinois: Peewaalia) are a Native American people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma headquartered in Miami, Oklahoma.<ref name="sphb">Template:Cite web</ref>
The Peoria people are the remnants of the nations that constituted the Illinois Confederation. The Peoria Tribe was located east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio River.<ref name=sphb/> In the colonial period, they traded with French colonists in that territory.
After 1763, when the British took over those lands following victory in the Seven Years' War, the Peoria were moved west across the Mississippi.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1867 their descendants moved to Indian Territory with remnants of related tribes and were assigned land in present-day Ottawa County, Oklahoma. The land which they were assigned belonged to the Quapaw, who were made to cede this land for the Peoria and Miami.
Language and name
The Peoria speak a dialect of the Miami–Illinois language, a Central Algonquian language in which these two dialects are mutually intelligible.
The name Peoria, also Peouaroua, derives from their autonym, or name for themselves in the Illinois language, peewaareewa (modern pronunciation peewaalia). Originally it meant, "Comes carrying a pack on his back."<ref>Peoria Indian Tribal History. Access Genealogy: Indian Tribal Records. 2009 (retrieved 8 Feb 2009)</ref> No native speakers of the Peoria language survive. Revitalization efforts for the Peoria Language were initiated in August 2022 by a 10-week online course offered by the tribe.<ref>[1]. ‘’Peoria Language Course.’’ 2023 (retrieved 2 Jan 2023)</ref><ref>Anderton, Alice. "Status of Indian Languages in Oklahoma", Intertribal Wordpath Society. 2009 (retrieved 8 February 2009).</ref> Along with the Miami language, a smaller number of historic citizens of the Peoria tribe of Oklahoma once spoke related Algonquian languages of Cahokia, Moingwea, and Tamaroa.
Government
The Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma is headquartered in Miami, Oklahoma.<ref name=sphb/> Their tribal jurisdictional area is in Ottawa County, in the northeast corner of the state. Of the 3,713 enrolled tribal citizens, some 777 live within the state of Oklahoma.
Template:As of, the current administration is:<ref name=ou>Template:Cite web</ref>
- Chief: Rosanna Dobbs
- Second Chief: Paul J. Attocknie Jr.
- Treasurer: Jason Dollarhide
- Secretary: Isabella Clifford
- First Councilman: Nick Hargrove
- Second Councilman: Kara D. North
- Third Councilman: Scott Myers
The Peoria issue their own tribal vehicle tags and operate their own housing authority.<ref name=oia/>
Economic development
The tribe owns one casino and the Peoria Ridge Golf Course. The estimated annual economic impact of the tribe in the area is $60 million.<ref name="oia"/> Tribal businesses, the Peoria Gaming Center, Buffalo Run Casino and Hotel, and Joe's Outback are all located in Miami, Oklahoma, their tribal lands.<ref>Oklahoma Indian Casinos: Casinos by Tribes. 500 Nations. 2009 (retrieved 8 Feb 2009)</ref>
History
The Peoria are Algonquian-speaking people. Their ancestors traditionally lived in what are now the state jurisdictions of Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri.<ref name="ptio">History. Template:Webarchive Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. 2007 (retrieved 8 Feb 2009)</ref> The Peoria are related to, and partially descended from, the Cahokia people, not to be confused with Cahokia Mounds.<ref name="ohs">Vaugh-Roberson, Glen. Peoria. Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture. 2009 (retrieved 8 Feb 2009)</ref>
The Peoria were one of the many Illinois tribes encountered by early French explorers, Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet. French Jesuit missionaries converted tribal citizens to Roman Catholicism.<ref name="ohs"/> Father Jacques Gravier, superior of the Illinois mission, compiled the most extensive bilingual dictionary of Kaskaskia Illinois and corresponding French terms, nearly 600 pages and 20,000 entries.<ref>"Review" of Carl Masthay, Kaskaskia Illinois-to-French Dictionary, Saint Louis: Carl Masthay, 2002, International Journal of Lexicography, 17(3):325–327, accessed 1 Mar 2010</ref>
After 1763 France ceded its Illinois Country and other territories east of the Mississippi River to the British, who had defeated them in the Seven Years' War. Like many of the French colonists in villages in this area, the Peoria migrated southwest into Missouri Territory.<ref name="ohs"/> For instance, Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis were founded in that era by French colonists from east of the river who did not want to live under British Protestant rule.
In 1818, after the United States (US) had taken over former British territory east of the Mississippi following their gaining independence, they pressed the Peoria to sign the Treaty of Edwardsville, which provided for the cession of Peoria lands in Illinois to the US.<ref>Illinois Indian History Timeline, Illinois State Museum</ref> The US pressed for Indian Removal from areas desired by European-American settlers, who kept pushing west, and President Andrew Jackson signed the act of that name in 1830. By the 1832 Treaty of Lewisville, the Peoria ceded Missouri lands in exchange for land in Kansas near the Osage River, which was then part of Indian Territory.<ref name="ohs"/>
The tribe suffered from the introduction of European and African infectious diseases and intertribal wars in new areas of resource competition. In 1849, remnant members of the Kaskaskia, Peoria, Piankeshaw, and Wea tribes formed a confederacy under the Peoria name.<ref name=sphb/> The confederation included the last members and descendants of the Cahokia, Moingwena, Michigamea and Tamaroa tribes, who had assimilated with the Peoria many year before. The Pepikokia also joined, having merged with the Wea and Piankashaw in the later part of the 18th century.<ref name="Rootsweb">Simpson, Linda. "The Tribes of the Illinois Confederacy." May 6, 2006. Accessed November 27, 2016.</ref>
In 1851, an Indian agent reported that the Peoria and the Kaskaskia, along with their allies, had intermarried among themselves and among white people to such an extent that they had practically lost their tribal identities. An 1854 treaty recognized this as a factual union and classified these groups as the Confederated Peoria. The treaty also provided for opening the Peoria-Kaskaskia and the Wea-Piankashaw reserves in Kansas to settlement by non-Indians.<ref name="Rootsweb"/>
After the Civil War, most of the confederated tribe signed the 1867 Omnibus Treaty.<ref name="ptio"/> By this means, the US federally government purchased land from the Quapaw tribe and relocated the majority of the Confederated Peoria tribe onto a Template:Convert reservation in Indian Territory, part of present-day Ottawa County, Oklahoma.<ref name="ohs"/><ref name="Rootsweb"/>Template:Efn Congress enacted a law to unite the Miami tribe, then also in Kansas, and assign them to lands with the Confederated Peoria.
In 1893, under the Dawes Act, the US broke up communal lands in Indian Territory to speed assimilation and make more land available for sale to non-Indians. Allotments were made to enrolled heads of households over the next few years, to extinguish Indian claims and enable the territories to be admitted as a state. In 1907, after admission of Oklahoma, any "surplus" land as determined by the US in former Confederated Peoria territory was transferred to Ottawa County, which could sell it.<ref name="Rootsweb"/>
Under the Dawes Act and Curtis Act of 1898, the US government created rolls of tribal citizens to make individual allotments of land to heads of families. They believed that encouraging subsistence agriculture was the way to forcibly assimilate the tribal citizens into European-American practices. It also enabled them to break up the communal culture and make land available for sale to whites. At the same time, they forced tribal governments to be dismantled before Oklahoma was admitted as a state. The Peoria lost much of their land in these transactions and suffered from the pressure to give up their culture. For decades, the Bureau of Indian Affairs appointed tribal chiefs, who previously had been selected by hereditary roles.
The federal government changed its approach during the President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, after realizing the adverse effects of those actions. In 1934 it passed a law to encourage federally recognized tribes (generally those who had been on reservations) to reorganize their governments, encouraging a constitutional, representative model similar to that of the US and states. Similarly, the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act was passed in 1939. Under that, the Confederated Peoria reorganized and re-established its historical form of council government.<ref name="ptio"/>
During the 1950s, the US government changed policies again, promoting Indian termination to end its special relationship with tribes that it believed were ready to be independent. It terminated the Peoria tribal government, which lost federal recognition in 1959. Tribal citizens objected and began the process to regain federal recognition, because it provided important education and welfare benefits. They regained federal recognition in 1978.<ref name="ohs"/> The Miami tribe was never 'terminated'.<ref name="Rootsweb"/>
Descendants of the Piankeshaw, Kaskaskia, and Wea, who were all part of the Illinois Confederacy, are also enrolled in the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma.<ref name=sphb/><ref>United States Code 2006, Volume 15. §1224, page 986</ref>
Namesakes
- The city of Peoria, Illinois, and the surrounding Peoria County are named after the tribe that traditionally lived in that area.
- The Peoria War occurred in their historic territory but is named for the town, as the tribe had migrated to Missouri before this conflict occurred.
- Paola, Kansas, and Peoria, Oklahoma, are named directly for the tribe.
- Many other places named Peoria and some U.S. Navy ships were named after the town in Illinois.
Notable Peoria people
- Charles Edwin Dagenett (1873–1941), founder and leader of the Society of American Indians
- Ruthe Blalock Jones (b. 1939), Shawnee/Peoria artist and educator
- Moscelyne Larkin (1925–2012), Peoria/Shawnee ballerina
See also
- Sagamite (native food)
Notes
References
External links
- Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, official website
- Tribes of the Illinois/Missouri Region at First Contact (1673)
- "The Tribes of The Illinois Confederacy", Rootsweb
- Peoria Historical Society, Google Cultural Institute
- The History of Chief Baptiste Peoria
- Template:CathEncy
- Template:Cite NIE
- Inoca Ethnohistory Project: Eye Witness Descriptions of the Contact Generation, 1667–1700, restricted access