The Mingo people are an
Iroquoian
The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking.
As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoian ...
group of
Native Americans, primarily
Seneca
Seneca may refer to:
People and language
* Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname
* Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America
** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people
Places Extrat ...
and
Cayuga, who migrated west from New York to the
Ohio Country in the mid-18th century, and their descendants. Some
Susquehannock survivors also joined them, and assimilated.
Anglo-Americans
Anglo-Americans are people who are English-speaking inhabitants of Anglo-America. It typically refers to the nations and ethnic groups in the Americas that speak English as a native language, making up the majority of people in the world who spe ...
called these migrants ''mingos'', a corruption of , an
Eastern Algonquian
The Eastern Algonquian languages constitute a subgroup of the Algonquian languages. Prior to European contact, Eastern Algonquian consisted of at least 17 languages, whose speakers collectively occupied the Atlantic coast of North America and adj ...
name for Iroquoian-language groups in general. The Mingo have also been called "Ohio Iroquois" and "Ohio Seneca".
Most were forced to move from Ohio to
Indian Territory
The Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States Government for the relocation of Native Americans who held aboriginal title to their land as a sovereign ...
in the early 1830s under the federal
Indian Removal program. At the turn of the 20th century, they lost control of communal lands when property was allocated to individual households in a government
assimilation effort related to the
Dawes Act
The Dawes Act of 1887 (also known as the General Allotment Act or the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887) regulated land rights on tribal territories within the United States. Named after Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, it authorized the Pres ...
and extinguishing Indian claims to prepare for the
admission
Admission may refer to:
Arts and media
* "Admissions" (''CSI: NY''), an episode of ''CSI: NY''
* ''Admissions'' (film), a 2011 short film starring James Cromwell
* ''Admission'' (film), a 2013 comedy film
* ''Admission'', a 2019 album by Florida s ...
of
Oklahoma as a
state
State may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State
* ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States
* ''Our S ...
.
In the 1930s Mingo descendants reorganized as a tribe with self-government. They were
recognized by the federal government in 1937 as the
Seneca–Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma.
History
The etymology of the name Mingo derives from the Delaware (Lenape) word, or ''Minque'', as adapted from their Algonquian language, meaning "stealthy". In the 17th century, the terms Minqua or Minquaa were used interchangeably to refer to the five nations of the Iroquois League and to the Susquehannock, another Iroquoian-speaking people.
The Mingo had a bad reputation and were sometimes called "Blue Mingo" or "Black Mingo" for their misdeeds. The people who became known as Mingo migrated to the
Ohio Country along the river in the mid-eighteenth century, part of a movement of various Native American tribes away from European pressures to a region that had been sparsely populated for decades but controlled as a hunting ground by the Iroquois League of the Five Nations. The "Mingo dialect" that dominated the Ohio valley from the late 17th to early 18th centuries is considered a variant most similar to the
Seneca language.
After the
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the ...
(1754-1763), France was defeated and ceded its lands east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain. Many
Cayuga people
The Cayuga (Cayuga: Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫʼ, "People of the Great Swamp") are one of the five original constituents of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), a confederacy of Native Americans in New York. The Cayuga homeland lies in the Finger Lakes regi ...
of the Five Nations also moved to Ohio, where the British granted them a reservation along the
Sandusky River
The Sandusky River ( wyn, saandusti; sjw, Potakihiipi ) is a tributary to Lake Erie in north-central Ohio in the United States. It is about longU.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Ma ...
. They were joined there by the Algonquian-speaking
Shawnee
The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...
of Ohio and the rest of the Mingo confederacy. Their villages were increasingly an amalgamation of Iroquoian-speaking Seneca,
Wyandot
Wyandot may refer to:
Native American ethnography
* Wyandot people, also known as the Huron
* Wyandot language
Wyandot (sometimes spelled Wandat) is the Iroquoian language traditionally spoken by the people known variously as Wyandot or Wya ...
, and Susquehannock;
Siouan
Siouan or Siouan–Catawban is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east.
Name
Authors who call the enti ...
-language speaking
Tutelo
The Tutelo (also Totero, Totteroy, Tutera; Yesan in Tutelo) were Native American people living above the Fall Line in present-day Virginia and West Virginia. They spoke a Siouan dialect of the Tutelo language thought to be similar to that of thei ...
and
Algonquian-language
Shawnee
The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...
and
Delaware
Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...
migrants.
Although the Iroquois Confederacy had claimed hunting rights and sovereignty over much of the
Ohio River Valley
The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illinoi ...
since the late 17th century, these peoples in Ohio increasingly acted independently. When
Pontiac's Rebellion
Pontiac's War (also known as Pontiac's Conspiracy or Pontiac's Rebellion) was launched in 1763 by a loose confederation of Native Americans dissatisfied with British rule in the Great Lakes region following the French and Indian War (1754–176 ...
broke out in 1763 against the British at the end of the French and Indian War, many Mingo joined with other tribes in an attempt to drive the British out of the Ohio Country. At that time, most of the six Iroquois nations based in New York (who then numbered six, as the Tuscarora had joined them from the South about 1722) were closely allied to the British because of their lucrative fur trading.
Guyasuta (c. 1725–c. 1794), a chief of the Mingo-Seneca, was one of the leaders in Pontiac's War.
Another famous Mingo leader was
Chief Logan
Logan the Orator (c. 1723–1780) was a Cayuga orator and war leader born of one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. After his 1760s move to the Ohio Country, he became affiliated with the Mingo, a tribe formed from Seneca, Cayuga, Le ...
(c. 1723–1780), who had good relations with neighboring white settlers. He was not a
war chief, but a village leader. In 1774, as tensions between whites and Indians were on the rise due to a series of violent conflicts, a band of white outlaws murdered his family. Local chiefs counseled restraint, but acknowledged his right to revenge. He conducted a series of raids against white settlers with a dozen followers, not all of whom were Mingo.
Logan did not participate in the resulting Lord
Dunmore's War
Lord Dunmore's War—or Dunmore's War—was a 1774 conflict between the Colony of Virginia and the Shawnee and Mingo American Indian nations.
The Governor of Virginia during the conflict was John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore—Lord Dunmore. H ...
. He was not likely to have been at the climactic
Battle of Point Pleasant. Rather than take part in the peace conference, he expressed his thoughts about the encroachment by Europeans in "
Logan's Lament." His speech was printed and widely distributed. It is one of the most well-known examples of
Native American oratory.
By 1830, the Mingo were flourishing in western Ohio, where they had improved their farms and established schools and other civic institutions. After the US passed the
Indian Removal Act
The Indian Removal Act was signed into law on May 28, 1830, by United States President Andrew Jackson. The law, as described by Congress, provided "for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for ...
in that same year, the government pressured the Mingo to sell their lands and migrate west of the Mississippi River to
Kansas
Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to th ...
, which they did in 1832. In Kansas, the Mingo joined other Seneca and Cayuga bands, and the tribes shared the Neosho Reservation.
In 1869, after the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
, the US government pressed for Indian removal of these tribes from Kansas to
Indian Territory
The Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States Government for the relocation of Native Americans who held aboriginal title to their land as a sovereign ...
(present-day Oklahoma). The three tribes moved to present-day
Ottawa County, Oklahoma
Ottawa County is a county located in the northeastern corner of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2020 census, the population was 30,285. Its county seat is Miami. The county was named for the Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma.[Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...]
joined the Seneca in Indian Territory. In 1902, several years before Oklahoma Territory was admitted as a state, 372 members of the joint tribe received individual land allotments under a federal program to extinguish communal tribal land holdings so that statehood could take place, and to encourage assimilation to the European-American model. This resulted in considerable loss of their lands in the following decades.
In 1937 after the
Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act was passed, the descendants of these tribes reorganized to re-establish self-government.
They identified as the
Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma and became federally recognized.
Today, the tribe numbers over 5,000 members. They continue to maintain cultural and religious ties to the
Six Nations of the Iroquois, which have been based largely in Ontario, Canada since after the American Revolutionary War. At the time, Great Britain ceded its territory south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi River to the newly independent American states, including most of the lands controlled by the Iroquois in New York and Pennsylvania. Some of the Six Nations also have bands with reservations in New York State, their original homeland. In the US, these governments are recognized as separate tribes.
References
*Cobb, William H., Andrew Price and Hu Maxwell (1921), ''History of the Mingo Indians'', Cumberland, Md.: F.B. Jenvy, printer.
*Hoxie, Frederick E., editor (1996), ''Encyclopedia of North American Indians''. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, pp. 380–381. .
*McConnell, Michael N. (1992), ''A Country Between The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724–1774''. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, .
{{authority control
Algonquian ethnonyms
Iroquois
Native American tribes in Ohio
Native American tribes in Kansas
Native American tribes in Oklahoma
Native American tribes in West Virginia
Native Americans in the American Revolution
Seneca tribe
Susquehannock