Note 84 — Chapter III

For the early history of the Shawnee see our volume i, p. 23, note 13. In 1793 one portion of this tribe emigrated, together with a band of Delaware, to the west of the Mississippi, where they dwelt on a Spanish grant near Cape Girardeau. In 1825 they relinquished this grant for the Kansas reservation described by Farnham, where they were joined (1832-33) by the remainder of the tribe from Ohio. In 1854 they ceded their lands to the federal government, save a reservation of 200,000 acres, where they established a form of government and made a body of laws. In 1869 about the half of the tribe bought lands of the Cherokee, and became incorporated with the latter tribe. A small band known as Eastern Shawnee are on the Quapaw reservation, while the remainder have been allotted lands in Oklahoma, near the town of Shawnee. Methodists, Baptists, and Friends all established missions for the Shawnee—see our volume xxvii, p. 194, note 72 (De Smet), for the first-named denomination. The Baptist mission, begun in 1831, had a printing press (1834) whereupon Rev. Jotham Meeker printed several books after a phonographic system that he had adapted to their language.—Ed.