The Life of the Shawnee by Megan

                Can you believe that people actually had ceremonies to honor food? Well, the Shawnee did this and much more. The Shawnee lived a life of war, nourishment, family life, and good living conditions. The Shawnee had a life of hunting, fishing, fighting, and much more.

                First, the Shawnee fought with Britain. They fought them in the Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763. During this conflict thousands of men, women, and children were killed when the British sent blankets infected with smallpox into their villages. War clubs were one of the many weapons the Shawnee fought with. There were two kinds of war clubs; there were ball war clubs and root war clubs. They crafted root war clubs from a root close to a sapling tree. They carved knobby roots to make the club sharp. They made ball war clubs using burl from a maple or oak tree. Men attached handles carved from ironwood trees onto the burl. Sometimes they embedded a tooth or an arrowhead in the burl. This made the war club even more deadly.

                Second, the Shawnee ate many of their crops while they were still fresh. However, they did dry some vegetables, meat, fish, and wild plants in the sun and saved them to eat during the winter. Sometimes they took ripe corn, dried it, and then grounded it into meal. Meal could be used to make corn bread or mush.

Shawnee Cornbread

                Third, the Shawnee produced their own food. They hunted, gardened, and fished for it. Only the Shawnee men hunted. They hunted with bows and arrows and flint-tipped spears. They hunted elks, bison, deer, and set snares to catch rabbits, squirrels, beavers, ducks, and geese. The men fished for bass, walleye, catfish, pike, perch, and muskellunge. To catch the fish they used spears and a hook and a line. Shawnee women grew corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers.

                Next, the Shawnee held seasonal ceremonies related to food. One of the ceremonies they had was called the green corn ceremony. The whole village came together for this event. During this ceremony, they took green corn off the cob and made it into soup. The whole village ate the soup, gave thanks, danced and sang. The Shawnee children loved playing games. They played ball games, ran, and swam. Girls often played with dolls made from hides and natural fibers.

Next, every family member helped with daily chores. Some of the chores they had to do were gather wild berries, greens, medicinal plants, hickory nuts, and walnuts. They also gathered some plants to make natural dyes. The women tended the gardens; they used hickory-handled hoes to clear away the weeds. They planted corn, beans, pumpkins and melons in their gardens. Men went fishing in rivers, lakes, and streams.

 Men were the only ones who went hunting. When men went on hunting trips, they sometimes traveled great distances to find bison on the prairie. When they returned home, men built drying racks, and women cut strips of fish or meat and hung them on the rack to dry. Sometimes they placed the rack over a fire to smoke the meat.

Next, there were two chiefs in a Shawnee village, a peace chief and a war chief. The peace chief was responsible for setting up and performing ceremonies. The war chief had responsibility of protecting their village form hostile people. The two chiefs worked together to plan hunting and fishing trips, they also acted as judges when villagers wronged each other.

The Shawnee made their homes from natural materials. Two common types of homes were dome-shaped wigwams and rectangular brick houses. To begin building a wigwam, men first dug a pit twelve inches deep, this pit served as a floor. Next they buried ends of sapling poles in the ground, and then bent the tops of the poles over the pit to form a dome-shaped form. Then men tied the poles together with rope made from plant fibers. Once the frame was built, women covered it with animal hides, bark, or mats woven from cattail reeds, they left a hole open in the roof to allow fire smoke to escape. They also left an opening in the side for a door.

The Shawnee spoke a language in the Algonquian language family and had many different neighbors. The word Shawnee came from an Algonquian word meaning “southerners.” Some of the Shawnee neighbors included the Huron, Iroquois, Delaware, Kickapoo, and Miami tribes.

The Shawnee lived close to where we live today; the Shawnee homelands were located in what is now northeastern United States. They lived east of the Mississippi River and along rivers such as the Cumberland and Ohio. Their territory included parts of present-day Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Their homelands were beautiful. They held forested mountains, hills, valleys, and grasslands. There were colorful wildflowers, flowering trees, and shrubs covering the land. There were also lakes, streams, and ponds filled with fish, muskrat, and beavers and many types of birds. The Shawnee built their villages along rivers. The rivers provided water to drink and food to eat. The rivers also provided protection, so that when hostile people approached.

As you can see, the Shawnee lived a life of war, nourishment, family life, and good living conditions. They also had a life of hunting, fishing, fighting, and much more. They were a very different tribe, because they did things different than other tribes. 

References

Gray-Kanatiiosh, Barbara. “Shawnee.” Edina, Minnesota: ABDO publishing CO. 2004.

Press, Petra. “The Shawnee.” Minneapolis, MN: Compass Point Books. 2002.

“Shawnee.” America the Beautiful.” 2008. Grolier Online. 3 Nov. 2008.http://atb.grolier.com/cgi-bin/article?templatename=topics.html&assetid=atb4361&assettype=t.

Tankersley, Kenneth Barnett. “Shawnee Indians.” World Book Online Reference Center. 2008. 4 Nov. 2008<http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/Article?id=ar505360

Waldman, Carl. “Shawnee.” Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, Thrid Edition. New York: Facts on File, Inc.http://www.fofweb.com activelink2.asp? ItemID=WE43& Pin=ind2430& SingleRecord= True (accessed October 30,2008

Last Updated 12-16-08