Brief Introduction:  What we know about the Miami and Illinois is that they were probably in the lower Great Lakes area of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and maybe northern Ohio before 1650. The Iroquois drove them west and north into Wisconsin where the first French explorers found them.  The Shawnee scattered in all directions, some groups went south to Georgia, Florida and Alabama, while others followed the Miami into Illinois country. The Lenape were forced away from Manhattan Island and out of New Jersey into Pennsylvania.  After the French began to intervene on behalf of these people, they began to return to the Ohio and Wabash valleys.  They were followed by Kickapoo, Piankeshaw, Wea, Potawatomi, and Wyandot or Wendat (Huron). 


Social Organization - See: “Natives Along the Wabash” for Details of Clans, Groups, Biographies, Houses


Village Chiefs - The villages were run by headmen and women who were in charge of the day to day activities, politics, diplomacy with other groups, and generally keeping things going peacefully.


War Chiefs  - If there was a need felt to go to war against another Nation, then councils would be held and a War Captain or Chief would be elected based on his ability to be able to lead and strategize tactical moves. The village chief was not involved in warfare. He may advise in council but would not be on the war trail with the others.


Female Chiefs- Females who were blood related to the peace chief as a sister or mother had specific responsibilities to ensure the rules were enforced.  If she had a son, she was responsible for seeing to it that  he was prepared for his duties as a leader of his clan village.  She may speak for him in council and advise the elders of the fact that a new leader was soon to be in office.  She was highly respected and listened to most of the time.


Female War Chiefs - Females who were related to the war captains were often responsible for ensuring a feast was prepared and offered to the men who were leaving or returning. She would be in charge of getting others to help her and assign duties to them. There were elder women who were given the war bundles upon the return of the men and were guardians of those and sang songs of victory thanking the Great Spirit for the safe return of the warriors to the village.

Symbols of the Woodlands

(Due to public and school venues, I feel those places are inappropriate to speak in any detail regarding the spiritual beliefs, religious values, and suggested meanings of symbols used in Great Lakes and Woodland iconography - so here I will delve a little deeper into some of those subjects briefly)


Thunderbirds and Underwater Panthers - These were used from pre-contact times and seen on rock walls in Wisconsin as well as on twined bags, in quillwork, and symbolically with the use of hourglass-shaped hairbows used by women, and lozenges in similar form utilized on knife cases, on moccasin flaps, and occasionally in carvings on pipes (the few that can be linked directly to historical First Nations) Stories about these symbols were told to early French explorer, Nicholas Perrot.  (I have these accounts)


The Underwater panther was a creature that frequently had the body of a large cat with a long swirling tail, and the head or antlers of a deer or elk. Michibis (Ojibwa Name) was supposed to live deep in pools of water where the water seems to boil up in lakes and rivers.  The moving of his tail caused this motion. The First Nation Woodland People often gave offerings of food to get help from Michibis when they went fishing or when they needed protection from the dangers of crossing swift moving rivers or deep lakes.  When the Miami saw a shooting star, they would say it was Leninnpinga going from one body of water to another. The reason the Underwater Panther stayed in deep water was, in Miami beliefs, to avoid setting the world on fire and avoid the Thunderbirds who lived Above.


Thunderbirds were believed to emit lighting from the flashing of their eyes. Tcingwia (Miami for Thunderbird)  made thunder overhead by flapping his large wings. The Miami would say something had been struck by Thunder, not lightning. The thunderbirds controlled the rains, winds, lightning, and storms that came from overhead and the Underwater Panther controlled the earth, grass, soils, and especially the water.


Myamiak (The People) lived on a plane in between the two powerful spirit beings and the two opposing forces kept everything in a kind of balance for the people on earth.  The hairbow, the women wore tied to their hair symbolized the body of the thunderbird and they wore it where they did because the Thunderbird resides in the world above.  On bags that are embellished with quillwork, sometimes lozenges will be used to indicate the water churning or being choppy caused by the action of the tail of the Underwater Panther while hourglass shaped symbols above those lines or Thunderbirds themselves indicated the balance of power shown on the bag and thus perhaps transmitted to the wearer of the bag.

Above: Thunderbird on a Miami Style Bag

Below: Underwater Panthers on an Ottawa Bag

Both are quilled on brain tanned leather

Foods - Gardens


The Miami were famous for their white corn. Fields of corn, hundreds of acres in size along the Maumee and Wabash were noted by first explorers, traders, and then soldiers.  Corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, wild potatoes, wild onions, wild carrots, acorns, walnuts, wild strawberries,  and hundreds of wild herbs, seeds, and roots were utilized by the people who lived during the 17th,, 18th, and into the 19th centuries.


Maple sugar provided a source of nutrition and flavor for meats, berries, breads, and jut about every kind of food. When sugar was produced, it was first collected in sugar buckets made of birch bark, elm bark or poplar bark.  Then the liquid was poured into clay pots or wooden troughs. If wooden troughs were used, then special smooth hot rocks were put in the liquid to help evaporate the water.  The remains could be used as liquid, which was probably rare or stored as granulated or caked sugar.  Children would take the hot sticky sugar and put it on the end of a stick and dip it into the snow for a tasty treat.  (Worlds’ first maple flavored snow cone)


Hunting was important to the Woodland Indians.  The Shawnee and others burned large forests down to attract the growth of tall grasses (Kain Tuc kee) blue grass lands - a name the Iroquois called Kentucky after Shawnee had fostered the growing of these grasses to attract large game animals. 

The Miami, Illinois and related groups somewhat further west in Indiana and Ohio fostered a similar pattern on  a smaller scale.  They were interested in attracting bison to their hunting grounds, which they did.  The bison were  enticed to come as far east as the Upper Ohio Valley in Western Pennsylvania. They were noted by early traders and those that journeyed through that country.


Fishing and food from the rivers and lakes provided mussels, freshwater fish, turtles, frogs, and birds that frequented those areas.


Drying squash and pumpkins could be seen in the fall in nearly every village.

Corn could be pounded into fine grain and fixed in a variety of ways

Sunflower seeds were also pounded into flour and cooked as if it were any other flour using grease, fruits, ground nuts and herbs to serve a huge array of meals.


Winter was not necessarily the starving time. If harvests were good, food could be stored all winter in underground caches. These were holes dug sometimes two-six feet deep and lined with bullrush, cattail, cedar bark or other types of mats or bark. The grain itself could be stored inside of twined bags or bark baskets with lids.  Tests by archaeologists have shown that this refrigeration system worked quite well, perhaps losing only 10-20% due to mold and moisture.  There were also countless roots that could be obtained in the winter, and in then of course, maple sugar.


When the soldiers came and started burning villages in the 18th century in Ohio and Indiana, the food stores were burned along with the houses and the Miami, Shawnee, their relatives, and sometimes white captives, were not only homeless in the worst possible season, but slowing starved to death.


Foods we have today because of Native Americans:

Corn on the Cob, Corn Flour, Corn Flakes, Corn meal, Corn bread, Tacos, Corn Chips, Pop Corn, Corn Syrup, Cheese Puffs, Corn Puffs, Corn Chowder, Corn soup, Creamed Corn, Mush, corn nuts. Can you think of more?


Tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato soup, tomato sauce, Italian and pizza sauces, Ketchup and more. Can you think of more?

Seasonings to make chili, Mexican foods, Italian foods spicy and tasty came from North, Central and South American Indians

Chocolate, chocolate ice cream, cookies, cake, icing, candy bars, cocoa. Can you think of more?


Beans, lima, string, kidney, and more.

Wild Rice

Potatoes - chips, french fries, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, potato salad, potato skins,

Squash, Egg Plant, pumpkins, sunflower seeds, nuts, peanut butter, pecans, walnuts, maple syrup, strawberries, black berries, blue berries, cranberries, crab apples


Many snacks, cereals, spices, and prepared foods such as most soda pops contain ingredients that originated with the Native Americans.