Shawnee Indians
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Shawnee Indians. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a powerful tribe of Algonquin stock. Of their early migrations no certain information is at hand. They are believed to have been an offshoot of the Delawares. They appear to have been buffeted by the Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Creeks on the south and by the Five Nations on the north. White settlers came into serious conflict with the Shawnees in the Ohio Valley. "Mad Anthony" Wayne won a victory over them in 1795. Chief Cornstalk was a Shawnee. The Indians encountered by Boone and his companions in the settlement of Kentucky were chiefly Shawnees. Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet, were Shawnees. They organized an extended Indian uprising which was put down by General Harrison at Tippecanoe in 1811. It is believed that at this time the Shawnees numbered not less than 2,000 warriors. Scattered remnants joined the Tuscaroras in New York and the Teton Sioux in North Dakota . A small village is said to have followed a party of trappers west to the Tulare Valley, California. After various vicissitudes, however, the villages of the Shawnees were concentrated in Indian Territory , the great reservoir of broken Indian tribes. Men, women, and children, they now number less than 1,000. See Wayne ; Anthony ; Tippecanoe ; Tecumseh
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a tribe of American Indians of the Algonquin family, formerly settled mainly in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, but driven W. by the Iroquois. They helped the French against the English, gave trouble to the newly-founded United States, and in 1812 some bands joined the English. They afterward removed to Missouri, Kansas, and Indian Territory.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's Encyclopedia counted the Shawnee in 1910 at "less than 1,000" people, gathered in Indian Territory "the great reservoir of broken Indian tribes" — though Oklahoma statehood had already abolished that territory in 1907. Today there are three federally recognized Shawnee nations, all headquartered in Oklahoma: the Absentee Shawnee Tribe, the Eastern Shawnee Tribe, and the Shawnee Tribe, whose members had been administered as part of the Cherokee Nation since 1869 and who regained separate federal recognition only in 2000. Their combined enrolled membership now runs to several thousand rather than under a thousand. The Shawnee language, unmentioned by either account, is severely endangered, with very few fluent first-language speakers, and is the object of active tribal teaching programs.
Written for this edition, 2026.