All about the ancient tribes
The Kickapoo Indians originally lived in the Michigan and Ohio area. They fled south and west to get away from British and American aggression, settling briefly in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. Eventually the Americans forced some Kickapoos onto Kansas and Oklahoma reservations.
Fiercely independent, many Kickapoo people fled all the way to Mexico rather than surrender to the Americans. Of those that went to Mexico, approximately half returned to the United States and were sent to Indian Territory in Oklahoma.
1a: an Indian people originally of Wisconsin but now living in Oklahoma and Chihuahua, Mexico. b: a member of such people. 2: a dialect of Fox.
The Kickapoo Indians, an Algonkian-speaking group of fewer than 1,000 individuals scattered across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and northern Mexico, are the remnants of a larger tribe that once lived in the central Great Lakes region.
The Kickapoo, meaning “those who walk the earth” or “he who moves here and there,” are grouped with other tribes in the Algonquian linguistic lineage, and were situated in what A. M. Gibson refers to as the “Algonquian heartland” (1963:3).
Religious practice is organized around sacred bundles, misaami, for clans and herbal societies. The religion is protected and practiced almost fanatically among the Mexican Kickapoo, whereas the Kansas Kickapoo have been strongly affected by Christianity.
Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas Selects Lester Randall as New Leader.
Kickapoo roots can be found in the Great Lakes region, and were first mentioned in Lower Michigan in the 1600s. By 1654, French explorers identified the Kickapoo, along with the Sauk, Fox and Potawatomi tribes, in southeast Wisconsin, having moved due to the heavy Iroquois influence in the east.
They were a Woodland tribe, speaking an Algonquian language, and were related to the Sac and Fox. There, in exchange for protecting their northern borders, the Mexican government gave the tribe a land grant and eventually placed them at Nacimiento. Other displaced Kickapoo settled in two villages in Indian Territory.
The French established New France in the 1600’s and established trading links with the tribe. The Kickapoo were allies of the French during the violent Beaver Wars (1640 – 1701) and the long running French and Indian Wars (1688-1763).
The Kickapoo built wooden, bark covered structures for houses. These houses are called wickiups or wigwams. They raised crops, gathered fruits and nuts when in season, fished the rivers and hunted deer, bear and small game. Wood, gathered from the forests provided material for many of the tools and implements.
The first group–known to French explorers and missionaries as the Illinois or Illiniwek Indians –was a collection of twelve tribes that occupied a large section of the central Mississippi River valley, including most of what is today Illinois.
In the 21st century, the Comanche Nation has 17,000 members, around 7,000 of whom reside in tribal jurisdictional areas around Lawton, Fort Sill, and the surrounding areas of southwestern Oklahoma.
Under pressure from European-American settlement, the ancestors of this tribe were Alabama and Coushatta peoples who migrated from Alabama and the Southeast into Louisiana and finally east Texas when it was under Spanish rule in the late eighteenth century.
The wickiup was constructed of tall saplings driven into the ground, bent over, and tied together near the top. This dome-shaped framework was covered with large overlapping mats of woven rushes or of bark that were tied to the saplings.