The Shawnees are an Eastern Woodlandstribe pushed west by white encroachment. In 1793, some of the Shawnee Tribe'sancestors received a Spanish land grant at Cape Girardeau, Missouri. After the1803 Louisiana Purchase brought this area under American control, some CapeGirardeau Shawnees went west to Texas and Old Mexico and later moved to theCanadian River in southern Oklahoma, becoming the Absentee Shawnee Tribe.    

     The 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs granted theShawnees still in northwest Ohio three reservations: Wapakoneta, Hog Creek, andLewistown. By 1824, about 800 Shawnees lived in Ohio and 1,383 lived inMissouri. In 1825, Congress ratified a treaty with the Cape Girardeau Shawneesceding their Missouri lands for a 1.6 million-acre reservation in easternKansas. After the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Ohio Shawnees on theWapakoneta and Hog Creek reservations signed a treaty with the US giving themlands on the Kansas Reservation.

      The Lewistown Reservation Shawnees,together with their Seneca allies and neighbors, signed a separate treaty withthe federal government in 1831 and moved directly to Indian Territory(Oklahoma). The Lewistown Shawnees became the Eastern Shawnee Tribe ofOklahoma, while their Seneca allies became the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma.

     In 1854, the US government decimated theKansas Reservation to 160,000 acres. This, coupled with the brutal abusesperpetrated against them by white settlers during and after the Civil War,forced the Kansas Shawnees to relocate to Cherokee Nation in northeasternOklahoma. Kansas MapThe 1854 Shawnee Reservation in Kansas was never formallyextinguished and some Shawnee families retain their Kansas allotments today.

      Thefederal government caused the former Kansas Shawnees and the Cherokees to enterinto a formal agreement in 1869, whereby the Shawnees received allotments andcitizenship in Cherokee Nation.

     The Shawnees settled in and around WhiteOak, Bird Creek (Sperry), and Hudson Creek (Fairland), maintaining separatecommunities and separate cultural identities. Known as the Cherokee Shawnees,they would also later be called the Loyal Shawnees.

     Initial efforts begun in the 1980s toseparate the Shawnee Tribe from Cherokee Nation culminated when Congressenacted Public Law 106-568, the Shawnee Tribe Status Act of 2000, whichrestored the Shawnee Tribe to its position as a sovereign Indian nation.