Mingo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (July 2008)

It has been suggested that Honniasont be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

The Mingo are an Iroquoian group of Native Americans that migrated west to the Ohio Country in the mid-eighteenth century. Anglo-Americans called these migrants mingos, a corruption of mingwe, an Eastern Algonquian name for Iroquoian groups in general. Mingos have also been known as "Ohio Iroquois" and "Ohio Seneca".

In the 17th century, the "Massawomeck" "neighbors’ names for the ancient Mingoe ("Mingoe", Gist & Croghan et al. 1750s) were various – "Pocoughtraonack" in southern Chesapeake, "Massawomeck" in northern Chesapeake and Potomac below the falls", quoting Rountree, 2006.The "Black Minqua" (Massawomeck) element of Eire, Clark (2006) demonstrated that "by 1608, there were hostilities with Piscataways, Anacostians, people down the Potomac, Patuxents, Tockwoghs and Susquehannocks; by 1632, peace with Anacostians and use of them ("Massawomeck") as middlemen." Massawomeck men wore shaven head with a lock along the nape of neck. ^[1] The Algonquian Lanape or Delaware called the Minqua (Dutch), Mingwe in the 17th Century. The Baltimores in the 1630s called the Mingwe, "Messawomecke". ^[2] Clobery & Company and the Baltimores established a trading post at Kent Island (1631) on the upper Chesapeake Bay to which the upper Ohio Valley Mingwe travelled down the Potomac River to trade. Virginian Native Americans at the time called those beyond the Allegheny Mountains the phrase, "Messawomecke", "those beyond the mountains".

[edit] History

Statue of Logan, the famous Mingo headman, in Logan, West Virginia.

Augustin Herrman printed the "Sussquahana" and "Sinaicus" Indians went over to the Black Mincquaas' River and destroyed the ancient Mingo Nation, 1670. Early 17th century Dutch tradesmen called the two Mingoe groups Mincquaas.

The people who became known as "Mingos" migrated to the Ohio Country in the mid-eighteenth century, part of an influx of Native Americans to a region that had been sparsely populated for decades. There was a well-known confederation of Iroquoian Indian bands drawn from throughout the Northeast that included the Mingo (from the upper Ohio River), Conestoga, Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Tuscarora, and Onondaga (driven into Ohio by early colonists) and the Seneca of Sandusky (who had lived in New York at the outset of the American Revolution). After the war, the Cayuga moved to Ohio, where they were granted a reservation along the Sandusky River. They were joined there by the Shawnee of Ohio and the rest of the confederacy. Their villages were increasingly an amalgamation of Seneca, Wyandot, Shawnee, Susquehannock, and Delaware immigrants. Although the Iroquois nominally claimed sovereignty over the Ohio country natives, these people increasingly acted independently of them. "Of all the tribes in the valley, the Mingoes were probably the most peaceably disposed, having been partially Christianized by Moravian missionaries. The Mingoes were affiliated to the Delawares and the Iroquois but separated themselves before 1750 and settled along the Juniata River. Becoming more warlike as time passed, they were frequently hostile to the settlers in the Juniata Valley. They and their cousins, the Delawares, later crossed the Alleghenies into Ohio where they lived for a time, and finally moved to Kansas and lived on the Neosho River, eventually they moved to the Indian lands of Oklahoma."[1]

When Pontiac's Rebellion broke out in 1763, many Mingos joined with other tribes in the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to drive the British out of the Ohio Country, even though the Iroquois were closely allied to the British. The Mingo/Seneca Chief Guyasuta was one of the leaders in that war.

One of the most famous Mingo leaders was Chief Logan, who had good relations with his fellow white settlers. Logan was not actually a chief, but a village leader. In 1774, as tensions between whites and Indians were on the rise due to a series of violent encounters, Logan's family was brutally murdered by a band of white outlaws. Local chiefs counseled restraint, but acknowledged Logan's right to revenge. Logan exacted his vengeance in a series of raids with only about a dozen followers, not all of whom were Mingos. His vengeance satisfied, he did not even participate in the resulting Lord Dunmore's War, and was probably not at the climactic Battle of Point Pleasant. Rather than participate in the peace conference, he issued Logan's Lament, a speech which was widely printed and is one of the most well-known examples of American Indian oratory.

By 1830, the Mingos were flourishing in western Ohio improving their farms and establishing schools. After the passage of the Indian Removal Act of that same year, however, the Mingos were pressured to sell their lands and migrate to Kansas in 1832. In Kansas, the Mingos joined other Seneca and Cayuga bands and the tribes shared the Neosho Reservation there. The tribes moved yet again in 1869 after the American Civil War to present-day Ottawa County, Oklahoma. In 1881, a band of Cayuga from Canada joined the Seneca Tribe in Indian Territory. In 1902, shortly before Oklahoma became a state, 372 members of the joint tribe received land allotments. In 1937, the tribe officially designated themselves the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma. Today, the tribe numbers over five thousand members and continues to maintain cultural and religious ties to the Six Nations of the Iroquois.

[edit] Language

The Mingo language (native name: Unyææshæötká' ^[3]) is a Northern Iroquoian language of eastern Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. It is a polysynthetic language with extremely complex verb usage, closely related to Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga. There has been increasing interest in recent years, especially among Mingo descendants, in revitalizing the language.

[edit] References

1. ^ MASSAWOMECK ROUND-TABLE, June 3-4, 2006, Bavarian Inn, Shepherdstown, West Virginia
2. ^ "THE VIRGINIA INDIAN TRADE TO 1673" by Morrison, A. J. Citation: William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine series 2, 1 (October 1921): 217-36. Dinsmore Documentation (May 27, 2008)
3. ^ Lachler, McElwain, and Burke http://www.mingolanguage.org/

• Cobb, William H., Andrew Price and Hu Maxwell (1921), History of the Mingo Indians, Cumberland, Md.: F.B. Jenvy, printer.
• Hoxie, Frederick E., editor (1996), Encyclopedia of North American Indians. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, pp. 380–381. ISBN 0-395-66921-9.
• McConnell, Michael N. (1992), A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724–1774. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, ISBN 0-8032-3142-3.