Ridgetop Shawnee
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The Ridgetop Shawnee Tribe of Indians, known as the Ridgetop Shawnee since 2013, is an unrecognized tribe in Kentucky. They are Americans who identify as being of Shawnee ancestry.
Historical claims
Europeans reported encountering Shawnee peoples over a widespread geographic area. The earliest mention of the Shawnee may be a 1614 Dutch map showing the Sawwanew just east of the Delaware River. Later 17th-century Dutch sources also place them in this general location. Accounts by French explorers in the same century usually located the Shawnee along the Ohio River, where they encountered them on forays from Canada and the Illinois Country.[1]
In the late 18th to mid-19th centuries, many multiracial families migrated to southwestern Virginia; extreme southeastern Kentucky, particularly Harlan County; and northeastern Tennessee.[citation needed] In the 1870 federal census for Harlan County, Kentucky, numerous families were classified as Indian. Families with the surnames of Sizemore, Callahan, Eldridge, and Cole have had a tradition of Native American ancestry, as well as European and African.[2]Template:Better sourced needed Often such families moved to the frontier for less expensive land, as well as to avoid racial caste discrimination in more settled areas of slave states. Remnant members of tribes intermarried with their neighbors and a multiracial group of settlers formed.
Beginning in 1913, the Pine Mountain Settlement School educated some of the local children in Harlan County. For nearly 20 years it operated as a progressive boarding school for elementary age children in the Appalachian region; in the 1930s, it shifted to operate as a boarding high school.[citation needed]
In June 2013 the Pine Mountain Indian Community, LLC, announced that the Ridgetop group would be renamed as the Ridgetop Shawnee, to serve as the heritage arm of this nonprofit organization. Within this new management structure, the Ridgetop Shawnee would concentrate on preservation and protection of the heritage of the region. The Pine Mountain Indian Community would focus on economic development and community development in Southeastern Kentucky.
Politics
Since the late 20th century, the Ridgetop Shawnee Tribe contributed to the passage of local ordinances that prohibit digging, or artifact hunting, on county and city lands. One such ordinance was passed by the Harlan County, Kentucky fiscal court in 2006. The only such ordinance in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, it has decreased illegal artifact hunting and helped preserve prehistoric sites. The Ridgetop Shawnee Tribe of Indians were instrumental in the creation of the Harlan County Native American Site Protection Office.[citation needed] They gained agreement from the city of Ashland, Kentucky, to put a protective fence around prehistoric earthworks in a park; the site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Indian Mounds in Central Park.[3]
In 2009 and 2010, the State House of the Kentucky General Assembly recognized the Ridgetop Shawnee Tribe of Indians by passing, unopposed, House Joint Resolutions 15 or HJR-15 in 2009 and HJR-16 in 2010.[4][5] These acknowledged the civic contributions of the group.
Language
The tribe is seeking to preserve the Shawnee language, a Central Algonquian language that was traditional for many members' ancestors.
Membership
The Ridgetop Shawnee require that prospective members prove documented descent from multiracial settlers in the region from 1790–1870, and also have Y-DNA or MtDNA showing direct-line Native American ancestry. Y-DNA and or MtDNA may be used only to show descent from individuals who are documented as eligible for enrollment.[6] In 2012 the Ridgetop Shawnee began the Express Enrollment program for descendants of several family lines of mixed-Native American heritage, who have been well-documented as migrating to Southeastern Kentucky, Northeastern Tennessee, and Southwestern Virginia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These families and lines are: Sizemore (KY); Fields (KY, VA); descendants of Hawkins Bowman (KY, VA); descendants of Ezekiel Bennett (KY, TN); descendants of John Cole (KY, VA); and descendants of Porter Jackson (KY, VA).[6]
See also
References
- ^ Charles Augustus Hanna (1911) The Wilderness Trail, esp. chap. IV, "The Shawnees", pp. 119–160.
- ^ Holly Timm (3 June 1987). "Indian Blood Runs in Many Harlan County Families". Harlan Daily Enterprise.
- ^ Carrie Stambaugh (4 July 2009). "Mounds will be fenced off from public". Daily Independent (Ashland, KY). Retrieved 15 January 2012.
- ^ "Kentucky General Assembly 2010 Regular Session HJR-16". kentucky.gov, updated 9-2-2010.
- ^ "Kentucky General Assembly 2009 Regular Session HJR-15". kentucky.gov, updated 5-2-2009.
- ^ a b "ridgetopshawnee.org". www.ridgetopshawnee.org. Retrieved 2023-03-05.