Terre Haute was founded as an associated French village. They typically set up posts at or near Native American villages. The French colonists set up remote fur trading posts throughout the region, including on the Wabash River. The earliest European contact with the Kickapoo tribe occurred during the La Salle Expeditions into Illinois Country in the late 17th century. This group was probably known by the clan name 'Mahouea', derived from the Illinoian word for wolf, m'hwea. A subgroup occupied the Upper Iowa River region in what was later known as northeast Iowa and the Root River region in southeast Minnesota in the late 1600s and early 1700s. They were confederated with the larger Wabash Confederacy, which included the Piankeshaw and the Wea to their north, and the powerful Miami Tribe, to their east.

The Kickapoo are an Algonquian-language people who likely migrated to or developed as a people in a large territory along the southern Wabash River in the area of modern Terre Haute, Indiana, where they were located at the time of first contact with Europeans in the 1600s. History Pre-1800s Babe Shkit, Kickapoo chief and delegate from Indian Territory, c. This interpretation is contested and generally believed to be a folk etymology. Smaller bands live in Sonora, to the west, and Durango, to the southwest.Īccording to some sources, the name 'Kickapoo' ( Giiwigaabaw in the Anishinaabe language and its Kickapoo cognate Kiwikapawa) means 'stands here and there,' which may have referred to the tribe's migratory patterns. Around 3,000 people are enrolled tribal members.Īnother band, the Tribu Kikapú, resides in Múzquiz Municipality in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila. The Kickapoo in Kansas came from a relocation from southern Missouri in 1832 as a land exchange from their reserve there.

The Oklahoma and Texas bands are politically associated with each other. Today, three federally recognized Kickapoo tribes are in the United States: the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas. The Kickapoo people ( Kickapoo: Kiikaapoa or Kiikaapoi Spanish: Kikapú) are an Algonquian-speaking Native American and Indigenous Mexican tribe, originating in the region south of the Great Lakes. Native American Church Christianity (many Catholic, some Protestant) tribal religious practices

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