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NATIVE AMERICAN GENEALOGY RESEARCH IN INDIANA
M. Teresa Baer
In the 1990 federal census, more than 12,000 Hoosiers claimed Native American ancestry. According to Jeannie Regan-Dinius, Executive Director of Historic Forks of the Wabash in Huntington, Indiana, being an Indian is a popular aspiration at the turn of the millennium. Many people cherish stories that depict an Indian as part of their ancestors’ families and hope that the stories are true, even though the details have been lost over time. There is something at once romantic and noble about Native Americans. Their belief in the spiritual nature of all life beckons to folks in this supertechnical age. Ironically, many Americans want to recapture the meaningful culture that their government tried to supplant. Regan-Dinius and Nick Clark, Executive Director of the Museums at Prophetstown in Lafayette, Indiana, caution that Native American genealogy research must start at the same place all other such research starts—with what a person knows about today’s generation. Researchers should work their way back with documented proof of each predecessor’s birth date and place, mari tal information, and so forth, until they come to the ancestor who united with an American Indian. At this point, the researcher might find the Indian ances tor on a tribal roll—if they know the ancestor’s tribal affiliation. An under standing of the migratory history of Native Americans in Indiana since the late 1700s will help to determine the tribal group to which the native ancestor likely belonged. During the 1790s the U.S. government began using military tactics to ac quire land in the Old Northwest Territory. Several groups of native people lived in the region that would become the state of Indiana. Elizabeth Glenn and Stewart Rafert locate various groups in their chapter of the book Peopling Indiana: The Ethnic Experience. The Miami, Delaware, and Shawnee had vil lages in the area of Kekionga (near Fort Wayne); the Wea and Kickapoo, which absorbed the remnants of the Mascoutens at this time, resided at Ouiatenon (near Lafayette); and the Piankashaw and some Kickapoo lived near Vincennes. The Potawatomi were expanding out from their villages in the north near the St. Joseph and Kankakee River trading posts. Concentra tions of Potawatomi and Wea resided in the regions near the mouths of the Tippecanoe and Eel Rivers, respectively. New groups migrated to Indiana at this time. Among these were bands of Delaware, including the Munsee and a small group of Nanticoke from the eastern United States and Wyandot and Ottawa from the northern Great Lakes area. Summarizing several county his tories’ reports about Native Americans, archaeologists Ellen Sieber and Cheryl Ann Munson locate several native groups in the Hoosier National Forest re gion for a few short decades after 1770. Piankashaw and Delaware groups