MIAMI TRIBE
1895 Maps of Indian Nations

The Miami are an Algonquian tribe, the earliest recorded notice of which is from information furnished in 1658 by Gabriel Druillette, who called them the Oumanik.  Then living about the mouth of Green Bay, Wisconsin, they withdrew into the Mississippi Valley 60 leagues away and were established there from 1657 to 1678.  The first time the French came into actual contact with them was in 1668.  In about 1671, the Miami formed new settlements at the south end of Lake Michigan, where missions were established late in the 17^th Century, and on the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.  The extent of territory they occupied a few years later suggests that when the whites first heard of them, the Miami Indians in Wisconsin formed but a part of the tribe, with other bodies already established in northeast Illinois and Indiana.  Encroachments by the Potawatomi, Kickapoo, and other northern tribes drove the Miami out to the east, and they formed settlements on the Miami River in Ohio.  They held this country until the peace of 1763, when they retired to Indiana.  They played a permanent role in all the Indian wars in the Ohio Valley until the close of the War of 1812.  Soon after, they began to sell their lands; and by 1827 they had disposed of most of their holdings in Indiana and had agreed to move to Kansas.  They later moved to Indian Territory, where the remnants still resides.