Potawatomi

Potawatomi

Bodéwadmi
Potawatomi at a rain dance in 1920
Total population
28,000
Regions with significant populations
United States (Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Illinois)  Canada (Ontario)
Languages
English, Potawatomi
Religion
Catholicism, Methodism, Midewiwin

The Potawatomi (/ˌpɒtəˈwɒtəmi/ ^ⓘ[1][2]), also spelled Pottawatomi and Pottawatomie (among many variations), are a Native American people of the Great Plains, upper Mississippi River, and western Great Lakes region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a member of the Algonquian family. The Potawatomi call themselves Neshnabé, a cognate of the word Anishinaabe. The Potawatomi are part of a long-term alliance, called the Council of Three Fires, with the Ojibwe and Odawa (Ottawa). In the Council of Three Fires, the Potawatomi are considered the "youngest brother". Their people are referred to in this context as Bodéwadmi, a name that means "keepers of the fire" and refers to the council fire of three peoples.^[3]

In the 19th century, some bands of Potawatomi were pushed to the west by European/American encroachment. In the early 1830s the U.S. federal government under the presidential administration of seventh President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845, served 1829-1837), forcibly removed most from their lands in the Old Southeast and driven west in the infamous "Trail of Tears" beyond the Mississippi River to a set aside reserve in 1834 of the Indian Territory - originally extending to the lands of future organized federal territories and first including Arkansas Territory, Missouri Territory, Kansas Territory, Nebraska Territory, and last to Oklahoma Territory, then later subsequently admitted as individual states to the federal Union in following decades. Some remaining native bands survived further north in the Great Lakes region and today are also federally-recognized as tribes, in addition to the Potawatomi, now in Oklahoma.