09/02/2026
The first confirmation I’ve encountered that the Huron, Ouendat, Wendat, when displaced upon the demise of Saint Marie at the hands of the English allied Iroquois, went south west as well as back to Champlain in Quebec, and those going south west were known as the Wyandot.
Ohio's Native history did not start with the tribes on this map, and that is the part most people never get taught.
Long before any of these names, the Adena and then the Hopewell built enormous earthworks across this state between roughly 800 BCE and 500 CE. The Newark Earthworks cover four square miles and are aligned to an 18.6-year lunar cycle with precision that took modern researchers decades to confirm. Mound City, Fort Ancient, Seip Mound, and later Serpent Mound. UNESCO named the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks a World Heritage Site in 2023.
Those people were here for thousands of years, trading for obsidian from Yellowstone and shells from the Gulf.
Then the 1600s emptied the region. The Beaver Wars, driven by Iroquois expansion over the fur trade, pushed most nations out of Ohio entirely. What followed was a repopulation by tribes arriving from several directions, and that is what the map shows.
The Shawnee returned to the Scioto and Little Miami valleys. Tecumseh was born near Springfield.
The Miami held the Great Miami and Maumee country in the west, led at one point by Little Turtle.
The Wyandot were Huron people who resettled central and northern Ohio after displacement from Ontario.
The Delaware, or Lenape, came west after being pushed off the Delaware River by colonial settlement, taking the Muskingum and Tuscarawas.
The Mingo were Seneca and other Iroquois who moved into the Ohio Valley on their own.
The Ottawa held the northwest near the Maumee.
All of them were removed. Greenville took most of the state in 1795. The Wyandot went last, in 1843.
No federally recognized tribes remain in Ohio.
Only the names on the map.
