Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma

Its Algonquian-speaking ancestors had migrated gradually from the Atlantic coast and Great Lakes areas, reaching what are now the states of Michigan and Ohio in the 18th century.

In the late 1830s the United States removed the Ottawa to west of the Mississippi River, first to Iowa, then to Kansas in what was Indian Territory.

In addition, there are First Nations of Odawa people in Ontario, Canada, including on Manitoulin Island, their original homeland.

[1] The tribe bases membership qualifications on direct lineal descent;[1] that is, they have no minimum blood quantum requirement.

The current Business Committee consists of Ethel Cook, Suzy Crawford, J.C Dawes, Mikal Scott-Werner, Mary King and Charles Ulrey.

They operate two tribal smoke shops, two gas stations, the Otter Stop Convenience Store, and the Adawe Travel Plaza.

[1] The tribe operates a Community Health Program and the Healthy Living Center in Miami, as well as a Department of Environmental Protection.

The French quickly realized how influential they were and used them as middlemen to the tribes to the north and west of them, who supplied them with furs from the 17th well into the 18th century.

[6][7] They were pressured to move again by the United States, after Congressional passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which authorized the government to make land exchanges with Native American tribes in order to remove them from east of the Mississippi River and extinguish their land titles there.

The Ottawa of the Blanchard's Fork, Roche de Bœuf and Auglaize reserves of Ohio signed a treaty with the US in 1833.

Affiliated with the Baptist Church, which operated missions in Kansas, Ottawa University educated both Indians and non-Indians.

[6] Two decades later, Congress passed the Dawes Act of 1887, designed to encourage Native American assimilation by having households establish subsistence farming in the European-American model.

[5] The tribe persevered to regain their status; federal recognition was restored under a bill signed by President Jimmy Carter on May 15, 1978.