Vinyard Indian Settlement is an unrecognized group and nonprofit organization of people who claim to have Shawnee ancestry.
[1] The poet Barney Bush (1944–2021), who claimed to be of Shawnee and Cayuga ancestry, was a major organizer for this group.
[4] Bush said that about 1810 Shawnee refugees fled a militia in Ohio and hid out near Karbers Ridge, Illinois, where the German/Irish-American Vinyard family allowed them to settle on their land.
[8] The Vinyard Indian Settlement is not federally recognized or state-recognized as a Native American tribe.
[8] Ben Barnes, chief of the federally recognized Shawnee Tribe, based in Miami, Oklahoma, stated of Barney Bush and the Vinyard Indian Settlement: "These [ceremonial] activities he presents for people are minstrel shows.