The etymology of the name Mingo derives from the
Delaware (Lenape) word, or
Minque, as adapted from their Algonquian language, meaning "stealthy". In the 17th century, the terms Minqua or Minquaa were used interchangeably to refer to the five nations of the
Iroquois League and to the Susquehannock, another Iroquoian-speaking people. The people who became known as Mingo migrated to the
Ohio Country along the river in the mid-eighteenth century, part of a movement of various Native American tribes away from European pressures to a region that had been sparsely populated for decades but controlled as a hunting ground by the Iroquois League of the Five Nations. The "Mingo dialect" that dominated the Ohio valley from the late 17th to early 18th centuries is considered a variant most similar to the
Seneca language. After the
French and Indian War (1754-1763), France was defeated and ceded its lands east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain. Many
Cayuga people of the Five Nations also moved to Ohio, where the British granted them a reservation along the
Sandusky River. They were joined there by the Algonquian-speaking
Shawnee of Ohio and the rest of the Mingo confederacy. Their villages were increasingly an amalgamation of Iroquoian-speaking Seneca,
Wyandot, and Susquehannock;
Siouan-language speaking
Tutelo and
Algonquian-language
Shawnee and
Delaware migrants. Although the Iroquois Confederacy had claimed hunting rights and sovereignty over much of the
Ohio River Valley since the late 17th century, these peoples in Ohio increasingly acted independently. When
Pontiac's Rebellion broke out in 1763 against the British at the end of the French and Indian War, many Mingo joined with other tribes in an attempt to drive the British out of the Ohio Country. At that time, most of the six Iroquois nations based in New York (who then numbered six, as the Tuscarora had joined them from the South about 1722) were closely allied to the British because of their lucrative fur trading.
Guyasuta (c. 1725–c. 1794), a chief of the Mingo-Seneca, was one of the leaders in Pontiac's War. Another famous Mingo leader was
Chief Logan (c. 1723–1780), who had good relations with neighboring white settlers. He was not a
war chief, but a village leader. In 1774, as tensions between whites and Indians were on the rise due to a series of violent conflicts, a band of white outlaws murdered his family. Local chiefs counseled restraint, but acknowledged his right to revenge. He conducted a series of raids against white settlers with a dozen followers, not all of whom were Mingo. Logan did not participate in the resulting Lord
Dunmore's War. He was not likely to have been at the climactic
Battle of Point Pleasant. Rather than take part in the peace conference, he expressed his thoughts about the encroachment by Europeans in "
Logan's Lament." His speech was printed and widely distributed. It is one of the most well-known examples of
Native American oratory. By 1830, the Mingo were flourishing in western Ohio, where they had improved their farms and established schools and other civic institutions. After the US passed the
Indian Removal Act in that same year, the government pressured the Mingo to sell their lands and migrate west of the Mississippi River to
Kansas, which they did in 1832. In Kansas, the Mingo joined other Seneca and Cayuga bands, and the tribes shared the Neosho Reservation. In 1869, after the
American Civil War, the US government pressed for Indian removal of these tribes from Kansas to
Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). The three tribes moved to present-day
Ottawa County, Oklahoma. In 1881, a band of Cayuga from
Canada joined the Seneca in Indian Territory. In 1902, several years before Oklahoma Territory was admitted as a state, 372 members of the joint tribe received individual land allotments under a federal program to extinguish communal tribal land holdings so that statehood could take place, and to encourage assimilation to the European-American model. This resulted in considerable loss of their lands in the following decades. In 1937 after the
Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act was passed, the descendants of these tribes reorganized to re-establish self-government. They identified as the
Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma and became federally recognized. Today, the tribe numbers over 5,000 members. They continue to maintain cultural and religious ties to the
Six Nations of the Iroquois, which have been based largely in Ontario, Canada since after the American Revolutionary War. At the time, Great Britain ceded its territory south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi River to the newly independent American states, including most of the lands controlled by the Iroquois in New York and Pennsylvania. Some of the Six Nations also have bands with reservations in New York State, their original homeland. In the US, these governments are recognized as separate tribes. ==In popular culture==