Citizen Potawatomi Nation

The Potawatomi are among the Algonquian-speaking people who occupied the Great Lakes region from prehistoric times through the early 1800’s. Oral traditions explain that the ancient Potawatomi people were once part of a larger group that had traveled down the eastern shores of North America along the Atlantic Ocean. This group included the Chippewa (Ojibwa), Ottawa (Odawa), and the Potawatomi. They later split at Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada and went their separate ways.

The Citizen Band of Potawatomi first migrated to southern Michigan. Then during the mid 1650’s, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation lived around Lake Michigan in Wisconsin. At the height of the Fur Trading Era, the Potawatomi controlled an area that encompassed Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and a small portion of Ohio, an area consisting of over 5 million acres.

The Mission Band (now known as the Citizen Band) of Potawatomi were forced to leave their homelands in the Wabash River Valley of Indiana in 1838 and were forced to march across four states (over 660 miles) to a new reserve in Kansas. In Potawatomi history, this three month march is known as the “Potawatomi Trail of Death."

Between 1838 and 1861, the Mission Potawatomi lived on a small reserve with the Prairie Potawatomi in Kansas. In 1867, Mission Potawatomi members signed a treaty selling their Kansas lands in order to purchase lands in Indian Territory and from that time on, they became know as the “Citizen Potawatomi.”

The Citizen Potawatomi Nation is the largest of the eight federally recognized Potawatomi tribes and the ninth largest tribe in the United States.