The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

WEA.

The Wea, or Waayaathtanwa, are a North American Indigenous group that are incorporated as part of the broader Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. They are closely related to other Illinois-Miami and Algonquian linguistic communities, including the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankashaw, and Miami. Before their initial encounters with European peoples, the Wea lived along the western shores of Lake Michigan. By the eighteenth century they occupied much of the western portion of Indiana, centered on the Wabash and White Rivers. Out of their community named Ouiatenon on the Wabash River, they influenced trade and diplomacy across the region.

After siding with the British during the American Revolution, in the 1790s the Wea and their allies confronted repeated incursions by the United States. For the Wea, this culminated in the destruction of Ouiatenon in 1791 by the Kentucky militia under the command of Gen. Charles Scott. Along with other Great Lakes Native nations, the Wea were signatories of the Treaty Greenville in 1795, which opened large portions of the Midwest for U.S. settlement.

This ushered in a period of diaspora for the Wea, who, like their neighbor nations, were forced from their lands by increasing waves of American settlers. Some Wea joined Tecumseh and The Prophet in their effort to resist the expansion of settlement, while others joined groups of Piankashaw and Peoria in Illinois and Missouri. Through the Treaty of St. Mary’s, in 1818 the Wea ceded all but a small reserve of their lands to the United States. In a second treaty, signed only two years later, they were forced to cede all their remaining territory east of the Mississippi River.

Despite these land cessions, American settlers in Illinois and Missouri repeatedly requested the Wea’s relocation. Under a new treaty signed in 1832 the Wea were removed to lands that would become Miami County, Kansas. There in 1854, with a depleted population, they officially joined the Piankashaw, Peoria, and Kaskaskia in a confederacy. From this point, these related nations relied on a single government acting in unison. In 1867 the now-united nations signed the expansive Omnibus Treaty, which created their final reservation in northeastern Indian Territory in present Ottawa County, Oklahoma.

In 1956 the Peoria Nation became the target of the U.S. government’s tribal termination policy as federal services and recognition were officially ended. After years of advocacy and legal effort the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma secured reinstated recognition in 1978. Since then they have begun numerous programs of economic and cultural revitalization including language classes and cultural education for enrolled citizens. The Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma is headquartered in Miami, Oklahoma, and has an enrolled population of more than three thousand citizens.

Sheldon Yeakley