Prairie Band of Potawatomi Nation

Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation

Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Flag
Regions with significant populations
United States ( Kansas)
Languages
Potawatomi, English

Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation (formerly the Prairie Band of Potawatomi Indians) is a federally recognized tribe of Neshnabé (Potawatomi people), headquartered near Mayetta, Kansas.

The Mshkodésik ("People of the Small Prairie") division of the Potawatomi were originally located around the southern portions of Lake Michigan, in what today is southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois and northwestern Indiana. Due to their name in the Potawatomi language, the Mshkodésik were often confused with another tribe, the Mascoutens. As part of the Council of Three Fires, the Prairie Band were signatories to the 1829 Second Treaty of Prairie du Chien (7 Stat. 320). Independently of the Council of Three Fires, the Prairie Band were also signatories to the 1832 Treaty of Tippecanoe (7 Stat. 378) as the Potawatomi Tribe of Indians of the Prairie.

Under the Indian Removal Act, the Prairie Band were forcibly relocated west, first to Missouri's Platte Country in the mid-1830s and then to the vicinity of Council Bluffs, Iowa in the 1840s, where they were known as the Bluff Indians. The tribe controlled up to five million acres (20,000 km²) at both locations. After 1846, the tribe moved to present-day Kansas. At that time, the reservation was thirty square miles which included part of present-day Topeka.