Wea

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see WEA.

"The Wea Plains", a historical marker near the extinct town of Granville in Tippecanoe County, Indiana.

The Wea are a Native American tribe of Indiana, They were one of the Tribes of the Miami Nation which in the later 1800s consisted of the Miami proper, Wea, Eel River and Pinakashaw. These tribes all signed treaties separately and were concidered politically separate from each other.

The name 'Wea' is use today as the a shortened version of the many recorded names, it is suggested and written that waayaahtanwa, is derived from waayaahtanonki, 'place of the whirlpool', their name where they were first recorded being seen and is where they were living at that time. The different spellings of their name is numerous with the influx of the many different settlers ethnic and educational backgrounds. One French recording of the name is Ouiatanon, another Ouiateno, these were their villages and are now known as Lafayette and Terre Haute Indiana respectively. A marker was placed by the Indiana Historical Bureau in 2004 depicting the presence of the Wea Village in Terre Haute and the living descendents.

With increased Euro-American settlement and Indian removal, many treaties were made which in the late 1800s lead to the Treaty that confederated the Kaskaskias, Peorias, and Piankeshaws into the Confederated Peoria Tribe of first Kansas and now Oklahoma. The tribes blended their cultural traditions, assimilated and intermarried with the many different ethnic cultures.

There were many of the Tribe that did not go West and remained in Indiana. They were referred to in Treaties as the Wea on the Wabash. It is said that these Wea lost federal recognition when the US Attorney General at that time decertified the Miami Nations in 1897 as part of an ongoing policy to eliminate indigenous cultures and identities. As the pressure for assimilation has officially eased since the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s they hope to regain a measure of recognition as distinct.

This Wabash Wea Tribe remained in Indiana after the removal period, and a those descendants live today in Indiana and throughout the United States and Europe.

These descendants and the Wea Indian Tribe of Indiana continues on. They are represented as a Tribe on the Indiana Native American Indian Affaris Commission by Chief Terry Stuff appointment to the Commission.

The Wea spoke a dialect of the Algonquin language or the Miami-Illinois language, the same language as the Miami and the Peoria. After many years this language has been rediscovered and is being spoken and taught again.