Presently, the Wyandotte, Myaamia, Shawnee, Eastern Shawnee, Modoc, Quapaw, Seneca-Cayuga, Peoria, and Odawa reside within a single Oklahoma county on the border of Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas. Explaining how these nations, whose roots stretch across the North American continent, came to live within this small geographic area uncovers a large story– one which fundamentally reevaluates the scope and significance of American Indian Removal. Their repeated displacements occurred both well before and long after the passage of the 1830 Indian Removal Act. Importantly, this expansive period of Removal contained within its span previously separate historical topics from the War of 1812, the American Civil War, Reconstruction, Allotment, Termination, Reservations, to Boarding Schools. Beyond temporal adjustments, the narratives of these nine Nations offer a new geographical frame for Removal’s study. Decentering the Mississippi River as a boundary for Removal’s reach, this dissertation travels from California to Ohio, from Michigan to Arkansas detailing a story relevant to the entire country.

Critically, beyond revising the perceived scope of Removal, this project argues for a revised vision of Removal’s significance. As Indigenous peoples and settlers moved across the country, more than their location changed. Caught within simultaneous and multifaceted diasporas, Removal served as a means of entanglement and national genesis. As the United States expelled Native peoples in hopes of constructing their own modern nation, they failed to eliminate Indigenous nationhood. Unexpectedly, Removal often served as a catalyst by which Native nations came together to form new confederacies, separate into independent nations, reconstituting themselves in new places. In each case, the U.S.’s effort to rid themselves of Native peoples produced new legal obligations which further entangled both settler and Native nations. While the saga of Indian Removal was not the origin of these Indigenous nations, it was a nation-building process; one of orogeny. As their location shifted, as the land underneath them moved, new structures emerged. Caught within a system of profound movement and destruction, these communities’ continued presence proves that Native nations were not eliminated by Removal but were profoundly changed by it. Through their survival of this genocidal moment, modern Native nations formed.