The end of communal holdings was also intended to be the end of traditional tribal government, to be replaced with leaders appointed by the federal government. By allocating communal lands to individual households and extinguishing tribal land claims, Congress was preparing the territory for eventual statehood. It was also making policy to encourage Native Americans to assimilate into white society.

By 1876 a post office and trading post had been established a quarter mile west of the mission at what became known as Shawnee Town.īeginning in April 1889, the United States government succumbed to the pressure that had built to open the tribal lands to white settlement. (The current Mission Hill Hospital is located near that site, now occupied by an historic building.) That first missionary, Joseph Newsom, opened a school in 1872. In 1871 a Quaker mission was established here. In addition, white settlers pressed for more land they were encroaching on territories previously reserved by treaty to Native Americans. With the cattle drives, railroads were constructed through the territory, with the government forcing tribes to cede rights of way. Over the course of the 1870s, Texas cattle drovers pushed their herds across Indian Territory there were four major trails, with the West Shawnee trail crossing near present-day Kickapoo and Main streets. These federally recognized tribes continue to reside today in and around Shawnee. The Sac and Fox originally were deeded land in the immediate area but were soon followed by the Kickapoo, Shawnee, and Potawatomi Indians. The area surrounding Shawnee was settled after the American Civil War by a number of tribes that the federal government had removed to Indian Territory. To the east and northeast, Shawnee is 112 miles from the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, which provides shipping barge access to the Gulf of Mexico. With access to Interstate 40, Shawnee is approximately 45 minutes east of downtown Oklahoma City. The city is part of the Oklahoma City-Shawnee Combined Statistical Area and the principal city of the Shawnee Micropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 29,857 in 2010, a 4.9 percent increase from the figure of 28,692 in 2000. Shawnee ( Meskwaki: Shânîheki ) is a city in and the county seat of Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, United States.

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