"History is written by the victors."  
  
  Shawnee history is one place where this saying 
applies very well. If you read history books and 
or sites on the web, you will read that once the 
Shawnees were defeated and their lands taken from 
them, they were hustled off to various places out 
west of the Mississippi.  There the survivors of 
the trek  were settled (and a great many did not 
survive) to live out their lives on a piece of 
poor ground, with disease, and meager rations. 
End of story, no more Indians in Ohio, Indiana, 
etc. You'll find very few references to Indians 
in Ohio after the clearances, either in history 
books or on the net.

 What the history books don't admit are that 
the soldiers weren't always as through as 
the government might have wished.  The   
clearances were made in stages.  There were 
Indians who made the trip, at least part way, 
and were disillusioned by the lack of promised
rations and the disease and death and the poor 
land.   

 They slipped off the trail when the
soldiers' backs were turned, or dissappeared 
into the night, and quietly made their way 
back home.  They would find their old friends 
back in Ohio, and tell them the ghastly truth 
of the trips.  Thus many decided not to go at 
all, and dissappeared into the hills and 
hollers of the backcountry, refusing to 
give up the little farms they had started, 
the cabins and livestock they had so carefully 
gathered.  They decided to "pass" as whites, 
wearing shirts buttoned to necks and wrists, 
shading their faces with hats and bonnets so 
as not to tan.  Their children were taught 
English, and were carefully schooled not to 
speak of their Indian genetics.  Being an 
Indian ment you couldn't hold land, or office 
or even vote; if you were found out, you could 
be shipped out west, loosing everyting you had.

  This went on for years, and there are still 
pockets of family trees that abruptly stop 
and dissappear like mists.  Our Mother was 
born in  the  1930's, and raised for the 
first eight years of her life in Lawrence 
County, Ohio.  The spot was called "Platform 
Reservation," but don't try finding it on a  map.  
She was of Shawnee and Cherokee descent (the 
members of different tribes in the southern 
Ohio/ West Virginia mixed and mingled freely), 
but a great many of the family didn't want 
that fact known.  One Uncle had political 
ambitions (remember---you couldn't hold office 
if you were Indian), and kept tearing down the 
"Platform Reservation" sign the state had put up.  
Finally, the state quit replacing the sign. The 
family kept quiet about the past, and it was 
forgotten by the neighbors.  But genetics don't 
lie. When a dentist in the 1960's pointed out her 
four rooted molars and told her she was an Indian, 
their curiosity was aroused. They started a search 
that lasted for years, and uncovered a great deal 
of the past that the family had ment to keep covered.

  When the next generation was handed the pieces 
of the past, the search became our responsibility.  
We talked to older folks whe told us, that they, 
too, knew of this spot.  Other friends found 
colaborating information on their own.  During 
the summer of 2001, Hubby and I went to Lawrence 
County, Ohio and we SAW an old map in the 
geneolgical section of their library, with 
Platform Reservation borders drawn and shaded 
in color.  When we went back during the summer 
of 2006 (NOW we have a digital camera!), the map 
and book were GONE.  The ladies at the library 
didn't know of any book like the one we described.  
But it was there, at one time.  

 We are Indian.  We don't need any BIA paperwork 
to say we are Shawnee. We don't want the federal 
government corn check (and thus, the government 
regulations attached).   We have a small but 
working government, recognized by the federal gov't 
as Indian, but independant of their controls.  We 
have formed treatys with the Little Shell Pembina, 
and are currently working with the Metis to form 
treaties with their group.