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Wyandotte Nation Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma | |
|---|---|
 Location (Blue) in theU.S. state ofOklahoma | |
  Wyandotte Nation Wyandotte Nation (the United States) Show map of the United States | |
| Coordinates:36°47′41″N94°43′02″W / 36.79472°N 94.71722°W /36.79472; -94.71722 | |
| Capital | Wyandotte |
| Government | |
| • Type | Tribal Council |
| • Chief | Billy Friend |
| • Second Chief | Norman Hildebrand, Jr |
| Population (2022) | |
• Total | 6,883 |
| Demonym | Wyandot |
| Time zone | UTC-6 |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-5 (CDT) |
| Area codes | 539/918 |
| Website | https://wyandotte-nation.org/ |
TheWyandotte Nation is afederally recognizedNative American tribe headquartered in northeasternOklahoma. They are descendants of theWendat Confederacy and Native Americans with territory nearGeorgian Bay andLake Huron. Under pressure fromHaudenosaunee and other tribes, then from European settlers and the United States government, the tribe gradually moved south and west toMichigan,Ohio,Kansas, and finallyOklahoma in the United States.
The headquarters of the federally recognized Wyandotte Nation is inWyandotte, Oklahoma,[1] and theirtribal jurisdictional area is inOttawa County, Oklahoma.[2]
As of 2025[update], the current administration is:[1]
The chief serves a four-year term.
The Wyandotte Nation issues its own tribal vehicle tags and operates its own housing authority. It has a ten-man police department providing 24-hour law enforcement response to the Nation and surrounding area.[2]
In May 2025, 7,254 people are enrolled citizens of the nation.[3] Only about 25 percent of the tribe lives within the state of Oklahoma. In 2011, that was 1,218 of 4,957 citizens.[2] Enrollment is based in lineal descent; that is, the tribe has no minimumblood quantum requirement.
The Wyandotte Nation operates the Bearskin Health and Wellness Center,[4] the Bearskin Fitness Center,[5]: 16 and the Lost Creek Recycling Center, which is managed by the tribe's Environmental Department and Planning and Natural Resources Department.[5]: 20 [6][7]The Turtle Speaks is the tribal newspaper.[8]
The tribe owns River Bend Casino & Hotel and Lucky Turtle Casino in Wyandotte, Oklahoma.[9] It owns a truck stop, the Turtle Stop fuel stations, and a smoke shop. They issue their owntribal vehicle tags.[2]
It owns the7th Street Casino in the formerScottish Rite Masonic Temple inKansas City, Kansas. It has legal control of the nearbyWyandot National Burying Ground.[10]In 2010, the Wyandotte Nation acquired land inPark City, Kansas, with the stated intention of building a gaming casino and hotel.[11] In 2021, the Wyandotte Nation completed and opened Cross Winds Casino in Park City, Kansas.
The tribe's annualpowwow is held in Oklahoma during the first weekend of September and features contest dancing,gourd dancing, and a socialstomp dance.[12]
In its own language, the tribe is called Wendat, renamed Wyandotte after merging with other related groups. It consists ofIroquoian-speaking Indians from theNortheastern woodlands. The name is thought to mean "dwellers on a peninsula" or "islanders".[13]
The first Wendat Confederacy was created around 1400 CE, when theAttignawantan (Bear Nation) andAttigingueenongnahac (Cord People) combined forces. They, in turn, were joined by theArendaronon (People of the Rocks),Ataronchronon (People of One Lodge), and theTahontaenrat (Deer Nation). Scholars once believed these peoples to be remnant bands of theSt. Lawrence Iroquoians, who established villages located near present-day Montreal visited by early French explorers.[14] Archaeologists have excavated large, 16th-century settlement sites north of Lake Ontario, suggesting that this may have been a site of the coalescence of the Wendat people. They later migrated to the area nearGeorgian Bay, where they were encountered by French explorers in the early 17th century.
French explorers encountered the Wyandotte around 1536 and dubbed them the Huron. They were fierce enemies of the nations of theIroquois Confederacy, then based in present-day New York. Obliterated bysmallpox epidemics, the Wendat Confederacy became seriously weakened during the early decades of the early 17th century. In 1649, the Haudenosaunee defeated the Wendat, and most of the Wendat migrated southwest, where they settled withOdawa andIllinois tribes.[13] Others moved east into Quebec.
The survivingTionontati (Petun),Attignawantan, andWenrohronon (Wenro) formed a new, unified group, known as the Wyandot or Wyandotte. By the beginning of the 18th century, the Wyandotte people had moved into theOhio River Valley, extending into areas of what would becomeWest Virginia,Indiana, andMichigan. Around 1745, large groups settled nearUpper Sandusky, Ohio. After theAmerican Revolution, a treaty signed with the United States in 1785 confirmed their landholdings. However, the 1795Treaty of Greenville greatly reduced its size.[13]
The 1817Treaty of Fort Meigs reduced the Wyandotte lands drastically, leaving the people only small parcels inOhio. In 1842, the Wyandotte nation all of its land east of the Mississippi River, under pressure of the United States government policy to remove the Native Americans to the West.[13] It made a treaty with the U.S. government by which it was to be compensated for its lands.
The tribe was removed to theDelaware Reservation in present-dayKansas, then considered Indian Territory.[13] During this migration and the early months, it suffered much illness. In 1843, survivors buried their dead on a high ridge overlooking the Missouri River in what became theHuron Cemetery in present-dayKansas City, Kansas. In 1971 it was listed on theNational Register of Historic Places. It was renamedWyandot National Burying Ground.
After theAmerican Civil War, Wyandotte people who had not become citizens of the United States in 1855 in Kansas were removed a final time in 1867 to present-day Oklahoma. They were settled on 20,000 acres (81 km2) in the northeast corner ofIndian Territory.[13] TheSeneca, Shawnee, and Wyandotte Industrial Boarding School, also called the Wyandotte Mission, opened for classes inWyandotte, Oklahoma in 1872.[15]
In 1893, theDawes Act required that the tribal communal holdings in the Indian Territory be divided into individual allotments. The land was divided among the 241 tribal citizens listed on theDawes Rolls. The Wyandotte citizens in Oklahoma retained some tribal structure, and still had control of the communal property of the Huron Cemetery, which by then annexed into Kansas City, Kansas.[13]
In 1937, seizing the opportunity presented by the USOklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1934 to regain tribal structure and self-government, citizens of the Wyandotte tribe organized into the Wyandotte Nation.[13] They later changed the Nation's name to simply Wyandotte Nation and achieved federal recognition.[16][17][18] The act enabled Native Americans to hold property in common again, and to develop self-government and sovereignty.
On August 1, 1956, the US Congress passed Public Law ch. 843, 70 Stat. 893 to terminate the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma as part of the federalIndian termination policy. Three years were allotted for completing the termination.[19] One of the stipulations required that a parcel of land inKansas City, Kansas, reserved as the Huron Cemetery, which had been awarded to the Wyandot by treaty on January 31, 1855, was to be sold by the United States. Litigation was filed by a group of Absentee Wyandot against the United States and Kansas City, prohibiting the federal government from fulfilling the terms of the termination statute and ultimately preventing the termination of the Wyandotte Nation.[20] The Bureau of Land Management records confirm that the Federal Register never published the termination of the Wyandotte lands and thus they were never officially terminated.[21]
When Congress restored the otherOklahoma Tribes, it included the Wyandotte in the repeal. On May 15, 1978, in a single Act titled Public Law 95-281, the termination laws were repealed, and the three tribes were reinstated with all rights and privileges they had prior to termination.[22]
For decades, the Huron Cemetery (also known as Huron Indian Park Cemetery and the Wyandot National Burying Ground)[23][24][25]: 1 was a source of controversy between the Wyandotte Nation and individual Wyandot descendants in Kansas. The former wanted to sell the property for redevelopment. Kansas City was also eager for that development, as the city had annexed all of the property in the area. By 1907 it was a prime site, near a newCarnegie Library, the Grund Hotel, and theMasonic Temple, which was undergoing reconstruction after a fire.[25]: 5–6, 8
In 1906, a clause in theIndian Appropriation Act of June 21, 1906, authorized theUS Secretary of Interior to sell the cemetery, with the bodies to be reinterred at nearbyQuindaro Cemetery. The proceeds from the sale, after deducting the costs of reinterment and any legal expenses related to the sale, were to be distributed among the Wyandotte Nation and the citizen-Wyandot.[26][25]: 29–30 This proposal was opposed byLyda Conley (Wyandot) and her two sisters in Kansas City, who launched what became a multiyear campaign to preserve the burying ground. They gained much support.[27][28] In 1916, SenatorCharles Curtis (Kaw/Osage/Prairie Potawatomi) of Kansas, who was a Kaw Native American, championed a successful bill to protect the cemetery as a national park and provide some funds for maintenance.[25]: 36, 38–39 Ironically, this dispute over the cemetery saved the tribe fromtermination during the 1950s.[29]
Over the years, the Wyandotte Nation continued to explore ways to increase revenues for the tribe, including the redevelopment of the Huron Cemetery. Descendants in Kansas vigorously resisted these efforts.[24][30] In 1971, the cemetery was listed on theNational Register of Historic Places.[23][25]: 3, 6 In 1998, the Wyandotte Nation and theWyandot Nation of Kansas, anunrecognized tribe, reached an agreement that prevented the use of the Huron Cemetery for purposes other than its original use as a cemetery.[27][25]: 41 This includes religious, cultural, and other activities appropriate to its sacred history and use.[31][25]: 42
In August 1999, the Wyandotte Nation joined the contemporary Wendat Confederacy, together with theWyandot Nation of Kansas, theHuron-Wendat Nation of Wendake (Quebec), and theWyandot of Anderdon Nation in Michigan. The tribes pledged to provide mutual aid to each other in a spirit of peace, kinship, and unity.[14]
This followed an important meeting of Huronia reconciliation inMidland,Ontario, Canada, attended by representatives of theIroquois Confederacy, Wyandotte nations, British, French, Dutch, Anglican Church, and Catholic Jesuit brothers. The weekend of events was organized by the Huronia Reconciliation Committee.[32]
Article I, Name: The name of this sovereign tribal government shall be the Wyandotte Nation.
In 1956, the United States terminated federal supervision over the Tribe; the termination attempt was never completed because it was conditioned upon the United States purchasing the Huron Cemetery from the Wyandotte-an event that never occurred.
