A Lister asked this question ... >> ... the Mingo Tribe in and around VA, and Chief John Logan, .c1770. >> Does anyone know what major group the Mingo tribe is part of (i.e. Shawnees)? ... and later commented : > Thanks to one and all who responded to my question about the Mingo Tribe. > Obviously, this is an mongrelized word. It should have been > Mingled, rather than Mingo. They seem to have been a conglomeration of > Indians, anticipating the average American's background. An amplification, and a book recommendation Mingo are indeed the independent, western Iroquois who, as i noted, shared kinship & social organization with the eastern Iroquois of what we know as the Six Nations Confederacy -- that is, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, & Mohawk -- but their villages would have included Miamis (Delawares), Shawnee, & others living / visiting / trading / adopting / inter-marrying. Despite the variety -- which was what you would find in just about every Great Lakes Indian village, whether of Algonquoin or Iroquoin linguistic culture -- make no mistake, these are a distinct people, not a 'mongrelized' <sic> or hodge-podge group. They were indeed Iroquois, albeit politically independent bands. Another lister supplied this quote, which when carefully read makes clear that Mingo were a distinct people. >"Even as the last of the Fox retired to their Wisconsin homeland, wandering >bands of Shawnee began moving back to the Ohio Valley. Other groups were >filtering in as well - Huron from the area around Detroit, Delaware >refugees from the Eastern seaboard, Munsee from New Jersey and even some >Iroquois splinter groups known as Mingos. " Finally, remember that what we now recognize as a "tribe," either in a formal, legal sense or as an historical term, among Great Lakes communities kinship and band are the forces behind cultural grouping; "tribe" can be somewhat meaningless when trying to distinguish, for instance, between Odawa & Ojibway at Michillimackinac. Richard White's THE MIDDLE GROUND: INDIANS. EMPIRES, AND REPUBLICS IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION, 1650-1815 demonstrates how far modern scholarship has taken us beyond the literature of Francis Parkman -- a real eye-opener. Regards - rdw < rdwinthrop@a1access.net >