The Mingos were a small group of Indians related to the Iroquois. They are sometimes called the Ohio Seneca Indians. Members of several Iroquois tribes lived among the Mingos. In the 1760s, the Mingos lived for a while in eastern Ohio near Steubenville. By the early 1770s they had moved to central Ohio. One of their villages was on the banks of the Scioto River at the site of modern Columbus.

Captain William Crawford led an attack against the Mingo village on the Scioto River at the close of Lord Dunmore's War in 1774. The Mingos fled across Ohio and became scattered. Some Mingos later lived with the Miami Indians in Champaign and Logan counties. Other Mingos lived along the Sandusky River. These Indians became known as the Seneca of Sandusky. In 1831 the United States forced them to sell their land and they were moved to reservations in the West.

Logan was the most famous chief of the Mingo Indians.

from the Ohio Historical Society Site, please visit their site for much more information

West Virginia, History, Early Inhabitants

In about the 1640s the powerful Iroquois Confederacy drove the weaker groups out of much of the Ohio Valley, leaving West Virginia almost unpopulated. Advertisement The region became a hunting ground and a source of salt for tribes north of the Ohio.

When the first European settlers arrived about 1730, a few Tuscarora, Mingo, Shawnee, and Delaware (all members or subordinates of the Iroquois League) lived in the state, and their claims to the land delayed settlement. In 1744 the Iroquois relinquished their claims east of the Allegheny Mountains. In 1768 they gave up their remaining claims to West Virginia by the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. The Cherokee surrendered their claims by treaties in 1768 and 1770. The movement of pioneers into the region continued to be opposed, however, by other peoples, especially the Shawnee, until 1794.

The 18th Century, Native American Troubles

The great movement of settlers into trans-Allegheny Virginia began in 1769, after the signing of the treaties with the Iroquois and Cherokee. Pioneers streamed into the Greenbrier region, the Monongahela and upper Ohio valleys, and, after 1773, the Kanawha Valley. Many of them fell victim to the Shawnee, who still claimed western Virginia. Atrocities were committed on both sides. In 1774 Governor Dunmore undertook a retaliatory expedition after a raid by the Shawnee, which itself had been in retaliation for several brutal murders of Shawnee and Mingo by white settlers. The Shawnee were defeated in a day-long battle at Point Pleasant on October 10, 1774, and their chief, Cornstalk, signed a peace treaty. Later, in a meeting in Pittsburgh in September 1775, the Shawnee, Delaware, and five other important Native American nations promised to remain neutral in the war of the American Revolution (1775-1783), which had broken out that spring between Britain and its American colonies.

from: "West Virginia," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

West Virginia Mingo Site

This site is dedicated to the preservation and revitalization of Unyææshæötká', the language of the West Virginia Mingo. Mingo is an Iroquoian language native to the areas of western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and West Virginia. It is a seriously endangered language, with very few native speakers remaining. However, in recent years, there has been increasing interest in the language among Mingo descendants, both in the traditional homeland areas, as well as across the country.

For more information please visit this site (the West Virginia Mingo Site) which contains:

• 'the Mingo Alphabet' (Throughout its history, Mingo was primarily an oral language. It is only in the last few years that a standardized alphabet has been adopted for the language. These pages explain how the alphabet works, and provide audio links so that you can hear how the letters are pronounced in combination).
• a Dictionary (Like all languages, Mingo has a huge inventory of words. This dictionary reflects only a small portion of all the words in Mingo).
• Texts (The online Mingo Text Archive provides a wealth of original texts composed by Thomas McElwain. These texts are presented both in the original Mingo and with corresponding English translations. Several of the texts are also accompanied by sound files).
• Grammar (The grammar of Mingo is quite different from that of English and other European languages. The pages here provide an introduction to the language for beginning students).
• and more ...