page_title: History of Cincinnati
section_title: Native Americans
hierarchical_section_title: History of Cincinnati / Early history / Native Americans
caption_attribution_description: Shawnee Lookout, Cincinnati OH (Hamilton County)
context_page_description: Cincinnati began with the settlement of Columbia, Losantiville, and North Bend in the Northwest Territory of the United States beginning in late December 1788. The following year Fort Washington, named for George Washington, was established to protect the settlers.
  It was chartered as a town in 1802, and then incorporated as a city in 1819, when it was first called "Queen of the West". Located on the Ohio River, the city prospered as it met the needs of westward bound pioneers who traveled on the river. It had 30 warehouses to supply military and civilian travelers — and had hotels, restaurants and taverns to meet their lodging and dining needs.
  Cincinnati became the sixth largest city in the United States, with a population of 115,435, by 1850. Before the Civil War, it was an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Due to the Defense of Cincinnati, there was never a shot fired in the city during the Civil War.
  Important industries throughout its history include meatpacking, iron production, steamboat repair and construction, carriage manufacturing, woodworking, cloth production, and engines.
context_section_description: From about 900 to 1600 CE, during the Late Prehistoric Period, a cultural group called the Fort Ancient people lived in southwest Ohio. Shawnee, who are believed by some scholars to be their descendants, were hunter-gatherers who established villages during the summers and followed and hunted animal populations in the winter throughout the Ohio River Valley. Men hunted and protected their tribes, while women gathered food and farmed crops. They constructed wigwams for lodging in the villages. Like other tribes in Ohio—the Ojibwe, Miami and Lenape people—their language is of the Algonquian languages family.
  Their way of life changed, beginning in the mid-1600s, as people of European descent encroached on their hunting and summer lands and became competitors of Europeans and other Native American tribes in the ensuing fur trade of British and French fur traders. Their options for redress were to search for unoccupied land, destroy colonial settlements, or fight. Many Shawnee and other tribes were driven out of Ohio beginning in the 1640s by the Iroquois Confederacy who hunted deer, beaver, and other fur-bearing animals.
  The Shawnee supported the French during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). There were continued land disputes and treaties in the 18th century. Members of the Ojibwa, Lenape, Ottawa, Wyandotte and Shawnee tribes formed an alliance with the Miami tribe, led by Little Turtle in the fight for their land. Ultimately, after the Battle of the Wabash (1792) and Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794), eleven tribes signed the Treaty of Greenville in 1794 which forced them to relinquish most of their land.
caption: View from the Shawnee Lookout Archeological District, which may be the largest continuously occupied hilltop Native American site in the United States.[2]
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