Wabash Confederacy

The Wabash Confederacy, also referred to as the Wabash Indians or the Wabash tribes, is a term used to describe a number of 18th century Native American villagers in the area of the Wabash River in what are now the U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

The Wabash Indians are primarily Weas and Piankashaws, but also include Kickapoos, Mascoutens, and others.

In this time and place, Native American tribes are not political units, and the villages along the Wabash are multi-tribal settlements with no centralized government.

The confederacy, then, is a loose alliance of influential village leaders (sometimes called headmen or chiefs).In the 1780s, headmen of the Wabash Confederacy ally themselves with a larger, loose confederacy of Native American leaders in the Ohio Country and Illinois Country, in order to collectively resist U.S. expansion after the American Revolutionary War.

In 1786, a Wyandot chief named Half-King warns Congress that the Wabash, Twightwee, and Miami Nations will disrupt U.S. surveyors, and Congress promises reprisals if this occurs.

This resistance movement culminates with the Northwest Indian War.

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