Native American Landmarks

Pennsylvania has no federally recognized tribes. Not one reservation, not one square mile of tribally governed land within state borders, even though the Lenape, Susquehannock, Erie, and Shawnee lived here for thousands of years before any colonist signed any deed. The Walking Purchase of 1737 is where the dispossession turned…

Mississippi has one federally recognized tribe today, but the state’s soil holds the memory of a dozen nations who called it home before removal tore most of them west. The Natchez, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Biloxi, and Pascagoula shaped this land for thousands of years, and you can still stand on the…

New Jersey is the most densely populated state in America, which means most visitors look right past the fact that it’s also home to the oldest formally designated Native American reservation on this continent. Brotherton was established here in 1757, years before the United States existed as a country, and…

Wisconsin is home to 11 federally recognized tribal nations, and this land has been Indigenous homeland for at least 12,000 years. Most visitors come for the cheese and the lakes, and they leave without knowing what they missed. The Ho-Chunk Nation survived three separate federal removal orders in the 1800s…

Kentucky has no federally recognized tribe headquartered within its borders today, but it holds more than 14,000 years of documented Indigenous presence. Land speculators called it the dark and bloody ground and an empty hunting ground, and those were deliberate lies told to justify taking everything. The Shawnee built towns…

Ohio sits at the heart of North America’s most sophisticated prehistoric Indigenous civilization, where ancient engineers built earthworks so precise they track the 18.6-year lunar cycle with a geometric accuracy that still staggers modern astronomers. Dozens of nations called this land home for thousands of years, including the Shawnee, Delaware,…

Wyoming has two federally recognized tribes sharing one 2.2-million-acre reservation – the seventh largest in the country. Most visitors drive through on their way to Yellowstone and miss the deepest Indigenous story in the American West. The Eastern Shoshone were guaranteed this land under the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868,…

Missouri calls itself the Gateway to the West, but when you look at the map honestly, you’re standing on a homeland, not a doorway. Ten Native nations lived here before the first European surveyor arrived, and they weren’t passing through. The Osage Nation, known to themselves as the Wazhazhe, controlled…