World Wetlands Day, Feb. 2, calls attention to the vital role these increasingly scarce ecosystems play in the health of our planet.
The Indigenous Miami people have known about and respected the benefits of wetlands for countless generations. The Miamis, the Myaamia in their own language, served as the first stewards of what is now Eagle Marsh and the Little River Wetlands Project’s other nature preserves in the Little River Valley.
Myaamia means “the Downstream People,” the now federally recognized Miami Tribe of Oklahoma writes on its website, www.miamination.com. The story passed down through generations describes their “Coming Out Place,” or place of origin, as the St. Joseph River that flows through the South Bend area.
“These aren’t the exact words, but they are being pushed along by the river, and they grab hold of roots and limbs,” said Dani Tippmann, a local Miami Tribe member and the community food program director for the tribe’s Cultural Resource Extension Office in Fort Wayne. “When they get out, they grab somebody else and help them out,” Tippmann added.
From there, the Miami people spread out to settle the Wabash River valley and watershed, including the Fort Wayne area. They had been here for generations when the first European fur trappers, explorers and missionaries first encountered them in the 1600s.
Several Miami leaders lived on land bordering or lying in the Little River Valley, including noted Miami woman civil chief Tahkamwa and her son, civil chief Pinsiwa (Jean Baptist Richardville). Their family controlled the portage route on what is now the southwest side of Fort Wayne, which provided a waterway link between the Maumee River and Great Lakes to the north and the Wabash River, Mississippi River, and Gulf of Mexico to the south.
The U.S. government forced many Miami Tribe members to leave their homeland in 1846 to relocate to a reservation in what is now Kansas. They later had to move again to the tribe’s current reservation in northeast Oklahoma. A limited number of Miamis were able to stayin their ancestral homeland.
Today, Tippmann said, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma has about 7,000 citizens overall, including about 400 in northern Indiana and 1,200 statewide.
The Miami people valued wetlands for many reasons.
“The wetlands were really important to us because they held a lot of foods,” Tippmann said. “I had an aunt tell me that cattails are like our Walmart — we get everything there. It’s a food, a medicine and a technology all in one plant. You can use it throughout the entire year.”
Cattail roots can be dug up in the fall, washed off, roasted and eaten, she said. New sprouts sent up in the spring can be eaten like asparagus. The cattail head, while still green and whitish with leaves around it, can be soaked, grilled, and eaten much like corn on the cob. The spike at the top of the cattail head collects pollen that can be used like flour, but without the need for grinding or sifting.
Tippmann said the Miami people use the gooey substance between cattail leaves to treat wounds, cuts, and abrasions. They sew cattail leaves into mats they place over a wood frame to create the walls and roofs of their homes, called wiikiaami.
Wetlands also provide other essentials.
Tippmann said that the Miami people have traditionally woven bullrushes into mats for sitting. "A lot of medicines grow there, too.”
They caught and ate fish. They hunted beaver and muskrats for food and for their furry hides.
“There’s just so much life there that we always had interactions with it,“ Tippmann noted. “And we need water. Whether it’s wetlands or a river, we were dependent on water.”
The Miamis used water sources for drinking, cooking, bathing and transportation.
Local Miami Tribe members carry on those traditions today.
Tippmann said they still make cattail mats and give presentations about them. She also uses cattails for medicine and food, though not all local Miamis do.
However, she said it has become challenging in recent years to find native Indiana cattails. She explained that they have thicker and broader leaves that are easier to work with than European cattails. The European variety has spread into Indiana wetlands and has cross-bred with native cattails, creating a cattail with narrower and thinner leaves than the native species.
Local Miamis recently celebrated “Beaver Week” at the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma’s local Cultural Resource Extension Office by skinning and eating beavers the state had declared nuisance animals, Tippmann said.
At the office, which includes 40 acres of property, she also helps tribal members use a large garden space — and soon a new kitchen area — to work together to become food self-sufficient. They grow tomatoes, beans, squash, okra and a special variety of corn known as Miami corn.
“We are planting our own seeds, too, which our ancestors did as well,” she said.
Little River Wetlands Project and its nature preserves assist the Miami people with carrying on their culture and traditions.
“They graciously allowed us to go and harvest cattails that we will use to make into cattail mats,” Tippmann said. “Some of them we have made into cattail mats, and they are beautiful. I think that allows us to connect to our own cultural past.
“I think that helps the plants to have the connection,” she added. “They know they are needed as well.”
Tippmann said she sees an abundance of beneficial plants and more beavers, cranes, and other birds when out in wetlands now.
“I think that those special places with those special plants connect us to our own past and to our own tribal members as well,” she said. “So I think it is really important that they are still there and that they are getting healthier.”
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