Pepikokia

The Pepikokia were one of the bands that made up the Miami, a Miami-Illinois-speaking Algonquian people of the Great Lakes and the upper Wabash valley. The early Miami, maize farmers and hunters of the Fisher Mississippian tradition, were driven west of Lake Michigan by Haudenosaunee raids during the Beaver Wars, then returned east with French firearms and trade around 1700.

The Pepikokia remained a distinct community until 1742, when they merged into the neighboring Wea, whose chief trading center was Ouiatenon on the Wabash. In the eighteenth century the Pepikokia leader Le Gris, also called The Gray, ranked among the principal Miami chiefs.

The Wea and their Pepikokia kin were among the bands forced beyond the Mississippi during the Indian removals of the 1820s and 1830s, their descendants eventually joining the Peoria in Indian Territory.