The Miami evolved out of the prehistoric Fisher and Huber cultures of the southern Lake Michigan region. In the late 1660s fear of Iroquois raids prompted them to move west of the Mississippi with the Illinois people. At the same time a group of Miami took up residence with a large group of similarly displaced people around Green Bay, Wisconsin. These Green Bay Miami were visited frequently by Jesuit missionaries during the 1670s. In the 1680s the Miami began to move back to the southern end of Lake Michigan. This trend southward continued, and by 1750 large numbers of Miami peoples could be found near the present-day Indiana cities of Fort Wayne, Lafayette, and Vincennes.
The Miami were allied with the English during the American Revolution, and some (most notably Little Turtle and his followers) continued to fight the Americans until the Greenville Treaty was signed in 1795. By 1820 most Miamis had sold their land to American settlers and moved to Reservations in Missouri. The majority of the remaining Miami were forcibly removed from Indiana in 1846 and resettled in Kansas, moving finally to Oklahoma in the 1870s to live with other Miami and Illinois people who had settled there.