Before that, most of the tribal elders believed they came from what is now the James River Valley in Virginia. Others thought it was from the Finger Lakes Region of New York. In any case, the Sioux were one of the tribes doing the pushing of weaker tribes west. And our tribe suffered the same fate at the hands of the Chippewa who pushed us out of northern Minnesota as they were displaced from what is now Michigan, Wisconsin and southwestern Ontario.
Interesting stuff. Many of the tribal divisions are purely arbitrary and partly white man's invention. A good friend of mine who is Navajo tells me that they are basically the same people as the Apache-- both tribes which originally moved from the south into what is now northern New Mexico and Arizona to raid the smaller, weaker tribes which had settled that region.
The only difference is that the Navajo accepted territory and an agricultural/ranching lifestyle in return for ending their periodic raids and invasions whereas their Apache cousins clung to that lifestyle for an extra half century or so. Thus they were designated as separate tribes by the white man, not by the Native people themselves. Our Navajo friend, who is well educated, even laughs at the term "Native people" as they expect they invaded what is now the southwestern United States from what is now Mexico some centuries before to escape the cruelties of the Aztec. The idea that they are somehow supposed to feel guilty about what America has supposedly done to Latin America is lost on them for this reason.
Not so different from the Normans (originally from Norway), Saxons (supposedly native to England but originally from Germany) and Norwegians who all fought for the English throne in that pivotal autumn of 1066.
Before that, most of the tribal elders believed they came from what is now the James River Valley in Virginia.
That rings a bell, it's what I'd read but I could not recall the river.