Encyclopedia of North American Indians -

Encyclopedia of North American Indians

Ojibwa

The Ojibwas are spread over a thousand miles of territory from southeastern Ontario westward across the upper Great Lakes country of the United States and Canada as far as Montana and Saskatchewan. Although classed as one people in the Algonquian linguistic family, they have several alternate regional names, and are divided into about one hundred separate bands or reservation communities. The Ojibwas probably number about two hundred thousand, two-thirds of that number residing in Canada, with an estimated twenty thousand of their people fluent in one of the three or four dialects of Ojibwa.

Variant forms of the name have long been a problem. On seventeenth-century French maps, a form of the word Ojibwa identified a village on the north shore of Lake Superior, but use of the term expanded to include allied communities along the eastern side of Lake Superior. Depending on its division into syllables, the Ojibwa name has been interpreted as a reference either to the puckered toe of the Ojibwas' distinctive moccasins, or to their use of glyphs to inscribe historical and religious information as well as simple messages on birch bark or rock surfaces. The name has no standard spelling in English and has been corrupted into Chippewa, the form still used by tribal organizations recognized by the U.S. government. The French first encountered Ojibwas at the falls of the St. Marys River, the connecting link between Lake Superior and Lake Huron at the eastern end of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Because they were associated with this location, Ojibwas were known to the French as "People of the Falls," or Saulteurs. The form Saulteaux today is used in the western provinces of Canada to refer to Ojibwa people.

The heartland of the Ojibwa country is around present-day Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. The Ojibwa migration legend, shared by Ottawa and Potawatomi people, recounts a long journey from the lower St. Lawrence River, ascending the Ottawa River at present-day Montreal, then crossing by way of Lake Nipissing to Lake Huron and continuing northwest behind Manitoulin Island to the St. Marys River. On this odyssey they were guided by a sacred megis (shell) that indicated stopping points. A significant place near the end of their journey was the Straits of Mackinac, the waterway separating the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan. According to the widely accepted account, it was here that members of the group separated into three divisions. The Potawatomis moved south into lower Michigan; the Ottawas made Manitoulin Island their base; and the Ojibwas continued north about fifty miles to the falls of the St. Marys River, their final destination. After several centuries of population growth, however, part of that group branched off to establish a new base on the south shore of Lake Superior at Chequamegon Bay in present-day Wisconsin, a place known historically as La Pointe.

The record of the long migration has been preserved in maps drawn on birch-bark scrolls used by leaders in the ceremonies of the Midewiwin, a physically and spiritually healing medicine society that originated among Ojibwa people. Since the scrolls were often buried with their medicine-men owners, few have survived, and the knowledge to interpret them is rare. One surviving scroll carries the time line into the late-eighteenth-century migration of a band to Leech Lake in Minnesota. Membership in the Midewiwin involved many years of dedicated study. To enter the society, the initiate has to undergo a long period of instruction to master the herbal knowledge and philosophy handed down by elders. Fasting and a vision quest are part of the preparatory ritual for admission to the first level. At one time, there were eight degrees of training in the Midewiwin, but after shamans on Madeline Island in Chequamegon Bay misused their exceptional powers sometime around 1600, training was limited to the first four levels. The Midewiwin today has a significant membership in the upper Great Lakes region and has spread from the Ojibwas to neighboring Indian people. The philosophy of the medicine society stresses the importance of maintaining balance in one's personal life, and respect for other forms of life, both plant and animal, with the goal of achieving harmony within the social order.

Situated on a major transcontinental waterway, the Ojibwas became involved in intertribal hostilities, peacemaking, and trade over a vast area of interior North America. In 1662, during Iroquois warfare to gain new hunting grounds (1649-1700), the Ojibwas and local allies decisively defeated a large war party encamped about fifteen miles west of the Sault. Thenceforth Iroquois raids were directed south of the Great Lakes. Beginning about 1680, the Missisagis and other Ojibwa bands living east of the Sault on the north shore of Lake Huron began advancing south across the Ontario peninsula, driving out the Iroquois invaders and by 1696 establishing their own communities in the area extending from present-day Detroit to the north shore of Lake Ontario. The name Missisagi continued in use in southern Ontario to identify these eastern Ojibwas. By 1750 they had moved around the bottom of Lake Huron into the Saginaw Valley of southeastern Michigan. Most of their Ottawa predecessors, who also lived around Thunder Bay, moved to the growing Ottawa concentration in northwest lower Michigan and along the north shore of Lake Michigan, or to the Ottawa village at Detroit.

Ojibwa leaders figured in all the major campaigns of eighteenth-century warfare that affected their hunting grounds and their trading connections. During the French and Indian War (1753-60) Wabojig led warriors from Chequamegon Bay to battles in upstate New York. Wasson from Saginaw contributed to General Edward Braddock's defeat near Pittsburgh in 1755, supported Pontiac's uprising at Detroit in 1763, and later met American representatives at Pittsburgh in 1775. Leaders from Sault Ste. Marie attended councils with the Shawnees on the Ohio River in the 1760s, and continued to oppose the advance of white settlement in the lower Great Lakes region until the era of the War of 1812.

While all these historical developments were in progress in the Ojibwa country east and south of Sault Ste. Marie, actions in the west were directed toward expanding hunting territory beyond Lake Superior. From the time of their first village settlement at Chequamegon Bay, Ojibwas had periodically battled two tribes who became traditional enemies: the Mesquakies (Foxes) to the south, around the headwaters of the St. Croix River in Wisconsin; and the Dakotas (Sioux) to the west, on the headwaters of the Mississippi River. By 1683, the Mesquakies had moved farther south, but conflict with the Sioux persisted until the mid-nineteenth century. Following an interval of peace and trade, aggressive warfare had resumed by 1740, leading to the advance of Ojibwa hunters into Sioux lands in present-day northern Minnesota. The Ojibwas also had the assistance of Cree and Assiniboine allies, who attacked the Dakotas from the north. After Crees living northwest of Lake Superior suffered severe population loss during the 1782 smallpox epidemic, they invited Ojibwas to come into their country.

As a result, Ojibwa communities occupied the Rainy River, Lake of the Woods, Red Lake, and lower Red River districts south of Lake Winnipeg by 1790. Pembina, on the Red River about a mile below the present-day international border, became a base for Ojibwa and Métis hunters who later made annual buffalo hunts and settled in the Turtle Mountains of the Dakota border region. An offshoot, the Little Shell Band, went farther west into Montana. In the district of future Winnipeg, the Ojibwa leader of the 1790s was Peguis from Sault Ste. Marie, who became an intermediary with early settlers and officials. Acquiring horses about 1820, Ojibwa bands advanced westward to trade near present-day Edmonton, Alberta, and the names Plains Saulteaux and Plains Ojibwa came into use, along with the Hudson's Bay Company name Bungi, referring to a begging phrase.

Ojibwa people have never formed a single organization, but the overlapping of regional groups forms a chain that ultimately links them together. Personal connections through kinship were extended by membership in patriarchal clans. Although there were originally only five or six Ojibwa clans, twenty-one were identified in the mid-nineteenth century with some geographic variations. Sault Ste. Marie has always been associated with the high-ranking Crane clan. The Marten and Loon totems have been well known around Chequamegon Bay, whereas the later-created Wolf clan was prominent in the former Sioux headquarters at Mille Lacs, Minnesota, where the Ojibwa community incorporated captive Sioux. A clan member provides hospitality for any visiting member of the same clan, even from another tribe. Common clan identities created kinship networks among Crees and Ojibwas.

Ojibwa identity has generally involved a way of life including the Midewiwin rituals; a subsistence pattern emphasizing maple sugar, fish, and wild rice with its important fall ceremonies; and travel by birch-bark canoe. The western Ojibwas for many years returned to the Red River and Lake Winnipeg districts to make maple (or box elder) syrup in the spring and gather wild rice in the fall, although some finally adopted a buffalo-hunting economic base, with its emphasis on horse herds. Today, many Ojibwas in the United States and Canada prefer to identify themselves as Anishinaabe, a term meaning "First [or Original] People." Yet they recognize that this name also refers to their eastern neighbors the Algonquins, as well as to Crees, Ottawas, and Potawatomis.

Modern Ojibwa reservations include members of mixed Indian and non-Indian heritage, with many intermittent residents who travel back and forth to cities. Economic development is a major concern. In Minnesota and along its border with Canada, Ojibwas have fought to protect their interest in the harvesting and marketing of wild rice. Although the struggle to protect tribal fishing rights has claimed public attention in Wisconsin and Michigan, other projects indicate the diversity of modern Ojibwa reservation life. A public radio station, as well as a junior college, are in operation at Lac Court Oreille, Wisconsin. The Bay Mills Reservation in the eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan also has established a junior college. On the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, a women's cooperative markets wild rice and crafts. The Sault Ste. Marie Tribe, officially recognized in 1972, had by 1995 enrolled twenty thousand members and developed housing projects in seven Upper Peninsula communities. Walpole Island, an Ontario reserve on the delta of the St. Clair River, has a growing historical-research center. The population there includes Potawatomi refugees from government removal efforts of the 1830s in Michigan and Indiana, and Ottawas who fled from the Toledo region and Maumee River valley of northwestern Ohio. At Walpole Island, Ojibwas emphasize their close relationship with both Ottawas and Potawatomis as the "Three Fires," invoking the memory of an alliance of the early migration era.





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