Lake Superior Chippewa

The Lake Superior Chippewa (Anishinaabe: Gichigamiwininiwag) were a large historical band of Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) Indians living around Lake Superior in what is now the northern parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. They migrated into the area by the seventeenth century, encroaching on the Eastern Dakota people who historically occupied the area. The Ojibwe defeated the Eastern Dakota and had their last battle in 1745, after which the Dakota Sioux migrated west into the Great Plains. While sharing a common culture, this group of Ojibwe had many independent bands.

In the nineteenth century, the leaders of the bands negotiated together as the Lake Superior Chippewa with the United States government under a variety of treaties to protect their historic territories against encroachment by European-American settlers. The United States set up several reservations for bands in this area under the treaties culminating in that of 1854. This enabled the people to stay in this territory rather than remove west of the Mississippi River, as the government had attempted. Under the treaty, the bands with reservations have been federally recognized as independent tribes; several retain Lake Superior Chippewa in their formal names to indicate their shared culture.