Lake Superior Chippewa - Origins

Origins

Sometime earlier than 1650, the Ojibwe split into two groups near present-day Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. This is believed to have been one of the stops which their prophets predicted in their migration; it was part of the path of the Anishinaabe, which they had traveled for centuries, in their passage west from the Atlantic Coast.

The Ojibwe who followed the south shore of Lake Superior found the final prophesied stopping place and "the food that grows on water" (wild rice) at Madeline Island. During the late 17th century, the Ojibwe at Madeline Island began to expand to other territory: they had population pressures, a desire for furs to trade, and increased factionalism caused by divisions over relations with French Jesuit missions. For a time they had an alliance with the Eastern Dakota.

Beginning about 1737, they competed for nearly 100 years with the Eastern Dakota and the Fox tribes in the interior of Wisconsin west and south of Lake Superior. The Ojibwe were technologically more advanced, having acquired guns through trading with the French, which for a time gave them an advantage. They eventually drove the Dakota Sioux out of most of northern Wisconsin and northeastern Minnesota into the western plains.

The Sioux (Lakota) were pushed to the west, where they eventually settled in the Great Plains of present-day Nebraska and the Dakotas. The Ojibwe successfully spread throughout the Great Lakes region, with colonizing bands settling along lakes and rivers throughout what would become northern Wisconsin and Minnesota in the United States. La Pointe on Madeline Island remained the spiritual and commercial center of the nation. The island is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.