Identification and History

The Algonkin, Ojibwa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi comprise the Central Algonquian-speaking peoples of Canada. They bear close linguistic and cultural resemblances to one another. Some diversity does exist, but cultural boundaries between peoples are often ambiguous. For instance, the Nipissing, or “[people] at the lake,” are included with the Algonkins for the purposes of this essay, even though they are linguistically, although not culturally, distinct from the Algonkin.

It has been argued that, prehistorically, the Nipissing, Ojibwa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi formed a uniform cultural and linguistic group extending from Lake Nipissing to lands southwest of Sault Ste Marie and westward to an undetermined boundary somewhere on Lake Superior. Ecological adaptations to differing environments within this vast area fostered variation in social organization, with flexible bilateral-band societies arising to the north and patrilineal clan structures emerging farther south. The Algonkin, Nipissing, many Ojibwa, and some Ottawa dwelt within a mixed coniferous-deciduous forest zone near the northern limit of corn cultivation. The Potawatomi, whose original homeland lay on the lower Michigan peninsula, engaged more extensively in horticultural pursuits. Iroquois incursions and mission activity compelled representatives of all these groups to relocate from time to time in American territory. Yet only the Potawatomi, who were invited by the British government in the 1830s to settle on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron or in southern Ontario, may be considered an “American” group among Canada’s present-day Central Algonquian speakers.

The nameAlgonkin derives from a Malecite term meaning “they are our allies.” Peoples belonging to this group reside in northeastern Ontario and adjacent portions of Quebec. Communities in the upper Ottawa River-Lake Temiskaming region include Argonant, Temiskaming, Long Point, Kipawa, Hunter’s Point, and Wolf Lake. North of and along the Gattineau River drainage basin lie the settlements of Lake Simon, Grand Lake Victoria, Barrier Lake, and Maniwaki (River Desert). Golden Lake is situated in Ontario west of Eganville near the headwaters of the Bonnechère River.

Most of these communities are located north of the Algonkin’s traditional homeland, which extended over the Ottawa valley. Population displacements, caused first by Iroquois incursions, later by settlement, and finally by lumbering enterprises, led the Algonkin progressively northward onto tracts used previously by them as winter hunting territories. Algonkin were located at Point-du-Lac near Trois-Rivières until 1830. Others joined the early French mission settlements of Sillery and, later, Sainte-Anne-du-bout-de-l’-île. In 1721 Algonkin, Nipissing, and Mohawk came together to establish three separate villages at Lac des Deux Montagnes near the Sulpician mission at Oka, north of Montreal. Remaining principally hunters, trappers, and fishers, with corn horticulture as a secondary occupation, Algonkin families departed each winter for their trapping territories, leaving their village almost deserted until spring. When a dispute arose at Oka in the 1840s between Mohawk and the Sulpicians regarding land tenure, heads of several Algonkin and Nipissing families petitioned the House of Commons for grants to lands they already seasonally occupied at Temiscaming and Maniwaki. In 1870 they acquired 620 hectares at Golden Lake. Algonkins also resided on lands around and within the boundaries of Algonquian Park, to which the Algonkin today argue they still retain rights.

During the early fur-trade era the Algonkin were a powerful people, well aware of their strategic importance in the Ottawa River trade. Around 1600, in addition to 700 or so Nipissing dwelling near Lake Nipissing to the west, at least six distinct Algonkin bands existed, the most noted being the Kichesipirini of the upper Ottawa valley. Other nations were the Weskarini (Petite Nation), Matouweskarini, Keinouche, Otaguottouemins, and Onontchataronon (People of Iroquet). These peoples exchanged hides, peltry, and dried fish with the Huron for corn, nets, and wampum during elaborate negotiations which often included a Feast of the Dead, adapted from a Huron ceremony. Not only did they play a major role as middlemen between the French and the Huron, they sought out the Dutch and, later, the English as well. They structured their exchanges around their own goals and proved defiant and proud. One Kichespirini leader, Tessouat, charged tolls on Huron traders passing through his band’s territory. In defence of his own interests, this chief in 1613 deflected the French from trading directly with the Cree by persuading Samuel de Champlain that an account, given by a young Frenchman of a visit to James Bay with the Nipissing, was false.

Traditional tensions between the Algonkin and the Iroquois acquired new impetus from fur-trade rivalries, and during the 1650s and 1660s many Nipissing and Algonkin temporarily fled west under pressure of Iroquois attacks or sought permanent refuge at French settlements and missions along the St Lawrence. While those who became attached to the Sulpician mission at Lac des Deux Montagnes spoke the Nipissing dialect by 1830, progeny of mixed Nipissing-Algonkin parentage who later moved to Maniwaki and Golden Lake came to be referred to solely as “Algonkin.” Movement of peoples also required a shifting of territorial boundaries. When Eastern Abenaki settled at Bécancour in 1704, local Algonkin bands willingly not only vacated a large tract south of the St Lawrence River for their use but permitted the newcomers to place these hunting grounds under their own territorial jurisdiction.

Another Central Algonquian group, the Ojibwa, form the largest native community north of Mexico with a population of over 160,000 people, of which the Woodland Ojibwa are the most substantial part. In Canada, Ojibwa live in numerous reserve- and non-reserve communities from Ontario to Alberta, the largest population concentrations being in Ontario and Manitoba. Ojibwa also reside across the international border in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, and Oklahoma. Slight dialectical variations are discernible from east to west, although all Woodland Ojibwa speakers are able to comprehend each other.

The Woodland Ojibwa arose historically from the inclusion of a number of bands north of Lakes Huron and Superior into one entity termed Ojibwa. Two competing translations have been given for this word: “puckered up,” which denotes a style of moccasin, and “voice of the Crane,” which refers either to a noted chief named Crane or to a totemic unit. The Ojibwa call themselves Anishinabeg, meaning “human beings.” Band names derived from animals and included Marameg (“Catfish [people]”), Amika (“Beaver [people]”), and Noquet (“Bear [people]”). During the early seventeenth century these bands, composed of several hundred persons and possessing patrilineal clans and high-profile leadership, interacted with the Ottawa and Algonkin in trading with the Huron. The Ojibwa were involved in the French fur trade as trappers and middlemen west of Lake Superior. Drawn by commercial opportunities, they spread west, although their principal location for festivities until 1670 remained at the rapids at Sault Ste Marie, from which place they derived the name Saulteurs, “people of the falls.” After 1670, a second centre emerged at the French trading station of Chequamegon near Lapointe in Wisconsin. Both Sault Ste Marie and Chequamegon lay near abundant whitefish fisheries and drew bands from around Lake Superior in the spring and fall of each year.

Woodland Ojibwa showed close similarities to the Ottawa and Potawatomi, with whom they had an alliance in the eighteenth century known as the Council of the Three Fires. All three had clans, each designated by a symbol called a dodem, or totem. One’s totem determined whom one could or could not marry, since all who held the same totem were regarded as kin. Many Ojibwa, but not all, engaged in corn and squash horticulture and grew some tobacco, an important component of Ojibwa ritual. By the late eighteenth century the Lake Superior Ojibwa had twenty-three totemic clans within five kinship groups. In pursuit of new trapping territories for furs, and in wars against the Dakota and other groups southwest of Lake Superior, the Ojibwa occupied lands in Minnesota and Wisconsin where today, known as the Southwestern Ojibwa, they have large reservations.

In the interval between the Huron dispersal in 1649 and final peace with the Iroquois in 1701, Ojibwa-speaking peoples began to move into lower Michigan and adjacent lands in southern Ontario to become what is known as the Southeastern Ojibwa. In 1781 the British government induced the Mississauga to cede lands in southern Ontario for the use of the incoming Loyalist Six Nations Iroquois. A series of other land surrenders followed, the last in 1930.

Woodland Ojibwa settled in numerous communities between the western end of Lake Superior and the Red River, having started their westward migration after a smallpox epidemic in 1781 drastically reduced Cree populations formerly living in the area. These lands contained rich fur reserves, deer, abundant whitefish and sturgeon fisheries, and wild rice, of importance for ceremonial as well as subsistence purposes. Overhunting during furcompany competition prior to 1821 reduced furbearing animals, yet Ojibwa numbers continued to grow. In the late nineteenth century many were engaged in smallscale farming, although lack of external assistance and white covetousness caused such activity to wane by the turn of the twentieth century. Commercial pursuits in this region included the production for sale of sturgeon isinglass, sturgeon caviar, and wild rice. Unfortunately, overfishing by white commercial interests and the consequences of damming projects damaged the commercial viability of many fishing locations.

The westernmost bands of Ojibwa reached Edmonton House to trade. Many kept to their Woodland way of life, using birchbark utensils, living in bark dwellings, and spending summers fishing in streams in the foothills of the Rockies and raising small gardens. By contrast, other Ojibwa bands who became known as the Bungee adopted the Plains way of life, particularly the horse, the buffalo hunt, and ceremonials such as the Sun Dance.

As early as the 1820s, those Ojibwa south of Lake Superior suffered the cutting edge of logging enterprises and mineral exploration. Yet the native population north of lakes Huron and Superior did not encounter such ventures on their lands until the mid 1840s. In 1849 a small Ojibwa and Metis group from the Sault area, in protest over their rights to land, timber, and minerals being ignored, confiscated a copper mine at Momainse on the north shore of Lake Superior. In response the government in 1850 made two treaties, the RobinsonHuron and the RobinsonSuperior, with the claimant bands. Both treaties involved a cession of a vast territorial tract, promised hunting and fishing rights on unoccupied Crown land, and became the model for similar agreements known as the numbered treaties made after 1871 with native groups west of Lake Superior. During later treaty negotiations, the western Ojibwa proved especially persistent in demanding that their rights to resources as well as land be respected. In Treaty 3 negotiations in 1873, a claim to timber and subsurface rights in northwestern Ontario was argued so strongly that it contributes to the legal basis for conceptions of native title in this region today. Yet other Woodland Ojibwa located outside the Robinson treaty or numbered treaty areas met with obstructions and frustrations. One group, the TemeAugama Anishnabai First Nation, located on Lake Temagami in northeastern Ontario, argue they were misrepresented during the Robinson-Huron Treaty negotiations and for over one hundred years have been asserting rights to land and resources within a tract hunted over by their ancestors for thousands of years.

The name Ottawa derives from Odwaw, which means “traders.” Ottawa in Canada reside east of Georgian Bay in Ontario, in southern Ontario, and on Manitoulin Island in northern Lake Huron. They, along with Ojibwa and Potawatomi, form the population of Walpole Island in Lake St Clair. Over 4,000 individuals in Canada ascribe themselves to the Ottawa category, although no community is exclusively Ottawa since extensive intermarriage has occurred between this group and the Ojibwa. The largest single settlement, Wikwemikong, arose as the consequence of a migration of Ottawa in the 1830s from l’Arbre Croche, north of Grand Traverse Bay in Michigan, to Manitoulin Island under the auspices of Roman Catholic missionaries. Between 1838 and 1858 Roman Catholic religious leaders at Wikwemikong competed for native converts with energetic Anglican missionaries at a government-sponsored Anglican mission nearby at Manitowaning, principally populated by Ojibwa. The Wikwemikong Ottawa became strong defenders of their land and resource rights, and, when approached in 1862 to surrender title to their lands, rejected the offer. Their tract east of Manitowaning Bay still remains unceded territory.

The Wikwemikong Ottawa resided on lands their ancestors had inhabited in the early 1600s but had abandoned for over two hundred years. Samuel de Champlain’s expedition of 1615 encountered Ottawa at the French River, on Manitoulin Island, and on the Bruce peninsula, where they were operating as middlemen between Lake Superior peoples and the Huron. Champlain called the Ottawa cheveux relevez owing to their practice of wearing their hair in a roached style. Throughout most of the later historic era they assumed a riverine mode of living in lower Michigan, where fish were abundant and good soils and an annual growing season of 180 days easily permitted horticulture. The French at Montreal with whom they annually traded recognized several subdivisions among them. These may have been local groups or patrilineal totemic units (or a mixture of both) and included the Kiskakon, “cut tail” or “bear”; Sinago or “black squirrel”; Sable or “sand”; and Nassauakuton, the “[people of] the fork.” Their population, which in the 1640s exceeded five thousand, fled under pressure of Iroquois attacks west to the Straits of Mackinac, Green Bay, and southwestern Lake Superior. Wherever they went they maintained a more sedentary existence than their Ojibwa neighbours. Their villages of rectangular, barrel-roofed multi-family dwellings, covered with fir bark, cedar bark, or matting, were often palisaded. The most strategically placed of these villages became fur-trade centres which supplied corn, bark canoes, and guides for westward-bound fur brigades. From such centres they seasonally carried out communal drives for deer and fowl. The loss of their middleman position, however, compelled them to devote more of their energies to trapping, and after 1780 they pushed into Minnesota and towards Red River, from where they extended their trapping activities as far northwest as Lake Athabaska.

The Mackinac bands remain the most important to an understanding of the history of the present-day Manitoulin Island Ottawa. After 1700, some Mackinac bands migrated south to join large multi-ethnic communities near Detroit. Those that lingered in the Straits of Mackinac area demonstrated continued attachment to their northern homeland by briefly retiring to Manitoulin Island in 1712 after defeating the Fox and Mascoutin. In 1742 the remaining Mackinac bands moved to l’Arbre Croche. After eschewing Pontiac’s anti-British stance in 1763 and fighting on the British side in the War of 1812, they strengthened their British connections still further by removing to Manitoulin Island in 1837, following the Ojibwa’s relinquishment of all claims to it. The Roman Catholic missionaries had introduced new crops such as potatoes, turnips, and wheat to their community, while in l’Abre Croche the Wikwemikong Ottawa proved to be one of the first groups to be able to subsist principally on the produce of their fields. Fishing and maple-sugar manufacture nevertheless remained important both for subsistence and commercial purposes. Perhaps because of its high degree of self-sufficiency, Wikwemikong remains a distinctive linguistic and cultural community, where about two-thirds of the population still speak their native tongue.

Those Ottawa who migrated into southern Ontario shared a different historical background from the Wikwemikong group since they were not directly associated with any mission. After 1795, when most Ohio groups lost their lands, the Ottawa migrated to Walpole Island and adjacent areas. By the 1840s substantial numbers of Ottawa had also joined the predominately Ojibwa communities of Parry Island and Shawanaga on Parry Sound and Christian Island in the eastern sector of Georgian Bay. Although merged with Ojibwa and Potawatomi, these persons never fully lost their Ottawa identity.

The last group to be discussed under the category of Central Algonquians are the Potawatomi, whose name has been translated as “people of the fire.” Originally hailing from the lower Michigan peninsula, they later established, following warfare with the Miamis, Fox, Mascoutin, and Illinois, a vast “tribal estate” which by 1720 extended south of Lake Michigan and westward through Illinois and southern Wisconsin to the Mississippi. In this area they hunted, raised corn, beans, melons, squash, and tobacco, and fished. Until the mid-eighteenth century, palisades surrounded their villages of rectangular barrel-roofed lodges. Close allies of the French as well as followers of Pontiac in 1763, they gradually switched their allegiance to the British between 1763 and 1810. Most fought on the British side during the War of 1812 and afterward travelled annually to military stations at Amherstburg, Drummond Island, and Manitoulin Island to receive distributions of goods and provisions for past services rendered the British Crown.

The Potawatomi lacked an overarching tribal organization until the 1640s, and even afterwards they never formed a centralized political entity. While a strong chief might be responsible for a number of villages, the primary functioning organization continued to remain the corporate exogamous patrilineal clan system. In the early nineteenth century there appear to have been around thirty of these clans, organized into six kinship groups. Each clan had an origin myth, medicine bundle, and special rituals and obligations. Owing to population shifts over time, clan members became distributed among numerous villages, yet clan membership provided important cross-cutting social linkages among the widely dispersed population until the 1830s.

After the mid-1830s, the American government set out to remove the Potawatomi living in southern Wisconsin and Illinois westward to Iowa. In response, about 2,000 of this tribe chose to emigrate to Canada either by way of Detroit and Port Huron or across Lake Huron to Manitoulin Island. Strangers in the settlements to which they came, these people had neither treaty rights nor government annuities. Eventually, however, they became assimilated into the Walpole Island, Sarnia, Kettle Point, Cape Crocker, Saugeen, Parry Island, and Manitoulin Island communities, where, while retaining memories of their historic migration in the late 1830s, they adopted the language and practices of their Ojibwa and Ottawa neighbours.