Ojibwe  OJIBWEHISTORY©(revised June 21, 2000)[Note: This is a single part of what will be, by myclassification, about 240 compact tribal histories (contact to 1900). Itis limited to the lower 48 states of the U.S. but also includes thoseFirstNations from Canada and Mexico that had important roles ( Huron,Assiniboine, etc.).This history's content and style are representative. The normal processat this point is to circulate an almost finished product among a peergroup for comment and criticism. At the end of this History you willfind links to those Nations referred to in the History of theOjibwe.Using the Internet, this can be more inclusive. Feel free to comment orsuggest corrections via e-mail. Working together we can end some of thehistorical misinformation about Native Americans. You will find the egoat this end to be of standard size. Thanks for stopping by. I look forward to your comments... Lee Sultzman.  Enter your search terms Webdickshovel.comtolatsga.orgSubmit search form [A reader comment:I am crying and the tears signal my relief. After reading more than Ihave ever been told by my family about our history, I am overjoyed to know thatwe are documenting ourselves and not losing history. The history of thepowerful Ojibewa Nation is everyone's history.My mother, born at Turtle Mountain, sent to boarding school in Alberta, andeventually adopted by a white family, was a chronic runaway. She was full ofwar. Her inability to overcome her anger lead to her early death. Withouther, I seek answers to where she/we came from. Who were her/our people?I am in the middle of final exams and am searching the web for statistics onNative American death rates. I am struggling with how much theory I am taughtin my classes. I must write critically, analytically, theorhetically aboutsomething I intuitively understand. Being able to check in with this sitetakes the morbid edge off my homework. Writing about how we die becomesdepressing and reinforces the myth that native peoples are dissappearing.This site renews my energy for finishing my projects. OjibweLocation In a tradition shared with the Ottawa and Potawatomi, the Ojibweremember a time when they lived near an ocean. This may have been theAtlantic near the gulf of the St. Lawrence, but more likely it wasHudson Bay. Sometime around 1400, the North America climate becamecolder, and the first Ojibwe, Ottawa and Potawatomi bands started toarrive on the east side of Lake Huron. The Ottawa remained at the mouthof the French River and Lake Huron islands, but the Ojibwe andPotawatomi continued northwest occupying the shoreline to the MackinacStrait which separates upper and lower Michigan. By 1500 the Potawatomihad crossed into lower Michigan while the Ojibwe continued west to LakeSuperior and Wisconsin's Apostle Islands. When the French had theirfirst meeting the Saulteur in 1623, the Ojibwe were concentrated in theeastern half of upper Michigan.Through the fur trade and war, the Ojibwe after 1687 expanded to theeast, south, and west. During their wars with the Iroquois, the Ojibwepushed down both sides of Lake Huron and by 1701 controlled most oflower Michigan and southern Ontario. Following the French fur trade westduring the 1720s, they moved beyond Lake Superior and into a war withthe Dakota (Sioux) in 1737. During the next century, the Ojibwe forcedthe Dakota out of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Reaching Manitobaand North Dakota during the late 1700s, some bands adopted the plainslifestyle and continued west into Montana and Saskatchewan. At the sametime, other Ojibwe moved south to settle in northern Illinois. By 1800Ojibwe were living in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Michigan,Minnesota, Michigan, North Dakota, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. No othertribe has ever come close to controlling so vast an area as the Ojibwedid at this time. White settlement ultimately took most of their landand forced them onto reservations, but with the exception of two smallbands, the Ojibwe have remained in their homeland.Canada recognizes more than 600 First Nations - more than 130 of whichare Ojibwe (at least in part). These are located in Ontario, Manitoba,Saskatchewan, and Alberta.In the United States,22 Chippewa groups have federal recognition.MichiganBay Mills Indian Community of the Sault Ste. Marie Band of ChippewaIndians,Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians,Keweenaw Bay Indian Community of L'Anse of Chippewa Indians, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community of Lac Vieux Desert of Chippewa Indians, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community of Ontonagon Bands of Chippewa Indians, Sault Ste. Marie Band of Chippewa Indians,Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan (Isabella)MinnesotaMinnesota Chippewa Nation of Minnesota (six bands): Boise Forte (Nett Lake),Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs, and White Earth.Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians of the Red Lake ReservationMontanaChippewa-Cree Indians of the Rocky Boy's ReservationNorth DakotaTurtle Mountain Band of Chippewa IndiansWisconsinBad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, Sokoagon Chippewa Community - Mole Lake Band of Chippewa Indians,St. Croix Chippewa IndiansOjibwe without federalrecognition Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (MI), ConsolidatedBahwetig Ojibwe and Mackinac (MI), Kah-Bay-Kah-Nong (Warroad Chippewa)(MN), Lake Superior Chippewa of Marquette (MI), Little Shell Tribe ofChippewas (ND and MT), NI-MI-WIN Ojibweys (MN), Sandy Lake Band ofOjibwe (MN), and Swan Creek and Black River Chippewa (KS and MT).PopulationMade up of numerous independent bands, the Ojibwe were so spread outthat few early French estimates of them were even close. 35,000 has beensuggested, but there were probably two to three times as many in 1600.The British said there were about 25-30,000 Ojibwe in 1764, but the theAmericans in 1843 listed 30,000 in just the United States. The 1910census (low-point for most tribes) gave 21000 in the United States and25,000 in Canada - total 46,000. By 1970 this had increased to almost90,000. Currently, there ar 130,000 Ojibwe in United States and 60,000in Canada. The 190,000 total represents only enrolled Ojibwe and doesnot include Canadian Métis, many of whom have Ojibwe blood. Ifthese were added, the Ojibwe would be the largest Native American groupnorth of Mexico.NamesTo end any confusion, the Ojibwe and Chippewa arenot only the same tribe, but the same word pronounced a littledifferently due to accent. If an "O" is placed in frontof Chippewa (O'chippewa), the relationship becomes apparent. Ojibwe isused in Canada, although Ojibwe west of Lake Winnipeg are sometimereferred to as the Saulteaux. In United States, Chippewa was used in alltreaties and is the official name. The Ojibwe call themselves Anishinabe(Anishinaubag, Neshnabek) meaning "original men" (sometimesshortened to Shinob and used as a nickname among themselves). Ottawa andPotawatomi also call themselves Anishinabe, and at some time in thepast, the three tribes were a single tribe. Ojibwe, or Chippewa, comesfrom the Algonquin word "otchipwa" (to pucker) and refers tothe distinctive puckered seam of Ojibwe moccasins. Various spellings:Achipoes, Chepeway, Chippeway, Ochipoy, Odjibwa, Ojibweg, Ojibwey,Ojibwa, and Otchipwe.Some major Ojibwe had specific names according to location: Missisauga in southern Ontario; Salteaux of upper Michigan; and Bungeefor the Ojibwe of the northern Great Plains. Other names: Aoechisaeronon(Huron), Assisagigroone (Iroquois), Axshissayerunu, (Wyandot),Bawichtigouek (French), Bedzaqetcha (Tsattine), Bedzietcho(Kawchodinne), Bungee (Plains Ojibwe, Plains Chippewa) (Hudson Bay),Dewakanha (Mohawk), Dshipowehaga (Caughnawaga), Dwakanen (Onondaga),Eskiaeronnon (Huron), Hahatonwan (Dakota), Hahatonway (Hidatsa), Jumper,Kutaki (Fox), Leaper, Neayaog (Cree), Nwaka (Tuscarora), Ostiagahoroone(Iroquois), Paouichtigouin (French), Rabbit People (Plains Cree),Regatci (Negatce) (Winnebago), Saulteur (Saulteaux) (French), Sore Face(Hunkpapa Lakota), Sotoe (British), and Wahkahtowah (Assiniboine).LanguageAlgonquin - central Algonquin group. Ojibwe is virtually identical toOttawa, Potawatomi and Algonkin, with a more distant relationship toIllinois and Miami. After 1680, Ojibwe became the trade language in thenorthern Great Lakes.Sub-NationsWhile the Ojibwe were concentrated near the Mackinac Straits 1650-85,the French called them Saulteur, with some groups apparently beingconfused with the Ottawa. Ojibwe and Chippewa came into use later. By 1800 there were five divisions: Southeast...included the Mississauga of southern Ontario, the Ojibwe villagesnear Detroit, and the Saginaw who occupied the eastern half of lowerMichigan.Northern...northern Ontario between the north shore of Lakes Huron and Superiorbounded on the north by the divide between the Great Lakes and HudsonBay drainages, and on the west by Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba.Lake Superior...south shore of Lake Superior from Mackinac across upper Michigan andnorthern Wisconsin to the headwaters of the St. Croix River.Mississippi...Minnesota north of the Minnesota River.Plains...Red River Valley and Turtle Mountains of eastern North Dakota rangingwest into Montana, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Ojibwe Bands and Villages in1650 Achiligouan, Amicoures, Amikouet (Amikwa, Amikouai), Auwause, Bawating,Chequamegon, Keweenaw, Kitchigami, Macomile, Malanas, (Mantouek(Mantoue, Nantoüe), Marameg, Mackinac (Mikinac), Missisauga(Mississague, Missisaki, Tisagechroanu), Mundua, Nikikouek, Noquet(Nouquet, Nouket), Oumiusagai, Ouasouarini (Aouasanik, Ousouarini),Outchibou (Ouchipoe), Outchougai (Atchougue, Outchougi), Ouxeinacomigo,and Saulteaux (Saulteur).Later Bands andVillages AlbertaCold Lake.British ColumbiaSaulteau (Beaver, Cree).ManitobaBerens River, Bloodvein, Brokenhead, Buffalo Point, Crane River(Ochichakkosipi), Dauphin River, Ebb and Flow, Fairford, Fisher River(Cree), Garden Hill (Cree), Hollow Water, Jackhead, Keeseekoowenin, LakeManitoba, Lake St. Martin, Little Black River, Little Grand Rapids,Little Saskatchewan, Long Plain, Pauingassi, Peguis (Cree), Pine Creek,Poplar River, Portage du Prairie, Red Sucker Lake (Cree), Rolling River,Roseau River, Sagkeeng (Fort Alexander), Sandy Bay, St. Theresa Point(Cree), Swan Lake, Tataskwayak, Tootinaowaziibeeng, Wasagamack (Cree),Waterhen, and Waywayseecappo.MichiganAngwassag, Bawating, Bay du Noc, Beaver Island, Big Rock, Blackbird,Gatagetegauning, Kechegummewininewug, Ketchenaundaugenink, Kishkawbawe,Lac Vieux Desert, Little Fork, Mekadewagamitigweyawininiwak, Menitegow,Menoquet, Mackinac (Michilimackinac), Nabobish, Nagonabe, Ommunise,Ontonagon, Otusson, Pointe Au Tremble, Reaums Village, Saginaw,Shabwasing, Thunder Bay (Ottawa), Wapisiwisibiwininiwak, Wequadong, andWhitefish.MinnesotaAnibiminanisibiwininiwak, Crow Wing, Fond du Lac, Gamiskwakokawininiwak,Gawababiganikak, Grand Portage, Gull Lake, Kahmetahwungaguma,Kechesebewininewug, Knife Lake, Leaf Lake, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs,Misisagaikaoiwininiwak, Miskwagamiwisagaigan, Mishtawayawininiwak,Munominikasheenhug, Mukmeduawininewug, Onepowesepewenenewak,Oschekkamegawenenewak (2), Oueschekgagamiouilimy, Pillager, Pokegama,Rabbit Lake, Red Lake, Saint Francis Xavier, Sandy Lake,Wabasemowenenewak, Winnebegoshish, and White Earth.OntarioAlderville, Alnwick (Rice Lake), Bagoache, Balsam Lake, Batchewana (Rankin), Beausoleil (Christian Island), Big Grassy, Big Island, Caldwell (Point Pele), Cape Croker (Potawatomi), Caradoc (Potawatomi), Cat Lake (Cree), Chapleau, Cockburn Island (Ottawa), Cochingomink, Constance Lake (Cree), Couchiching, Credit River, Curve Lake, Deer Lake (Cree), Dokis, Eabametoong (Fort Hope), Eagle Lake, Epinette, Flying Post, Fort William, Garden River, Georgina Island, Ginoogaming (Long Lake), Grassy Narrows, Gull Bay, Henvey Inlet, Hiawatha, Iskutewisakaugun, Jackfish Island, Keewaywin (Cree), Kettle Point (Potawatomi), Kojejewininewug, Koochiching (Cree), Lac des Mille Lacs, Lac La Croix, Lac Seul, Lake Helen, Lake Nipegon, Lake of the Woods, Long Lake (2), Magnetewan, Manitoulin Island (Ottawa), Manitowaning, Marten Falls, Matachewan (Makominising), Matawachkirini, Mattagami (Cree), McDowell Lake (Cree), Michipicoten, Mishkeegogamang (Osnaburg) (Cree), Mississagi River, Mississauga, Mnjikaning (Rama), Moose Deer Point, Mud Lake, Naicatchewenim, Namakagon, Nameuilni, Nawash (Big Bay), New Slate Falls (Cree), Nicickousemenecaning, Nipissing, Northwest Angle (2), Obidgewong (Ottawa), Ochiichagwe (Dalles), Omushkego, Onegaming (Sabaskong), Ottawa Lake, Ouasouarini, Outchougai, Parry Island, Pays Plat, Pickle Lake (Cree), Pic Mobert, Pic River (Pic Heron), Pikangikum, Point Grondine, Poplar Hill, Rainy River, Red Rock, Riviere aux Sables (Potawatomi), Rocky Bay, Sagamok (Spanish River), Sandpoint, Sarnia (St. Clair Rapids), Saugeen (2), Savant, Scugog Lake, Seine River, Serpent River, Shawanaga, Sheguiandah, Sheshegwaning, Shoal Lake, Snake Island (Lake Simcoe), Stanjikoming, Stoney Point (Potawatomi), Sucker Creek, Sugwaundugahwininewug, Tahgaiwinini, Thames, Thessalon, Wabasseemoong (Islington, Whitedog), Wabauskang, Wabigoon Lake, Wahgoshig, Wahnapitai, Walpole Island (Bkejwanong, Chenail cart) (Ottawa, Potawatomi), Wanamakewajejenik, Wasauksing, Washagamis Bay, Wauzhushk (Rat Portage), West Bay (M'Chigeeng) (Ottawa), Whitefish Bay, Whitefish Lake, Whitefish River, Whitesand (Cree), and Wikwemikong (Ottawa).North DakotaBungee (Bunbi, Bungi, Plains Chippewa, Plains Ojibwe), Little Shell,Midinakwadshiwininiwak, Pembina, and Turtle Mountain.SaskatchewanCote, Cowessess (Cree), Fishing Lake, Gordons (Cree), Keeseekoose(Cree), Key, Kinistin, Muscowpetung, Muskowekwan (Cree),Nibowisibiwininiwak, Okanese, Pasqua (Cree), Sakimay, Saulteaux (Cree),White Bear (Cree), and Yellowquill.WisconsinBetonukeengainubejig, Burnt Woods, Cedar Lake, Chegwamegon, Chetac Lake,Kechepukwaiwah, Lac Courte Oreilles, Mole Lake, Red Cliff, Rice Lake,Shaugawaumikong, Sukaauguning, Trout Lake, Turtle Portage,Wahsuahgunewininewug, Wauswagiming, Wiaquahhechegumeeng, and YellowLake.CultureThe Ojibwe were the largest and most powerful Great Lakes tribe; perhapsthe most powerful east of the Mississippi; and quite possibly the mostpowerful in North America. The Lakota (Sioux) and Apache have gottenbetter press, but it was the Ojibwe who defeated the Iroquois and forcedthe Sioux to leave Minnesota. Very few Americansrealize that the Ojibwe were a major power. Their location waswell north of the main flow of settlement, and their victories overnative enemies have never received proper credit. A variety of names(Ojibwe, Chippewa, Bungee, Mississauga, and Saulteaux) and division oftheir population between Canada and United States has masked their truesize. In addition, the Ojibwe never fought with Americans after 1815.Even before this, their participation in wars between Britain and Franceor fighting Americans in the Ohio Valley was fairly limited. Consideringthe prowess of Ojibwe warriors, this was probably just as well for theAmericans. However, this does not mean they have been ignored bygovernment. As the Chippewa, they signed moretreaties with the United States than any other tribe fifty-one! North of the border, the Ojibwe have "touched thepen" more than thirty times with the French, British, andCanadians.Europeans came to the upper Great Lakes for fur, but after 200 years,this trade had ended. Most of the Ojibwe homeland had poor soil and ashort growing season which did not attract settlement. Some whites camelater for the minerals and timber, but even today, the area is notheavily populated. Because of this limited exposure, the Ojibwe havebeen able to retain much of their traditional culture and language. MostAmericans have heard the Longfellow's poem "Hiawatha."Unfortunately, he got his tribes mixed. The name of Hiawatha wasborrowed from the Iroquois, but the stories were Ojibwe. Most Ojibwewere classic Woodlands culture, but since different groups lived acrosssuch a wide area, there were major differences. Like all NativeAmericans, the Ojibwe adjusted to their circumstances. After reachingthe northern plains, the Bungee (Plains Ojibwe) adopted the Buffaloculture and became very different from the other Ojibwe in their art,ceremony, and dress. Towards the southern part of their range inMichigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ontario, Ojibwe villages were largerand permanent with the cultivation of corn, squash, beans, and tobacco.However, most Ojibwe lived in the northern Great Lakes with a shortgrowing season and poor soil. They were hunter-gatherers who harvestedwild rice and maple sugar. Woodland Ojibwe had no salt to preserve foodand generally mixed everything with maple syrup as seasoning. They wereskilled hunters and trappers (useful skills in war and the fur trade).Fishing, especially for sturgeon, provided much of their diet and becameprogressively more important in the northernmost bands. As a rule,Woodland Ojibwe rarely used horses or hunted buffalo. Dogs were the onlydomestic animal and a favorite dish served at their feasts. The Ojibweused birchbark for almost everything: utensils, storage containers, and,most importantly, canoes. Coming in a variety of sizes depending onpurpose, the birchbark canoe was lighter than the dugouts used by theDakota (Sioux) and other tribes. Birchbark was also used to cover theirelliptical, dome-shaped wigwams.. When a family moved, the covering ofthe wigwam was rolled up and taken along leaving only the framework.Summer clothing was buckskin with fur outer garments added for winter.The men wore breechcloths, but both sexes wore leggings. Moccasins werethe distinctive puffed seamed style that gave Ojibwe their name. Thesewere often colored with red, yellow, blue, and green, dyes made by thewomen. Long, cold winters were spent confined inside their wigwams alsoallowed time to add intricate quill and moose-hair designs. The Ojibweoften passed these times and entertained each other with stories, an artfor which they are still renown. Generally, men and women wore theirhair long and braided. In times of war, men might change to a scalplock.Ojibwe scalped, but as a rule they killed and did not torture. Like other Great Lakes warriors, there was ritualcannibalism of their dead enemies. Polygamy was rare. Theirsocial organization was based on approximately 15-20 patrilineal clanswhich extended across band lines and provided their initial sense oftribal unity.Before contact, the clans and a common language were all that bound themto each other as the Anishinabe. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle of theOjibwe required they separate into small bands moving in a fixed patternto take advantage of available resources. During winter, they separatedinto extended families in isolated hunting camps which allowed the mento cover a large area without competition from other hunters. Duringwarmer months, they gathered in bands of 300-400 at known locationswhere fish, berries, and wild rice were abundant. There was littlecentral organization, and the authority of hereditary Ojibwe chiefsbefore contact was limited and confined pretty much to his own band.Tribal councils occurred only when several bands made common cause intimes of war but otherwise were rare. However, this, changed after thebeginning of the fur trade with the French, and the different bandsbegan merging.The Ojibwe were outstanding hunters and trappers. The colder weather intheir homeland gave their beaver thicker coats resulting in a highquality fur. The Ojibwe became so heavily involved in the French furtrade their language became the unofficial trade language of thenorthern Great Lakes. Both the French and Ojibwe prospered as a result.The trade and weapons brought the Ojibwe wealth and power. At the sametime, they became dependent on the French and trade goods. Because theyhandled the dealings with French traders, the authority of Ojibwe chiefsincreased. Bands became larger and began to cooperate on a greaterscale, especially during the Beaver Wars (1630-1700) with the Iroquois.Traditional ties between their clans added to the new sense of unity andpurpose, but trade had also brought them their first experiences withEuropean epidemics.Before contact, Ojibwe religion was similar to their politicalorganization. There was little formal ceremony. For healing, they hadrelied on medicinal herbs gathered by the women and shamans. These wereoverwhelmed by the new diseases which were deadly beyond anything theyhad seen. What evolved was the Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society), asecret religious society. Open to both men and women, its membersperformed elaborate healing ceremonies to deal with sickness. Among theOjibwe, the Midewiwin kept records on birchbark scrolls, an actualwritten record unique among the Great Lakes tribes. Beyond its healingand religious functions, Midewiwin membership crossed band lines andprovided an additional element of political leadership binding thedifferent Ojibwe groups to each other. Within 50years of their first meeting with a European, the Ojibwe had united tobecome one of the most powerful tribes in North America.HistoryThe arrival of the Ojibwe at Sault Ste. Marie sometime around 1500displaced several of the resident tribes. The Menominee were pushedsouth into an alliance with the Winnebago, and it would appear theCheyenne and Arapaho started a series of movements which eventuallywould take them to the plains of Colorado. Continued Ojibwe expansionwest along the shores of Lake Superior also brought them into conflictwith the Dakota (Santee or Eastern Sioux) and Assiniboine at the westernend. The date of the first meeting between the French and Ojibwe isuncertain, because the French at first did not distinguish betweenOttawa and Ojibwe. Champlain is reported to have met some Ojibwe at theHuron villages in 1615. Three years later while exploring Lake Huron,Étienne Brulé went far enough north that the people shouldhave been Ojibwe, but it was not until he reached the falls of the St.Marys River (Sault Ste. Marie) in 1623, we can be certain of a meetingbetween the Ojibwe and French.The journey from Quebec to the Huron villages on the south end of LakeHuron was long and dangerous, and the French and Jesuit priests stoppedhere allowing the Ottawa and Huron to conduct the fur trade fartherwest. The Ojibwe and their Ottawa neighbors had always been friendly, and sincethe Ojibwe had a lot of quality fur, the Ottawa did most of theirtrading with them. In this way, French trade goods and weapons reachedthe Ojibwe years before they had regular contact with the Frenchthemselves. Despite the hostilities already mentioned, the western GreatLakes were relatively peaceful before 1630, but the fur trade changedthis. Fur traded for steel weapons allowed the Ojibwe to take huntingterritory from other tribes. This gave them more fur to trade for moreweapons to expand even farther. War with the Dakota and Winnebago became moreintense, and when the Ottawa and Huron attempted toarrange trade with the Winnebago in 1633, the Winnebago killed theOttawa ambassadors since their trade provided weapons to the Ojibwe.At the Huron villages, the French learned what had happened and, seeingthe Huron and Ottawa prepare to retaliate, intervened to stop a warwhich might halt trade. In 1634 Jean Nicolet was sent west to theWinnebago villages at Green Bay to arrange a peace and possibly discoverthe Northwest Passage. Nicolet never found the passage but became thefirst European to enter Lake Michigan. He also succeeded in arranging apeace which lasted for several years and allowed the Huron and Ottawa totrade along Lake Michigan. Nicollet returned to Green Bay in 1639, andmust have met with some Ojibwe enroute, but there was little mention ofthem until the Jesuit Relations of 1640. The following year, the Ojibweaccepted a Huron invitation to visit their villages during the Feast ofthe Dead providing the first opportunity for Jesuits to meet theSaulteur (people of the rapids).Fathers Charles Raymbault and Issac Jogues accepted an Ojibwe invitationto accompany them on their 17-day return journey to Sault Ste. Marie.The Jesuits did not stay but during the visit learned the Ojibwe alreadylived as far west as Chequamegon (La Pointe WS) and were fighting with apowerful enemy at the west end of Lake Superior whom they called theNadouessioux (rattlesnakes). Over the years, the French would shortenthis name until it became "Sioux." Despite the peace arrangedby Nicollet, the fur trade turned the Great Lakes into a war zone. TheBeaver Wars (1630-1700) began in the east but soon spread to the GreatLakes. The British capture of Quebec in 1629 halted the flow of Frenchtrade goods, and the Iroquois (supplied by the Dutch) took advantage ofthis and attacked the Algonkin and Montagnais to recapture the upper St.Lawrence River which they had been forced to abandon in 1610. The Frenchdid not regain control of Quebec until 1632, and by then their nativeallies were in serious trouble.Trying to restore a balance of power and protect the trade route throughthe Ottawa Valley, the French broke a long-standing rule and began tosupply firearms to the Algonkin and Montagnais. This turned the tideonly briefly, since the Dutch started selling guns to the Iroquois. Theresult was an arms race and greater violence. The Huron and Ottawa alsoreceived firearms from the French, and some of these weapons were tradedto the Neutrals and Tionontati. All this new armament arrived just asbeaver were becoming scarce in southern Ontario from supplying theFrench. Huron, Ottawa, Neutral, and Tionontati hunterssolved this by moving into lower Michigan and using their new weapons totake territory from the Assistaeronon, or Fire Nation (an alliance ofFox, Sauk, Mascouten,and Potawatomi). Although the French were aware of what was happening,they made no attempt to stop it.During the 1640s, the advantage of steel and firearms over traditionalweapons began to dislodge the resident tribes in lower Michigan. After aten-day siege in 1641, 2,000 Ottawa and Neutral warriors destroyed amajor Assistaeronon village. That same year, the first groups ofPotawatomi refugees attempted to relocate near Green Bay, but thehostile reception they received from the Winnebago forced them toretreat north to the protection of the Ojibwe. Within a few years, therewould more Michigan refugees in Wisconsin than Winnebago could handle,and the Potawatomi settled near Green Bay unopposed. During the sameperiod, the Ojibwe defeated the Mundua who lived in the northern part oflower Michigan and absorbed the survivors. They also combined with theOttawa to drive the Assegun (Bone) from Michilimackinac (Mackinac) intolower Michigan where they apparently found refuge with, and became partof, the Mascouten.The French allies and trading partners started the process of forcingthe original tribes from lower Michigan, but they never got to completeit. Facing a similar shortage of beaver in their homeland from tradingwith the Dutch, the Iroquois during the 1630s needed to find new huntingterritory but were hemmed in by powerful enemies. Diplomatic requests tothe Huron for permission to pass through their territory to hunt wererefused. The Huron were aware of the Iroquois predicament but had nowish to help a potential rival. After the Huron killed an Iroquois hunting party indisputed territory, war erupted between the Iroquois and Huron. Atfirst, the Huron held their own, but a series of epidemics struck themkilling half of their population. During 1640 British traders from NewEngland attempted to break the Dutch monopoly with the Mohawk byoffering firearms. The Dutch responded by selling the Iroquois anyamount of weapons they wanted. The Iroquois became the best-armedmilitary force in North America.Driving the Algonkinfrom the lower Ottawa River, the Iroquois cut the French trade routefrom the Great Lakes. Large parties could force their way past theIroquois blockade, but the amount of fur reaching Montreal dropped offto almost nothing. By 1645 the French were forced to agree to a peacewith the Mohawk which required them to remain neutral in theHuron-Iroquois conflict. The Huron still refused to allow the Iroquoisto hunt in their territory and continued forcing their way to Montrealwith their furs. War resumed with the Iroquois making direct attacksagainst the Huron villages. The Huron were overrun in 1649, and laterthat year, the Tionontati, Algonkin, and Nipissing sufferedsimilar fates. The survivors fled west to the Ojibwe and Ottawa atMackinac. Iroquois war parties followed, and in 1651 theHuron-Tionontati (Wyandot) and Ottawa relocated west to Green Bay. TheIroquois by this time had destroyed the Neutrals and were preparing fora war with the Erie in northern Ohio.To assure success, the western Iroquois (Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga)in 1653 offered peace to the French. With less than 400 French in NorthAmerica versus 25,000 Iroquois, there was little choice. The truceallowed the Iroquois, not only to fight the Erie that year, but send 800warriors against the refugee villages at Green Bay. The attack failedwhen the Iroquois ran out of food and were forced to retreat.Unfortunately for the Iroquois, they had also attacked the NikikouekOjibwe on the north shore of Lake Huron. The Mississauga killed almosthalf of them during their retreat to New York marking the beginning ofOjibwe involvement in the Beaver Wars. Iroquois raids continued, butunlike their other enemies, the Ojibwe did not fold and run. Instead,they gave ground slowly and began to concentrate near Sault Ste. Marie.To defend themselves, the Ojibwe began to organize and merge, andalthough they probably did not realize it at the time, the Iroquois hadcreated a dangerous enemy.This did not happen over-night. The Iroquois defeated the Erie and thendrove the remaining Algonquin from lower Michigan. The sudden arrival ofso many refugees not only overwhelmed the Wisconsin tribes, but also theresources. Most of this area was too far north for reliable agriculture.Disorganized and starving, the Algonquin were fighting among themselvesover hunting and fishing territory. The Sturgeon War began when theMenominee built a series of weirs at their village near the mouth of theriver. However, this prevented sturgeon from reaching the Ojibwevillages upstream. Demands to remove the weirs were ignored, and theOjibwe attacked and destroyed the village. Too few to retaliate, theMenominee called on the Fox, Sauk, Potawatomi, and Noquet at Green Bayfor help spreading the fighting well-beyond the original participants.The French fur trade was almost destroyed by the Huron defeat in 1649.To maintain their fragile peace with the Iroquois, the French haltedtheir travel to the Great Lakes, but they still encouraged their formerallies to bring furs to Montreal. With the Iroquois occupying much ofsouthern Ontario and controlling the Ottawa Valley, this was dangerousand possible only for large, heavily-armed canoe convoys. Despite therisk, the Ottawa and Huron were accustomed to French trade goods andwilling to try. Lacking enough warriors, they enlisted the Ojibwe nearSault Ste. Marie. The French at this time made no distinction betweenthe Algonquin bringing furs to Montreal and called everyone an Ottawa,but many of these were Ojibwe. This did not go unnoticed by the Iroquoiswho had their own ambitions of controlling the French trade as theyalready did with the Dutch. To stop the convoys, Iroquois went to theirsource, and their war parties roamed through Wisconsin attacking justabout everyone. Because of this (and very few beaver), the Wyandot left Green Bayin 1658 and moved west to Lake Pepin on the Mississippi River. Havingestablished trade with the Cree to the north, most of the Ottawa alsowithdrew and relocated near the Ojibwe at Chequamegon and Keweenaw onthe south side of Lake Superior.The peace between French and Iroquois came to a violent end in 1658.Seeing opportunity in this, Pierre Radisson, Médart Chouart desGroseilliers, and Father Réné Ménard ignored theban on travel and joined the Wyandot on their return journey to thewest. The first French to reach Lake Superior, their guides took them toChequamegon (La Pointe) where they wintered with the Ottawa and Ojibwe.Ménard wandered off into the woods and may have been killed bythe Dakota. This failed to discourage the others who travelled overlandto trade with the Dakota. For their efforts to restore the fur trade(and enrich themselves), Radisson and Des Groseilliers were arrestedwhen they got back to Quebec in 1660. Now aware of the value of fur, theDakota did not want to share their beaver with the Wyandot on theMississippi. After several threats, the Wyandot left Lake Pepin in 1661and joined the Ottawa at Chequamegon. The Dakota were still not pleasedby this large gathering of beaver hunters on their border, but toleratedit for the moment.The Iroquois, however, saw a chance to strike their enemies who were nowgathered in one place, but to reach them, they would have to passundetected through Ojibwe territory. They tried and paid dearly. TheSaulteur, Amikoue, Nipissing, and Ottawa in 1662 surprised a largeMohawk and Oneida war party (100 warriors) just west of Sault Ste. Marieand annihilated them. Known today as Iroquois Point, the Ojibwe stillcall this "the place of Iroquoisbones." The Iroquois never again attempted raids into LakeSuperior, and behind a wall of Ojibwe warriors, the Ottawa and Wyandothad a refuge from which to collect furs to trade to the French.Meanwhile, back on the St. Lawrence, the French had tired of living inconstant fear of the Iroquois. Up to this point, settlement and the furtrade had been a private commercial venture, but this changed after theBritish captured New York from the Dutch. Charters were revoked in 1664,and the king assumed control of Quebec. France also sent a regiment ofsoldiers to Canada which began direct attacks on the Iroquois homeland.This ultimately pushed the Iroquois into a military alliance with theBritish beginning the 100-year struggle between Britain and France forNorth America. It also brought great changes for the Ojibwe and GreatLakes. No longer concerned with antagonizing the Iroquois, the Frenchresumed travel to the west. In 1665 fur trader Nicolas Perot, JesuitClaude-Jean Allouez, and 6 other French accompanied 400 Ottawa andWyandot on their return journey. Fighting their way past Iroquois alongthe Ottawa River, they reached Green Bay. Allouez went on to Chequamegonwhere he encountered a mixed population of Wyandot, Ottawa, Ojibwe plusa few Potawatomi and Kickapoo. He remained there and built the missionof St. Esprit for Huron and Ottawa converts the Jesuits had made beforethe disaster of 1649. By 1667 French attacks on their homeland hadforced the Iroquois to agree to a peace which also extended to Frenchallies and trading partners.For the next thirteen years, this much-needed peace permitted the Frenchto visit the Great Lakes unopposed. Beside fur traders, Jesuitmissionaries came also. In 1668 Allouez was joined by the Father JacquesMarquette. The conditions they found in Wisconsin and upper Michiganwere appalling - starvation, epidemic, and constant warfare. Raisingcorn on the south shore of Lake Superior was almost impossible, even forfarming tribes like the Ottawa and Wyandot, and starvation stalked themalmost every winter. Some years they were reduced to eating their ownmoccasins when the food ran out. Meanwhile, over-hunting for food andfur was creating a war with the Dakota to the west. For purposes of bothconversion and trade (although these would soon be in conflict), it wasin the French interest to bring order to the region. To end warfare, theFrench became mediators in intertribal disputes. This role wasformalized in 1671 by treaty at the Grand Council held at Sault. Ste.Marie, in which Simon Daumont annexed the entire Great Lakes for France.In the meantime, Father Marquette was able to convince the Wyandot andOttawa to leave Chequamegon in 1669 and relocate to Mackinac near hisnew mission at St. Ignace. Both the move and annexation were premature.The Seneca attacked and burned St. Ignace and the nearby villages in1671, but the mission was rebuilt, and Wyandot and Ottawa stayed. Theirdeparture left only the Ojibwe and Dakota confronting each other alongthe south shore of Lake Superior. Smallpox hit Sault Ste. Marie duringthe winter of 1670-71 reducing the original Saulteur at Bawating to lessthan 200, but the loss had little effect on the Ojibwe. Small bands suchas the Amikwa, Nikikouek, and Marameg merged with the survivors, and theOjibwe of upper Michigan continued to grow in size and influence.Jesuits made few conversions among the Ojibwe, but in the French furtrade, they became extremely important.Before 1670, the Ottawa had gotten much of their fur from the Cree, butthe British established their first posts on Hudson Bay that year. Ablefor the first time to trade directly without a middleman, the Cree begantaking their fur to the British, and the Ottawa had lost their mainsupplier. The Ojibwe stepped in to fill the void and, with Frenchencouragement, began expanding west along both shores of Lake Superior.The movement along the northern shore blocked British access to otherGreat Lakes tribes and brought skirmishes with the Assiniboine and Creealliance which traded with the British. However, it was the expansionalong the south shore which produced the most trouble. It not onlystarted a war between the Ojibwe and Dakota, but fighting with the Foxwho were also competing for hunting territory in the area.Daniel DeLhut (Duluth) arrived at Sault Ste. Marie in 1678 and two yearslater negotiated a truce between the Saulteur and Sioux. He also wasable to arrange a peace between the Dakota and Assiniboine. This secondone did not last, but the Saulteur and Dakota agreement endured for sometime, and fur flowed east to Montreal in unprecedented amounts. Despitea second smallpox epidemic at Sault Ste. Marie in 1681, the Ojibwe andOttawa by 1685 were supplying over 2/3 of the French fur trade.Unfortunately, the 1680 treaties did include all of the Ojibwe. TheSaulteur signed, but the Keweenaw Ojibwe remained at war and joinedforces with the Fox to defeat a large Dakota war party. The Saulteur, ofcourse did nothing against their Keweenaw relatives, but they formed analliance with the Dakota against the Fox. Neither the Keweenaw nor theFox wanted the French to trade with the Dakota, and to prevent this,Menominee and Ojibwe warriors of chief Achiganaga murdered two Frenchtraders in upper Michigan in 1682.DeLhut brought the culprits in for a European-style trial, but theSaulteur and Ottawa intervened on behalf of Achiganaga. In the end,DeLhut was only able to execute a single Menominee (a small tribe)rather than offend the Ojibwe, an important ally and trading partner. Hereally had no other choice, because the French at the time needed theOjibwe. Peace in the Great Lakes ended in 1680 when the Iroquois began aseries of devastating attacks against the Illinois. At first, thefighting was confined to the south, but in 1683 the Seneca brought thewar north with an attack on Mackinac. The following year, the Iroquoisfailed in their attempt to take Fort St. Louis on the upper IllinoisRiver which is generally regarded as the turning point of the BeaverWars. Afterwards, the French attempted to organize an Algonquin allianceagainst the Iroquois, but its first offensive was such a fiasco, JosephLa Barre, the governor of Canada, signed a treaty with the Iroquoisconceding most of Illinois.He was replaced by Jacques-Rene Denonville who renounced La Barre'streaty, built new forts, strengthened old ones, and provided guns to theOjibwe and other Algonquin. A much stronger alliance took the offensivein 1687. Largely ignored because it coincided with the King William'sWar between Britain and France (1688-97), this was one of the criticalevents in North American history. By 1690 Algonquin victories in massivebattles fought between canoe fleets on Lakes St. Clair and Erie haddriven the Iroquois from lower Michigan allowing the Ottawa to return totheir old homes on Manitoulin Island. The Ojibwe pushed much farther,occupying not only their former lands on the north and east shore ofLake Huron, but continued south taking the western shore in lowerMichigan as far south as Saginaw Bay, while the Mississauga seized theold homelands of the Neutrals, Tionontati and Huron in southern Ontario.By 1696 the Iroquois had abandoned most of their villages in southernOntario and, except for eastern Ohio and northern Pennsylvania, werepretty much confined to their original homeland.The victories in the west belonged entirely to Algonquin warriors. TheFrench helped with attacks against the Iroquois homeland from Quebec. Inthe Great Lakes their contribution was arms, ammunition, and keeping thealliance together. Providing weapons was the easy part. The allianceincluded the Ojibwe, Ottawa, Wyandot, Potawatomi, Missisauga, Fox, Sauk,Miami, Winnebago,Menominee, Kickapoo, Illinois,and Mascouten. All agreed the Iroquois were an enemy, but not all ofthem liked each other which kept the French very busy. The three-way warbetween the Ojibwe, Dakota, and Fox along the St. Croix in northwestWisconsin continued until the French finally managed a Ojibwe-Fox trucein 1685. This lasted five years, during which time the Fox attempted toblock French trade with the Dakota by charging tolls on traders passingthrough their territory. This exasperated Nicolas Perot, the Frenchcommandant at Green Bay, and in 1690 he asked the Ojibwe to make the Foxstop this. They did much more than this. Allied with the Dakota, theOjibwe drove the Fox from the St. Croix Valley.French influence over the Algonquin alliance came mainly from control oftrade goods on which their allies were dependent. During the first yearsof the war, the French opened more trading posts. Despite hostilities,the amount of fur reaching Montreal increased as the French andAlgonquin drove the Iroquois east. In fact, there was so much fur itcreated a glut on the European market, and the price fell. This hadimmediate effect on the ability of the French to control their allies.Native Americans understood little about economic laws of supply anddemand. The price drop in Europe meant French traders in North Americasuddenly were giving native hunters fewer goods for the same amount offur, and this was perceived as greed. Relations were already strainedwhen warfare broke out during the 1690s over hunting territory along theupper Mississippi between the Dakota and an alliance of Ojibwe,Potawatomi, Fox, Kickapoo and Mascouten.The warriors involved in this would have been better used against theIroquois, but as trade goods became fewer and more expensive, the Frenchwere losing control. The Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 ended the war betweenBritain and France, but fighting between the Algonquin and Iroquoiscontinued. Nearing collapse, the Iroquois asked for peace to which theFrench - concerned continued fighting could bring another war with theBritish (Iroquois allies) - were receptive. But their allies, sensingblood, were not interested. Since the Iroquois had already made offersof peace and trade to the Ottawa and Ojibwe if they would leave thealliance, there was also fear the French would abandon their allies andmake a separate peace. Using every diplomatic skill available, it tookthe French until 1701 to convince the Algonquin to agree to a peace withthe Iroquois. With this, the Beaver Wars ended with France in control ofthe Great Lakes, and the Ojibwe occupying lands from the northern sideof Lakes Erie and Ontario to the west end of Lake Superior.The French then proceeded to throw away their victory. For many years,Jesuit missionaries had complained about the corruption which the furtrade was creating among Native Americans. These protests fell upon deafears, especially after Louis XIV's dispute with Rome began in 1673.However, when the price of fur dropped and profits plunged, the Frenchmonarchy suddenly got "religion" and in 1696 issued a decreesuspending the fur trade in the western Great Lakes. What appeared tothe government in Paris as a practical decision, was disaster to theFrench in North America. As posts closed and official trade ended,Coureurs de Bois (illegal and unlicensed traders) attempted to take upthe slack. Many were honest, but most were not, and their abuse anddishonesty added to the tension. The French in 1701 negotiated anothertruce between the Saulteur and Dakota ending fighting which had occurredsince the 1690s, but the Algonquin in Wisconsin still opposed Frenchsales of firearms to the Dakota. French traders enroute to Dakotavillages were robbed and murdered, and even the highly respectedNicholas Perot found himself tied to a Mascouten torture stake ready tobe burned alive. Saved by the Kickapoo, Perot went back to Quebec andnever returned to the Great Lakes.Under the 1701 treaty, the Iroquois were required to remain neutral inBritish-French wars and consult the French if there were any conflictswith their allies. The Mississauga must not have heard this, becausethey continued to attack the remaining Iroquois villages in southernOntario. Iroquois complaints to Onontio (their name for French governorof Canada) went unanswered, mostly because the French were occupied withfighting the British in the Queen Anne's War (1701-13). True to theirword, the Iroquois remained neutral in this conflict, but it wasneutrality only in the military sense. Using their ties to Britishtraders at Albany, they offered trade to French allies and began aneconomic war which almost destroyed the French.Since British trade goods were of higher quality and cheaper thananything the French could offer, Ojibwe and Ottawa traders were soontaking most of their furs to Albany. By 1707 the Missisauga had movednear Niagara Falls, not to fight, but to trade. Without native allies,Canada was vulnerable to British invasion. Urgent requests were sentfrom Quebec to Paris, and in 1701 the French government relented byallowing the construction of single trading post at Detroit for theGreat Lakes Algonquin. The responsibility was given to Antoine de laMothe Cadillac, the commandant at Mackinac, who despised Jesuits ingeneral and blamed their meddling for the suspension of the fur trade.Cadillac built Fort Ponchartrain and took great delight in inviting theOttawa, Wyandot, and Ojibwe to settle nearby for trade. So many leftMackinac, the Jesuits were forced to close their mission at St. Ignace.The Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Wyandot settled in the vicinity of Detroit, butthe jostling for territory brought skirmishes between the Ottawa andOjibwe who normally were on the best of terms. Worse things wouldfollow. Cadillac ignored this ominous sign and, to keep them fromtrading with the British, invited other tribes to move nearby. Within ashort time, more than 6,000 Saulteur, Saginaw, and Missisauga Ojibwe,Wyandot, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Miami, Illinois, and even Osage relocatedto Detroit completely overwhelming the area's resources. During 1706there were fights between the Ottawa and Miami, but the final strawoccurred in 1710 when Cadillac invited the Fox. About 1,000 Fox arrivedbringing with them many of their Kickapoo and Mascouten allies. Alreadyantagonistic to the French from their experiences in Wisconsin, the Foxwere returning to what had been their homeland before the Beaver Wars.They were not at all shy about letting other tribes know this, and inthe tense situation which prevailed, the other alliance tribes demandedthe French order the Fox to return to Wisconsin.The French delayed a decision, and during the winter of 1711-12, theOttawa and Potawatomi took matters into their own hands by attacking aMascouten hunting party near the headwaters of St. Joseph River. TheMascouten fled east to their Fox allies at Detroit. As the Fox preparedto retaliate, the French commander at Fort Ponchartrain ordered them tostop. At this point, the Fox had had just about enough, and theyattacked the French fort. In the midst of this, a relief force ofOjibwe, Ottawa, Huron, and Potawatomi arrived and almost annihilated theFox. A few escaped and found refuge with the Iroquois. The others madetheir way back to their relatives in Wisconsin who retaliated byattacking the French and their allies. The Fox Wars (1712-16 and1728-37) were actually a civil war within the French alliance. To fightthe Fox and their Kickapoo and Mascouten allies, the French first had torebuild the alliance.They started with the Detroit tribes, but there were other problems.After the establishment of Fort Ponchartrain in 1701, many of therefugee tribes had left Wisconsin and moved east. This relieved thecrowding, but the area had been over-hunted for many years, and as theOjibwe ranged south from Lake Superior, there was renewed competitionfor hunting territory. The peace the French had arranged in 1701 betweenthe Saulteur and Dakota allowed these two tribes to combine against theremaining Algonquin, and in 1711 the Saulteur were at war with thetribes near Green Bay. To the south, the Miami were fighting theIllinois. It took the French some time to organize enough allies tofight the Fox, but in 1715 the Potawatomi defeated the Kickapoo andMascouten causing them to sign a separate peace with the French. Despitethe loss of their allies, the Fox refused to quit.The following year, the French mediated the dispute between the Ojibweand Green Bay tribes allowing the Ojibwe and Potawatomi to join a Frenchexpedition against the Fox in southern Wisconsin. However, this failedto take the Fox fort, and the French offered peace to the Fox. The Foxaccepted, but both parties were still angry and distrusted each other.The Fox continued to annoy the French by becoming involved in a long andbitter war with the Illinois. At the same time west of the Mississippi,they were also fighting with the Osage which disrupted the developingFrench trade along the Missouri River. To fight both of these wars, theFox formed alliances with the Dakota, Kickapoo, Iowa, Mascouten, andWinnebago which the French suspected were directed against themselves.In the meantime, the Iroquois had been watching this fighting amongtheir enemies with a certain amount of glee and, by offering access toBritish traders, continued to make inroads into French trade in theGreat Lakes and Ohio Valley.It took the Fox Wars for the French in Canada to convince theirgovernment in Paris that the suspension of the fur trade in the GreatLakes had been a terrible mistake, and they moved rapidly to correctthings. Coureurs de Bois were legalized in 1715; their frequentintermarriage with native women (especially Ojibwe and Cree) eventuallycreated a new group of mixed-blooded people that known as theMétis. They also reoccupied old posts and created new ones: LaBaye, Chequamegon, Credit River, Des Chartes, La Pointe, Miami,Mackinac, Ouiatenon, Niagara, Pimitoui, St. Joseph, and Vincennes. Butthe damage had already been done. During 1717 the Saginaw Ojibwe andOttawa had started trading with the British. Fort Oswego was built inthe Iroquois homeland during 1727 to shorten the distance the Algonquinhad to travel to reach the Albany traders. By 1728, 80% of thebeaver on the Albany market had come from French allies.Meanwhile, the Fox had continued to be a major problem for everyone, andthe French were under increasing pressure from their allies to dosomething. French expeditions to support the Illinois against the Foxended in frustration. The first suggestion of genocide was made in 1727,but this was not official policy until approved by the king 1732. TheFrench first took the precaution to isolate the Fox from their Dakotaand Winnebago allies and by 1728 were ready to strike. The Fox added tothis by killing some of the Kickapoo and Mascouten after an argument,and the Kickapoo and Mascouten went over to the French. Under attackfrom all sides, the Fox accepted an offer of sanctuary from the Iroquoisand left Wisconsin. Crossing northern Illinois in 1730, they becameinvolved in fighting with the Illinois and were forced to fort up. Thisallowed the French to bring forces against them from all directionincluding Saginaw and Mackinac Ojibwe. When the Fox attempted to escapethe siege, they were caught and massacred.All that remained were the Fox who had chosen to remain in Wisconsin.They fled to the Sauk at Green Bay. The Sauk asked the French to makepeace with the Fox, but this was refused. In 1734 a French expeditionwith Menominee and Ojibwe warriors arrived at the Sauk village to demandthe surrender of the Fox. The Sauk refused, and during the ensuingbattle the French commander was killed. In the confusion,the Fox andSauk escaped west into eastern Iowa. The French attacked them again in1736 without success, but by this time the French allies had lost theirdesire to "eat the Fox" and began urging the French to makepeace. Faced with the rebellion of their allies, a war against theNatchez and Chickasaw on the lower Mississippi, and an uprising by theDakota in Minnesota, the French reluctantly agreed. One of the largestGreat Lakes tribes prior to contact, fewer than 500 Fox remained in1737.The Dakota uprising against the French in 1737 had been building formany years and would be the beginning of 130 years of continuous warfarebetween the Ojibwe and Dakota. There were hostilities between these twotribes before the first European saw the Great Lakes, but this had beenlow-level compared to what the fur trade created. Despite their closerelationship with the Ojibwe, the French had been eager to trade withthe Dakota. This frequently got them in trouble with their Algonquinallies who had no wish to see the Dakota either rich or well-armed.Competition from the British trading posts on Hudson Bay after 1670 onlyadded to the French effort, and they encouraged Ojibwe expansion westalong the northern shore of Lake Superior. This brought the Ojibwe intoconflict with the Assiniboine who were allied with the Cree, the primarytrading partner of the British at Hudson Bay. Although closely related,the Assiniboine were enemies of the Dakota, and it was the fact theDakota and Ojibwe had mutual enemies which allowed DuLhut in 1680 tonegotiate the peace between them.It was, of course, an unnatural arrangement between two people whoreally did not like each other, and it was not accepted by all of theOjibwe, most notably the Keweenaw. As a result, the French were keptbusy during the next thirty years stopping the warfare which eruptedperiodically. In this, the Fox had been the third competitor for huntingterritory at the west end of Lake Superior. The near annihilation of theFox during the Fox Wars removed them from the picture leaving the Ojibweand Dakota to face just each other. French traders had begun regulartrade with the Dakota at Fond du Lac (Duluth) as early as 1712 and, forthe most part, were bringing the Ojibwe with them. A post (and Ojibwevillage) was established in 1717 at Thunder Bay, and by 1727 theyreaching west to the Pigeon River from Grand Portage to Rainey Lake andLake of the Woods to the Red River, Lake Winnipeg, and the northernplains. Pierre Vérendrye built Fort St. Pierre at Rainy Lake in1731, Fort St. Charles at Lake of the Woods in 1732, and Fort Maurepas(Pembina) in 1734.By this time, the Ojibwe had ended their hostilities with the Cree andAssiniboine, but the Dakota had not. With the Ojibwe neutral in theseconflicts, their friendship was of less use to the Dakota. In addition,Ojibwe had used up most of the beaver on their own lands supplying theFrench. This forced them to rely more on hunting territory sharedpeacefully with the Dakota and to look with a jealous eye on the fur andrice lakes the Dakota had in Minnesota. The Dakota became increasinglydisturbed by the heavy Ojibwe hunting, but the explosion came in 1736when Vérendrye attempted to lure the Cree and Assiniboine awayfrom the British by selling them firearms. The Dakota would not toleratethe French arming their enemies and attacked Fort St. Charles killing 21Frenchmen (including Vérendrye's son). Perhaps more for their ownreasons than to avenge the French, the Ojibwe swore revenge, formed analliance with the Cree and Assiniboine, and attacked the Dakota villageson Lake Pepin on the Mississippi.French traders at La Pointe tried to halt the fighting, but this hadbeen coming for years, and neither the Dakota nor the Ojibwe wouldlisten. Starting from Chequamegon (La Pointe), the Pillager Band beganan invasion of the Dakota homeland. The initial movement was inlandtowards Lac Courte Oreilles and Lac Flambeau to take northern Wisconsin.From there they spread west into Minnesota to attack the center of theDakota world, Mille Lacs. Allied with the Cree and Assiniboine, theOjibwe at the same time advanced west from Thunder Bay up the RaineyRiver portage dislodging the Dakota from what is now the border ofMinnesota and Ontario. Following the three-day battle at Kathio in 1750,the Dakota abandoned most of their villages in northern Minnesota (MilleLacs, Sandy Lake, Red Lake, Leech Lake, Cass Lake, and Lake Winnebegosh)and retreated south. By 1780 there was not a single Dakota village northof the Minnesota River.Since it occurred far from any white settlements, this epic strugglewent largely unnoticed by Europeans. Their attention was focused on theconfrontation between Britain and France for North America. The Frenchhad things pretty much their own way in the upper Great Lakes,especially after the Ojibwe victory over the Dakota, and were makingtheir initial forays onto the plains. But back in the eastern GreatLakes and Ohio Valley, British and Iroquois traders were cutting intoFrench trade. The Mississauga and Saginaw Ojibwe were taking most oftheir furs to Oswego, and after the Iroquois allowed British traders toenter the Ohio country, the Miami and Wyandot joined the defectors.South of the Ohio, the British had found an ally in the Chickasaw whooften blocked the Mississippi to French trade, and which no combinationof the French and their allies seemed able to defeat. By the beginningof the King George's War (1744-48), the infection had spread to theChoctaw, the most important French ally on the lower Mississippi.There was almost no fighting between the Britain and France west of theAppalachians during this conflict, but the trade competition continuedunabated. The Ojibwe and other Great Lakes tribes participated bysending warriors east to defend Quebec from a British invasion. Themajor victory in this war occurred in 1745 when the British captured theFrench fortress at Louisbourgh. This enabled them to blockade the St.Lawrence River and cut the supply of French trade goods. Without these,the French alliance collapsed. The Miami and Wyandot broke with theFrench and began to trade openly with the British. French traders weremurdered, and the Fox, Sauk, and Mackinac Ojibwe were fighting with theDetroit tribes (Ottawa, Wyandot, and Potawatomi). Meanwhile, theMississauga in southern Ontario were calling for a revolt against theFrench and alliance with British. When the war ended in 1748, the Frenchrushed around with gifts and mediating disputes, but the unrestpersisted.In 1749 a conspiracy developed among the Saginaw Ojibwe, Ottawa,Wyandot, and Miami to trade with the British, and by 1752 even theIllinois were secretly organizing a coalition for this purpose.Meanwhile, large numbers of Shawnee, Delaware, andMingo (independent Iroquois descended from adopted Huron and Erie) hadsettled in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio during the 1740s.Referred to collectively as the Ohio tribes, these newcomers werenominally members of the Iroquois Covenant Chain, but they had come westin defiance of the League's authority. Nevertheless, it suited them totrade with the British and honor the Iroquois claims to Ohio, if for noother reason than to counter French claims to the same area. In 1751Chabert de Joncaire travelled through Ohio demanding the expulsion ofBritish traders only to have the Mingo demand to know by what authoritythe French were claiming Iroquois land.Unable to win over the Ohio tribes, the French in 1751 asked the Detroittribes to attack them and expel the British traders. Using the smallpoxepidemic which swept the area that year as an excuse, they declined, butit appears they were considering going over to the British themselves.Desperate, the French had to reach to the north for reliable allies.Charles Langlade, a Métis of French-Ojibwe heritage, gathered awar party of 250 Ojibwe and Ottawa at Mackinac and led them south inJune, 1752 to attack the Miami village and British trading post atPickawillany (Piqua, Ohio). One British trader was killed and fivecaptured along with £3000 of trade goods. Thirty Miami were alsokilled in the attack including their chief, Memeskia (called LaDemoiselle by the French and Old Britain by the British). Langlade's warriors afterwards boiled his body and ateit. Other French allies abandoned whatever thoughts they had oftrading with the British. The Wyandot renewed attacks on Chickasaw thatfall, and in 1753, the Miami, Potawatomi, and Sauk apologized to theFrench and returned the alliance.With their alliance intact, the French began construction of string offorts across western Pennsylvania to block British access. The Ohiotribes appealed to the Iroquois who turned to the British. Virginia alsoclaimed Ohio as a resul from Minnesota during the Minnesota Valley Uprising.Until the late 1800s, many Ojibwe in Minnesota maintained closer tieswith Canada than the United States. Winnipeg and Fort Geary wereactually closer to them than the American traders at St. Paul, and the"medicine line" (U.S.-Canada border) meant little. Like theAmericans, Canadian relations with the Ojibwe were mostly friendly, butthere were major problems with the Métis (French-Ojibwe-Creemixed bloods) who had settled in the Red River Valley and become almosta nation. The Hudson Bay Company began the first white settlements inthe area in 1811. These was opposed by the Northwesters, who by 1815were urging the Ojibwe, Cree, and Assiniboine to attack the settlements.The Ojibwe and others refused, but the Bois Brulé (French-Ojibwemixed bloods) agreed. Disguised in native dress, they captured thegovernor and Pembina and forced 140 settlers to flee for their lives.The insurrection was finally crushed by Lord Thomas Selkirk in 1817.Selkirk reorganized the settlements and negotiated peace treaties withthe Cree, Assiniboine, and the Ojibwe. He even managed a treaty with theDakota who recently had killed 33 Saulteaux (Red River Ojibwe) infighting near Pembina.Hudson Bay and the Northwesters merged in 1821 ending theirno-hold-barred competition, but Métis resentment againstnewcomers continued and erupted into the Red River Rebellion of 1869 ledby Louis Riel. It took almost the entire Canadian army to put down thisrevolt, and Riel fled south to, of all places, the United States.Meanwhile, at the urging of mining and timber interests,authority preceding the French defeat, theMackinac Ojibwe in 1761 were on the verge of war with the Menominee andWinnebago. The British slipped into the old French role of mediator,but, while the agreement they negotiated ingratiated them to theMenominee and Winnebago, it aggravated the Ojibwe who remained hostileand dangerous. Meanwhile, the British commander in North America, LordJeffrey Amherst chose to ignore the advice of the British Indiancommissioner William Johnson and ended the practice of making annualpresents to tribal chiefs. This was taken as an insult. To make mattersworse, Amherst raised the prices on trade goods and restricted theirsupply, particularly firearms and gunpowder. By 1761 the Seneca werecirculating a war belt calling for a general uprising against theBritish.Only the Delaware and Shawnee responded, but William Johnson discoveredthe plot during a meeting at Detroit with the tribes of the old Frenchalliance. However, this did not prevent Minavavana, representing theMackinac Ojibwe at this meeting, from complaining that the lack ofpresents was undermining the chiefs' authority. It also underminedBritish authority. During 1761 the Miami, Ottawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomialmost went to war against Shawnee, and the following year Fox warriorskilled the important Ojibwe chief, Grand Saulteur. Drought hit the OhioValley and southern Great Lakes during the summer of 1762 followed byfamine that winter. In the midst of this suffering, the prophet Neolinarose among the Delaware urging the tribes to reject their dependence ontrade goods (especially alcohol) and return to their traditional values.His most important convert was Pontiac, the Ottawa chief at Detroit (hismother was an Ojibwe).An important French ally in the old alliance, Pontiac interpretedNeolin's return to traditional values to mean getting rid of the Britishand bringing back the French. To this end, he began secretly organizingthe Pontiac Conspiracy. When it struck in May of 1763, the British losteight of their twelve forts west of the Appalachians. The Saginaw joinedPontiac's attack on Detroit while the Mississauga helped the Seneca tobesiege Fort Niagara. At Fort Mackinac, word of the uprising had notreached its garrison by the time of the King's birthday on June 4th. TheOjibwe used a lacrosse game to lull the soldiers into false securitywhile the warriors assembled as spectators and participants. Suddenly,the ball was launched towards the gates of the fort, and grabbingweapons hidden under the blankets of their women, the warriors rushed inand overwhelmed the garrison. Sixteen soldiers were killed outright, butthe French were not harmed. A Jesuit priest and Charles Langladeintervened to save twelve others, including the commander, CaptainGeorge Etherington. Given to the Ottawa, they were joined by thegarrison from Fort Edward Augustus (Green Bay) and escorted to Montreal.Pontiac's rebellion collapsed as Forts Detroit, Pitt, and Niagaracontinued to hold and British forces began to arrive. The Mississauga,whose support had never been too strong, were among the first to make aseparate peace. They joined with the Caughnawaga Iroquois to escortColonel John Bradstreet's army to Detroit. The British issued theProclamation of 1763 forbidding further settlement west of theAppalachians, and Amherst was replaced by Sir Thomas Gage. The MackinacOjibwe attended the general peace conference held at Niagara in July of1764, but the La Pointe and Mississippi bands did not. The Britishrestored annual presents to the chiefs and promised to reopen tradingposts with more trade goods. Despite this, the Mackinac and Saginawremained aloof and hostile for some time - the Saginaw attacked Britishtraders on the Ohio River in 1767. At Mackinac, the British wiselystarted using French traders to deal with the Ojibwe. Alexander Henryand Jean Cadotte (Metis) organized the Voyagers who used large 36'canoes with 12-man crews, many of them Ojibwe, to bring furs to market.Pontiac's reputation suffered with the collapse of his uprising. Hesigned his own peace with the British in 1766 and afterwards leftDetroit to settle in northern Illinois where he still had a considerablefollowing. Although he had promised never to fight the British again, heappears to have been trying to organize another rebellion in the west.In 1769 he was murdered in Cahokia by a Peoria (Illinois) after adrunken argument at the establishment of a British trader namedWilliamson. The British were suspected of having arranged theassassination, and Minavavana, the Ojibwe chief at Mackinac, arrived inCahokia escorted by two warriors looking for Williamson. Not finding theman he wanted, he killed two of his employees. This was the beginning ofa general war against the Illinois to avenge Pontiac. The Ojibwe hadalready fought the Illinois in 1752 and seized some of their territoryin northern Illinois. Now they were joined by the Fox, Sauk, Kickapoo,Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Winnebago. After making their last stand atStarved Rock, fewer than 300 Peoria survived to flee down the IllinoisRiver to the French at Kaskaskia - the victors taking over the landsformerly occupied by the Illinois.The Proclamation of 1763 was doomed as soon as it was issued. Americanfrontiersmen simply ignored it and came anyway to squat on native lands.The British could not stop them, and the inability to speculate infrontier lands was pushing the wealthier American colonists towardsrevolution. It was hurting the Iroquois who were losing their homelandeast of the mountains to squatters and legal settlement. To solve this,the Iroquois and British met at Fort Stanwix in 1768 and signed a treatywhere the Iroquois ceded their claims to Ohio and opened it forsettlement. No one bothered to consult the Delaware and Shawnee whoactually lived there. Their protests to the Iroquois ignored, theShawnee took matters into their own hands and made overtures for analliance to the: Illinois (the few who were left), Wea, Piankashaw,Miami, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Wyandot, Ottawa, Delaware, Mascouten,Ojibwe, Cherokee,and Chickasaw. Meetings were held at the Shawnee villages on the SciotoRiver in 1770 and 1771, but William Johnson was able to prevent analliance with threats of a war with the Iroquois.This left the Shawnee alone to face the frontiersmen and Virginiamilitia during Lord Dunmore's War (1774). The British remainedinterested observers in the struggle for the Ohio Valley until thebeginning of the American Revolution (1775-83), at which time they beganactively supporting the Ohio tribes against the Americans. Only theSaginaw had any important part in this fighting. The Lake Superior andMinnesota Ojibwe took no interest, and Mackinac participation was verylimited. However, the British remained in control of the Great Lakesthroughout the war and their fur trade continued. To allow the northerntribes to be used against the Americans, the British in 1778 werefinally able to resolve the still-smoldering dispute between theMackinac, Menominee and Winnebago. The truce freed these in 1780 toparticipate in the British expedition which attacked St. Louis (Spainhad joined the war against Great Britain). In the east, Mississaugawarriors joined Joseph Brant's Mohawk in a series of attacks againstfrontier settlements in New York and Pennsylvania.War between the Dakota and Ojibwe did not end when the Dakota weredriven into southern Minnesota during the 1750s. Large battles gave wayto continuous, raids designed make life miserable and give the otherside little rest. These were mostly killing and burning. Few prisonerswere taken. On most occasions, the Dakota got the worst of this. TheOjibwe were better armed and had the advantage of birchbark canoes(Dakota used dugouts). Neither had horses at the time, but to be fair,the Lakota (Teton Sioux) had already left Minnesota for the northernplains. With only 3-400 warriors, the Dakota were completelyoutnumbered, and even the Ojibwe admit they were a brave and dangerousenemy. Despite their disadvantages, the Dakota continued to resist andin 1780 formed an alliance with the Fox and Sauk to retake the St. CroixValley. After a major battle at St. Croix Falls, the Ojibwe destroyedsix Fox villages along the Chippewa River. By 1783 the Fox had withdrawnfrom Wisconsin and crossed the Mississippi into Iowa.Allied with the Cree and Assiniboine, the Ojibwe had swept acrossnorthern Minnesota and western Ontario during the 1740s. By 1750 groupsof Ojibwe (Pembina band) had reached the Red River at the edge of theplains in Manitoba and western Minnesota. They paused here, adapted tothe plains culture, and began to venture onto the plains to hunt bothbuffalo and Lakota. The Ojibwe seemed determined to drive the Sioux intothe Pacific Ocean. The Cheyenne, who lived in eastern North Dakota atthis time, were caught in the middle. In 1770 the Ojibwe decided theCheyenne were favoring the Lakota, and they destroyed their villagewhile the warriors were absent on a hunt. The Cheyenne left soonafterwards and moved west to the Missouri River. Before 1750 the easternDakotas were dominated by the Mandan who lived in permanent,agricultural villages along the upper Missouri. The area was sharedsomewhat with the Lakota who spent their summers on the plains butreturned to Minnesota each winter.The Ojibwe invasion changed this, and the Lakota stayed permanentlypushing the Mandan back towards the Missouri. On their heals, came theAssiniboine, Plains Cree, and Plains Ojibwe (Bungee or Plains Chippewa).The pursuit ended when the Lakota got horses, something their enemiesalso acquired, but never as many. As a result, the Lakota became themost powerful tribe on the northern plains, and the westward expansionof the Ojibwe into the Dakotas stopped at the Turtle Mountains. Smallpoxstruck the Red River during the winter of 1781-82. The Assiniboine,famous for large winter encampments, were especially hard-hit. Thesurvivors left the valley afterwards and joined the Plains Cree movingwest. The Ojibwe custom of small groups during the winter had protectedthem. Many stayed near the Red River, but others joined the westwardmigration. Because the Lakota controlled most of North and South Dakota,the remaining Ojibwe movement to the west occurred in Canada. CalledSaulteaux by the French and Bungee by Hudson Bay traders, groups ofPlains Ojibwe accompanied the Cree and Assiniboine, eventually reachingthe foot of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta.The Revolutionary War officially ended in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris,but in Ohio and Great Lakes, it continued until 1794. Under the terms ofthe Treaty of Paris, the boundary of new United States extended throughthe Great Lakes and west to the Mississippi River. The Americans werealso required to compensate British loyalists (Tories) for theirproperty losses during the revolution. Saddled with heavy debts from thewar, there was no way the Americans could pay these obligations unlessthey could sell the land in Ohio. The British, of course, knew this, andcontinued to occupy their forts in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes untilthe Americans paid. Meanwhile, they armed the tribes fighting to keepthe Americans out of Ohio and sat back to watch their former coloniesfall back into their hands through economic collapse.Officially, the British had told their native allies in 1783 to stoptheir attacks on the Americans, but the year before, Simon De Peyster,the British agent at Detroit, had begun the initial steps towards analliance by reconciling disputes between the: Ojibwe, Winnebago, Fox,Sauk, Menominee, Potawatomi, and Miami. The British did not attend themeeting held at Sandusky in 1783 where the alliance was formed, but theybrought the Mohawk Joseph Brant west to speak for them and let it beknown they would support the western alliance against the Americans. TheUnited States were also active, and among the first things the newgovernment did was to meet with the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix in 1784 andforce them to confirm their 1768 cession of Ohio. Badly mauled byAmericans during the war, the Iroquois did as demanded. Americancommissioners were sent west to gain the acceptance of the Ohio tribes.The treaty signed at Fort McIntosh in 1785 was the first between theOjibwe and the United States.The treaty recognized American authority in Ohio and established aboundary between white and native lands. Unfortunately, the chiefs whosigned did not represent the alliance anymore than the Americancommissioners represented the interests of its frontier citizens. Theencroachment continued, and settlements were attacked in retaliation.Frontier militia responded with their own raids against the southernmostalliance villages forcing the council fire to be moved from Shawneevillage of Waketomica in Ohio to Brownstown near Detroit. In a finalattempt to resolve this through treaty, the American governor of theNorthwest Territory, Arthur St. Clair, in December, 1787 asked for aconference to be held at the falls of the Muskingum River (Fort Harmar).The alliance was divided on how to respond. Joseph Brant was opposed tothe surrender of any land in Ohio. He stormed out of the meeting indisgust and went back to Ontario.The Wyandot decided to attend and convinced the Detroit Ojibwe andOttawa, Delaware, and Potawatomi to join them. The Saginaw Ojibwe andOttawa expressed their opinion that summer by attacking soldiersbuilding the meeting house at Fort Harmar. The Fort Harmar Treaty(January, 1789) establish the frontier on the Muskingum River but failedfor the same reasons as the Fort McIntosh Treaty in 1785 - encroachment,raids, and retaliation. After Americans attacked the Wabash villagesthat summer, the militant Shawnee and Miami dominated the alliance, andthe Americans decided on war. The first efforts met with disaster.Harmar's (1790) and St. Clair's (1791) defeats were the worst beatingsever inflicted on an American army by Native Americans. PresidentWashington sent "Mad Anthony" Wayne to Ohio to take command.Wayne was anything but "Mad." A deliberate and cautious man,he took two years to train a large force of regulars to back theskittish frontier militia. In the meantime, constant warfare was takingits toll on the unity of the western alliance.The alliance could muster more than 2,000 warriors, but it could notfeed them. Hungry Fox and Sauk warriors went home in 1792. That sameyear, Americans captured many of the Wabash tribes (Wea, Piankashaw, andKickapoo) women and children forcing them to make a separate peace.Meanwhile, Wayne's careful preparations were creating doubts within thealliance, most notably the Miami war chief Little Turtle who had giventhe alliance its greatest victories. American peace commissioners weresent to offer peace in exchange for acceptance of the Muskingumboundary. The Shawnee murdered two of them in 1792, but the delegationwhich included Hendrick Aupamut, a Stockbridge (Mahican) with relativesamong the Delaware, arrived safely in 1793. The alliance was divided,but the arguments of Joseph Brant prevailed, and the conference endedwithout bringing peace.The alliance had decided to fight but remained divided. After Waynebegan his advance north from Fort Washington at Cincinnati, LittleTurtle was replaced by Bluejacket (Shawnee). Saginaw and Detroit Ojibwewere among the warriors who faced Wayne at Fallen Timbers in August,1794, but the 700 who participated were far fewer than in earlierbattles. As the warriors retreated from the battlefield afterwards, theBritish at Fort Miami refused to open their gates. Great Britain haddecided to reach an accommodation with the Americans rather than riskwar.In November, it signed the Jay Treaty agreeing to withdraw fromforts on American territory. Abandoned by the British, alliance chiefssigned the Fort Greenville Treaty in 1795 ceding Ohio except thenorthwest part. As part of the alliance, the Detroit and Saginaw Ojibwealso signed, but the loss of Ohio did not affect their lands which werenorth of the treaty line.The British gave up the forts, but the Jay treaty allowed them to tradein American territory. American soldiers occupied Mackinac, but theiractivities were confined to the immediate vicinity of the fort. Britishand French Canadians dominated the region's tribes and trade until the1820s. After the British had assumed control of Canada in 1763, the furtrade had continued to operate mostly from Montreal. In 1779 severalMontreal traders merged to form the Northwest Company, and at theirrequest, the British government called a council the following year atMackinac with the Ojibwe, Dakota, Fox, Sauk, Menominee, and Winnebago toend the intertribal warfare which was crippling the fur trade. Theresulting treaty brought 20 years of peace to the region with one veryimportant exception: the Dakota and Ojibwe. Nothing could stop this, butthe Northwesters still managed to bring a lot of fur back to Montreal.By 1798 they were making regular visits to the Mandan villages on theMissouri River. To counter the competition from the Northwesters, HudsonBay traders began moving their posts inland from Hudson Bay. By 1793they had a permanent post on the Red River at Pembina. A thirdcompetitor entered the scene with the formation of the XYZ Company.Before this three-way competition began, alcohol was not a major problemfor the Ojibwe, but ruthless competition made it readily available.The Northwesters and XYZ merged in 1804 ending the worst abuses, butBritish traders were all over the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin andan increasing concern to the Americans. The factory system was createdduring the 1790s to compete with the British, but it was poorly managedand ineffective. During his exploration of the upper Mississippi in1806, Zebulon Pike ordered the Ojibwe to stop trading with the Britishand arranged a truce between them and the Dakota. Pike had barelystarted back down the Mississippi, when war with the Dakota and tradewith the British resumed. John Jacob Astor's American Fur Companyentered the Lake Superior trade just after the War of 1812. The Britishwere still allowed to trade in the area, but United States law nowrequired a permit. For some reason, these were difficult to obtain, andAstor was soon able to buy out the Northwesters. However, farther westin Minnesota, the Dakotas, and northern plains, British and Métistraders from the Red River remained active for many years. Known to theLakota as the Slota, Métis traders took their high, two-wheeledRed River carts out on the plains. They were an important source offirearms for the Lakota until the 1870s.The years after the Greenville Treaty were terrible for the westernalliance tribes. Defeated and crowded into a shrinking land base, therewas widespread social disintegration and breakdown of tribal authority.Drinking was a serious problem, and "peace chiefs" trying toreach an accommodation with the Americans were often in danger of beingkilled by their own people. The alliance collapsed, although the Shawneechief Bluejacket tied to resurrect it in 1801. Not satisfied with thelands gotten at Greenville, the Americans continued to whittle away atthe remaining native lands in the Ohio Valley. William Henry Harrison,the American governor of the Northwest Territory, had instructions toextinguish native land titles, and he set about his work. The Illinoisceded southern Illinois in 1803 even though they no longer controlledit. That same year, the Delaware sold part of southern Indiana. This wasfollowed by treaties in 1805, 1807, and 1808 wherein the Detroit Ojibwe,Ottawa, Wyandot, and Potawatomi ceded parts of northern Ohio andsoutheastern Michigan.The times called for a prophet. In 1805 a Shawnee drunkard namedLalawethika received a spiritual vision. He never touched alcohol againand took a new name - Tenskwatawa (The Open Door). Unwilling to wrestlewith the pronunciation of his Shawnee name, Americans called him"The Prophet." The Shawnee were surprised at the sudden changein this man, but after he predicted a solar eclipse in 1806, Tenskwatawagained a large following from several tribes. His message wasessentially the same as Neolin's in 1763 - reject the white man's tradegoods and whiskey and return to traditional ways. His religious movementprobably would have run its course and disappeared unnoticed intohistory, but his brother was Tecumseh. A spell-binding speaker andrespected Shawnee war chief, Tecumseh added a political force to hisbrother's movement. His main argument was there were to be no more landcessions to the Americans ...period! This placed him in directopposition to the peace chiefs and Harrison.Tecumseh visited Canada in 1808 and received strong Britishencouragement and offers of support. The Prophet's messengers also madetheir first visits to the Ojibwe villages that year. Many listened, butthere was the competing movement of Trout, an Ottawa mystic at Mackinac,and strong opposition from the Midewiwin, who were not only a healingsociety but a major political force binding the Ojibwe bands to eachother. Despite this, some of the Ojibwe and Ottawa decided to visit theProphet at Prophetstown (Tippecanoe) in western Indiana. They arrivedskeptical, and a harsh winter with starvation and disease atProphetstown made them more so. They left angry after killing a Shawneewoman and her child in defiance of Prophet's teachings and were planningan attack on Prophetstown until dissuaded by Michigan governor WilliamHull.William Henry Harrison ignored the growing strength of Tecumseh and theProphet and kept pressing for more land. In 1809 he negotiated treatiesat Fort Wayne and Vincennes with the Delaware, Potawatomi Miami, andIllinois which ceded 3,000,000 acres in southern Indiana and Illinois.When he heard this, Tecumseh threatened to kill the chiefs who signed.He made good on this when his followers executed the Wyandot chiefLeatherlips in 1810. The peace chiefs at Brownstown condemned theProphet as a witch, but this was more a bark than a bite. Wyandot loyalto Tecumseh defied the council and brought the wampum belts of the oldalliance to Prophetstown that year. Certain of war, Tecumseh leftTippecanoe to gather support from the tribes south of the Ohio. While hewas absent, the Potawatomi attacked settlements in Illinois, andHarrison used this as an excuse to gather an army and march onProphetstown in November, 1811.Disregarding his brother's orders to avoid confrontation with theAmericans while he was gone, Tenskwatawa attacked. The battle ofTippecanoe followed, during which Prophetstown was burned. The militarydefeat was not nearly as important as the damage done to Tenskwatawa'sreputation as a prophet. After Tecumseh returned to Indiana, he had touse all of his powers to rebuild his alliance before the War of 1812(1812-14) erupted that summer. Tecumseh and his followers fought on theBritish side during this conflict, but participation by the Ojibwe ismore complex. Many of the Detroit and Saginaw Ojibwe joined Tecumsehuntil he was killed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813. Mississaugawarriors helped the British defend Canada against American invasion.However, the Lake Superior and Mississippi (Minnesota) Ojibwe remainedneutral, with their chief Bugonaykishig (Hole In the Day) as friendly toAmericans as he was dangerous to the Dakota. The Mackinac helped theBritish capture Fort Michilimackinac in 1812, and two years later joinedforces with the British garrison and 500 Menominee, Winnebago, Sauk,Dakota, and Ottawa warriors to defeat an American attempt to recaptureit.So far as Britain and the United States wereconcerned, the War of 1812 ended in stalemate, but for Native Americansit meant total defeat. The Americans were in control afterwards,and native lands began to dwindle away. The first treaties like the oneat Spring Wells in 1815 were "kiss and make up" where tribesrecognized United States authority and both parties agreed to forgiveinjuries which occurred during the war. The United States got down tobusiness at the Fort Meigs Treaty (September, 1817) when the Ojibwe andothers exchanged their remaining Ohio lands for reservations. TheSaginaw surrendered a large part of southeast Michigan in 1819, followedin 1821 by the cession of northern Indiana lands by the Ojibwe andPotawatomi. Strangely enough, the first Ojibwe land losses occurred inOntario with the Mississauga. This began shortly after 1783 to make roomfor the resettlement of Joseph Brant's Mohawk who had been forced fromNew York during the Revolutionary War. Thousands of British loyalistsalso left the United States to settle in Upper Canada, and in 1792Moravian Delaware arrived to escape the fighting in Ohio. Game becamescarce, and the Mississauga began attacking Delaware hunters. TheMississauga eventually lost almost all of their land. By the 1840s theywere destitute, but they still managed to donate £50 (aconsiderable sum at the time) for Irish famine relief.There were no wars and few confrontations between the Americans andOjibwe after 1815, but this was not true about the Ojibwe and Dakota.The Ojibwe had driven the Dakota south of the Minnesota River by 1780,but the Dakota made up for their losses by taking territory from themuch-smaller Iowa tribe. As the Iowa retreated southward they came intoconflict with the Osage and formed an alliance with the Fox and Sauk -also at war with the Osage. Despite the brief Fox-Dakota allianceagainst the Ojibwe (1780-83) and British efforts to negotiate a peace atMackinac in 1786, the upper Mississippi was a war zone in 1800. Afterthe War of 1812, the United States, for the first time, had control ofits own territory free from British interference, but settlementadvanced up the Mississippi from St. Louis no farther than the presentsouthern border of Iowa because of the warfare to the north. Althoughthe French and British had both failed, the Americans were determined tostop this.Fort Snelling (St. Paul, MN) was built in 1819 to control Britishtraders in Minnesota and provide a barrier between the Dakota andOjibwe. It was more effective in controlling the British than the Dakotaand Ojibwe. Despite a major Dakota victory at Cross Lake, Ojibwevillages by 1800 were located as far south as the Crow Wing River withthe Ojibwe usually attacking the Dakota rather than theother-way-around. One American in Wisconsin during the early 1820sobserved an Ojibwe war party return to their village with more than 300scalps. With the fighting occurring up to the gates of their forts, theAmericans decided to solve the problem by defining tribal territories.To this end, a Grand Council was held at Prairie du Chien in August,1825 (Ojibwe, Dakota, Fox, Sauk, Iowa, Ottawa, Menominee, Winnebago, andPotawatomi). William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame) headed the Americandelegation and, using lavish gifts and the promise of American tradefactories, secured a treaty with general boundaries. Final adjustmentswere to be made at the discretion of the United States.Not all of the Ojibwe were represented at Prairie du Chein, and it tooktwo other treaties - Fond du Lac (1826) and Butte des Morts (1827) tocomplete the process. Unfortunately, these treaties bought little peace.In 1826 the Ojibwe ambushed the Dakota just north of Fort Snelling, andthe Dakota retaliated the following year with an attack on an Ojibwechief visiting the fort. The Americans captured the responsible Dakotaand turned them over to the Ojibwe. By 1828 full-scale warfare hadresumed, with the soldiers at Fort Snelling as spectators. Despite this,American settlement surged up the Mississippi Valley after the Prairiedu Chien treaty. The first target was the lead deposits between Prairiedu Chien and Galena, Illinois. This caused a brief war with theWinnebago during 1828, after which, the Winnebago were forced tosurrender their claim to the area. Additional treaties the followingyear with the Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi completed the takeover.Further south, Blackhawk's Sauk in 1832 refused to surrender theirwestern Illinois lands as required by a questionable 1804 treaty, andthis erupted into the Blackhawk War. Although Blackhawk thought theOjibwe, Winnebago, and even British would support him, only a fewPotawatomi in northern Illinois joined in. Soundly beaten, the Sauk wereforced to cede their remaining lands in Illinois as well as parts ofeastern Iowa. In the aftermath, pressure built to remove the othertribes from Illinois. At the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, the Ojibwe,Ottawa, and Potawatomi in northern Illinois ceded their remaining landsand agreed to move to Council Bluffs on the Missouri River in southwestIowa. After a few years, the Illinois Ojibwe merged with themore-numerous Prairie Potawatomi. The combined tribe was forced fromIowa in 1846 and removed to eastern Kansas.After the Blackhawk War, settlers moved into northern Illinois, southernWisconsin, and eastern Iowa and then started looking north towardsMinnesota for more land. In the meantime, fighting between the Dakotaand Ojibwe had continued, and a government peace mission headed by HenrySchoolcraft in 1831 failed to produce lasting results. However, theOjibwe over-hunted Minnesota, and as the fur dwindled, they acquiredalmost $70,000 in debt to American traders. The Dakota had similarproblems and obligations. To pay these, both tribes agreed in 1837(Treaty of St. Peters) to cede a disputed area between the Mississippiand St. Croix Rivers (including much of northwest Wisconsin) which theyhad fought over for a century but neither could safely use. The Ojibwereceive a $35,000 annual payment which gave the Americans leveragein preventing hostilities.Unfortunately, many of the northern Ojibwe bands got nothing andcontinued to raid the Dakota. When the Ojibwe delegation came to FortSnelling in the summer of 1839 to collect their annuities, the Dakotaattacked them. 100 Ojibwe and 23 Dakota died in a battle which tookplace on the grounds of the fort itself. In 1848 the Winnebago (friendlywith both tribes) were brought to Minnesota and placed at Long Prairiebetween the Ojibwe and Dakota. In 1851 a group of Ojibwe visiting theWinnebago agency slipped off unnoticed and killed five Dakota. Fightingbetween the Ojibwe and Dakota only slowed after the Dakota were moved toreservations in southwest Minnesota during the 1850s. However,occasional outbreaks continued until 1862 when the Americans drove theDakota from Minnesota during the Minnesota Valley Uprising.Until the late 1800s, many Ojibwe in Minnesota maintained closer tieswith Canada than the United States. Winnipeg and Fort Geary wereactually closer to them than the American traders at St. Paul, and the"medicine line" (U.S.-Canada border) meant little. Like theAmericans, Canadian relations with the Ojibwe were mostly friendly, butthere were major problems with the Métis (French-Ojibwe-Creemixed bloods) who had settled in the Red River Valley and become almosta nation. The Hudson Bay Company began the first white settlements inthe area in 1811. These was opposed by the Northwesters, who by 1815were urging the Ojibwe, Cree, and Assiniboine to attack the settlements.The Ojibwe and others refused, but the Bois Brulé (French-Ojibwemixed bloods) agreed. Disguised in native dress, they captured thegovernor and Pembina and forced 140 settlers to flee for their lives.The insurrection was finally crushed by Lord Thomas Selkirk in 1817.Selkirk reorganized the settlements and negotiated peace treaties withthe Cree, Assiniboine, and the Ojibwe. He even managed a treaty with theDakota who recently had killed 33 Saulteaux (Red River Ojibwe) infighting near Pembina.Hudson Bay and the Northwesters merged in 1821 ending theirno-hold-barred competition, but Métis resentment againstnewcomers continued and erupted into the Red River Rebellion of 1869 ledby Louis Riel. It took almost the entire Canadian army to put down thisrevolt, and Riel fled south to, of all places, the United States.Meanwhile, at the urging of mining and timber interests, the Canadiangovernment was extinguishing Ojibwe land titles. Signed during the1850s, the Robertson Treaties (Robinson-Huron and Robinson-Superiortreaties) and Manitoulin Island Treaty cost the Ojibwe their lands onthe northern and eastern shores of Lakes Superior and Huron and theSaugeen Peninsula. A series of five treaties (1871-75) followed with thePlains Ojibwe, Cree, and other tribes which are known only by theirnumber (Treaty No. 1, etc.). This concluded in 1923 with the WilliamsTreaty with the Ojibwe of southern Ontario.In the United States, the process was similar. Spread over such a largearea, their lands passed into white ownership and the public domainthrough a series of treaties rather any single agreement. This initiallyhappened where soil and growing season permitted agriculture: Ohio,Illinois, Indiana, southern Wisconsin. After their first cessions in1819 and 1821, the Saginaw through six treaties (1836-39) ceded theirlands and agreed to temporary reservations until arrangements could bemade for their removal to Kansas. Only the Black River and Swan Creekbands actually moved. The others decided to stay in Michigan and refusedto leave. Some joined the Ojibwe in upper Michigan, but the rest usedthe money from their original cessions to purchase new lands. By 1854the government accepted this but required allotment (individual ratherthan tribal ownership). During the next fifteen years, the Saginaw lostat least 300,000 acres to fraud. The situation was so rotten even thefederal government noticed and was forced to intervene.Their treaty promised to send them to Minnesota, but the Black River andSwan Creek Ojibwe arrived in Kansas in 1839. They settled near Ottawa onlands originally intended for all of the Saginaw. When it became clearin 1854 the other Saginaw were going to stay in Michigan, 8,320 acreswere given to the Black River and Swan Creek bands. After Kansas wasopened to white settlement by the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, theimmigrant tribes from the east began to sell their lands. This left agroup of Moravian Delaware from Ontario without land, but the Ojibwegave them permission to settle on their lands. The two groups mergedshortly afterwards and, after agreeing to allotment and citizenship,stayed in Kansas when the other tribes left for Oklahoma after the civilwar. Most still live in the vicinity.Although it always took several treaties to reach agreement with everyband, the United States initially treated the Ojibwe in upper Michigan,Wisconsin and Minnesota as one tribe. Since most of their land wasuseless for agriculture, pressure for land cessions occurred later thanwith other Ojibwe. Only a small area near Sault Ste. Marie for a fortand trading post and the St. Martin Islands were ceded in two treatiessigned in 1820. The 1826 treaty at Fond du Lac was similar, but theAmericans received permission to explore and mine the south shore ofLake Superior. Rich cooper deposits were discovered on the KeweenawPeninsula, and at La Pointe in 1842, the Ojibwe ceded most upperMichigan and northern Wisconsin retaining only their right to hunt andfish. For this the United States paid $75,000 for the debtsaccumulated with American traders and an annuity of $36,000 for 25years. However, the agreement split the Lake Superior Ojibwe (who gotmost of the money) from the Mississippi bands in Minnesota who hadopposed the cession.Whites rushed in to exploit the copper and timber, and by 1847 there wastalk of moving all of the Ojibwe to Kansas. Three years later PresidentZachary Taylor ordered the removal, but his death that year postponedthe implementation. This allowed time for opposition to organize - notonly Christian missionaries working among the Ojibwe, but the Minnesotalegislature in 1853 voted its opposition to removal. Taylor's order wasrescinded by his successor, Millard Fillmore. Since it no longerintended to remove the Ojibwe, the government needed to assignreservations. In the treaty signed at La Pointe in 1854, the LakeSuperior Ojibwe gave up seven million acres in exchange for sixreservations too small to support them. It took twelve years and eightadditional treaties to finalize the Ojibwe reservations in Minnesota.Louis Riel went back to Canada to lead a second rebellion in 1884. Thistime he was captured, brought to trial, and hung. His supporters hadincluded not only the Métis, but also Cree and Ojibwe, andafterwards, many found sanctuary in the United States. Ojibwe of RockyBoy (Stone Child) Ojibwe crossed into northeast Montana and settledalong the Milk River in 1886. The army considered them Canadian Indiansand wanted to deport them, but with the support of Montana citizens,they were allowed to stay and given the Rocky Boy Reservation. In 1910they were joined there by Little Bear's Cree. Back in North Dakota, thePlains Cree escaped the government attention until 1882. Whites movinginto the area wanted to know why all of the "Indians" werestill running loose. Since the United States no longer dealt with NativeAmericans through treaty, the Turtle Mountain Reservation was createdthat year by executive order.The Plains Ojibwe did not always remain on this reservation and oftenleft on extended buffalo hunts. During one of these absences of LittleShell's group of almost 5,000 Ojibwe and Métis in 1884, thegovernment concluded Turtle Mountain was too large for the number ofOjibwe living there and reclaimed 90% of the reservation for sale towhites. This left Little Shell and his people stranded in Montanawithout land. The government offered to compensate the Ojibwe for theloss of ten million acres at the rate of 10¢ per acre - the"Ten Cent Treaty." Many Ojibwe took the money and returned tothe crowded reservation in North Dakota, but Little Shell rejected thesettlement, and his people have remained without recognition ever since.The real embarrassment to the government occurred when the reservationwas allotted in 1892. Even without Little Shell's people, there was notenough land available on the reservation. 2,000 allotments had to beadded from public lands in Montana and South Dakota.After 1815 there were few confrontations between the Ojibwe and Americans,but the fight between the Army and Pillager Band of Ojibwe on October 5th,1898 was the last official battle of the Indian Wars. Troops were sent to theLeech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota to arrest Bugonaygeshig, adissident Ojibwe elder. Bugonaygeshig had been arrested once before and,after a trial in Duluth, had to walk back to Leech Lake. He was in no mood torepeat this experience. As the Ojibwe gathered to protect him, an army rifleaccidentally discharged, and the soldiers suddenly found themselvessurrounded and under fire from all sides. Cooler heads prevailed, and after atruce, the army withdrew without Bugonaygeshig. This skirmish produced thelast Medal of Honor awarded in an Indian campaign. To Private O. Burchard:"For distinguished bravery in action against hostile Indians for actionduring the uprising of Chippewa Indians on Leech Lake, northern Minnesota." Asoldier got the medal, but as was the case with almost every enemy they hadever faced, the Ojibwe had won the battle. First Nations referred to in this Ojibwe History: AlgonkinCherokeeHuronIroquoisKickapooMascoutenMenomineeMiamiNeutralNipissingShawneeTionontatiWinnebagoWyandot Comments concerning this "history" would be appreciated. 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