Odawa

The Odawa, or Ottawa, are an Anishinaabe people whose name, from adaawe, means traders. Their oral history traces a migration from the Atlantic Dawnland to the Straits of Mackinac, where they split from the Ojibwe and Potawatomi to form with them the Council of Three Fires.

They nearly monopolized trade passing Green Bay and Sault Ste. Marie. After the French founded Fort Detroit in 1701 many Odawa moved south into Michigan and Ohio.

They fought beside the French in the Seven Years' War, and in 1763 chief Pontiac led a pan-Indian rebellion against British garrisons. They fought in the Northwest Indian War until defeat at Fallen Timbers in 1794 and the Treaty of Greenville of 1795 opened Ohio to settlement; after the Indian Removal Act of 1830 the Ohio bands ceded their reserves and were removed to Kansas.