Anishinabe

The Anishinabe peoples of the Great Lakes include the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi, together with the Algonquin and Nipissing, all Algonquian speakers. At first contact with Europeans they lived in the Northeast Woodlands and the Subarctic.

The Ojibwe are known for birchbark canoes, copper trade, wild rice and maple sugar, and for the Midewiwin society, which keeps their oral history and songs on birchbark scrolls. The Odawa, whose name means ‘to trade’, settled on Manitoulin Island and the Bruce Peninsula and after the 1600s spread along the Ottawa River and into Michigan and Wisconsin. The Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi were allied in the Council of Three Fires.