Nipissing

The Nipissing, or Nbisiing Anishinaabeg, lived around the lake that bears their name and in the forests to its north, west and south. Hunting and fishing sustained communities in a country of interlinked lakes and rivers. Their position on the route between the Ottawa valley and Georgian Bay also made them important intermediaries among Algonquian peoples, the Huron and French traders.

In the early seventeenth century the trader Jean Nicolet lived among the Nipissing and learned from visitors who came to the lake to exchange goods. Warfare later drove some of the people away from the lake; a Nipissing village was recorded at Lake Nipigon during the upheavals of 1649–50. Some returned to their homeland later in the century and resumed their life and trade around Lake Nipissing.