OTTAWA

With the CHIPPEWA (ojibway) and the POTAWATOMI, the Ottawa formed the Council of Three Fires. All three Algonquian tribes supposedly migrated to the Great Lakes country from the north as one people, then separated. In the early 1600s, when French explorers and missionaries arrived in the area, the Ottawa controlled the northern reaches of Lake Huron—especially Mani-toulin Island and the shores of Georgian Bay.

The Ottawa lived like other Great Lakes ALGO-NQUIANS—surviving through a combination of hunting in the forests, fishing in the lakes and rivers, gathering wild rice in the marshes, and, when conditions allowed, planting crops in cultivated fields (see NORTHEAST INDI ANS). They shared many typical Algonquian beliefs—for example, in Manitou, the Great Spirit—but they had their own unique legends and traditions too. Their creation myth tells the story of their descent from three different creatures—Michabou, the Great Hare; Namepich, the Carp; and the Bear’s Paw.

After the arrival of Europeans, the Ottawa became noted in two connections: first as traders, then as the tribe that produced one of the great Indian leaders, Pontiac. Their fame as traders came about while the French controlled much of North America, up until 1763. Their name, pronounced AHT-uh-wuh, means “to trade” or “at-home-anywhere people.” (An alternate spelling, preferred by most tribal members, is Odawa, singular, or Odawak, plural.) The name was given to the river that runs through what was once their territory and which now separates Quebec from Ontario in Canada. (The name also was given to the capital city of Canada.) The Ottawa River was a main trade route for Indians and Frenchmen alike. It probably had more canoes going up and down it than any other river in history.

The Ottawa were part of the Great Huron Trade Circle. They supplied furs to HURON (wyandot) middlemen, who took them to the French in Quebec and Montreal and then returned to pay off the Indians with European trade goods. After 1649, when the IROQUOIS (haudenosaunee) defeated the Huron, the Ottawa took over as middlemen. Now it was their turn to deal directly with the French, bartering furs for European-made knives, hatchets, tomahawks, pipes, cloth, beads, kettles, and paints.

But in 1660, the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) defeated and dispersed the Ottawa too, breaking up their trade monopoly. The Ottawa took refuge in the west, fleeing in their boats to the islands off Green Bay. Some eventually went farther west to Keweenaw Bay in Lake Superior. Others passed overland as far as the Mississippi River, carrying their light birch-bark canoes between streams. This group migrated again because of attacks by SIOUX (DAKOTA, LAKOTA, NAKOTA). They ended up on Chequamegon Bay in northern Wisconsin. Ten years later in 1670, when the French promised to protect them from the Iroquois, many Ottawa returned to Man-itoulin Island. Many also joined their old trading partners, the Huron, who were now at Mackinac in present-day Michigan. Michigan’s northern lower peninsula became an adopted Ottawa homeland.

Ottawa birch-bark dish

These were just some of many migrations for Ottawa people. In the years to follow, most lives and homelands would be disrupted with increasing non-Indian settlement.