Ojibwe Indians

Ojibwe people also known as Chippewa tribe are an Anishinaabe people.

They are the fifth largest group of Indian tribal people in Canada and the U.S.A today .

Most of the Ojibwe now live in the U.S.A and the rest in Canada .

Their history goes back along way before the arrival of Europeans .

Their historic homelands include what is now Ontario and Manitoba Canada and North Dakota in the U.S. also from Lake Huron down to the Great plains .

However, their oral and recorded history written on birch bark scrolls they claim to have originated from the mouth of the St Laurence river on the Atlantic coast in what is now Quebec Canada .

In 1773 they were at war with the Dakota the Ojibwe won al large portion of North Minnesota this was a climax of long-standing rivalry  between the two tribes .

The French made an  alliance with the Ojibwe hoping to gain more territory and trading rites against the British .

The French gave them guns and other weapons to help them push other tribes further West to allow the French to gain more influence .

Also the Lakota had horses which gave them an advantage over the Ojibwe .

In the mid-1700s the Ojibwe expansion westward was finally halted in North Dakota by better armed enemy the Lakota .

Over time the Ojibwe began to encounter more white settlers and so eventually treaties were made selling land between the native tribes and the Americans .

The Ojibwe occupied land that had a lot of Copper and Lumber, so the Ojibwe sold of this land to help them financially because they had been cheated by the fur traders .

They were then put onto reservations that were to small to accommodate all the people so they could not support them selves either by hunting or other means as they had done in the past .

They were known for their Birch bark canoes and fishing the lakes and rivers in the summer months when there was no ice to cover the water.

In the winter they would harvest wild rice and hunt Moose. Caribou and other game they came across .

They were also very good at tapping Maple syrup which they used as sugar .They would also store this in the ground until it was required or could be sold .

The Ojibwe like all other woodland peoples built their houses from Birch bark and were known as Wigwams or Wanigans the same as the Mohawk and Iroquois.

However, some lodges  were coned shaped like the plain’s tepee.

There were some Ojibwe who did adopt the Plains Indian way of life and became nomadic hunting the Buffalo and using the tepee as their home . These were easy to put up and dismantle when they move camp to better hunting grounds.

To day the Ojibwe live in Canada and occupy land around the Great lakes and in the U.S including Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ontario . Population wise there are around 77000 mainline Ojibwe 76000 Saulteaux, and 900 Mississauga living to day .