The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and ManuscriptsSchoolcraft, Henry Rowe
History
The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
Indians of North America
for his achievement.
Lake Superior, at the time of our earliest acquaintance with the region,
was occupied, as it is at this day, by the Chippewa race. The chief
seat of their power appeared to be near the southwestern extremity of
the lake, at Chagoimegon, where fathers Marquette and Alloez found their
way, and established a mission, so early as 1668. Another of their
principal, and probably more _ancient_ seats, was at the great rapids on
the outlet of that lake, which they named the Sault de Ste. Marie. It
was in allusion to their residence here that they called this tribe
Saulteur, that is to say people of the leap or rapid.
Indian tradition makes the Chippewas one of the chief, certainly by far
the most _numerous and widely spread_, of the Algonquin stock proper. It
represents them to have migrated from the east to the west. On reaching
the vicinity of Michilimackinac, they separated at a comparatively
moderate era into three tribes, calling themselves, respectively,
Odjibwas, Odawas, and Podawadumees. What their name was before this era,
is not known. It is manifest that the term Odjibwa is not a very ancient
one, for it does not occur in the earliest authors. They were probably
of the Nipercinean or true Algonquin stock, and had taken the route of
the Utawas river, from the St. Lawrence valley into lake Huron. The term
itself is clearly from Bwa, a voice; and its prefix in Odji, was
probably designed to mark a peculiar intonation which the muscles are,
as it were, _gathered up_, to denote.
Whatever be the facts of their origin, they had taken the route up the
straits of St. Mary into lake Superior, both sides of which, and far
beyond, they occupied at the era of the French discovery. It is evident
that their course in this direction must have been aggressive. They were
advancing towards the west and northwest. The tribe known as Kenistenos,
had passed through the Lake of the Woods, through the great lake
Nipesing, and as far as the heads of the Saskatchewine and the portage
of the Missinipi of Hudson's bay. The warlike band of Leech Lake, called
Mukundwas, had spread themselves over the entire sources of the
Mississippi and extended their hunting excursions west to Red River,
where they came into contact with the Assinaboines, or Stone Sioux. The
central power, at this era, still remained at Chagoimegon, on Superior,
where indeed, the force of early tradition asserts there was maintained
something like a frame of both civil and ecclesiastical polity and
government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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