The Chippewa tribe is a Native American and First Nations group located in the US and Canada. They speak a version of the Anishinaabe language and have a well-recorded history. They were spotted by French traders in the 1600s and established a loose confederacy with other tribes. They were forcibly removed from their land in the 1800s but were eventually allowed to stay close to their homelands due to events like the Sandy Lake tragedy.
The Chippewa tribe is a group of Native American and First Nations people located in the United States and Canada in North America. It represents the third largest collection of bands in America next to the Cherokee and Navajo. The Chippewa tribe is also known by a number or other names such as Ojibwe, Saulteurs and Mississaugas.
Belonging to the Algonquin family of American Indians, the Chippewa tribe speak a version of the Anishinaabe language. This language survives today as the fourth most spoken Native American language in the world. Many names for today’s places in the United States and Canada are derived from Chippewa language words, some conflated with French.
The Chippewa have one of the best recorded histories compared to other Native American tribes. Along with vocal stories and songs, they transcribed much of their long history on birch bark scrolls kept and copied for generations. According to their legends, the Algonquins were founded by six radiant beings representing various animals. These beings appeared to various Chippewas when the Europeans arrived, telling them to move west to preserve their way of life. In response, Indian tribes moved into the Great Lakes area from the east coast.
In the early 1600s the Chippewa were spotted by French traders along the shoreline of Lake Superior. French travelers supplied the tribe with weapons, which helped them push their rivals, the Sioux and Fox, out of the region. By 1700, the Chippewa were almost entirely responsible for today’s Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. During this time, they established a loose confederacy with the Native Americans of Ottawa and Potawatomi and entered into a short-lived conflict with the Iroquois Confederacy, allied with the French against Great Britain during the French and Indian War. Later, they sided with the British against the United States during the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.
In the 1800s, the Chippewa tribe was forcibly removed from much of their land west of the Mississippi. The goal was to get them on bookings in Minnesota, but various events eventually convinced the public to allow the various bands to stay close to their homelands. One of the major events that created these conditions was the Sandy Lake tragedy of 1850 in which the federal government failed to deliver promised supplies to the Chippewa tribe as it moved. Over the winter, about 12% of the tribe died of starvation and disease.
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