BACKGROUND - Wisconsin - page 779

roast,”andthewordstogetherdenotethetribe'suniquemoccasinstitching.Inanyevent,all
arereallyAnish'nabeanyway.)WisconsinhasfiveOjibwatribes.TheOjibwainhabitedthe
northern woodlands of the upper Great Lakes, especially along Lakes Huron and Superior.
TheywerealliedwiththeOttawaandPotawatomi, butbranchedoffinthe16thcenturyand
moved to Michigan's Mackinac Island. The Ojibwa said that their migration westward was
to fulfill the prophecy to find “food that grows on water”—wild rice. The Bad River group
today lives on a 123,000-acre reservation along Lake Superior in Ashland County. It's the
largest reservation in the state and is famed for its wild rice beds on the Kakogan Sloughs.
The Red Cliff band, the nucleus of the Ojibwa nation, has been organized along the Bay-
field Peninsula's shore since 1854. The St. Croix band (“homeless” tribes scattered over
four counties with no boundaries) lives in northwest Wisconsin. The Lac du Flambeau
band is the most visited and recognizable because of its proximity to Minocqua and state
and federal forests and for exercising its tribal spearfishing rights. Lac Courte Oreilles is
originally of the Betonukeengainubejib Ojibwa division. The Sokaogan (Mole Lake) band
of Lake Superior Ojibwa is known as the “Lost Tribe” because its original legal treaty title
was lost in an 1854 shipwreck. Originally from Canada, the band moved along to Madeline
Island before defeating the Sioux near Mole Lake in 1806.
The Algonquian Menominee have been in Wisconsin longer than any other tribe. The
Menominee once held sway south to Illinois, north into Michigan, and west to the Missis-
sippi River, with a total of 10 million acres. Known as the “Wild Rice People”—the early
French explorers called them “Lords of Trade”—Menominee were divided into sky and
earth groups and then subdivided into clans. Though the hegemony of the Menominee las-
ted up to 10,000 years in Wisconsin, they were almost exterminated by eastern Canadian
Indians fleeing Iroquois persecution and by pestilence imported by the Europeans. Today
the population has rebounded to around 3,500, and the Menominee reservation constitutes
an entire Wisconsin county.
The Forest County Potawatomi, also Algonquian, are the legacy of the tribe that made
the most successful move into Wisconsin, beginning in the 1640s. Originally inhabitants of
the shores of Lake Huron, the Potawatomi later moved to Michigan, Indiana, and places
alongtheSt.Joseph'sRiver.Thenamemeans“PeopleoftheFire”or,better,“Keeperofthe
Fire,” after their confederacy with the Ojibwa and Ottawa. The Potawatomi tribe stretched
from Chicago to Wisconsin's Door County and was one of the tribes to greet Jean Nicolet
when he arrived in 1634. Wisconsin's band of Potawatomi was one of the few to withstand
relocation to Oklahoma in 1838.