Plains Ojibwa,"puckered up," refers to a distinctive style of moccasin seam. They were also known as "Bungi." Their self-designation is Anishinabe, "First People." People of Ojibwa/ Cree/French ancestry are known as Metis, or Mitchif. The Plains Ojibwa are the westernmost branch of the large Ojibwa people, also known variously as Ojibwe, Ojibway, Chippewa, and Anishinabe. See also Anishinabe (Chapter 8).
Location Located along the northern Lake Superior shore in the late seventeenth century, the proto-Plains Ojibwa migrated to the Red River Valley (Lake Winnipeg to the North Dakota-Minnesota border) in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, the Plains Ojibwa were located in north-central Montana (vicinity of Milk and Judith Rivers). Today, most live on a reservation in Chouteau and Hill Counties, Montana; in nearby towns such as Havre, Great Falls, and Helena; and in eastern Montana and western North Dakota.
Population There were roughly 35,000 Ojibwa in the mid-seventeenth century and about 3,000 Plains Ojibwa in the late eighteenth century. In the early 1990s there were roughly 3,100 enrolled members of the Rocky Boy Reservation, about 1,000 residents of the Montana Allotment Community, and about 25,000 enrolled members of the Turtle Mountain Reservation.
Language Ojibwa is an Algonquian language.
Historical Information
History The Plains Ojibwa originated in the eastern Great Lakes region. The so-called Salteaux Anishinabe bands had their origin in the vicinity of Sault Sainte Marie. During the late sixteenth century, the people came into friendly, trade-based contact with Dakota bands west and south of Lake Superior. The first French traders and missionaries arrived in the early seventeenth century. Later in that century, the Anishinabe became heavily involved in the fur trade.
The Anishinabe also began to expand their territory during the seventeenth century, an event caused in part by pressure from the Iroquois as well as the overtrapping of food and pelts. One migration route was westward into northern Wisconsin and Minnesota (upper Mississippi basin)—displacing Dakotas, Sauks, Foxes, and Kickapoos along the way—where these people became influenced by the Cree. Wild rice became an important part of their diet during this time. This group emerged from the forest about 1690.
Anishinabe groups that continued into the Red River area (northwest Minnesota, northeast North Dakota, and Canada) during the eighteenth century, such as the Pembina band of Chippewa, were armed with French guns and thus able to displace Hidatsa, Arikara, and Cheyenne bands. From this base there were four separate migrations to Montana.
During the eighteenth century, Red River Valley Ojibwa, Cree, and Metis traveled west in response to the continued overtrapping of small game. They acquired horses in the late eighteenth century and became buffalo hunters, fully adapting to life on the Plains by the early nineteenth century. After a failed effort to establish a native state in Manitoba, Canada, in 1868, about 4,000 Chippewa-Cree from the Pembina Band moved into present-day Montana. During the 1880s, the United States forced many Cree out of the United States into Canada. Many Chippewa and Metis were also forced out; their homes were burned behind them.
In 1885, the Chippewa, Cree, and Metis, now back in Canada, again attempted to create a native state in Manitoba under the leadership of the Metis Louis Riel. When this effort failed, the Chippewa chief Stone Child, or Rocky Boy, led a group of people back into Montana. In the late 1870s another group of Chippewa-Cree followed the buffalo into Montana from the Turtle Mountain area in North Dakota. They generally moved between Montana and North Dakota Chippewa-Cree communities.
In 1882, the United States recognized the Turtle Mountain Band’s claim to 20 townships in north-central North Dakota. Two years later, however, it decided that the reservation was too large. The Little Shell Band, away hunting buffalo in Montana, was excluded from a government census, as were all Metis, who were declared to be Canadian. Despite the existence of these roughly 5,000 people, the North Dakota Reservation was reduced by about 10 million acres, or about 90 percent.
Little Shell’s people sought refuge and a reservation near their relatives at Fort Belknap, Montana. Some remained on that reservation, with others settling in towns such as Havre, Great Falls, and Helena. Little Shell himself worked from the 1880s to his death in 1900 to establish a reservation for his people in Montana. He also worked to restore the size of the Turtle Mountain Reservation and to reenroll the Metis.
In the early twentieth century, following the negotiations over the Turtle Mountain Reservation, many of those people were forced to accept allotments on the public domain in North and South Dakota and eastern Montana. In 1904 the United States paid the Turtle Mountain band $1 million for their land cession, or about 10 cents an acre, but they refused to reenroll the Metis. Cree Chief Little Bear’s people joined the Indians already in the Rocky Boy community in 1910. The Rocky Boy Reservation was established in 1916.
By 1920, many of the exiled Turtle Mountain and Pembina Chippewas, having lost their allotments through tax foreclosure, returned to the North Dakota community. During the next several decades the situation became, if anything, worse, with the poverty-stricken people squeezed on an inadequate land base. Many left the reservation during those years in search of work, never to return. The Turtle Mountain people were saved from termination in the 1950s only by the deplorable example of the Menominee termination fiasco (see Menominee [Chapter 8]).
Religion Gitchi Manito, the Great Spirit, and other spirits pervaded all nature. Children were encouraged to attract guardian spirit helpers by fasting in remote places. The people adopted the Sun Dance in the nineteenth century.
The Midewiwin, or Medicine Lodge Society, included both men and women. Candidates, who usually had to have experienced dream spirit visions, were initiated in a dance ceremony lasting several days. The main event included being "shot" by a member with a white shell that, taken from the medicine bag, carried supernatural power into the initiate. Upon being "revived" by older members, the initiate would spit out the shell. Members "shot" at one another as well to demonstrate their magical power. The meeting events were recorded on birch-bark scrolls with bone awls dipped in red paint. Members wore special medicine bags, usually of otter skin.
Government While still living around Lake Superior, people lived in small hunting bands of about ten people, each with its own hunting area. On the Plains, government conformed largely to the Plains model, including the presence of soldier societies.
Customs On the Plains, patrilineal clans gave way to bilaterally descended extended families. Generosity was highly valued, as were bravery, fortitude, wisdom, and fidelity. People shared regularly, especially with the less able or fortunate. Thus did people achieve prestige while actually reducing individual suffering and want. Wealth and kin connections also played a part, however, and status ultimately rested on a combination of individual and family qualities.
Winter was generally a time for repairing tools and weapons and making crafts and clothing. Social control was effected mostly by peer pressure and ridicule, although serious crimes were punished by revenge and/or council action. Among the various social and religious groups were men’s dance societies. Games included various guessing games, cup-and-ball, and competitions. Adult games were usually accompanied by gambling. Toys included conical tops and sleds. In general, storytelling was a favorite pastime.
Polygamy was practiced, although it was expensive. Each wife might or might not have a separate tipi. Marriage was mainly a matter of parental agreement, often based on the couple’s choice, and divorce was common and easy to obtain. Infants spent their first few months swaddled in a cradle board. Children were treated permissively. Boys and girls (except for brothers and sisters) generally played together until puberty. Games revolved around future adult activities.
During menstruation, girls and women were secluded for a few days, as men considered them dangerous. Several weeks later, fathers who were able gave a ceremony, presided over by a shaman, for their daughters. Girls who had reached puberty were considered marriageable. Boys did not have a specific puberty ceremony. Their vision quests, first successful buffalo hunt, first war party, and so forth might be marked by feasts and gifts and were considered rites of passage. Men generally married slightly older than did women, having first to prove their manhood and perhaps acquire enough goods to distribute.
As a matter of respect there was no verbal communication between a man and his mother-in-law. Aged people were generally accorded a great deal of respect. The dead were buried with their effects on high hills or in scaffolds in trees. In the prehistoric period remains were buried in an earth mound.
Dwellings Winter camps on the Plains were places containing wood and water, such as valley cottonwood groves. People also needed forage for horses and some natural protection against weather and enemies.
On the Plains, the people lived in conical buffalo-skin tipis in both summer and winter. The skins were dressed and sewn together by women and placed over a pole framework. A tipi held one family. Two skin flaps at the top, attached to long poles, regulated the smoke hole. A small, elevated doorway was covered by a rawhide door.
Skin liners helped insulate against the cold and wind. Tanned buffalo robes served as beds and blankets and buffalo robes as carpeting. Women erected and took down the tipis, which could be moved quickly and easily. Tipis were often painted with special symbols and war exploits and also decorated with feathers, quills, or other items.
Diet While in the vicinity of Lake Superior, rabbits and wild rice were staples. On the Plains, buffalo, hunted communally, became the main food. Men also hunted other large and small game. Women gathered local roots, berries, and nuts. Sugar syrup came from box elder or maple trees.
Key Technology Bone fishhooks were fastened onto sinew lines attached to willow poles. Many tools were also made of stone, until iron became available from non-Indian traders. On the Plains, most manufactured items came from the buffalo.
Women tanned the skins using elk antler scrapers with an attached stone (or iron) blade; the hair was either left on or soaked and scraped off. Rawhide was often used to attach items to each other, such as two-piece clubs and mauls. People made willow back rests.
Trade Plains Ojibwas exchanged sugar syrup with tribes that had no such traditions. Among the products they imported were pipes. Part of an extensive trade complex stretching throughout the West, Plains tribes traded buffalo products to eastern groups for non-Indian goods the latter had obtained through the fur trade.
Notable Arts Some people used a pointed tool (or, occasionally, pieces of wood) to cut into the inner layer of birch bark to produce line drawings; most such drawings related to the Midewiwin society. Such pictograms also combined to illustrate song texts. People occasionally used incised drawings to decorate prayer sticks and weapons. Some groups also used a different style of decoration, consisting of zigzags and bands of triangles combined with symbolic shapes. On the Plains, the people decorated clothing and hides with paint, beads, and quillwork. Nineteenth-century quillwork consisted mainly of floral designs. Carved pipes were also a notable Plains Ojibwa art form.
Transportation Canoes were common in the Woodlands. The Plains Ojibwa acquired horses in the later eighteenth century.
Dress On the Plains, women made tailored skin clothing and buffalo robes. They decorated the clothing with geometric designs and floral patterned beadwork. Both sexes wore hard-soled moccasins.
War and Weapons The Ojibwa historically were fierce warriors. They adopted Plains-style soldier societies in the nineteenth century. Weapons included bows and arrows, clubs, and shields.
Contemporary Information
Government/Reservations Modern communities of Plains Ojibwa groups are as follows:
The Rocky Boy Chippewa-Cree Reservation (1,485 resident Indians in 1990) and Trust Lands (397 resident Indians in 1990), Chouteau and Hill Counties, Montana, established in 1916, contains 108,015 acres. The tribe is governed by a written constitution delegating authority to the Chippewa-Cree Business Committee. There is also a tribal court. Roughly half of the population lives off-reservation.
The Little Shell people, some of whom are of Cree descent, had a 1990 population of 3,300. They are governed by a tribal council under a constitution. Their main offices are in Havre and Helena, Montana.
There is also a community of Chippewa, established during the process of allotting the Turtle Mountain Reservation, living in eastern Montana. The seat of their government is in Trenton, North Dakota.
The Turtle Mountain Reservation and Trust Lands, Rolette, Burke, Cavalier, Divide, McLean, Mountrail, and Williams Counties, North Dakota, and Perkins County, South Dakota, established in 1882, contains over 45,000 acres, of which about 30 percent is controlled by non-Indians. The 1990 resident Indian population was 6,770. The reservation is governed by an elected nine-member Tribal Council under a 1959 constitution and by-laws.
Economy The Rocky Boy Chippewa-Cree Development Company manages that tribe’s economic resources. The tribe’s beadwork is in high demand. The company organized a propane business and owns a casino as well as recreational facilities. The largest employers on the reservation are the tribal government, Stone Child Community College, and industry. Other activities include cattle grazing, wheat and barley farming, some logging and mining, and recreation/tourism. Unemployment regularly approaches 75 percent.
People in the Montana Allotment Community are integrated into the local economy. Turtle Mountain operates a casino.
Legal Status The Chippewa-Cree Indians of the Rocky Boy Reservation, Montana, are a federally recognized tribal entity.
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians is a federally recognized tribal entity.
The Saginaw Cippewa Tribe (Swan Creek and Black River Chippewa) is a federally recognized tribal entity.
The Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, as well as some of the "landless Chippewa," have been seeking federal recognition since the 1920s.
Daily Life People from all four Montana Chippewa communities (Rocky Boy, Little Shell, Allotment Community, and "landless community") are generally related and often visit and move freely between locations. A renaissance of Montana Chippewa communities has taken place in the 1990s. The people look toward to a future well grounded in the past.
The Chippewa-Crees opened Stone Child Community College in 1978. Many Chippewa/ Crees/Metis are Christians. Many also participate in the Sun Dance, sweat lodge ceremonies, and the Native American Church. Most Chippewa/Crees/Metis consider themselves one people and commonly intermarry. Indians living on the Rocky Boy Reservation speak English, Cree, and Metis.
Turtle Mountain Community College is located in Belcourt, North Dakota. At Turtle Mountain, the Chippewa and Metis languages are still spoken. Most people are Catholic. Some tribal members have received payments as part of a settlement regarding the unfairness of the original land claims payment. Turtle Mountain author Louise Erdrich has set many of her stories in the Turtle Mountain area. The Midewiwin Society remains active but has incorporated elements of Christianity.
