Ojibwa (Rachel, from Mills Lacs Lake area, has given me the true spelling of this name-Ojibwe. Thank you Rachel.)

• On an island in Chequamegon Bay near the western end of Lake Superior, the old Ojibwa people told the story of the Man with a Hat-the first being from across the salt sea they had ever encountered. It happened, as many things happen, because of a dream. One of the Ojibwa holy men saw a vision of "white spirits," their heads covered, approaching from the direction of the rising sun with smiling faces and outstretched hands. So to seek them out, the old man worked all winter building a birchbark canoe, curing meat for travel, and preparing furs to have ready for an exchange of gifts.
  
  In the spring he and his wife set out for the East, retracing the course their westbound ancestors were said to have used centuries earlier to reach Lake Superior. The two paddled along the lake's south shore to its outlet, the present St Mary's Rvier, probably stopping at Bawating, the principal village at the rapids. Heading on, they reached Lake Huron, then turned up the French River to Lake Nipissing. From there the old couple labored through 36 portages around dangerous rapids, unloading the boat and carrying it overland, before they reached the Ottawa River and rode it down to the St Lawrence. Moving northeast through friendly Algonquin country, then through dangerous Iroquois territory, they reached the broadening of the river where the St Lawrence Seaway begins-and soon saw a cabin with smoke coming out of the top. There they found the Man with a Hat, a bearded human wearing a head coveirng-a "white spirit," they later said.  He came forward, shook their hands, and gave them food and wondrous gifts: a metal ax and knife, a piece of beautiful red cloth, and brightly colored beads that could be strung on a length of sinew.
  
  The old man and his wife made the slow upstream journey back to their island in Chequamegon Bay. (The people there later calculated that, by the European calendar, this encounter took place about 1612.) Before the village they opened their medicine bundle with its exotic contents and told of the Man with a Hat. The next spring neighbors made the same trip and returned with more valuable objects from the "white spirits," including the first gun and a bottle of whiskey. They tested the liquor on an old woman, in case it was poison; when she recovered from her stupor, she asked for more. The men promptly drank the rest, calling it "mother's milk" and agreeing that it was worth a trip of many miles.
  
• Radiating outward from the hub at Bawating and from the equally strategic Straits of Mackinac to the south, a great arc of more than 20 tribes stretched south to the Ohio Valley and west to the Mississippi. They had lived there for centuries, shifted sometimes by population pressures of the gains and losses of land in war.
  
  In the north those later called Ojibwa or Chippewa (Anishinabe, "original people," to themselves; Ojibwa and Chippewa were variants of a  Dakota name for them) overarched the entire Graat Lakes region, with a population of as many as 100,000 people. In ancient lore, the Ojibwa shared with the Ottawa and the Potawatomi a tradition of having migrated from the St Lawrence Valley. At the Straits of Mackinac they split: the Ojibwa settled first at Bawating, and the Ottawa on Manitoulin Island, while the Potawatomi ventured south to the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The three groups, who speak similar Algonquian languanges, still refer to their tribal alliance as the Three Fires, and to the Potawatomi as the Keepers of the Fire.
  
• The Fox wer ancient enemies of the Ojibwa and also of the Dakota, while the Ojibwa was also enemies with the Dakota. Seasonal warfare was constant in this area.
  
• Despite myriad differences in local customs, the people of the entire region-from the Ojibwa in the north to the Shawnee in the south-were part of the same larger social order. Except where the growing season was too short they all raised the storable staples: corn, beans, squash, and gourds. The spring and fall fish runs and the sap from the sugar maple were as important as a corn patch; dried blueberries would last through the winter. Wild rice was especially abundant along the Wisconsin-Minnesota border. To the north, where long winters discouraged farming, the people were mainly hunters, fishermen, and traders.
  
• The people of the Upper Country loved children, and the villages teemed with them. Among the Algonquian groups, a child was born into the father's clan. Clan affiliation remained a primary source of personal identity-though everyone had his or her own given name and sometimes several others acquired over a lifetime.
  
  Pampered by their parents, indulged by a sprawling network of more distant relatives, children learned by storytelling and example rather than physical punishment. Grandparents were the principal teachers. Among the lessons of the elders was the value of generosity and sharing. Hoarding was deplored, and status was measured by how much a man gave away rather than how much he could accumulate.
  
  At puberty every young woman knew she must begin retiring to the women's hut during her menstrual cycle. And every young man, after proper preparation, moved off to a secluded spot for fasting and prayer in hopes of receiving a vision that would become his guardian spirit for the rest of his life.
  
• Religion permeated daily life in every realm. Althugh the languages differed, people throughout the region believed in a higher power, called the Master of Life or the Great Spirit or the Creator. Other spirits or beings were available to intercede with the higher power on behalf of earthly people. There was a spiritual essence in rocks, trees-everywhere in the physical environment. All Great Lakes peoples (among others) told and retold the adventures of mythical figures who gave humans many valuable lessons.
  
  The Ojibwa developed an institution of great importance called the Grand Medicine Society, or Midewiwin, and initiated members into the knowledge and rituals of the Mide religion. As part of the initiation ceremonies, a leader recounted stories of the origin of the people near the salt seas who had been guided west by a sacred shell. Mide priests kept birchbark maps of the migration route with symbolic markings that indicated the songs and procedure for stages of the initiation rites. The Midewiwin promoted the knowledge of herbal medicine and advocated balance in all aspects of life.
  
  The religion spread among other Great Lakes tribes: Potawatomi, Ottawa, Sauk, Winnebago, Fox, Kickapoo, and Shawnee. Great Lakes Indians, like others, developed an extensive knowledge of plant medicine. There were medicines to attract animals to traps and snares and to lure fish; love medicines, cures for respiratory problems and a whole catalog of human ailments, as well as contraceptive and abortion-inducing medications, insect repellents, and cures for poison ivy and snakebite.
  
• No great domains or chieftains controlled the Upper Country; each village was an independent community. A village leader was selected, usually by a council of elders, on merit alone. Proven ability in hunting and warfare, courage, stamina, and generosity-these were the valued traits. So, too, was skill as an orator. Since no village leader could force a path of action, he often needed to exhort, inspire, and cajole. Decisions were made by consensus, with a highly formalized (and time-consuming) system of debate. On quesions of war and peace, talks could consume days on end. A minority faction might move to another village or even join a different tribe.
  
  Villages usually had a separate war leader, and joining a war party was a matter of choice. Even so, warfare was the bone and sinew of life in the region, deemed essential for sharpening the survival skills of the entire society. The ball games and running competitions of peacetime trained the young men of the village in attack and rapid retreat. Even small children were periodically deprived of food and water in order to inure them to the rigors of forced marches.
  
• Having decided to go to battle, the warriors would set out after spring fishing or planting. They might be gone a few weeks or sometimes the entire summer, usually breaking up into war parties of six or ten-groups small emough to test their bravery and skill by penetrating enemy territory and returning unharmed. Most commonly, they attacked an enemy hunting party away from its village; captured warriors were subjected to ritual torture and death-although a very lucky captive might be saved for adoption. Alternately, the raiders might seize women and children out gathering wood and either adopt them or hold them for ransom.  In either case, the number of victims was never large.
  
  But one thing was essential: an enemy. Every tribal group had a traditional opponent. And since the motive for battle was usually revenge and retaliation, the bloodshed could perpetuate itself for generations.
  
• The Black Robes-Jesuits- traded goods with the Great Lakes tribes, but their real quarry was Indian souls for their God. In this they met with mixed success. Most Indians discovered the powers of these European shamans to be singularly ineffective. In the Ojibwa country, leaders considered the merits of Christianity with hours of thoughtful debate. They concluded that saying "the Prayer" might be suitable for the overseas people, but was not meant for them. Indeed, they decided that the Great Spirit had sent his Son to the overseas people because they were so wicked.
  
• As the middle of the 17th century approached, the struggle for new fur sources prompted the Iroquois, who already dominated from the Hudson River to Lake Erie, to reach for more. Starting around 1640 and for the next six decades, Iroquois raiders struck and struck again, battling to take over the trade routes and rich trapping grounds around the Great Lakes. So began the spiral of bloodshed known as the Beaver Wars that would change forever the world of the Upper Country.
  
  French military posts sprang up all across the region, from the forests morth of Lake  Superior, along Lake Michigan, to the rivers of central Illiois. Green Bay became a major trading psot. The surrounding native population may have reached as high as 20,000 as refugee bands poured in from the eastern battlegrounds.
  
  As the tribes converged around the French installations and the number of refugees increased, so did the frictions between competing trade groups. The large band of Ottawa at Michilimackinac became the principal middlemen for the Ojibwa in suppying furs to the French. In Green Bay the Potawatomi distributed lavish gifts in hopes of achieving the same end. The Fox, deeply concerned that European rifles were being traded to their arch-enemy, the Sioux, joined forces with the Iroquois in order to disrupt that deadly flow of merchandise-and at the same time they hoped to obtain a larger share of beaver profits for themselves.
  
  Then, little by little, the balance began to shift. When Iroquois raiders thrust into Illinois in 1684, combined native forces from Ft St Louis turned them back. In the Lake Huron area a French garrison at Ft St Joseph, at the lake's southern tip, became a focal point for multitribal counterattacks against nearby Iroquois settlements. Across the river the Ontario peninsular was being reconquered by Ojibwa people from the north, who claimed it had belonged to their forefathers before the Iroquois came.
  
  As the bloodshed abated in the Upper Country, the governors of New France took advantage of the lull to consolidate their position. Ambassadors went out from Montreal, inviting all the tribes to gather for a mass celebration of friendship and peace. Prisoners would be exchanged, and all remaining quarrels put to rest. Most of France's Indian allies readily agreed, and a large delegation of Great Lakes leaders met with the French governor general "Onontio" to pledge their loyalty. The Iroquois councils deliberated in their unhurried, consensus-building manner for a full two years, weighing the pros and cons with their English patrons. Then they, too, decided to accept the proposed French accord.
  
  In midsummer of 1701 the canoes started landing on the beach at Montreal-Sauk, Fox, and Winnebago, Potawatomi and Miami, spiky-haired Huron and feathered Ojibwa, buckskin-clad Kickapoo, and Sioux in their eagle feathers and buffalo robes...and the Five Nations of the Iroquois League.
  
  Close to 1,300 people attended, representing 39 separate tribes, and together they feasted and parleyed and smoked the calumet. The delegates worked out some last-minute details. The Iroquois received the right to hunt in Ontario country, and western Indians were given free access to trade in New York. Then on August 4 everyone assembled in a newly built courtyard just outside the city to hear the final orations and witness the signing of a treaty that officially ended decades of intertribal war in the Upper Country.
  
  Forced to play both sides in the high-stakes game of woodland power politics, the Fox did not take kindly to insult or neglect. French arms continued flowing to both the Sioux and the Ojibwa. And no matter how loudly the Fox objected, the French refused to listen.
  
• The disputants came to blows at the new French garrison at Detroit. A large community of Huron and Ottawa refugees already lived in the area. Cadillace, ambitious to expand the fur trade, inivited other tribes to come settle. More Huron moved in, and a sizable group of Potawatomi. Then in 1710 there arrived 1,000 Fox from Wisconsin-and with them disaster.
  
  For the next quarter centruy Fox war parties staged lightning raids on key French outposts (due to a betrayal by the French troops), crippling trade in the Upper country. Nothing was safe. Isolated villages, canoe portage routes, even boats carrying corn from Detroit to Michilimackinac-Fox raiders hit them all.
  
  Adroit  Fox diplomacy enhanced their battlefield prowess. They made peace with the Ojibwa in 1724 and allied themselves in 1727 with their former enemies the Sioux. But the question of a new truce with the French opened a rift that could not be closed. Montreal enlisted its Indian allies, including most of the Great Lakes and Illinois tribes, and in 1728 sent a massive force into Fox country.
  
• One of the first of the escalating string of armed clashes that led to the French and Indian W ar was a French attack on a British trading post at Pickawillany, newly opened for business among the Miami in western Ohio. By reaching this far west, the British were, in effect, expanding their American empire into the realm of New France-and this the French could not allow. So in 1752, a force of Ottawa and Ojibwa warriors under French command swept down and obliterated the post, killing a British trader and 13 Miami defenders. They seized the Miami leader, La Demoiselle, and-as the chronicle puts it-"made a broth" of him.
  
• In May of 1763 Pontiac, a Ottawa chief, made a move against the British. Leading a multitribal force that included Ojibwa, Potawatomi, non-Christian Huron, and Menominee-as well as his own Ottawa-he laid siege to the British garrison at Detroit. Within a matter of weeks eleven frontier British forts had fallen to allied Indian warriors. The attacks came so swiftly that often the defenders had no idea a rebellion had begun. At Ft Sandusy, on Lake Erie, the raiders simply asked for a meeting with the comander, then seized control.
  
  In taking Ft Michilmackinac, the Ojibwa and Sauk invaders staged a more elaborate ruse. They began with a lacrosse match held just outside the main gate, ostensibly to honor the king's birthday. Suddenly one of the players lobbed the ball back into the stockade, and everyone rushed in after it. Dropping their lacrosse sticks, they picked up rifles that had been smuggled in earlier by the women.
  
• For the native people of the Great Lakes, the War of 1812 was less traumatic than on others. The opening of the Erie Canal in the 1830's produced a modest influx of newcomers, but the Americans arriving by that route-New Yorkers and New Englanders whom the Indians called Saganash (Englishmen) or Bostonais-proved relatively easy neighbors. Most important, American financiers were more interested in lumbering and mining around the Great Lakes than in land development. The north country was too sandy, swampy, or rocky for prosperous farming, and so the Ojibwa, Ottawa, Menominee, and Winnebago, and many Potawatomi were left comparatively undisturbed until after the Civil War. Even then, despite some shifting around, Great Lakes groups managed to stay close to their traditional homelands.
  
  Many remain there today. The region is hardly the same unspoiled, naturally balanced realm it was before the French explorers appeared four centuries ago. Yet through all the dark history that followed-the tragic violence and irretrievable losses-descendants of the Upper Country's first nations have preserved a living connection with those forebears from one generation to another, nourished by the conviction that they still belong to the land, and the land to them.