performers to Navy Pier. The large Indian population 

 in Chicago is not an unusual phenomenon, but is a 

 characteristic of all major cities in the Great Lakes reg- 

 ion. The Chicago Indian community includes most of 

 the Indians in Illinois, a state that has no Indian re- 

 servations. Yet Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota 

 together have an Indian population above 120,000, 

 with some identifiable Indian representation in every 

 county. Furthermore, an estimated forty to sixty per- 

 cent of the population living north of Grand Rapids, 

 Michigan; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Minneapolis- 

 St. Paul, Minnesota has some degree of Indian ances- 

 try. The first American and immigrant workers enter- 

 ing the north country were generally single men, and 

 many married women of Indian heritage, like the 

 French and British traders, and even missionaries and 

 government agents preceding them. 



Representatives of almost all the tribal people liv- 

 ing earlier in the western Great Lakes are present today, 

 defying the stereotype of the "vanishing Indian." 

 Wyandot descendants of the seventeenth century Hu- 

 ron refugees live on both sides of the Detroit River, 

 although a large body left Michigan and Ohio for a new 

 reservation in Kansas in 1843. For the past sixty years, 

 the community south of Detroit has sponsored the 

 annual Green Com Ceremony, with an attendance of 

 about three hundred. Miamis can be found around 

 Peru, Indiana near the large Miami reserve on the 

 Wabash River, subdivided in 1870. Mesquakie sur- 

 vivors of the "Fox Wars" have a reservation at Tama, 

 Iowa on land they originally purchased by selling their 

 own ponies. The Winnebagos in Wisconsin, who have 

 frustrated repeated government attempts at removal, 

 now occupy land in ten counties and a center near 

 Black River Falls. But they remain in close contact 

 with friends and relatives on the tribal reserve in Neb- 

 raska. 



Potawatomis still live in southwestern Michigan 

 and northern Indiana, the heartland of their original 

 tribal estate. Other Potawatomis live on reservations 

 in Kansas and Oklahoma; Forest County, Wisconsin; 

 and near Escanaba, Michigan. As refugees from the re- 

 moval program, several thousand also joined Ojibwas 

 on Canadian reserves. The western side of Michigan's 

 Lower Peninsula has a large population of Ottawas, 

 considerably intermixed with Potawatomis and Ojib- 

 was. Many Ottawas had prosperous farms and orchards 

 in the Grand River valley until 1859, when the govern- 

 ment conveyed them to poorer lands near Manistee. 

 Ottawas in northwestern Michigan were relatively un- 

 disturbed until the railroad reached Petoskey in 1874 



and the first real estate office opened. 



In central Lower Michigan, Ojibwas from the 

 Saginaw Valley have a reservation at Mount Pleasant. 

 Twenty other Ojibwa reservations are spread across the 

 Upper Peninsula of Michigan and northern Wisconsin 

 and Minnesota, with many more in adjoining Cana- 

 dian territory. The Ojibwas have carried on lengthy 

 court proceedings to maintain their treaty-guaranteed 

 hunting and fishing rights. In the more northern areas 

 of the Great Lakes, Indian people place greater empha- 

 sis on the seasonal pattern of spring sugar-making and 

 fishing, summer gardening and berry-gathering, fall 

 fishing and rice harvesting, and winter hunting. 



Contemporary Great Lakes Indians actually fol- 

 low a variety of economic pursuits. On their reserva- 

 tion at Lac Court Oreille, Wisconsin, Ojibwas operate 

 a national public radio station, as well as commercial 

 cranberry beds. The Menominees, whose reservation 

 near Green Bay is in ancestral territory, manage a large 

 modern lumber mill. Oneidas at Green Bay have 

 recently developed an impressive hotel and conference 

 center near the airport. This group of Oneidas, one of 

 the New York Iroquois tribes, came to Green Bay in 

 1830 by prior arrangement with the Menominees. The 

 economic status of many reservations is improving 

 since the introduction of still controversial bingo and 

 other games of chance. But the Bureau of Indian 

 Affairs is pleased that funds are being collected to fi- 

 nance housing, scholarships, and health care. 



Non-Indians living in the western Great Lakes, 

 still often referred to as "Chemokoman" by Indian peo- 

 ple, are beginning to search out their own elusive Indi- 

 an ancestry and the Indian background of their local 

 communities. Sympathy is increasing for native con- 

 cepts that stress harmony and balance in the environ- 

 ment and in personal lifestyle. Ideas and beliefs, 

 cumulative through thousand of years of past time, are 

 percolating through to the surface and beginning to 

 permeate contemporary attitudes. FM 



Sources of Further Information 



David Beck, The Chicago American Indian Community, Chi- 

 cago, NAES College Press, 1988 



W. Vernon Kinietz, Indians of the Western Great Lakes, 1617-1760. 

 Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology 

 Occasional Papers, No. 10, 1940. 



George 1. Quimby, Indian Life in the Upper Great Lakes, 1 1,000 

 B.C. toA.D. 1800, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1960 



Helen Hombeck Tanner, Atios of Great Lakes Iruiian History, Nor- 

 man, University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. 17 



