34 INDIAN TRIBES. [Chap. I. 



and merry-making, within the limits of their vil- 

 lages. 



Turning his course northward, traversing Lakes 

 Michigan and Superior, and skirting the western 

 margin of Lake Huron, the voyager would have 

 found the solitudes of the wild waste around him 

 broken by scattered lodges of the Ojibwas, Potta- 

 wattamies, and Ottawas. About the bays and rivers 

 west of Lake Michigan, he would have seen the 

 Sacs, the Foxes, and the Menomonies ; and pene- 

 trating the frozen wilderness of the north, he would 

 have been welcomed by the rude hospitality of the 

 wandering Crees or Knisteneaux. 



The Ojibwas, with their kindred, the Pottawatta- 

 mies, and their friends the Ottawas, — the latter of 

 whom were fugitives from the eastward, whence 

 they had fled from the wrath of the L'oquois, — 

 were banded into a sort of confederacy.^ They 

 were closely allied in blood, language, manners and 

 character. The Ojibwas, by far the most numerous 

 of the three, occupied the basin of Lake Superior, 

 and extensive adjacent regions. In their bounda- 

 ries, the career of Iroquois conquest found at length 

 a check. The fugitive Wyandots sought refuge in 

 the Ojibwa hunting-grounds ; and tradition relates 

 that, at the outlet of Lake Superior, an Iroquois 

 war-party once encountered a disastrous repulse. 



In their mode of life, they were far more rude 

 than the Iroquois, or even the southern Algonquin 

 tribes. The totemic system is found among them 



A Morse, Report, Appendix, 141. 



