277 
OJIBWA 
Xuinerically the Ojibwa or Chippewa (both are forms of the 
same worth which signifies “ people whose moccasins have puckered 
seams ”) were the strongest nation in Canada, totalling even to-day 
around 2(),000d Hiey controlled all the northern shores of lakes 
Huron and Superior from Georgian bay to the edge of the prairies, 
and at the height of land north of lake Superior where the rivers 
begin to flow towards Hudson bay they united with their near kins- 
men, the Cree. So numerous were they, aiul so large a territory did 
they cover, that we may sej^arate them into four distinct groups or 
tribes, viz., the Ojibwa of the Lake Superior region,- the IMissisauga 
(“people of the large river-mouth”) of IVTanitoulin island and of ' 
the mainland around the Mississagi river, the Ottawa (“ Traders ”) 
of the Georgian Bay region,'^ and the Potawatomi ('“people of the 
place of fire ”) on the west side of lake Huron within the state of 
/ 
Michigan, some of whom moved across into Ontario in the eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries. Three of these four tribes, the Lake 
Superior Ojibwa, the Ottawa, and the Potawatomi, formed a loose 
confederacy that became known in the eighteenth century as the 
Council of the Three Fires. 
Each tribe, as among other Algonkians, was subdivided into 
numerous bands that possessed tlieir own hunting territories and 
were politically independent of one another, though closely connected 
by intermarriage. The majority of the bands were small, number- 
ing probably not more than 300 to 400 individuals; and each con- 
tained an indefinite number of exogamous totemic clans in which the 
children inherited the totems of their fathers.'* These clans had no 
jwlitical functions and very little religious significance, but being dis- 
tributed among all the bands they gave the nation a certain unity, 
since fellow clansmen regarded one another as close kinsmen even 
when they belonged to different tribes. The real political unit was 
the band. Each had its own leader, who normally handed on his 
1 It is possible tlmt they v.'cre excet'decl b\' tlie Crt'O. 
2 Tliese nro often called SauHeaiis, from their meetiiiK place at the falls (Sault) of Saiilt St. Marie. 
3 In the early seventeenth ci’ntviry, when they first beianie known to Europeans, the Ottawa seem to 
have occupied part of Manitoulin island also. 
^ .Skinner states that sonic of the Saulteaux clans north of lake Superior were matrilinear, i.e. 
children inherited the totems of their mothers (Skinner, A.; ” Notes on the Ea.stern Cree and North- 
ern Saulteaux’': Anth. Papers, Am, Mus, of Nat. Hist., vol. i.x, pt. i, p. 149 f (New York, 1911)). But 
around lake Nipigon at least they were patrilinear (Cameron, D'. : “The Nipigon Country, 1804”; in 
Masson, op. cit., ii, p. 246), 
