Aaniin! Hello!

The Les Cheneaux Islands and surrounding region are the lands of the Anishinaabek — "the original people" — who have been stewards of this land for generations. The Anishinaabek are collectively the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples, originally one people whose distinct identities developed during a long westward migration from the Atlantic coast. Upon reaching Michilimackinac, they formalized their relationship as the Council of Three Fires in 796 AD — a political and cultural alliance that would endure for centuries. The eastern Upper Peninsula became home to the Ojibwe; the Odawa settled into the northern lower peninsula; the Potawatomi into southwestern Michigan. Even as they dispersed across the Great Lakes, the Straits of Mackinac and Mackinac Island remained — and still remain — a significant cultural gathering place, marking a tradition that long predates European contact (the Roman Empire only lasted 1,000 years, for perspective).
 

The French, and then the British, maintained control of this region until the 1790s, and the United States established the Michigan Territory in 1805. Although in control of a large portion of the Michigan Territory's lands, with the passage of the Indian Removal Act by President Andrew Jackson in 1830, the tribes were acutely aware of the likelihood of being forced to leave their homeland. In 1836, the Ojibwe and Odawa tribes, also known as the Chippewa and Ottawa, signed the Treaty of Washington in Washington, DC and ceded the eastern UP and northern lower Michigan to the United States — in their effort to prevent forced relocation outside of the Great Lakes and away from their water-centered way of life.

The ceded lands are a huge swath of the northern half of the lower peninsula and the eastern upper peninsula — nearly to Marquette — totaling 13,837,207 acres (the yellow area on the map). The Les Cheneaux area was ceded by Chief Shabaway, who lived on Marquette Island near the "narrows" at the western end of Snows Channel. In return for the land, the treaty was supposed to guarantee the Anishinaabek permanent reservation lands and perpetual access to natural resources, including hunting and fishing rights. With these ceded lands, the Michigan Territory became a state in 1837. Immediately following in the 1840s, the deforestation of northern Michigan and the lumber boom began.
 

Despite further treaty negotiations with the United States, the Odawa and Ojibwe were forced onto smaller reservation lands in northern Michigan as the demand for more lumber grew through the late 1880s. This area's lumber boom mostly ended in the 1880s. The tribes were additionally subjected to the forced removal of children to Indian boarding schools, including students at local schools like the Hessel School House. Students as young as 6, but sometimes after 3rd grade, were sent away to one of eight known Michigan Indian schools — including Holy Childhood of Jesus Catholic boarding school in Harbor Springs, Michigan (operational from 1829–1983). For the Potawatomi then living in southwestern Michigan and northwestern Indiana, the US Government broke their 1832 treaty and in 1838 forced many toward Oklahoma on a Trail of Death — this explains why there are still Potawatomi living in the Central Plains. This forced march is similar to the Cherokee Nation's Trail of Tears, which took place the same year.
 

The impacts of history are still playing out today as tribes across the Americas — including the United States and Canada — strengthen their rights to natural resources, flex their tribal sovereignty, contest broken treaties with their national governments, and work through the cultural hollowing caused by methods such as the 1887 Dawes Act that forced assimilation through the Indian Boarding Schools. The Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians — whose historical bands include Drummond Island and whose service area covers this region — remains the most directly connected present-day tribal nation to these lands and waters. While we cannot change history, we can study it from multiple perspectives, be culturally-sensitive advocates, and recognize that these and other tribes are still very much present in the northern Great Lakes region and throughout the Americas. Woods & Waters offers our sincerest respect toward all indigenous peoples and we choose to invest in our shared responsibilities to this place and these waters.

​

[Enjoy history and cultural geography? Check out our What's is a name? blog post here]