Paths of the People
On this page, and the pages that follow, are excerpts from Paths of the People, a highly illustrated book by Tim Pfaff, published by CVM Press to accompany the Museum's major exhibit on the Ojibwe, which opened in 1991.
Paths of the People is available from the Chippewa Valley Museum Press.
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The Chippewa Valley (in gray) showing important Ojibwe sites in the 1600-1700s. Map by Sean Hartnett. |
Anishinabe, Saulteur, Ojibwe, Chippewa -- all names of a people who have lived in the Chippewa Valley for the past three centuries. Anishinabe, "original or spontaneous people," is what they called themselves during their 500-year migration from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Lake Superior. French explorers and fur traders labelled them Saulteur, or "people of the rapids," because they first encountered them near the rapids of the St. Mary' s River between Upper Michigan and Ontario. Ojibwe, meaning "to roast until puckered," refers to their distinctive style of moccasins. This was the name commonly used by their long-time enemies, the Eastern Dakota or Sioux. The English and Americans corrupted the word Ojibwe to Chippewa. Since Chippewa was the name written on 19th-century treaties with the United States, it is the name that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has used since that time. People at Lac Court Oreilles and Lac du Flambeau, the two reservations in the Chippewa Valley, today most often refer to themselves as Ojibwe. Ojibwe oral tradition speaks of life as a circular path, with parents passing on knowledge to children and grandchildren. Over the past 300 years, contact with Europeans and settlement by Americans have forced them to adapt in order to survive. The challenges each generation has faced-whether at treaty grounds, boarding schools, or boat landings-have influenced what knowledge has been passed down, what paths taken. |
