The Great Lakes
To the west, Algonquian-speaking peoples dominated the Great Lakes. The tribal groups recognized by Europeans in this region included the Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Potawatomis. But collectively they thought of themselves as a single people the
Anishinaabe. Clan identities — beaver, otter, sturgeon, deer, and others — crosscut tribal affiliations and were in someways more fundamental. The result was asocial landscape that could be bewildering to outsiders. Here lived, one French official remarked, an infinity of undiscovered nations.”
The extensive network of lakes and rivers, and the use of birchbark canoes, made Great Lakes peoples especially mobile. They seem to have as many abodes as the year has seasons wrote one observer. They traveled long distances to hunt and fish, to trade, or to join in important ceremonies or military alliances. Groups negotiated access to resources and travel routes. Instead of a map with clearly delineated tribal territories, it is best to imagine the Great Lakes as a porous region, where political power and social identity took on multiple forms as one scholar has written.
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