Ottawa (tribe)

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

The Ottawa (also Odawa, or Odaawaa), meaning "traders," are a Native American and First Nations people. They are related to but distinct from the Ojibwe nation. They lived near the northern shores of Lake Huron. There are approximately 15,000 Ottawa living in Michigan, Ontario, and Oklahoma. The Ottawa language is considered a divergent dialect of the Ojibwe, characterized by frequent syncope. The Ottawa language, like the Ojibwe language, is part of the Algonquian language family.

Like the Ojibwe, the Ottawa usually refer to themselves as Nishnaabe (Anishinaabe, plural: Nishnaabeg (Anishinaabeg)), meaning original people.

The Ottawa and Ojibwe were part of a long term alliance with the Potawatomi tribe, called the Council of Three Fires and which fought the Iroquois Confederacy and the Sioux. The Ottawa allied with the French against the British and Ottawa Chief Pontiac led a rebellion against the British in 1763. A decade later, Chief Egushawa led the Ottawa in the American Revolutionary War as an ally of the British. In the 1790s, Egushawa again fought the United States in a series of battles and campaigns known as the Northwest Indian War.

The name in its English transcription is the source of the place names of Ottawa, Ontario and the Ottawa River, even though the Ottawa's home territory (at the time of early European contact), but not their trading zone, was well to the west of the city and river named after them. It is also the source of the name for Tawas Michigan and Tawas Point, which are just shortened versions.

Ottawa Communities

• Walpole Island, on unceded territory between Ontario and Michigan
• Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma
• Grand River Bands, Michigan
• Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians , Michigan
• Burt Lake Band, Michigan
• Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Michigan
• Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, Michigan
• Wikwemikong,Ontario, Canada

See also

• Ottawa (disambiguation) for several places named for the Ottawa.

Further reading

• Cappel, Constance, "The Smallpox Genocide of the Odawa Tribe at L'Arbre Croche, 1763: The History of a Native American People," Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press,

2007.

• Cappel, Constance, editor, "Odawa Language and Legends: Andrew J. Blackbird and Raymond Kiogima," Philadelphia, PA: Xlibris, 2006.

External links

• "Ottawa History" Shultzman, L. 2000. First Nations Histories. Accessed: 2006-03-28.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Wednesday February 27, 2008 at 17:33:14 PST (GMT -0800)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation