Ottawa are a First Nations people of what is now southern Ontario, in east-central Canada. First Nations is a designation used for the Indigenous (native) peoples of Canada. Ottawa, the capital city of Canada, is named for this people. The Ottawa belong to the Algonquian language group of eastern woodland tribes. The name Ottawa is an Algonquian word that means traders. Like the Chippewa, a related indigenous group, the Ottawa called themselves Anishinaabe, which means original people.
The Ottawa traditionally grew beans, corn, and squash. Women tended the crops. Men fished for food and hunted deer and other animals. The Ottawa lived in villages of dome-shaped wigwams. These shelters were made of wooden poles covered with animal skins or bark. The Ottawa used birchbark canoes to travel long distances by river for trade.
In the early 1600’s, the Ottawa were among the most important sources of furs for the French in the fur trade. The Ottawa obtained furs mainly from other tribes around the Great Lakes. The Winnebago, another indigenous group, resisted the fur trade as the Ottawa moved into traditional Winnebago hunting grounds. The Ottawa fought several battles with the Winnebago. However, the French explorer and trader Jean Nicolet convinced them to make peace.
In the mid-1600’s, tribes from the Iroquois League, who called themselves Haudenosaunee, fought over Ottawa lands, over furs, and over access to trading posts (see Iroquois). They tried to gain control of the fur trade. Many Ottawa were forced south and west into what is now Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin in the U.S. Midwest.
During the French and Indian War (1754-1763), the Ottawa Chief Pontiac led the tribe in fighting alongside the French against the British. Pontiac also tried unsuccessfully to unite many tribes to maintain Indigenous American control of the Great Lakes area.
Many Ottawa in Wisconsin and Illinois were relocated to Oklahoma after the 1830’s. President Andrew Jackson and his supporters helped pass the Indian Removal Act of 1830 in Congress. The act called for the removal of Indigenous Americans to territory west of the Mississippi River. Today, the Ottawa have several communities and reservations (lands set aside for a tribe by treaty) in Michigan, Oklahoma, and Ontario. Each reservation is independent and has its own tribal government.
