Who was here when the French arrived?
The ecosystem of what today we call the state of Michigan had long nurtured Native peoples with its forests, plains, wetlands, and waterways by the time the French arrived in the 1600s. Plants and animals were resources for food, shelter, and methods of transportation for these Native groups, whom we know today primarily by names that were popularized after the arrival of Europeans.
Who were they? In the southern reaches of the Lower Peninsula, the Sauk, Meskwaki, and Kickapoo lived in the Saginaw Valley and other parts of the eastern portion of the peninsula. The Mascouten inhabited territory from the Saginaw drainage to Lake Michigan, while southwest Michigan from the St. Joseph River valley to Ludington was home to the Potawatomi. West of the St. Joseph valley and around the southern shore of Lake Michigan lived the Miami, and the western Upper Peninsula was inhabited by a number of bands that were the ancestors of today’s Ojibwe or Chippewa.
There had always been considerable territorial movement among Native peoples in Michigan, as they were pushed or pulled by changes in resource distribution relationships with tribes with whom they came into contact. After the arrival of Europeans on the North American continent, this movement continued, influenced by disease, warfare, and other stresses brought on by the presence of the early European arrivals.
What were the Native people’s lives like? Those who lived in northern Michigan subsisted primarily by hunting and gathering plant resources, moving with the seasons in their home area to follow game and seasonal plants. In southern Michigan, resident Native groups moved less as they relied more on planting corn, beans, and squash along with hunting and foraging.
While the Native peoples living in Michigan did not have identical social structure or religious beliefs, they did hold some characteristics in common. At the heart of Native societies were extended families, with clan groups also providing social structures. Relative flexibility when it came to incorporating outsiders into kin or other groups made it easier for Native people to create relationships with the newly arrived French explorers and settlers. Often, Native religious beliefs were animistic, seeing powers in the natural world of which they were a part. They revered ancestors and the elderly. Though frequently there were separate roles for men and women, in Native societies, compared with many European societies, Native social groups were quite egalitarian.
For food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, the Native peoples made creative and extensive use of local resources. Plant foods included maple sugar, berries, and nuts; ashwood splints and plant fibers were used to make baskets or cordage. Native peoples used stone for spear points, arrowheads, knives, and scrapers, as well as tools for chopping and pounding. Animals provided meat as well as hide, fur, and sinew for multiple uses. Bones and antlers made tools for processing animal hides for clothing and shelter. Wood was used for bows, dugout canoes, and frames for birchbark canoes, as well as shafts for spears and handles for knives and hoes. Natives used locally obtained clay to produce ceramic vessels for cooking, serving, and storage. Birchbark was used for strong yet lightweight canoes: this was just one of the important technologies passed by the Natives to the French.
Native clothing was primarily made of deer hides that were processed, cut, and sewn predominantly by women. Shelters, also constructed by women, were made of saplings bent to form a support covered by large strips of bark or cattail mats.
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Native peoples of Michigan were already part of complex networks of relationship with their neighbors, involving both alliance and conflict. Trade routes that made use of the extensive waterways of the region brought items like shells from the Gulf of Mexio, metal objects from the Keewenaw Peninsula, and beads from different parts of the North American continent. And though conflict was certainly present in some intertribal relationships, kinship ties helped to cement alliances as well. The Native people were willing to engage in diplomacy, and they were also willing adopters of new technologies and new ideas, even as they sought to maintain their own cultural values. These characteristics—willingness to enter into relationship, foregrounding of kinship ties, use of trade routes, and openness to new technologies—would prove important as they encountered the French who arrived in what we now know as Michigan.
The cultural cohesion of Michigan’s Native peoples served them well in their efforts to exercise autonomy up through the present. Today there are twelve federally-recognized tribes in the state of Michigan: Bay Mills Indian Community; Grand Traverse Bay Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians; Hannahville Indian Community; Keweenaw Bay Indian Community; Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians; Little River Band of Ottawa Indians; Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians; Match-e-be-nash-she-wish Band of Potawatomi Indians of Michigan (Gun Lake); Nottawasseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi Indians; Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians; Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe; Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. (See https://www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/inside-mdhhs/tribal-government-services-and-policy/native/overview/federally-recognized-tribes-in-michigan.) This is testimony to the survival of indigenous peoples despite the multiple challenges their ancestors faced in their interactions with outsiders.
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