"Chippewae" means "he or she who mumbles, stammers or slurs," a reference to the Chippewa custom of speaking extremely rapidly (Johnston, p. 241).
The Chippewa came into early contact with the French, English, and Spanish explorers who roved over eastern North America in the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. These Indians quickly becamed involved in trading furs with the Europeans, a practice that forever changed their Indian way of life. As they became more and more dependent upon the goods-notably the guns-that they received in exchange for beaver pelts and the hides of other animals, the Chippewa began to hunt farther and farther west from their traditional home in the woodlands on the shores of the Great Lakes. Eventually, their involvement in the fur trade led them to the prairies. Formerly hunters of deer, moose, and beaver in the eastern forests, the "plains" Chippewa now began to hunt buffalo and pronghorn antelope as their primary means of sustenance. When the buffalo herds were depleted, circumstances forced the plains Chippewa into a sedentary existence, and their culture began to diverge from that of their woodland ancestors: they started to live in tipis, began riding horses instead of paddling canoes, and even developed new religious ceremonies.
This is a free page. This page contains 182 words. This
article contains 4,113 words (approx. 14 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Love Medicine Access Pass.
