Potawatomi

The Potawatomi are an Algonquian-speaking Indigenous people of the western Great Lakes and upper Mississippi, who today live in several federally recognised tribes in the United States and in First Nations communities in Ontario. They call themselves Neshnabé, a word related to Anishinaabe, and also Bodéwadmi, "keepers of the fire". English names such as Pottawatomie come from the Ojibwe form of that second name.

With the Ojibwe and the Odawa (Ottawa), the Potawatomi make up the Council of Three Fires, a long-standing alliance in which they are regarded as the youngest brother. Their name refers to their role in tending the alliance's council fire. Children are taught the Seven Grandfather Teachings, which ask for wisdom, respect, love, honesty, humility, bravery and truth towards people and all of creation. A well-known story tells how the patient Water Spider, laughed at by larger animals, wove a bowl from her web and carried back a hot coal so that all could survive the cold.

Early seventeenth-century French records place the Potawatomi in what is now south-western Michigan. During the Beaver Wars they withdrew to the Green Bay area of Wisconsin to escape pressure from the Haudenosaunee and their allies; one estimate puts their number at around 3,000 in 1658. Under French influence, roughly 1615 to 1763, they traded widely and gradually shifted back towards Detroit. After France ceded its claims at the end of the French and Indian War, Potawatomi fighters joined Pontiac's uprising and took every British frontier post in their area except Detroit. Their villages then spread along Lake Michigan and the St Joseph River beside the Miami.

From 1783 the United States treated the Potawatomi as one tribe, though their society was decentralised into regional bands on rivers from Milwaukee and Chicago to the Wabash. They formed an important part of Tecumseh's confederacy and fought in the War of 1812, shifting their alliances between Britain and the United States as trade and land interests required. In 1812 around 500 warriors attacked the column leaving Fort Dearborn, at the site of Chicago, killing most of the civilians and 54 soldiers; the chief Black Partridge had advised against the attack and later helped protect captives.

Treaties at Prairie du Chien in 1829 and Chicago in 1833 gave up most Potawatomi land in Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois in return for promised territory, annuities and supplies in the West. The Illinois bands were moved to Nebraska and the Indiana bands to Kansas, from where many were later moved again to Indian Territory. Supplies often arrived late or reduced. A Catholic priest, Benjamin Petit, kept a diary of the forced march of the Indiana Potawatomi in 1838, remembered as the Trail of Death, on which many died. Some families stayed in Michigan, while others found refuge among the Odawa or in Canada.

Seven federally recognised tribes in the United States are Potawatomi, among them the Forest County Potawatomi in Wisconsin, the Pokagon Band in Michigan and Indiana, the Prairie Band in Kansas and the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in Oklahoma, while several Ontario First Nations, such as Caldwell and Walpole Island, include Potawatomi members. Population tables cite about 28,000 people in 1998. Fewer than 1,300 first-language speakers were counted in 2001, most of them elderly, and tribes now publish online dictionaries and teaching materials to revive the language. Midwestern place names such as Kalamazoo, Muskegon and Skokie come from it.

Our maps for 1530, 1600, 1650, 1700 and 1715 draw an approximate Potawatomi territory in the western Great Lakes region; these years reflect the basemaps, not the people's history. Neighbouring peoples drawn on the same maps include the Illinois Confederation and the Shawnee.