Ottawa

Dictionary: Ot·ta·wa1   (ŏt'ə-wə, -wä', -wô')

1. 1. A Native American people formerly inhabiting the northern shore of Lake Huron, with later settlements throughout the upper Great Lakes region. Present-day Ottawa populations are located mainly in southern Ontario, northern Michigan, and Oklahoma.
   2. A member of this people.
2. The dialect of Ojibwa spoken by the Ottawa.

[Ojibwa odaawaa.]

The Ottawa are an Algonquin tribe closely related to the Ojibway (Chippewa) and the Potawatomi, which together form the Three Fires Confederacy. Their name, by most accounts, means "traders," which reflects their role as the intermediaries between the Ojibway to the north and the Potawatomi to the south. Their involvement in the European fur trade was a natural extension of their tribal role within the confederacy.

At the time of contact, the Ottawa resided on Manitoulin Island and on the Bruce Peninsula along the eastern shore of Lake Huron. During the early post-contact era, they took up residence in northern Michigan, notably along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. As did most area tribes, the Ottawa vigorously fought to maintain their grip on their homeland and way of life, most notably through the actions of Pontiac, who lead an uprising against the British in 1763.

While most Ottawa still live in Michigan, others were removed to Kansas and Oklahoma during the early nineteenth century. Still others have returned to the islands of the North Channel of Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay. Also, because of early French trade policies and later U.S. Removal efforts, many Ottawa now live on Walpole Island on the north end of Lake St. Clair. While early estimates of their numbers are clouded by their often being counted as Ojibway, estimates in the early twenty-first century put their numbers at about 15,000, with two-thirds of those resident in what is now the United States (mostly in Michigan) with the rest living in Canada.

Bibliography

McClurken, James M. Gah-baeh-Jhagwah-buk: The Way It Happened, a Visual Cultural History of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa. East Lansing: Michigan State University Museum, 1991.

White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Ottawa is a city in the province of Ontario and the capital of Canada.

Ottawa may refer to:

Places

In Canada

• Ottawa (City of), a historical electoral district in Ontario
• Ottawa (County of), a historical electoral district in Quebec
• Ottawa Islands, located on the east coast of the Hudson Bay

In Cote d'Ivoire

• Ottawa, Côte d'Ivoire, a town and commune in west Africa

In the United States

• Ottawa, Illinois
• Ottawa, Kansas
• Ottawa, Ohio
• Ottawa, Wisconsin

Other

• Odawa people, a First Nation/Native American ethnic group also known as the Ottawa
• Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe in the U.S.
• Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe in the U.S.
• SS Ottawa, a steamship that was once the SS Germanic (1875)
• Ottawan, a disco band
• Ottawa Treaty

See also

• Ottawa County (disambiguation)
• Ottawa River (disambiguation)
• Ottawa Township (disambiguation)

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - Ottawa

Français (French)
n. - Ottawa

Deutsch (German)
n. - Ottawa

Português (Portuguese)
n. - Ottawa

Español (Spanish)
n. - Ottawa

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
渥太华

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 渥太華

한국어 (Korean)
오타와 (캐나다의 수도)

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮אוטווה‬

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