The emergence of the northern Ojibwa: social and economic consequences1

Abstract

During the historic period, the Ojibwa expanded over an area considerably larger than that which they had occupied at contact and, in the process, grew in numbers. Those groups which migrated into the area north and west of Lake Superior, the Northern Ojibwa, segmented into smaller entities, as they adapted to the fur trade and a new environmental setting. The original patrilineal clan-totem groups split off into subgroups, which, in time, often became widely separated. As the environment became depleted of large game and beaver, and the Ojibwa became dependent on European commodities for survival, these clan-named groups further fragmented into families during the colder months to hunt and trap. By the nineteenth century, trade and ecological conditions had made the former clan system dysfunctional. The major process in the early historic dispersal, one which may have predated contact, was segmentation along lineage lines.