George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 3, 15th edition.

[242]

In the early part of the eighteenth century, the Po-

Chap. XXII.}

tawatomies had crowded the Miamis from their dwellings at Chicago: the intruders came from the islands near the entrance of Green Bay, and were a branch

Schoolcraft, 1825, p. 360

of the great nation of the Chippewas. That nation, or, as some write, the Ojibwas,—the Algonquin tribes of whose dialect, mythology, traditions, and customs, we have the fullest accounts,—held the country from the mouth of Green Bay to the head waters of Lake Superior, and were early visited by the French at Sault St. Mary and Chegoimegon. They adopted into their tribes many of the Ottawas from Upper Canada, and were themselves often included by the early French writers under that name.

Ottawa is but the Algonquin word for ‘trader;’ and Mascoutins are but ‘dwellers in the prairie.’ The latter hardly implies a band of Indians distinct from the Chippewas; but history recognizes, as a separate Algonquin tribe near Green Bay, the Menomonies, who were found there in 1669, who retained their ancient territory long after the period of French and of English supremacy, and who prove their high antiquity as a nation by the singular character of their dialect.

South-west of the Menomonies, the restless Sacs and Foxes, ever dreaded by the French, held the passes from Green Bay and Fox River to the Mississippi, and, with insatiate avidity, roamed, in pursuit of contest, over the whole country between the Wiscon sin and the upper branches of the Illinois. The Shaw. nees are said to have an affinity with this nation: that the Kickapoos, who established themselves, by con-

Morse, App. 222.

quest, in the north of Illinois, are but a branch of it is demonstrated by their speech.