Hello, I have a question regarding some of the American aboriginal tribes.
So, having researched the group of peoples known as the Anishinaabe(g), which includes most of the Great Lakes' tribes of Amerindians (The Ojibwe, Odaawaa, Potawotami, Nipissing, Algonquin, and Mississaugas), I'm left with a peculiar question.
According to their own oral history, which in this case seems plausible (as they all speak very closely related languages and genes, and are in the same general area with similar cultures), these peoples split from a single population at some point at the Atlantic coast and migrated inland, sundering along the way.
My question, simple as it is, is- when did this potentially happen? Maybe linguistic clues could give us an idea, or some sort of archaeology. I dunno. Either way, it'd be really interesting to have some sort of timeframe.
All I've found on it is a sketchy claim, supposedly from a Potawotami elder, that the formation of the Council of the Three Fires, a sort of confederation between the Michiganian tribes, was around 796 AD. But.. given that the birch bark scrolls do not contain specific writing, or dating, I'm not sure about the accuracy of that. That would also put their sundering pretty far back, considering that their languages are basically dialects of the same language.
Anyway, any sort of information regarding this would be great, from a Native American historian or just a researcher. Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for the help!
There's isn't a consensus on this topic yet. I've seen estimates that kick off the migration as early as 500 CE to as late as 1490 CE, if not later*. Edward Benton-Banai has popularized a start date at around 900 CE, reaching the end of the migration at Madeline Island in the 1390s.
Archaeologically, settlements following the typical patterns of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi start showing up in the western Great Lakes between 800-1000 CE, though whether this settlements were inhabited by the Anishinaabeg or by prior peoples in the area whose way of life the Anishinaabeg adopted as they moved west is unknown. The Blackduck cultural complex, which would include many of these sites and occupied much of the region north of the Great lakes from Lake Nipissing in the east to Lake of the Woods in the west, appears to have been rather stable until ~1400 CE when the Michipicoten complex starts pushing in from the east, which might represent the northern branch of the Anishinaabe migration (the one that came along Ottawa River rather than coming along the coast of Lake Erie). On a final archaeological note, around 900 CE is also when Iroquoian peoples start northward along the St. Lawrence, which would have contributed to the migration of Algonquian-speaking people out of the area.
*I know Theresa Schenck places the Ojibwe arrival at Chequamegon Bay about a generation later than Warren does, and compress the number of years in each generation used to count backwards from there. While I can't remember a specific estimate for the start of the migration from her, it would be later than Warren's 1490 estimate.