History
The ancestors of the Lac du Flambeau Band and other bands moved west from the Michigan area in the seventeenth century into the interior of Wisconsin west and south of Lake Superior. were the Waaswaaganininiwag (the "Torch Lake Men"). French fur traders named the band and lake for the Ojibwe practice of catching fish at night on the lake by torchlight.
According to the Lac du Flambeau Band, they settled permanently in the area in 1745, led by their Chief Keeshkemun. He helped them defeat the Sioux (Dakota) that year, who had long occupied this area. The last battle between them and these Chippewa took place on Strawberry Island in the lake.
The larger competition for resources between the Dakota and the Lake Superior Chippewa had begun in 1737 and continued for nearly 100 years before the Chippewa pushed out the Dakota and the Fox tribes from the Wisconsin interior.
The Waaswaaganininiwag constituted the eastern group of the Biitan-akiing-enabijig (Border Sitters), a sub-Nation of the Gichigamiwininiwag (the Lake Superior Men, also known as Lake Superior Chippewa). Others members of the eastern Biitan-akiing-enabijig included bands located on Pelican Lake, Lac Vieux Desert, Turtle Portage, Trout Lake and Wisconsin River.
For centuries, the lake Waaswaagani-zaaga'igan served as the trade and transportation hub for Native Americans and later colonial traders, as it connected the waterways between Lake Superior (via the Montreal River) and the Wisconsin and Flambeau rivers. Traders used the lake and rivers to pass back and forth through their far-flung network. They also had to use the Flambeau Trail to portage from Lake Superior to the Lac du Flambeau District. The trail was 45 miles long, with 120 "pauses" created along the path to give portagers a break, an indication of the rough country.
As part of the Lake Superior Chippewa and signatories to the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe, the bands at Pelican Lake, Turtle Portage, Trout Lake and Wisconsin River were consolidated into the Lac du Flambeau Band (Waaswaaganing in Ojibwe). As signatories to the Treaty of St. Peters of 1837, and the Treaties of La Pointe of 1842 and 1854, members of the Lac du Flambeau Band enjoy the traditional hunting, fishing and gathering practices guaranteed in these treaties.
Like other tribes, the Band had much of it land allotted to individual households under the Dawes Act of the early twentieth century, intended to encourage assimilation to European-American style property holding and farming. This led to the loss of some of its lands, including Strawberry Island, which was sold to a non-Native family in 1910.
Read more about this topic: Lac Du Flambeau Band Of Lake Superior Chippewa
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