Menominee - The Menominee

The Menominee

The Menominee are part of the Algonquian-language family of North America, of which several tribes were located around the Great Lakes. They were one of the historical tribes of present-day upper Michigan and Wisconsin, and had a territory of 10 million acres. They are believed to have been well-settled in that territory for more than 1,000 years; by some accounts, they are descended from the Old Copper Culture people and other indigenous peoples who have been in this area for 10,000 years.

They are the only present-day tribe in Wisconsin whose origin story tells that they have always been here. Their reservation is located 60 miles west of the site of their Creation, according to their tradition: it is the site where the Menominee River enters Green Bay of Lake Michigan, at the present-day city of Marinette, Wisconsin. Their name for themselves is Mamaceqtaw, meaning "the people."

The name "Menominee" is not their autonym. It was adopted by the Europeans from the Ojibwe, whom they encountered first and who told them of the other people. The Ojibwe name for the tribe was manoominii, meaning "wild rice people", as wild rice was one of their most important food staples.

The Menominee were a peaceful, friendly and welcoming nation who had the reputation for getting along with other tribes. When the Oneota people, ancestors of several historical tribes throughout the Midwest, migrated into present-day Wisconsin between A.D.800 and A.D.900, the indigenous Menominee shared the forests and waters, and developed and maintained a friendship with them that exists to this day.

The historical Menominee were encountered by European explorers in Wisconsin in the mid-seventeenth century during the colonial era, and had extended interaction with them during later periods in North America. They lived in numerous villages which the French visited for fur trading. The anthropologist James Mooney in 1928 estimated that the tribe's number in 1650 was 3,000 persons.

Their customs are quite similar to those of the Chippewa (Ojibwa), another Algonquian people. Their language has a closer affinity to those of the Fox and Kickapoo tribes. All four are Anishinaabe languages, part of the Algonquian family.

They are an Eastern Woodlands tribe. The early French explorers and traders referred to them as "folles avoines" (wild oats), referring to the wild rice which they cultivated and gathered as one of their staple foods. The Menominee formerly subsisted on a wide variety of plants and animals, with wild rice and sturgeon being two of the most important; feasts are still held annually at which each of these is served.

The five principal Menominee clans are the Bear, the Eagle, the Wolf, the Crane, and the Moose. Each has had traditional responsibilities within the tribe. With a patrilineal kinship system, the Menominee believed that children derived their social status from their fathers, and were born "into" their father's clan. Choices of marriage were related to the tribes, as people had to marry outside their clan. The ethnologist James Mooney wrote an article on the Menominee for the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), reporting their descent and inheritance was through the female line, as a matrilineal kinship system, which is common to many Native American peoples.