Nipissing
The Nipissing are a North American Indian tribe whose tribal area was around Lake Nipissing in Ontario , Canada in the sixteenth century . The name refers to Lake Nipissing and means "small water" compared to the Great Lakes in the south and west. They spoke an Algonquin dialect and culturally belong to the Anishinabe people .
The current name of the tribe is Nipissing First Nation and the majority of the members live in the Nipissing Indian Reserve 10 . The reserve is located on the north shore of Lake Nipissing and had 1,450 inhabitants in 2011 according to the Canada census .
language
Reports from the first missionaries state that the Nipissing language was very different from that of their neighbors. Nevertheless, according to Father Franquet, in 1752 they lived together with the Algonquians in the Two Mountains Mission and talked without any problems. John Long believed in 1791 that they all spoke the Anishinabe language. After learning this, he was able to communicate with the Indians throughout the north of the Great Lakes. Around 1847 the Nipissing language became the dominant idiom in mission. The characteristic differences between the Nipissing and Algonquian languages have yet to be scientifically investigated.
Tribal area
The traditional tribal and hunting ground of the Nipissing was around Lake Nipissing; however, the exact boundaries of their territory are unknown. Their northern neighbors were probably the Temiskaming and Temagami , the Algonquians lived in the east, the Hurons to the south, while the Ottawa and Anishinabe were found in the west. The entire territory of the Nipissing was on the formerly icy Canadian Shield and was covered by coniferous forest. French explorer Samuel de Champlain told of the beauty of Lake Nipissing and the forests that surrounded it. He raved about the abundance of game, ducks and swans, but above all the abundance of fish. The missionaries who followed him spoke of the land of lakes, treeless rocks and countless beavers .
Culture and way of life
The Nipissing's livelihood was based on an annual cycle of fishing, hunting, and trading. Field management was only practiced to a very limited extent. There is a detailed description of the annual round from Father Jerome Lalement : “It seems that they have as many different homes as there are seasons. In spring they seek out the best fishing grounds. Some stay behind at camp while others gather and canoe down the rivers to the north shore of Lake Nipissing. They need ten days for the journey. In summer they travel together with the Hurons to the French, whom they meet on the shores of the lake that bears their name. Around mid-August they slowly move to the land of our Hurons, where they usually spend the winter. Before they get there, they catch large quantities of fish and dry them. With the dried fish they buy their winter supply of corn and other foodstuffs like rich people who live in prosperity. They cultivate some land for growing vegetables near their summer houses. The yield does not serve as a reserve, but only for immediate consumption. "
The annual cycle was designed to be variable. Occasionally the Nipissing would spend the winter in the woods hunting. Samuel de Champlain reported trading in bald people from the north who came in large wooden boats and traded axes, boots and other goods. Champlain assumed that the skins of these northern traders came from bison . Today it is certain that they were members of the Cree . The bald heads were apparently English who visited this area from Hudson Bay from 1610 .
Little information is available about the cosmology and religion of the Nipissing. Its creator was believed to be the Great Beaver and there was a tale of the Flood and Earth Diver that they shared with their eastern and western neighbors. There were shamans for the healing of the sick and the interpretation of oracles , as well as the thunderbird ( thunderbird ). They celebrated the Feast of the Dead , which differed in many details from that of the Hurons. The names of the dead were transferred to the living in order to keep the memory of them alive and to select and appoint chiefs. In 1682, in Maskounagoüng on Lake Huron, Father Henri Nouvel met four different Nipissing tribes. Maray de la Chauvinerie reported several totems , namely herons, beavers, birch bark, squirrels and blood. From the Jesuit reports (Jesuit Relations) shows that they rejected corporal punishment for children and the cradle boards threw away dead children. There was a lot of singing and the missionaries enjoyed their melodious songs.
Father Denis Jamet described the Nipissing as slimmer than the Hurons and as a sturdy, persistent traveler. They let their hair grow long and dressed in beaver pelts and marten pelts . He also claimed that, like the Montagnais and Algonquin , they had no god, but called on the devil, loved war and were cruel and vengeful. He had probably taken this description of her character from an interpreter, just as other statements from Jamet were second-hand. Champlain was at the same time in the Nipissing tribal area. He judged her to be hospitable and helpful after a two-day stay.
Louis Franquet described a welcome dance in 1752, which was performed at a joint festival of members of the Nipissing and Algonquin in Lake of Two Mountains and in 1757 Louis Antoine de Bougainville observed a war dance. Also in 1757, Father Pierre Roubaud described the burial of a warrior after the battle of Fort William Henry .
history
First contacts with Europeans
Samuel de Champlain first got information about the Nipissing in 1613 and wanted to visit them. He turned to the neighboring Algonquin, but they advised him not to visit. They claimed the Nipissing were vicious wizards. The Algonquians apparently wanted to prevent the French traders from coming into direct contact with the Nipissing. Champlain visited them anyway in 1615, and the following winter he met them again with the Hurons.
Between 1615 and 1629 missionaries from the French Recollect Order came to the Hurons and on this occasion also got to know the Nipissing. Brother Sagard-Theodat described them as "very friendly and polite" and called them an "excellent people" who knew the language of the Hurons in addition to their own language. After the withdrawal of the Recollect missionaries, the Nipissing continued to trade with the French, albeit not regularly. In 1636 a mixed group of Hurons and Nipissing were held up by the Algonquians who wanted to oversee trade with the French. As a result, they refused to support the Algonquin in the fight against the Iroquois. As early as 1634 there was a devastating epidemic among the Hurons and Nipissing. In the winter of 1636/37 70 of the Nipissing living with the Hurons died of smallpox . The latter accused an Algonquin chief who was present of having killed them by a spell out of revenge because the Nipissing had refused to help him against the Iroquois. In the spring they brought their dead back to their homeland. By late summer, many had still not gotten over the disease. The shamans charged that they had offended Manitu and were now punishing her. These events made the Nipissing more receptive to the teachings of the Jesuits. Fathers Claude Pijart and Charles Raymbault set up a mission in winter camp for the Nipissing in 1640 and then followed them to their homeland in the north. Here they were very successful because most of the baptized children recovered from their illness. Thereupon the supreme chief Wikassoumint converted to Christianity. Fathers René Mènard and Leonard Garreau strengthened the Mission of the Holy Ghost among the Nipissing and even took part in a winter hunt.
Displacement in the Beaver Wars
In 1647 the Algonquin, Montagnais and Nipissing formed a defensive alliance against the Iroquois, which was not very successful. In 1649 the Hurons were defeated by the Iroquois and in the following years several attacks by the Iroquois on the Nipissing took place. After the last skirmish at Lake Nipissing in 1653, the survivors fled west. Around 1661 they were sighted together with the Amikwa at Lake Nipigon . In the summer of 1662 they united with the Ottawa and Saulteaux against the Iroquois and defeated a sizeable force of the Mohawk and Oneida . From their new home on Lake Nipigon, the Nipissing cemented their old trade ties with the Cree . In 1657 and 1660 they visited Trois Rivières via the northern route. In July 1664, 60 nipissings with their beaver pelts reached Montreal via the Ottawa River route after they had been attacked twice by the Iroquois en route. Father Claude Allouez returned with them to lead the mission station at Chequamegon Bay on Lake Superior . Around 1667 he visited the Nipissing at Lake Nipigon and found a group of Christian tribesmen there who had not seen a missionary for 20 years.
After the peace treaty between the French and Iroquois in 1667, part of the Nipissing returned to their old residential area and since then the tribe has been divided into western and eastern Nipissing. The Sulpizian father Dollier de Casson spent the winter of 1668/69 with the eastern Nipissing and in 1670 there was a peaceful encounter with the Iroquois. Nevertheless, numerous Nipissing lived in other places, such as 1671/72 in the predominantly Iroquois mission of Saint Francois Xavier des Près near Montreal. Father Henri Nouvel met a group in Michigan in 1675, and in the Illinois War of 1677–1680 some western Nipissing fought the Iroquois. Father André Bonneault visited the Eastern Nipissing in 1677, while Father Pierre Bailloquette set up a mission for the Western Nipissing at Michilimackinac . In the following decade, hostilities between the French and British escalated. The Nipissing were firmly on the side of the French, although the sale of alcohol by French traders weakened the tribe.
In the course of King William's War (1689-1697) the Nipissing fought against the English and were involved in the battles of Schenectady, Salmon Falls and Falmouth. In addition, the western Nipissing carried out joint attacks with the Amikwa and Kickapoo against the Iroquois. The Eastern Nipissing fought the Iroquois and Fort Orange in 1695 and 1697 . In 1701 a new peace treaty was concluded with the Iroquois. Afterwards the Sulpizians collected their converted Nipissing at Baie d'Urfé and Ile aux Tourtes , where Governor Philippe Vaudreuil had a fort and a mission house built for them in 1706/07. A new Sulpizian mission was established in Oka on the Lake of Two Mountains in 1721 and by 1735 all residents of the missions in the Montreal area had moved there. In 1742 more Nipissing came to Oka, probably the remnants of the western group. Around 1748 a devastating cholera epidemic decimated the inhabitants of the mission village. In 1752 Franquet reported that the Nipissing lived in French-style wooden rectangular or square houses.
The fur trade with the French declined at the beginning of the eighteenth century. After the Queen Anne's War (1702–1718), the Indians on the Great Lakes increasingly established trade relations with the English in Albany until the outbreak of the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Most of the nipissing stayed in Oka on the Lake of Two Mountains. When Bougainville visited them there in July 1757 to woo the warriors for support against the English, he observed separate town halls for the different tribes. The Nipissing remained loyal allies of the French against the English and were involved in the battles at Oswego , Fort William Henry and others.
Under British rule
After the defeat of New France , the Canadian Indians came under the supervision of Sir William Johnson , the British Superintendent for Indian Affairs . In July 1770, a large council meeting took place in German Flatts , attended by 1,600 Indians. Under Johnson's direction, all tribes present, including the Nipissing, were called up and assigned to the British as allies. In the War of 1812 they fought Americans against the US. The French trading post on the Lake of Two Mountains was taken over by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1819 . In 1828, the increasing white settlement in the Ottawa River valley forced the Nipissing to hunt in the area of other tribes, which led to friction and conflict. In 1835 another cholera epidemic decimated the residents of the Lake of Two Mountains. The Hudson's Bay Company closed its trading post there in 1847, which had become unprofitable.
As early as 1807, a number of Nipissing had moved and settled on Golden Lake . The remaining Nipissing and Algonquin kept their tribal identity as long as they lived on the Lake of Two Mountains. But as a result of unrest and the fire in their church in 1877, both tribal groups left this place. They probably moved to Maniwaki together , but some Algonquin families who lived in the Ottawa Valley in the late nineteenth century may have come from the Lake of Two Mountains. In the aforementioned Algonk groups at Golden Lake and Maniwaki there were certainly descendants of the Nipissing. Unfortunately, in the fire in the church, the records on the tribal affiliation were destroyed.
Demographics
In 1615, Champlain estimated the Nipissing to be 700 to 800 tribe members. In the seventeenth century, their numbers declined as a result of the Iraqi Wars and epidemics brought in by Europeans. Around 1710, around 50 warriors lived on the Lake of Two Mountains, making a total of around 250 nipissings. After the French and Indian War, William Johnson estimated them to be 40 warriors or around 200 people. The official census of 1827 revealed 250 tribal members. The population of the reserves in 1965 was 898 for River Desert Algonkin, 273 for Lac Simon Algonkin, 446 for Golden Lake Algonkin and 493 for Nipissing Ojibwa. These numbers presumably include descendants of the Nipissing. According to the 2011 Canada Census, Ontario's Nipissing Reservation 10 had 1,450 residents.
Todays situation
Descendants of the Nipissing may be found in the Nipissing First Nation today, although they are officially assigned to the Anishinabe. They live in Nipissing Indian Reserve 10 on the north shore of Lake Nipissing. The two places Beaucage and Garden Village are located in the approximately 21 km² reserve .
The government of the Nipissing First Nation is elected every three years and consists of a chief, a deputy and six councilors. The First Nation is a member of the Union of Ontario Indians, a tribal political organization that includes many of the Anishinabe First Nations in Ontario.
See also
Known nipissing
- Wayne Keon, born 1946, poet and short story writer
- Dan Frawley, born 1962, NHL hockey player, captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins (1987)
literature
- Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 15: Northeast. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1978. ISBN 0-16004-575-4
Web links
- Nipissing First Nation Homepage
- AANDC profile
- Nipissing history
- Nipissing First Nation (PDF file; 4.40 MB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ in the scientific French of Canada, plural: Népissingues
- ↑ a b Canada 1011 Census
- ↑ a b Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 15: Northeast, p. 787.
- ↑ a b c d e Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 15: Northeast, p. 788.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 15: Northeast, pp. 789/790
- ↑ Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 15: Northeast, pp. 790/791