How Chippewa County got its name

The Library of Michigan gives the short answer plainly: Chippewa County was organized in 1826 and named for the Ojibwe, or Chippewa, people. Both names appear in Michigan today. Anishinaabe and Anishinaabeg are also used by the people themselves, including in the Sault Tribe’s account of its history.

That tribal account describes the Sault Tribe’s ancestors as Anishinaabeg fishing peoples whose settlements reached across the upper Great Lakes and the St. Marys River system. Families gathered in summer at places including Bahweting, now Sault Ste. Marie, and separated into family groups for winter. The county name is tied to that living homeland, not just to a chapter in a settler history book.

Michigan’s official list of federally recognized tribes places the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Sault Ste. Marie and the Bay Mills Indian Community in Brimley, both in Chippewa County. These are present-day governments, not memorial organizations. They govern their own affairs, run public institutions, and continue to exercise treaty rights. That is the most important context for the county’s name: the people it names are still here.