How Chippewa County got its name

Of all Michigan’s county names, Chippewa’s is one of the most direct: it’s named for the people who have lived here longest. “Chippewa” is one of the names for the Ojibwe — also spelled Ojibway, and known among themselves as Anishinaabe — one of the largest Native nations in North America. “Chippewa” and “Ojibwe” are simply two versions of the same name for the same people; “Chippewa” became the more common form in the United States, “Ojibwe” in Canada. So this county carries, plainly, the name of its first and enduring inhabitants.

This was Ojibwe country long before it was a county, a state, or a country. The rapids at what’s now Sault Ste. Marie were a great gathering place — the people called it Bahweting — where families came for the extraordinary whitefish runs and where trade routes met. The Ojibwe were here for centuries before French missionaries and traders arrived in the 1600s, and through all the upheaval that followed — treaties, land cessions, and broken promises — they never left.

That’s the most important thing to understand about the name: it isn’t a memorial to people who are gone. The Chippewa are very much still here. Two sovereign tribal nations are based in this county today — the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and the Bay Mills Indian Community — governing their own affairs, running their own institutions, and exercising treaty rights their ancestors secured. The county’s name is a reminder, every day, of whose homeland this has always been.