• Go to the Michigan Historical Museum home page
• Go to our First People online exhibits

Background Notes

The First People entered the area we call Michigan over 10,000 years ago. They hunted and fished for thousands of years. Yet the environment showed little impact from their lives here. When the Europeans arrived around 1620, Woodland peoples of the Algonquian language groups lived on this land that would become Michigan. This chart lists the tribes and their approximate Michigan locations.

Objectives

• Students will identify Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas and the directions-north, south, east, and west-on an outline map of Michigan.
• Students will be able to correctly identify the major Native American tribes and their locations upon the arrival of Europeans in the area that is now the state of Michigan.

Michigan Social Studies Curriculum Content Standards

This lesson presents an opportunity to address, in part, these standards:

• SOC.II.1 All students will describe, compare, and explain the locations and characteristics of places, cultures, and settlements.
• SOC.II.2. All students will describe, compare, and explain the locations and characteristics of ecosystems, resources, human adaptation, environmental impact, and the interrelationships among them.
• SOC.II.4 All students will describe and compare characteristics of ecosystems, states, regions, countries, major world regions, and patterns and explain the processes that created them.

Materials Needed

• Blank outline map of Michigan [PDF]
• Pencils, pens or markers
• Teacher: completed map for reference

Directions

This activity assumes knowledge of directional concepts (north, south, east, west) and the concepts of upper and lower (peninsula). Review these using a Michigan map before beginning the activity. (Note that there are no definite areas marked with lines. Tribes moved seasonally and-due to conflicts and interactions with the French, British and Americans-changed locations into the 19th century.)

Provide each student with an outline map of Michigan. Write the names of the major Indian tribes on the board. Using a Michigan wall map discuss the tribes and point out the areas in which they lived.

Have students write the names of the tribes on their own maps during the discussion. (For greater challenge, distribute the blank maps and assign the activity to be completed from memory after the class discussion.)

Questions for Further Research

1. Why did some Indian tribes move from one section of Michigan to another?
2. Was each tribe aware of neighboring tribes? How did they get to know each other?

At the Museum

• Look at the "Tribal Locations circa 1620" map on the reader rail in front of the Woodland scene. Does it resemble the map you made in your class? Why might maps of tribal locations look slightly different in different books or displays?
• See the map on the wall of the fort that shows the lands ceded by the Native Americans to others in treaties.

Vocabulary

• Peninsula: A section of land surrounded by water on all sides but one.
• Tribe: A group of people made up of many families.

References

• Cleland, Charles E. Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan's Native Americans. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1992.
• Clifton, James A., George L. Cornell, and James M. McClurken. People of the Three Fires. Grand Rapids, MI: Grand Rapids Inter-Tribal Council, 1968.
• Farm Bureau Insurance Group. Early Indians of Michigan. Lansing, MI: Farm Bureau Insurance Group, n.d.
• Halsey, John R. (Editor). Indians in Michigan. Great Lakes Informant, Series 2, Number 10. Lansing, MI: Michigan Department of State, History Division, 1984.
• Sturtevant, William C. (Editor). Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 15. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978.
• Tanner, Helen Hornbeck (Editor). Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.

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Updated 08/09/2010