Food from the land

OJIBWE

Moving with the Seasons

Food sources Year Round

The Ojibwe based their lives on the four seasons of the Great Lakes region: winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Each season provided different plants and animals for the Ojibwe to use. When the seasons changed, people moved their camps to the places within their territories where they would find the most food and natural materials for making clothing, tools, and shelters.

WINTER TASKS AND TALES

During the harsh winters, men spent the days hunting and ice fishing, while women and children usually stayed indoors, making clothing and household items. In the evenings, men made and repaired tools and weapons. During this time, the family elders told stories.

Hunting and fishing provided the Ojibwe with many of the things they needed to survive. Hunting was not an easy task. Men had to know where animals could be found each season and how different animals behaved, especially when threatened. Hunters often traveled far from their camps in order to find animals. Sometimes they helped one another by working in small groups to herd the animals closer to the camps or to hunt large animals such as moose.

Men hunted and fished year-round, but these tasks became especially important in winter, when their families survived on stored foods and whatever the hunters could catch. In early winter, men caught and hunted beavers, ducks, and geese. The rest of the winter they hunted moose, bears, elks, foxes, minks, and rabbits. They hunted deer year-round.

WAYS OF HUNTING

Hunters used several methods to catch animals. They caught small animals, such as rabbits and foxes, in traps and snares and set up deadfalls to catch larger animals such as bears. A deadfall was a trap that was rigged to drop a heavy weighted object, such as a log, onto an animal that wandered into the trap. Hunters also shot animals with bows and arrows. They speared fish with long, sharpened poles, called spears, or trapped them in nets of woven plant fibers.

SPRING JOBS

The southern parts of the Ojibwe territories had forests of maple trees. In the spring, families in these areas moved to the maple forests. They collected sap and boiled it down into syrup and sugar. Spring also was a time for cutting and peeling birch bark, which was used to make containers, shelters, and canoes.

MAPLE SUGARING SEASON

In the late winter, the Ojibwe began watching the crows--the first sign of spring. When the birds appeared, the families moved to the bush to begin collecting sap and making maple syrup and sugar. Each family had its own sugar bush, or group of maple trees, to which it returned each year.

People used maple syrup and sugar to flavor their foods. They ate it with fruits, vegetables, meats, and fish. Sugar not only added flavor, but it also kept foods from spoiling.

To get the sap out of the trees, people cut notches into the trees and hammered in sharp wooden spouts. As the sap would rise from the roots and travel up the trunk, it would drip out of the spouts and into birch bark buckets.

They had to collect a lot of sap! It took about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup.

BOILING IT DOWN

Women made sap into syrup and sugar by heating it. They put the sap into hide or birch bark containers and dropped hot rocks into it until it boiled. The longer the sap cooked, the thicker it became. When sap became smooth syrup, women would put it into containers for storing. They boiled the rest until it became as thick as glue. The women then spooned it into wooden troughs and worked it with paddles until it cooled and formed sugar. For fun, they spooned the thick syrup onto snow or into wooden molds, where it cooled into maple candy for children.

summer villages

In the summer, huge groups of extended families camped together. They often returned to the same site year after year. Men spent their days fishing, hunting, and building new canoes. Women dried extra meat and fish and gathered foods such as berries from the forest. Most also planted vegetable gardens. Summer was also a time for the community to hold councils (meetings), ceremonies, and celebrations.

GATHERERS

Foods that grew in fields and forests were important parts of the Ojibwe diet, especially in summer and autumn when many trees and plants grew fruits, seeds, and berries. Women and children searched the forests for cherries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries.

GARDENERS

Besides berries and other fruits, they also gathered herbs such as mint, which they used to make tea and to season foods. Some women also planted small gardens with pumpkins, corn, squash, potatoes, and beans. People ate some of the foods fresh and dried the rest for winter.

The fall gathering season

In early autumn, wild rice became ripe. People moved from their large summer camps to the marshy areas where the rice grew. Each family had its own spot for harvesting wild rice. Family members worked together to gather, dry and store as much rice as they could before heading to the winter camps.

WILD RICE - MENOOMIN

KEEPING THE BALANCE

The Ojibwe respected animals and the balance of the natural world so they killed only what they needed. They never fished or hunted an animal during its mating season. When they killed an animal they were careful never to waste any part of it. They ate the animal's meat, used the bones to make tools, and made clothing, shoes, bedding and wigwam coverings from the its hide. They used other parts to make threads or medicine.

Additional Resources

Sources

Kalman, B., & Walker, N. (2003). Life In An Anishinabe Camp. New York: Crabtree Pub.

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