Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians
 |
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 30,000 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| North Dakota, United States | |
| Languages | |
| English, Ojibwe, Michif | |
| Religion | |
| Catholicism, Methodism, Midewiwin | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Chippewa Cree, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Métis |
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians (Ojibwe language: Mikinaakwajiw-ininiwag) is a Native American tribe of Ojibwa and Métis peoples, based on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota. The tribe has 30,000 enrolled members. A population of 5,815 reside on the main reservation and another 2,516 reside on off-reservation trust land (as of the 2000 census). It is federally recognized and Richard McCloud is the current Tribal Chairman.
Around the end of the eighteenth century, prior to the advent of white traders in the area, the formerly woodland-oriented Chippewa, who had been in what is now Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, moved out onto the Great Plains in pursuit of the buffalo and new beaver resources to hunt and trade. They successfully reoriented their culture to life on the plains, adopting horses, and developing the bison-hide tipi, the Red River cart, hard-soled footwear, and new ceremonial procedures. By around 1800, these Indians were hunting in the Turtle Mountain area of present-day North Dakota.
For more than a century, as there was no international boundary, the Chippewa freely ranged in the areas that would become Manitoba, Canada and the US states of Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana, where they mingled with Cree and other tribes in the area. Running battles with the Dakota over territorial disputes, were finally settled in 1858 with the signing of the Sweet Corn Treaty which described the 11,000,000 acres of the Chippewa domain and provided for reparations. The agreement was signed by Mattonwakan, Chief of the Yanktons and La Terre Qui Purle, Chief of the Sisseton Band, Chief Wilkie (Narbexxa) of the Chippewa and witnessed by many members of both tribes.
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