ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches part of the history of the Lake Superior Ojibwa and links their past to two of the great ongoing scholarly enterprises in North American historical demography: the work of Robert Fogel (1986) and his associates, which gives an account of the mortality decline in the entire population of North America and explains its timing, and Russell Thornton’s (1987) narrative of the decline and rebound of the Native American population over the four centuries from 1500 to 1900. In particular, this chapter will look at the role of diet and nutrition among the Lake Superior Ojibwa (also known as “Chippewa”) people of Wisconsin and attempt to make some connections to the larger history of the tribe’s experience with treaties and land cessions, economic change, and demographic change.
