Location: The Potawatomi first lived in lower Michigan, then moved to northern Wisconsin and eventually settled into northern Indiana and central Illinois.
History: The Potawatomi started out as hunters and gatherers, they ate wild game, fish, wild rice, red oak acorns, and maple syrup. After being pushed out of the hunting ground and into Wisconsin, they learned farming from neighboring tribes. They grew corn, beans and squash. The women took care of the field while the men did the hunting. Their modes of travel was the birch bark canoes and later the horse as their tribes moved into different regions. They used the horses to hunt buffalo in the roaming grassland.
Both men and women had long hair. In times of war the men shaved their hair, except for a scalplock to which they added porcupine hair with an eagle feather. They learned to fight in ranks from European soldier, one rank kneeled and fired while the others reloaded. They used a tribal band system of government, where “independent bands were bound to each other by a common language and shared a clan system, which cut across band lines.” (www.dickshovel.com/pota.)
Language: Central Algonquin - very close to Ojibwe and Ottawa.
Daily life: Today the Potawatomi are known as the Citizen Potawatomi Nation retain their cultural roots. There is a historical museum set up called the Potawatomi Museum and Cultural Center located at 5460 Everybody’s Road, Crandon, WI.
References:
www.potawatomi.org
www.dickshovel.com/pota.html
www.fcpotawatomi.com/
Jared Smasal