How did native people understand the Great Lakes?

October 26, 2015 10:24 AM

How did native people understand the Great Lakes?

So a facebook friend posted an article about Lakes Michigan and Huron being hydrologically one lake which I weirdly knew already because wikipedia is a rabbit hole and it got me wondering how First Nations peoples related to the lakes pre-Colombian contact. Did they consider all canonical five one entity or group? Did they make separate mental categories for "big lake" and "regular lake" as contemporary North Americans do? More broad resources regarding First Nations peoples' philosophy of geography would be interesting to me as well. (I don't have access to academic paywalled content, and my own searches are giving me... dubious content.)

posted by tivalasvegas to Society & Culture (3 answers total)

It's been a while since I read it, but I'm pretty sure that 1491 dealt with this in one of its sections.
posted by Melismata at 11:13 AM on October 26, 2015

Best answer: According to the Decolonial Atlas, the Ojibwe use the word gichigami ("sea;"* literally, "big-liquid") to denote the Great Lakes. A lake of more ordinary magnitude is referred to by zaaga'igan.

*Gichigami also covers "seas" in our sense of the word. The finer distinction between the Great Lakes and the oceanic seas seems to be made according to water content: the former being nibiimaang gichigamiin, "freshwater [or possibly 'loonwater'] seas," the latter zhiiwitaagani-gichigamiin, "salty seas."
posted by Iridic at 2:21 PM on October 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Perhaps?
posted by persona au gratin at 12:06 AM on October 27, 2015