Forest County Potawatomi

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The Forest County Potawatomi have lived in Forest County, Wisconsin, since the late 1800s. Around 1880, groups of the Potawatomi settled in areas near Blackwell and Wabeno and have lived in that area since, as well as in the Carter and Crandon areas. Centuries ago, the Potawatomi people numbered more than 10,000 and occupied and controlled almost 30 million acres in the Great Lakes area. Today, the Forest County Potawatomi have roughly 1,400 tribal members. The Potawatomi Reservation is located primarily in Forest County it totals about 12,000 acres. Approximately 9,000 acres are trust land, and 3,000 acres are fee land. There are also seven acres of trust land in the City of Milwaukee. Approximately 531 tribal members live on reservation, trust, or fee land. In addition, a large number of tribal members live in the Milwaukee area. The Forest County Potawatomi are Algonquin, a European term based upon linguistics, and Neshnabek, a Potawatomi word that means "keepers of the fire." The Potawatomi were part of a confederacy with the Ojibwa (Chippewa) and Odawa (Ottawa) Indian tribes. This group was known as the Council of the Three Fires. The Potawatomi were given the task of keeping alive the Sacred Fire. At the time of first contact by the Europeans, the Potawatomi people were living in what is today lower Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. To the west of Lake Michigan, the Potawatomi land base extended from Illinois to Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Potawatomi signed 42 treaties with the United States government which is more than any other tribe. In 1833, the Potawatomi lost all of their land east of the Mississippi River in the Treaty of Chicago. This treaty took 5,000,000 acres of Potawatomi land. During this period, the U.S. military rounded up many of the Potawatomi and forcibly removed them from traditional lands. These Potawatomi people

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