Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa
band of Ojibwe Indians in Wisconsin
Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe: Gaa-Miskwaabikaang) is a band of Ojibwe Native Americans. The Red Cliff Band is located on the Red Cliff Indian Reservation, on Lake Superior in Bayfield County, Wisconsin. Red Cliff, Wisconsin, is the administrative center. Red Cliff is notable for being the band closest to the spiritual center of the Ojibwe nation, Madeline Island. As of November 2010, there were 5,312 enrolled members, with about half living on the reservation and the rest living in the city of Bayfield or the Belanger Settlement.
History
The Red Cliff Band is one of the successors of the Lake Superior Chippewa the group of Ojibwe that moved west along the south shore of Lake Superior from Sault Ste. Marie. According to tradition, the Ojibwe came from the Atlantic coast via several stopping places to Chequamegon Bay directed by the Great Spirit {Gichi Manidoo} to find the "food that grows on water" (wild rice). Madeline Island represented the final stopping place.
During the 17th century, French fur traders and Jesuits arrived on Madeline Island and set up a trading post at La Pointe with a Catholic mission.
“Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa” enters the record as band of Ojibwe Indians in Wisconsin. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cliff, Band and Lake can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7303906. Authority coordinates are 46.947, -90.872. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.