Indians of Michigan: Tribes, Treaties, and Records for Genealogy Research

Who are the Native American tribes of Michigan?

The Native American tribes in Michigan are, almost without exception, Anishinaabe — a shared name covering three related Indigenous peoples of the western Great Lakes region: the Ojibwe (also spelled Ojibwa, and recorded in old documents as Chippewa), the Odawa (Ottawa), and the Potawatomi. Speakers of these related languages call themselves Anishinaabe in Anishinaabemowin, their own tongue. Older Michigan sources sometimes group the three as the Council of Three Fires, a political and military alliance that predates statehood by centuries. If your ancestor’s file uses the word “Chippewa,” that’s almost always an anglicized spelling of Ojibwe, not a different people.

I started digging into this topic because a client’s family story mentioned an “Indian grandmother” from the Saginaw valley, and the paper trail ran straight through the treaties below. That’s the pattern for most Michigan researchers: you don’t start with the tribe, you start with a name in a family Bible, and the tribe reveals itself through the records.

Today, twelve federally recognized tribes in Michigan hold a home base within the state of Michigan — sovereign nations with their own governments, courts, and enrollment offices:

• Bay Mills Indian Community (Ojibwe, Brimley)
• Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (Peshawbestown)
• Hannahville Indian Community (Potawatomi, Wilson)
• Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (Ojibwe, L’Anse Indian Reservation, Baraga)
• Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians (Watersmeet)
• Little River Band of Ottawa Indians (Manistee)
• Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians (Harbor Springs)
• Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians / Gun Lake Tribe (Shelbyville)
• Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi (Fulton)
• Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians (Dowagiac)
• Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan (Mount Pleasant)
• Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians (Sault Ste. Marie)

Notice the geography. Ojibwe communities cluster in the Upper Peninsula and the Saginaw valley; Odawa communities sit along the northwest shore of the Lower Peninsula; Potawatomi communities concentrate in the southwest and south-central counties. That tracks where each people lived through the treaty era, and it’s a useful first filter for guessing which nation an ancestor from a given county belonged to.

The treaties that reshaped Native land in Michigan

Three treaties did more to shape Michigan’s land — and its records — than anything else in the state’s Indigenous history. Each one moved a large population out of collective land tenure and into a paper system of names, ages, and payment amounts, which is exactly the kind of paper trail genealogists need.

The 1819 treaty is the earliest with real genealogical texture. Article 3 names specific individuals by name — John Riley, Peter Riley, and James Riley, sons of a Chippewa woman named Menawcumegoqua — and grants each of them 640 acres along the Saginaw River. That’s an unusually early instance of a Michigan document tying a Native mother’s name to her mixed-heritage children’s land rights, decades before any standardized enrollment process existed.

The 1836 treaty is the one that matters most for later paperwork, because it established the population base that later rolls point back to. The 1855 treaty is the hinge point: Article 5 formally dissolved the joint Ottawa-Chippewa “tribal organization” the 1836 treaty had created, and Article 1 required the Indian agent to prepare name lists — heads of families, single adults over 21, and two classes of orphans — before any land could be allotted. Those agent-prepared lists are the direct ancestor of every enrollment roll that followed.

What records document Native American ancestry in Michigan

Many Native Americans with Michigan roots can trace a direct line to one of these treaty-era bands, because the paperwork behind land cessions and annuity payments survived unusually well.

Annuity rolls come first, chronologically. Once a treaty set up regular payments, someone had to write down who got paid. Michigan’s Ottawa and Chippewa annuity rolls survive in fragments for 1855, 1857, 1858, and 1868, each listing a head of family, the number of males, females, and children in the household, the payment amount, and a roll number. Thin on detail by modern standards, but a name and a roll number is often enough to anchor a family in place and time.

The single most useful record for Michigan Native genealogy is the Durant Roll, compiled between 1908 and 1910. Congress had authorized the Ottawa and Chippewa tribes to sue over money owed under the 1836 and 1855 treaties, and on March 4, 1907, the Court of Claims awarded a judgment. To distribute it, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs assigned Special Agent Horace B. Durant to compile a census of everyone who had been enrolled with the tribes in 1870, or was a descendant of someone who had been, and was still alive on that March 1907 date.

Durant worked band by band — Sault Ste. Marie, Mackinac, Grand Traverse, Grand River — producing field notes for every 1870 household he could trace. He submitted a roll of 7,396 names in October 1909. The Commissioner disallowed 1,952 of them and approved 5,444, signed on January 25, 1910. A supplemental roll covering 236 children born between March 4, 1907, and August 1, 1908, added another 202 approved names. The whole set — the roll, Durant’s working field notes, and the correspondence behind the decisions — sits at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., as Record Group 75, Microfilm Publication M2039.

Beyond the Durant Roll, three other record families come up constantly in this research:

1. Bureau of Indian Affairs agency records. Michigan had two BIA agencies of record: the Mackinac Agency, active roughly 1828–1927, and the Michigan Agency, established around 1934 in Sault Ste. Marie and active through 1970. Both sets of agency files — correspondence, annual reports, enrollment cards — are held at the National Archives at Chicago.
2. Annual Indian census rolls. Separate from the Durant Roll, the Mackinac Agency filed annual census rolls for 1902–1903, 1910, and 1915 through 1927, microfilmed as National Archives Microcopy M595, roll 253.
3. Mission and church registers. Long before Michigan’s 1867 statewide vital-records law, Catholic and Protestant missions serving Anishinaabe communities — at Mackinac Island, L’Arbre Croche near Cross Village, and Sault Ste. Marie among them — kept their own baptism and marriage registers. For a family that was Native and Catholic in the early 1800s, a mission register can predate any government record by decades.

Where to search now

Start at the National Archives. The Durant Roll and its field notes (M2039) are the anchor document for Ottawa and Chippewa descent, searchable by surname before you commit to a research trip. If your family connects to the Mackinac or Michigan Agency, request those records through the National Archives at Chicago rather than Washington — agency-level files didn’t travel with the microfilmed rolls.

The Library of Michigan, part of the Archives of Michigan in Lansing, holds its own microfilm of the Durant Roll along with Raymond Lantz’s published index — an easier starting point than raw microfilm. The Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan separately holds an 1854–1855 Michigan Indian Agency land register recording which tract each enrolled person received, arranged by tribe, treaty, and band.

Each of Michigan’s twelve tribes also maintains its own enrollment office and, in several cases, its own archive — the Saginaw Chippewa’s Ziibiwing Center in Mount Pleasant, central Michigan, is a good example, holding census, annuity, and allotment rolls specific to that tribe’s bands. If your research points to a particular nation, the tribe’s own records office is often the fastest route to material that never made it into a federal microfilm.

FamilySearch rounds it out. Its “Michigan Indigenous Peoples” wiki page catalogs every BIA agency that operated in the state, links to the Durant Roll and related rolls, and lists which repository holds what — useful as a jumping-off checklist even if you end up ordering the actual documents elsewhere.

How tribal enrollment works

Finding an ancestor’s name on the Durant Roll or a mission register tells you something real about your family history. It doesn’t, by itself, make you a tribal citizen — and I want to be straightforward about that instead of letting the research high carry you further than the paperwork supports.

Tribal enrollment is a matter of tribal sovereignty: it’s set by each tribe’s own governing documents, not by the federal government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is explicit that it doesn’t set membership criteria for member tribes and hasn’t administered current tribal rolls since roughly the 1980s. What a tribe typically requires is documented lineal descent from a specific person on that tribe’s official base roll, proven with a chain of birth and death certificates connecting you, generation by generation, back to that ancestor. Some tribes also apply a blood-quantum threshold; requirements vary enough that you have to check with the specific nation rather than assume a rule that applies elsewhere in the country applies in Michigan.

One thing the BIA states plainly: a DNA test cannot establish tribal citizenship. It can, in some cases and only if a given tribe chooses to accept it, help confirm a biological relationship you’re already trying to document through paper records. The records are the proof.

If you get to the point of applying for enrollment, or for a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, contact the specific tribe directly using the BIA’s Tribal Leaders Directory. The Bureau’s own guide to tracing American Indian ancestry lays out the same three steps: identify the tribe, establish the lineal ancestor, and document the relationship. They’ll tell you what their own constitution requires — and that answer is the only one that counts.

Frequently asked questions

What Native American tribes are from Michigan? Michigan has twelve federally recognized tribes, all belonging to three related Anishinaabe nations: Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Potawatomi.

How do I find out if I have Native American ancestry in Michigan? Work backward from yourself through standard genealogical records — census, vital records, church registers — until you reach a specific ancestor in a specific time and place. Then check that name against the annuity and census rolls for the relevant county and era, starting with the Durant Roll if your line points to Ottawa or Chippewa bands.

What is the Durant Roll? It’s a 1908–1910 census of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan, compiled by Special Agent Horace B. Durant to determine who was eligible for a Court of Claims payment tied to the 1836 and 1855 treaties. It documents everyone enrolled with the tribes in 1870, or descended from someone who was, and still living on March 4, 1907. It’s held at NARA as Record Group 75, Microfilm Publication M2039.

Can a DNA test prove I’m a member of a Michigan tribe? No. The Bureau of Indian Affairs does not accept DNA or blood tests as proof of tribal membership. Enrollment is set by each tribe’s governing documents and generally requires documented lineal descent from someone on that tribe’s official base roll.

Where are Bureau of Indian Affairs records for Michigan kept? Record Group 75, the main BIA record group, is at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Records specific to Michigan’s Mackinac Agency (1902–1927) and Michigan Agency (1934–1970) are at the National Archives at Chicago.