Last Updated: 20 years The First People entered the area we call Michigan over 10,000 years ago. They hunted and fished for thousands of years. Yet the environment showed little impact from their lives here.
When the Europeans arrived around 1620, Woodland peoples of the Algonquian language groups lived on this land that would become Michigan. This chart lists the tribes and their approximate Michigan locations.
| Menominee | South central Upper Peninsula (near present Menominee River and Green Bay) | |
| Chippewa
(Ojibwa) |
Eastern Upper Peninsula | |
| Ottawa | Eastern Upper Peninsula, Canada | |
| Potawatomi | Western lower Michigan | |
| Mascowten | Western and central southern lower Michigan | |
| Sauk | Eastern central lower Michigan, near Saginaw Bay | |
| Fox | Eastern lower Michigan, near Lake Huron | |
| Kickapoo | Southeastern corner of lower Michigan | |
| Miami | Southwestern corner of lower Michigan |