Amikwa Indians (from amik, beaver). An Algonquian tribe found by the French on the north shore of Lake Huron, opposite Manitoulin Island, where they were located in the Jesuit Relations at various dates up to 1672. Bacqueville de la Potherie 1 says that they and the Nipissing once inhabited the shores of Lake Nipissing, and that they rendered themselves masters of all the other nations in those quarters until disease made great havoc among them and the Iroquois compelled the remainder of the tribe to betake themselves, some to the French settlements, others to Lake Superior and to Green bay of Lake Michigan. In 1740 a remnant had retired to Manitoulin Island. Chauvignerie, writing in 1736, says of the Nipissing: “The armorial bearings of this nation are, the heron for the Achagué or Heron tribe, the beaver for the Amekoȣes [Amikwa], the birch for the Bark tribe. The reference may possibly be to a gens only of the Nipissing and not to the Amikwa tribe, yet the evidently close relation between the latter and the Nipissing justifies the belief that the writer alluded to the Amikwa as known to history. They claimed in 1673 to be allies of the Nipissing.
Citations:
- Bacqueville de la Potherie, Hist. Am. Sept., 1753[↩]
