The Early World of Chigagou, 1600–1750

This chapter talks about a marshy area Native Americans called Chigagou, meaning the “wild-garlic place”. It describes Chigagou as an inhospitable place and very few American Indians wanted to live on the area's marshy land. It also points out that the ancestors of the Native Americans who settled in the Chigagou area came from Siberia. This chapter explains that Chigagou was never the site of a major settlement and its geographic location suggests it was a place that American Indians passed through while traveling. The chapter mentions white traders that realized that the Chigagou swamp amounted to a mini-continental divide. East of Chigagou, rivers flowed eastward toward the Atlantic Ocean, and, west of the swamp, rivers flowed westward toward the Mississippi River.