Ottawa (or
Odawa) is a
dialect of the
Ojibwe language, spoken by the
Ottawa people in southern
Ontario in Canada, and northern
Michigan in the United States. Descendants of migrant Ottawa speakers live in
Kansas and
Oklahoma. The first recorded meeting of Ottawa speakers and Europeans occurred in 1615 when a party of Ottawas encountered explorer
Samuel de Champlain on the north shore of
Georgian Bay. Ottawa is written in an alphabetic system using
Latin letters, and is known to its speakers as
Nishnaabemwin "speaking the native language" or
Daawaamwin "speaking Ottawa".