they lived in numerous villages which the French visited for fur trading. The anthropologist James Mooney in 1928 estimated that the tribe's number in 1650 was 3,000 persons.

The early French explorers and traders referred to the people as "folles avoines" (wild oats), referring to the wild rice which they cultivated and gathered as one of their staple foods. The Menominee have traditionally subsisted on a wide variety of plants