About 11,000 years ago, Native people moved into what is now Wisconsin, a land whose name in the Chippewa (Ojibwe) language means "gathering of the waters." They found many possibilities there, with animals such as mammoth, mastodon, moose, and giant beaver in the surrounding forests. For thousands of years, the Wisconsin River served as an important transportation corridor for ideas and goods. Around 2,000 years ago, Native American farmers, traders, and skilled craftsmen living along rivers in Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin traded fine pottery, stone knives, and other works of art throughout the Midwest. Wisconsin's Native Americans adopted new technologies, including pottery for cooking and food storage, the bow and arrow for hunting small animals, and the cultivation of wild plants, corn, beans, and squash, changes that led to a more settled village life. About 1,700 years ago, Native Americans built a village on the south bank of the Wisconsin River in Grant County that archaeologists call Millville. The houses at Millville are the only ones discovered from this time period in southwestern Wisconsin, and the site also preserves early evidence of plant cultivation, including squash, domesticated sunflower, and sumpweed. Its villagers gathered wild rice, nuts, seeds, and berries, and continued to hunt animals such as elk and white-tailed deer.