Thursday, May 18, 2023

MINONG – The Misty Isle Emerges

This is the 2nd part of my friend Philip J. Kucera's Isle Royale expedition.

Access the 1st part here. 


Departure prep. Kayakers in fog, morning mist. Courtesy Jeff Price, ©2022


Approaching Isle Royale by ferry in a dense Lake Superior fog, the 45 mile long "Rock" can loom into view in an instant under a clearing blue on blue as the vessel begins to maneuver through the sinuous Smithwick Channel to dock at the Rock Harbor complex. Fear not armchair traveler, the ship captains have navigated these waters before.



Isle Royale possesses a mystical quality for visitors. Sailing from Michigan's U.P. on a hot, muggy midsummer day, a first sighting might find the island floating far above the horizon, a long thin line of haze. Mirage? Temperature inversion? A Fata Morgana, if you're a reader of Arthurian legend. Islands do carry a certain mysticism…detached as they are.



French missionary Claude Dablon wrote in the Jesuit Relations of 1669-1670 that Indian canoeists told him the island floats. "Sometimes far off, sometimes near, according to the winds that push it and drive it in all directions." Can that be the work of Ojibwa trickster Mishipeshu?

Some sense the primordial as they tread thousands year old footpaths through mossy coastal glades, pondering bogs rich in exotic plants…



…or are stopped short by the raucous jungle cry of pileated woodpeckers weaving suicidal through close forest growth, with "Old Man's Beard" lichen dripping morning dew.

The midcontinent suffered a violent birth over a billion years ago when volcanoes spewed mountain building lava flows and a gigantic rift tore the land apart, creating what would become the Lake Superior Basin. The intense heat is visible today in the fiery blacks, grays and reds of Isle Royale's basalt basement rock.



Over eons, mountains eroded to sediments that eventually compressed to stone. Mile thick glaciers arrived, scraping away the intervening soft rock to expose the mass of hard basalt, Isle Royale's backbone. Glacially gouged shore faults play host to subalpine vegetation today…including the ever-present harebell.



The last glacier closed the Ice Age about 11,000 years ago, its meltwaters filled a deep wide rift and the floating island emerged bobbing in Glacial Lake Minong…Lake Superior.

Earliest humans followed the great melt, hunting mastodons and saber-toothed cats as well as many other cold climate creatures to extinction. They visited the island chain from 6,500 to 5,400 years ago, mining veins of copper and silver exposed on bare rock surfaces.


From the Philip J. Kucera Collection


Long lines of deep excavations are scant evidence of their activity, along with tens of thousands of notched stone hammerheads, most broken, now hidden under accumulated duff.



Cold wintery winds sent the ancients packing south with their metallic treasures, striking for Cahokia, an Archaic Era trade center for the continent. Sited near the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois Rivers, the vast marketplace filled with highly skilled artisans, some of whom beat raw copper into tools, weapons, and exquisite hammered repoussé ornaments.

The miners eventually disappeared into the mists of time…and the island rested.

Near five hundred years ago the Ojibwa settled the upper great lakes, guided by the "Megis" sea shell and ending a long migration from the Atlantic coast in search of turtle islands. The tribe aptly named the place "Minong," The good place. And it was.

Caribou and moose were hunted, fish were abundant in island lakes and offshore. They picked thimbleberries, gathered ceremonial and medicinal herbs, and returned to their mainland winter camps well before the snows. You'll find three dioramas depicting Native activities on the island on lounge walls of the large park service motor vessel, Ranger III.



In the late 1830's the American Fur Company established nine seasonal fish camps on the island, supplying fur trade canoeists -voyageurs- sustenance for 'the road'. Large catches of lake trout, whitefish and herring were hauled into Mackinaw boats, a craft that supplanted birchbark canoes on the big lake. Fish were salted and packed in wooden barrels coopered from island trees, shipped to lower ports.


Courtesy Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper County Historical Collections


Beaver were trapped from the 1600's into the mid-1800's, mainly for the felted hat market – the rage in the "Old World" back then. Fur trade declined throughout North America as over-trapping almost annihilated the beaver population. Fashion trends change, if slowly at times.

The American government appropriated Indian land in Superior Country through a series of treaties during the 1840's. One treaty added Isle Royale to its list of acquisitions. The island was purchased for $400 dollars in gunpowder and $100 dollars in fresh beef.

(Reference: the 1844 Isle Royale Compact.)

Prospectors soon swarmed the island 'discovering' copper in the ancient workings. Minong Mining Co. owners paid a couple to "winter over" to protect their newly acquired property from claim jumpers. Among the few through the centuries to take on the winter challenge, here's their harrowing story.

Scandinavian immigrants began settling the island before the turn of the twentieth century. The rugged beauty and low fjords of Isle Royale reminded them of home…and fishing was a way of life they knew well.



They adopted the Mackinaw boats, "The greatest surf boat known," rowing or sailing the small open craft to fishing grounds often miles from shore, in weather fair or foul. Worked daily for decades, the boats were eventually powered, renamed "gas boats" by locals. "Belle," built in 1928, sitting landlocked today at Edison Fishery, served its masters well to the close of commercial fishing in the early 1950's.



To carry their families through lean years, fishermen built rental cottages to house occasional island visitors. Resorts quickly sprung up to handle increased tourist traffic arriving by steamship. They came for "the airs," for hay fever relief and to escape hot, crowded, smoke-clogged lower lakes cities. They came to experience the wild, to view wild creatures and they filled the resorts for entire summers.


Courtesy Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper County Historical Collections


A few purchased land, even islets, and built cottages large and small. They paid fishermen to caretake their properties, and guide "Sports" to ancient fishing grounds.



Each year, as chill autumn winds stirred – before Lake Superior turned mean, they packed their trunks, shuttered cabin windows and hauled boats high ashore beyond the grasp of gale driven combers. Heading back to the mainland, they left the isle to battle the winter spirts alone.

And once again, the island rested.

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