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