Historical Pictures of Native Americans from the Lake Superior Region

This picture of a family building a canoe is labeled from Lac Du Flambeau.

An essential part of my Historical Pictures Collection is to acquire images of our regional Native Americans. It is not an easy task. Doing this requires forgetting about borders and looking at the area regionally more from a Great Lakes perspective. In researching the Upper Peninsula’s Native American past, it is important to realize that through the resultant acts of treaties, many of the original indigenous families and tribes were relocated.  The Natives from the Keweenaw Peninsula were relocated at Baraga. The tribes from the western U.P. were sent to Wisconsin to places like the Bad River and Lac Du Flambeau. The Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa says it all in the name.

This is an Ojibwa family from somewhere near Lake Superior. The picture doesn’t give an actual location.

The Ojibwa travelled Lake Superior & Lake Michigan without thought of Canada or U.S., whether it was Michigan, Wisconsin or Minnesota, it is all the same.  Everything was tied together by the water and unbroken land.

This is an Ojibwa Chief named Kegadesa. The picture is mis-identified often.

Ojibwa villages dotted the shores of the Upper Great Lakes. Their canoes plied the waters and the campfires lit the night. It was a region of abundance where living off the land and water was possible.

The rare picture of the Native American village on Grand Island.

As I collect these images of native Americans, I try my best to identify the people and locations, but it is in many cases an impossible task. Their names were allowed to disappear into an unrecoverable past. The importance of their lives, culture, and religion, in most cases, was removed from the history books.

Native Americans fishing on the Canadian side of the St. Mary’s River. The Sault tribes were as one when they drew the border to Canada between them.

For more information on Lake Superior Native Americans:

Michigan Early History: Michigan First Inhabitants (ereferencedesk.com)