Splendor and “delightful prospects"
Splendor and “delightful prospects"
Water defines us. Michigan’s story is a history of water exploration, innovation, use and enjoyment. For 10,000 years, tens of thousands of native peoples called the Lakes and Michigan home. They lived, traveled and traded along its waterways, in scattered villages, growing what food they needed for themselves and to trade, bountiful fish providing plenty to eat. These tribes lived in respect and awe of these inland seas they called: “Gichigami,” the Ojibwe word for “big water”; “Erielhonan,” Iroquoian for “long tail”; “Mishigami,” Ojibwe for “large lake.”
The first Europeans were awed too. While searching for the Northwest Passage, they met native peoples to the east and heard of lakes hundreds of miles in size. So awesome was the scope of these inland seas, it’s not surprising that the earliest explorers like Samuel de Champlain assumed they’d reached the Pacific Ocean, closing in on the riches of China and the Orient. In 1634, Jean Nicollet famously donned his Chinese silk robes to meet the Chinese upon arrival on Lake Michigan’s west side. He met the Winnebago Indians instead. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Song of Hiawatha” beautifully captures the timeless power and beauty of the water. Later visitors like Herman Melville were similarly wowed, noting in Moby Dick that the Great Lakes possess “an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the ocean’s noblest traits.”
Nested among these Great Lakes, the peninsulas of Michigan offered a “delightful prospect.” That was Baron LaHontan’s description riding up the St. Clair River in 1688: “It is difficult to imagine a more delightful prospect than is presented by this strait and the little Lake St. Clair.” One hundred fifty years later, according to David Dempsey’s book Ruin and Recovery, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft described the same shore as “rich, and handsomely exposed to the sun … Indeed the succession of interesting views, has afforded us a continued theme of admiration.” Naturalist Bela Hubbard rhapsodized about the Lake Superior shore near Pictured Rocks. “The lake coast presents a succession of bold and rocky cliffs, with leaping streams and dunes of sand, which give many strange and wild features to the scenery of that wonderful region.”
And the many rivers that drain into the lakes are beautiful and equally perceived in romantic and even spiritual terms. Writer Dr. John Hartig quoted the International Rivers Network in his book Burning Rivers: “The River is a thing of grace and beauty, a mystery and a metaphor, a living organism … shaping our landscapes into works of art greater than those found in any museum.”