Keweenaw Bay

Keweenaw Bay lies beneath the long peninsula projecting into Lake Superior. The surrounding country is rich in native copper, which Indigenous peoples extracted and worked long before European visitors reached the lake. In 1659 Pierre Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers travelled along the southern shore to the bay, where they encountered copper and an established portage across the peninsula. The following year the Jesuit René Ménard visited an Ojibwe village at the head of the bay.