Manitowoc

Manitowoc lies at the mouth of the Manitowoc River on the western shore of Lake Michigan. Its name comes from an Indigenous language and has been explained through words relating to spirits. In Menominee it is Manetōwak, meaning a place of spirits. The shore and river formed part of a wider Indigenous Great Lakes world connected by waterways and exchange. In 1836 the Menominee ceded this land to the United States under the Treaty of the Cedars, following negotiations involving peoples displaced from New York to Wisconsin. The later city grew at the river mouth; its modern development should not be assumed to describe an earlier town of the same form.