Minong

Minong, the Good Place, is the Ojibwe name for the long island in Lake Superior later called Isle Royale. Forested ridges rise above a deeply indented shore, and the island forms part of the traditional country of the North Shore Ojibwe. Long before European arrival, people dug pits along Minong Ridge to extract native copper, using stone hammers to free the metal and fashioning it into tools and ornaments.

In 1669–70 the Jesuit Claude Dablon recorded accounts of an island called Menong, famous for its copper. Ojibwe people continued to travel to the island for its resources. At Indian Point near McCargoe Cove, the remains of an eighteenth-century camp include glass beads, gunflints and iron alongside older forms of material, evidence of life on the island during the era of the fur trade.