Ontonagon

The Ontonagon River flows through the western Upper Peninsula into Lake Superior, gathering several branches among its forests and waterfalls. On the river's western branch lay a great boulder of native copper, known to the Ojibwe as Misko-biiwaabik. According to the Keweenaw Bay community, people made offerings there to the Great Spirit.

Stories of the copper reached French voyageurs, and the Jesuit Claude Dablon visited it in 1667. In 1766 Ojibwe guides brought the trader Alexander Henry to the boulder; he found its copper soft enough to cut. Henry Schoolcraft reached it in 1820 with Indigenous guides and noted marks left by axes and chisels. Its fame drew attention to the copper country around Lake Superior, where the metal had long been known to Indigenous peoples.