Peshtigo

The Peshtigo River runs through the forests of northeastern Wisconsin to Green Bay, carrying the waters of the wooded interior toward Lake Michigan. Its long course includes a turbulent stretch of rapids that boatmen had to portage, and the river cut a valley through hemlock and pine. This country lay within the homeland of the Menominee, whose communities gathered wild rice from the shallow lakes and rivers, hunted deer and bear in the woods, and fished at the mouths of the streams. Their canoe routes followed the river to the bay, where they met French traders who had come up the coast from Michilimackinac in the seventeenth century.