Gichi-onigamiing

Gichi Onigamiing, the Great Carrying Place, joins Lake Superior to the Pigeon River. Indigenous travellers carried canoes and goods along the trail to avoid the falls and rapids of the river’s lower course. The bay at the eastern end was also the site of an Ojibwe summer village, linked to winter hunting grounds and spring maple sugar camps inland.

After La Vérendrye arrived in 1731, French traders increasingly used the route to reach the interior. The place became known to them as Grand Portage and grew into a major meeting point of the fur trade. By the 1780s the North West Company maintained a depot at the lake and another post at the inland end. Each summer traders and Indigenous hunters gathered to exchange furs and goods; the company moved its main depot away in 1803.