Gichi Bitobig, Grand Marais: Early Accounts of the Anishinaabeg and the North Shore Fur Trade

The journals of two clerks of the American Fur Company recall a lost moment in the history of the fur trade and the Anishinaabeg along Lake Superior’s North Shore

Long after the Anishinaabeg first inhabited and voyageurs plied Lake Superior’s North Shore in Minnesota, and well before the tide of Scandinavian immigrants swept in, Bela Chapman, a clerk of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, fetched up in Gichi Bitobig—a stony harbor now known as Grand Marais. Through the year that follo...