Historic Diaries: James Doty, 1820
June 6, 1820: To Mackinac Island
Editor's Note:
At the junction of lakes Huron and Michigan, and close by the route into Lake Superior, Mackinac Island had been a fur trade center for more than 150 years. As early as 1665 a French author had called it, "the general meeting-place for all the French who go to trade with stranger tribes; it is the landing-place and refuge of all the savages who trade their peltries." By 1820, both Indians and whites had long-established communities there and had intermarried for several generations. Wisconsin's early fur trade families went back and forth between Green Bay and Mackinac quite casually.
At the time of Doty's visit, Elisabeth Therese Fisher was a 10-year old girl living on the island. In her old age, she wrote a memoir of her childhood that describes the island and its multi-cultural social life.
Schoolcraft estimated that they had now come 360 miles up the eastern coast of Michigan from Detroit.
Location: Mackinac Island, Mich.
View Doty's handwritten manuscript of this page
View page in the 1895 printed edition
We rose at day break & embarked. Fifteen miles from Swan river is Wauqui-og, or Deep
bay, into which a river of the same name empties, navigable for boats & canoes only a short distance. This river is frequented by the Indians for hunting beaver. Bois Blanc, or white wood Island, called by the Indians Ke-tin-a-gung, is 18 miles long and 6 m. wide. Nearly opposite to this Island on the west there is Sha-baw-e-guning bay into which empties a river of the same name. It rises in a lake.
Although the wind was high, we determined if possible to reach Mackinac this day. At the head of Bois blanc lies a round Island on which Trowbridge, Chase, Riley & myself landed and walked across opposite to Mackinac, where we again got into the canoe and passed over to Mackinac, two miles, where we arrived at sun set.
Whole distance of travel this day 60 miles. Off the upper end of Bois Blanc about 10 miles distant, on the main [land] is a saw mill. The timber around it is pine.
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