Chief Shoppenagon / Shoppenagon´s Homesite

Chief David Shoppenagon was born in Indianfields, a Chippewa Indian Village in the Saginaw River Valley. In 1795 his grandfather, also a Chippewa chief, was among the Indians who met with General Anthony Wayne at Fort Greenville, Ohio, and signed a treaty that ended forty years of warfare in the Ohio Valley. Shoppenagon arrived in the Grayling area from the Saginaw Valley during the early 1870s. He trapped, hunted, and was a guide for sportsmen throughout the northern Lower Peninsula. Shoppenagon´s Homesite Chief David Shoppenagon had a house near this site, though he spent much of his time along the lakes and rivers of the area. Whites called him “Old Shopp” and welcomed his campfire tales of bear and deer hunts. He made canoes and paddles by hand and was a river guide in the area. In the early 1900s, a local inn, the area’s cork pine and maple flooring company were named for Chief Shoppenagon. The chief died on Christmas Day 1911. He was believed to be 103 years old.